by Andre Sanchez

The Dutch East India Company, otherwise known as the VOC, began on the 20th March, 1602.  It was formed by a group of Dutch trading companies and merchants with view to breaking the Portuguese monopoly of the lucrative Asian tea and spice trade.

This move was taken after a number of successful forays in the late 16th century by the Dutch into East Asia that returned with very profitable quantities of spices.  The price was loss of life through battles with the Portuguese and Indonesians, but the prizes were enormous

Once it received a government charter, the Dutch East India Company was enabled, not only to secure a trade monopoly with East Asia, but also to colonize any country or territory that did succumb to its demands.  Many independent islanders were forced to grow the tea, spices and other crops demanded by the VOC, or were killed off and replaced with slave labor. 

This policy resulted in trade wars with other Europeans and Asians, since the Dutch monopoly allowed them to dictate not only spice prices, but also their availability and the extent to which other nations were allowed trade in them. They came to a tentative and temporary treaty with the British East India Company in 1619, giving one third of the spice trade to the British, but that lasted only until the Amboyna Massacre of 1603, when 20 employees of the British East India Company were tortured and killed.

The Amsterdam Stock Exchange was created in 1602 to sell VOC shares, the first company shares ever issued,  and so became the worlds first official stock exchange. Since the routes used by the spice trade was also used for gold and silver trading, there were a significant number of trading stations constructed along the route and in East Asia. 

The Dutch influence in East Asia was at its highest during this period, and many Asian countries were colonized, and still bear the effects of this today.  Slavery was commonplace, and exceeded that of the great slavery era of the American South. Indigenous natives were forced from their farms, killed, or pressed into working them as slaves rather than owners.

It was as a result of the Dutch East India Company that South Africa became colonized by the Dutch.  It was seen as a good staging post along the spice trade route, and the area around the Cape of Good Hope was set up as a refreshment station. Although it was not in the original mandate to colonize South Africa, this soon changed due to greed and the need for slaves, and war broke out between the indigenous Khoikhoi and the Dutch. 

The result was that the Khoikhoi were force north into less fertile lands.  The Cape developed into a slave economy, and the relationship between the Dutch and the Africans became that of master and slave, or servant, with the Europeans the masters. This continued into the 20th century until the policy of apartheid formerly ceased.

Between the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries British imperial power grew rapidly, and with the discovery of coffee the demand for tea dropped. The lucrative trading routes began to drift towards the west and the Caribbean, rather than to the east. Dutch power began to decline, and in 1800, after 200 years of issuing an annual dividend of 18% to investors, the Dutch East India Company was dissolved.  Its debt and possessions were taken on by the Batavian Republic of Holland; the VOC was ended.

The privately owned territories of the VOC were given to the Netherlands by the Treaty of Vienna after the defeat of the French Empire, and Dutch colonization began to wane in that part of the world. However, like South Africa, Indonesia is still suffering from the actions of the Dutch East India Company that were underwritten by the Dutch government.  All of this arose because of a desire by the Europeans for that exotic drink, tea, and the highly desirable spices freely available throughout East Asia yet unavailable naturally in Europe.

There are still many critical voices raised in Holland and elsewhere of the part the Dutch government paid in the subjugation of areas of East Asia and South Africa.  Indonesia was largely tied to the European economy, from which it found it difficult to break free and is still suffering from the effects of the VOC, but is now emerging from these dark years.

A Profile of The Dutch East India Company – the VOC was originally published at http://www.globallifenow.com