The Dutch East India Company (
Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC, "United East India Company") was a
chartered company established in 1602 when the
States General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year
monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. It is sometimes considered to have been the first
multinational corporation in the world,[9] and it was the first company to issue
stock.[10] It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[11] negotiate treaties, strike
its own coins, and establish colonies.[12]
ORIG
The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (
Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie;[f]VOC), was a
multinational corporation founded by a
government-directed
consolidation of several rival Dutch trading companies (voorcompagnieën) in the early 17th century. It is believed to be the largest company to ever have existed in recorded history.[13][14] It was established on March 20, 1602, as a
chartered company to trade in pepper and spices with South Asia and Southeast Asia after the Spanish tried to block access to trade routes.[15]
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Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the
English (later
British)
East India Company, the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.[16]
ORIG
The company has been often labelled a
trading company (i.e. a company of merchants who buy and sell goods produced by other people) or sometimes a
shipping company. However, the VOC was in fact an early-modern corporate model of
vertically integratedglobal supply chain[2][5] and a proto-
conglomerate, diversifying into multiple commercial and industrial activities such as international trade (especially intra-Asian trade),[1][17][18][19][20][21] shipbuilding, and both production and trade of
East Indian spices,[2]Indonesian coffee,
Formosan sugarcane,[3][4] and
South African wine.[5][6][7] The company was a transcontinental employer and a corporate pioneer of outward
foreign direct investment in the early modern world. At the dawn of
modern capitalism, wherever Dutch capital went, urban features were developed, economic activities expanded, new industries established, new jobs created, trading companies operated, swamps drained, mines opened, forests exploited, canals constructed, mills turned, and ships were built.[22][23][24][25][26] In the early modern period, the Dutch were pioneering
investors and
capitalists who raised the commercial and industrial potential of underdeveloped or undeveloped lands whose resources they exploited, whether for better or worse. For example, the native economies of pre-VOC-era Taiwan and South Africa were largely rural. It was VOC employees who established and developed the first modern
urban areas in the history of Taiwan (
Tainan) and South Africa (
Cape Town and
Stellenbosch).
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Having been set up in 1602 to profit from the
Malukan spice trade, the VOC established a capital in the port city of
Jayakarta in 1609 and changed the city name into
Batavia (now
Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory.[27] It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual
dividend for almost 200 years.
ORIG
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Weighed down by smuggling, corruption and growing administrative costs in the late 18th century, the company went bankrupt and was formally dissolved in 1799. Its possessions and debt were taken over by the government of the Dutch
Batavian Republic. The former territories owned by the VOC went on to become the
Dutch East Indies and were expanded over the course of the 19th century to include the entirety of the Indonesian archipelago. In the 20th century, these islands would form the
Republic of Indonesia.
ORIG
In the early 1600s, by widely issuing
bonds and
shares to the general public,[g] VOC became the world's first formally listed
public company.[h][i][33][34][35][36][full citation needed][37][38][39] With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in global business history, the company is often considered by many to be the forerunner of modern corporations. In many respects, modern-day corporations are all the 'direct descendants' of the VOC model.[29][full citation needed][40][41][42][43][full citation needed] Its 17th-century institutional innovations and business practices laid the foundations for the rise of giant global corporations in subsequent centuries[28][29][30][44] – as a highly significant and formidable socio-politico-economic force of the modern-day world[45][46][47][48][49] – to become the dominant factor in almost all economic systems today. It also served as the direct model for the organisational reconstruction of the
English/British East India Company in 1657.[50][51][52][53][39][54] The company, for nearly 200 years of its existence (1602–1800), had effectively transformed itself from a corporate entity into a state or an empire in its own right.[j]One of the most influential and extensively researched business enterprises in history, the VOC's world has been the subject of a vast amount of literature that includes both fiction and nonfiction works.
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ORIG
The company was historically an exemplary company-state[k] rather than a pure
for-profit corporation. Originally a government-backed military-commercial enterprise, the VOC was the wartime brainchild of leading Dutch republican statesman
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and the
States-General. From its inception in 1602, the company was not only a commercial enterprise but also effectively an instrument of war in the young
Dutch Republic's revolutionary global war against the powerful
Spanish Empire and
Iberian Union (1579–1648). In 1619, the company forcibly established a central position in the Javanese city of Jayakarta, changing the name to
Batavia (
modern-day Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory.[58] To guarantee its supply, the company established positions in many countries and became an early pioneer of
outwardforeign direct investment.[l] In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[62] negotiate treaties, strike
its own coins, and
establish colonies.[63] With the increasing importance of foreign posts, the company is often considered the world's first true
transnational corporation.[m][64]
Along with the
Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWC), the VOC was seen as the international arm of the
Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the
Dutch Empire. To further its trade routes, the VOC-funded exploratory voyages, such as those led by
Willem Janszoon (Duyfken),
Henry Hudson (Halve Maen), and
Abel Tasman, revealed largely unknown landmasses to the western world. In the
Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography (
c. 1570s–1670s), VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the world as we know it today.
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ORIG
Socio-economic changes in Europe, the shift in power balance, and less successful financial management resulted in a slow decline of the VOC between 1720 and 1799. After the financially disastrous
Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), the company was nationalised in 1796,[65] and finally dissolved on 31 December 1799. All assets were taken over by the government with VOC territories becoming Dutch government colonies.
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REFS
^
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^
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^
abcShih, Chih-Ming; Yen, Szu-Yin (2009). "The Transformation of the Sugar Industry and Land Use Policy in Taiwan", in Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering [8:1], pp. 41–48
^
abcTseng, Hua-pi (2016). "Sugar Cane and the Environment under Dutch Rule in Seventeenth Century Taiwan", in Environmental History in the Making, pp. 189–200
^
abcFourie, Johan; von Fintel, Dieter (2014), "Settler Skills and Colonial Development: The Huguenot ine-Makers in Eighteenth-Century Dutch South Africa". The Economic History Review 67(4): 932–963.
doi:
10.1111/1468-0289.12033
^
abcWilliams, Gavin (2016), "Slaves, Workers, and Wine: The 'Dop System' in the History of the Cape Wine Industry, 1658–1894". Journal of Southern African Studies 42(5): 893–909
^Ames, Glenn J. (2008). The Globe Encompassed: The Age of European Discovery, 1500–1700. pp. 102–103.
^Gelderblom, Oscar; de Jong, Abe; Jonker, Joost (2011), "An Admiralty for Asia: Business Organization and the Evolution of Corporate Governance in the Dutch Republic, 1590–1640", in J. G. Koppell (ed.), Origins of Shareholder Advocacy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 29–70. "The hot rivalry between the voorcompagnieën undermined the country's fragile political unity and economic prosperity, and seriously limited the prospects of competing successfully against other Asian traders from Europe. ... According to
Willem Usselincx, a large merchant well versed in the intercontinental trade, the VOC charter was drafted by bewindhebbers bent on defending their own interests and the
States-General had allowed that to pass so as to achieve the desired merger (Van Rees 1868, 410). An agreement was finally reached on March 20th, 1602, after which the Estates General issued a charter granting a monopoly on the Asian trade for 21 years (Gaastra 2009, 21–23)."
^Unoki, Ko (2012), "A Seafaring Empire", in Mergers, Acquisitions and Global Empires: Tolerance, Diversity and the Success of M&A (New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 39–64
^Gaastra, Femme (2003), The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline (Zutphen: Walberg Pers).
^Gaastra, Femme (1986), "The Dutch East India Company and its Intra-Asiatic Trade in Precious Metals", in Wolfram Fischer, Marvin McInnis, and Jürgen Schneider (eds.), The Emergence of a World Economy, 1500–1914, Part I (Papers of the XI International Congress of Economic History) (Stuttgart: F. Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH).
^Van Dyke, Paul A. (1997), "How and Why the Dutch East India Company Became Competitive in Intra-Asian Trade in East Asia in the 1630s", Itinerario 21(3): 41–56.
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^Shimada, Ryuto (2006), "The Golden Age of Japanese Copper: the Intra-Asian Copper Trade of the Dutch East India Company", in A. J. H. Latham & Heita Kawakatsu (eds.), Intra-Asian Trade and the World Market (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), chapter 2
^Shimada, Ryuto (2005). The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company During the Eighteenth Century (TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction). (BRILL,
ISBN978-9004150928)
^Nadri, Ghulam A. (2008), "The Dutch Intra-Asian Trade in Sugar in the Eighteenth Century". International Journal of Maritime History 20(1): 63–96
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abSteensgaard, Niels (1982), "The Dutch East India Company as an Institutional Innovation", in Maurice Aymard (ed.), Dutch Capitalism and World Capitalism / Capitalisme hollandais et capitalisme mondial [Studies in Modern Capitalism / Etudes sur le capitalisme moderne], pp. 235–257
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abcGoetzmann, William N.; Rouwenhorst, K. Geert (Oxford University Press, 2005)
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abVon Nordenflycht, Andrew (2011), "The Great Expropriation: Interpreting the Innovation of 'Permanent Capital' at the Dutch East India Company", in Jonathan G. S. Koppell (ed.), Origins of Shareholder Advocacy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 89–98
^Shah, Anup (5 December 2002).
"The Rise of Corporations". GlobalIssues.org. Retrieved 28 August 2018. Today we know that corporations, for good or bad, are major influences on our lives. For example, of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations while only 49 are countries, based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs. In this era of globalization, marginalized people are becoming especially angry at the motives of multinational corporations, and corporate-led globalization is being met with increasing protest and resistance.
^Kyriazis, Nicholas C.; Metaxas, Theodore (2011), "Path Dependence and Change and the Emergence of the First Joint-Stock Companies", Business History 53(3): 363–374.
doi:
10.1080/00076791.2011.565513
^Petram, Lodewijk (2014); in Harold James, et al. (ed.), Financial Innovation, Regulation and Crises in History (Routledge, 2014)
^Petram, Lodewijk (Columbia University Press, 2014)
^Stringham, Edward P. (2015); in Edward P. Stringham, Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 39–60
^Stringham, Edward Peter; Curott, Nicholas A. (2015), On the Origins of Stock Markets (Oxford University Press, 2015,
ISBN978-0199811762), pp. 324–344
^
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^Clarke, Thomas; Branson, Douglas (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Corporate Governance (London: SAGE Publications, 2012), p. 431. "The EIC first issued permanent shares in 1657 (Harris, 2005: 45)."
^Shinkai, Tetsuya; Ohkawa, Takao; Okamura, Makoto; Harimaya, Kozo (2012),
"Why did the Dutch East India Co. outperform the British East India Co.? A theoretical explanation based on the objective of the firm and limited liability" (Discussion Paper Series No. 96, School of Economics,
Kwansei Gakuin University). "The Dutch company sent a governor-general with full authority over all of the company's officers to Indonesia. The British East India Company was even more decentralized, however, and acted less as a trading company than as a
guild. It allowed each of its members to trade on his account, owning only the ships in common with other members. Bernstein (2008) also describes the behavior of the employees of the British East India Company, 'the employee of the East India Company treated its ships as their own, transporting large amounts of trade goods for their accounts to and from Asia.'"
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^Raben, Remco (2013), "A New Dutch Imperial History? Perambulations in a Prospective Field", BMGN: Low Countries Historical Review 128(1): 5–30
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^Weststeijn, Arthur (2014), "The VOC as a Company-State: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion", Itinerario 38(1): 13–34.
doi:
10.1017/S0165115314000035
^In his Das Kapital,
Karl Marx describes the Dutch Republic, in its
Golden Age, as "the model capitalist nation of the seventeenth century", which was at the dawn of modern capitalism.
^Taylor, Peter J. (2002). "Dutch Hegemony and Contemporary Globalization" (Paper prepared for Political Economy of World-Systems Conference, Riverside, California).
^Due to internal structural changes, the effects of the fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1780 and the invasion of the French in 1795 all contributed to a perfect storm devastating the company's revenue and lending capability. In the early hours of 14 June 1795 an English fleet hijacked nine Dutch East India Company ships off the coast of
Saint Helena. As a result of this hijacking the VOC lost many ships and the accompanying cargo. The company could not afford to recover from this loss. The Committee for Affairs Relating to East India Trade and Possessions was instituted by the new Batavian Republic revolutionary government, resulting in the VOC being nationalised on 1 January 1800. The VOC charter, the legal foundation of the enterprise, was revoked. Although the state of war in Europe permitted no drastic changes in course as far as shipping and trade to Asia were concerned, it spelled the end of the company. Balk, L.; Van Dijk, F.; Kortlang, D.; Gaastra, F.; Niemeijer, H.; Koenders, P. (2007) The Archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Local Institutions in Batavia (Jakarta), p. 14
NOTES
^The direct translation of the Dutch name Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie is "United East-India Company". For the VOC's different English-language
trade names, see articles:
East India companies; Greater India;
East India;
East Indies; Dutch East Indies;
Dutch India;
Voorcompagnie; List of Dutch East India Company trading posts and settlements.
^Historically, the Dutch East India Company was a multinational proto-conglomerate (including
international trade,[1] shipbuilding, spice production and trade,[2]sugarcane industry,[3][4]wine industry[5][6][7]) rather than a pure trading company or shipping company.
^The modern Dutch spelling is Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie.
^Edward Stringham (2015) notes: "Companies with transferable shares date back to classical Rome, but these were usually not enduring endeavors and no considerable
secondary market existed (Neal, 1997, p. 61)."[32]
^The concept of the bourse (or exchange) was historically 'invented' (in medieval
Bruges) before the birth of formal
stock exchanges in the 17th century. Before the VOC era, in terms of historical role, a bourse was not exactly a stock exchange in its modern sense. With the establishment of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the rise of Dutch
capital markets in the early 1600s, the 'old' bourse (a place to trade
commodities,
municipal and
government bonds) found a new purpose – a formal exchange that specialize in creating and sustaining
secondary markets in the
securities (such as
bonds and shares of
stock) issued by corporations – or a modern stock exchange as we know it today.
^As Remco Raben (2013) noted, "The concept of a 'VOC World', although implicit in many studies on early modern Dutch ventures in Asia, has received little attention and even less discussion. The term was used most prominently in
Nigel Worden (ed.), Contingent Lives: Social Identity and Material Culture in the VOC World (Rondebosch 2007). ... The webbed character of the VOC World deserves further enquiry. This world should not be conceived as a firmly limited space of interaction or as exclusively 'Dutch'. Both the linkages between various VOC settlements as well as those to the worlds beyond should be taken into account, as the VOC created patterns of transport and safe spaces that facilitated the exchange of knowledge, goods and people. ... All kinds of persons and groups participated in or made use of the VOC World, forming their own webs. One example are knowledge networks, which have become a topic of research only fairly recently. Another strong case are the networks of exiles as described by Kerry Ward in her aptly titled Networks of Empire".[55]
^About the VOC's exemplary role as a historical company-state (or a 'CorporNation' as dubbed by
Adam Hanft[56][57]
^For the pioneering roles of the Dutch Republic and the VOC in history of modern capitalism,[59][60][61]
^A transnational corporation differs from a traditional
multinational corporation in that it does not identify itself with one national home. While traditional multinational corporations are national companies with foreign subsidiaries, transnational corporations spread out their operations in many countries sustaining high levels of local responsiveness. An example of a transnational corporation is the
Royal Dutch Shell corporation whose headquarters may be in
The Hague (Netherlands) but its registered office and main executive body is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Another example of a transnational corporation is
Nestlé who employ senior executives from many countries and try to make decisions from a global perspective rather than from one centralized headquarters. While the VOC
established its main administrative center, as the second headquarters, in
Batavia (Dutch East Indies, 1610–1800), the company's global headquarters was in Amsterdam (Dutch Republic). Also, the company had
important operations elsewhere.