Dutch East India Company facts for kids

Logo of the VOC

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in old Dutch), started in 1602, when the Netherlands gave a group of small trading companies a 21-year monopoly to trade in Asia. It was the first multinational corporation in the world and the first company to issue stock. The VOC had the power to start wars, make treaties, make its own money, and start new colonies.

It was an important company for almost 200 years until it became bankrupt in 1800. The VOC's colonies became the Dutch East Indies which later became Indonesia.

Founding: 1602-1620

In the 16th century, trade with Asia was mostly controlled by Portugal. The Dutch government wished to take a foothold in the spice market, as Portugal could not keep up with the demand and rising prices in Europe. With government funding, the VOC set up its first trading post in what is now Jakarta, which eventually became its' main base of operations in the continent.

Expansion: 1620-1669

In 1620, the VOC created a trade agreement with their biggest rival in Asia, the English East India Company. This lasted until 1623, when the Amboyna Massacre forced the EEIC to move its trading posts from Indonesia to other areas in the continent.

In the 1620's, the VOC extended their reach to the remaining Indonesian Islands, and established plantations on the colonised islands to increase the volume of their exports. This expansion continued, until eventually the VOC was the richest company in the world.

In 1640, the VOC founded a trading post in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the last place where the Portuguese had a foothold. The VOC now had a total monopoly over trade between Europe and Southern Asia.

Exploration of Australia

Ships from the VOC were among the early explorers of Australia. The first Europeans to live in Australia were left behind after the mutiny on the VOC ship Batavia in 1629. Many of the sailors who took part in the mutiny were executed, but two, Wouter Loos, a soldier, and Jan Pelgrom de Bye, a cabin boy, were left at Wittecarra Gully, near the mouth of the Murchison River. They were never seen again.

Images for kids

• 

  The "United East India Company", or "United East Indies Company" (also known by the abbreviation "VOC" in Dutch) was the brainchild of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the leading statesman of the Dutch Republic.

• 

  Amsterdam VOC HQ

• 

  Replica of the VOC ship Duyfken under sail

• 

  17th century plaque to Dutch East India Company (VOC), Hoorn

• 

  VOC headquarters in Amsterdam

• 

  Return of the second Asia expedition of Jacob van Neck in 1599 by Cornelis Vroom

• 

  Mughal Bengal's baghlah was a type of ship widely used by Dutch traders in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal, the Malacca Straits and the South China Sea

• 

  Reproduction of a map of the city of Batavia c. 1627, collection Tropenmuseum

• 

  Dutch Batavia in 1681, built in what is now North Jakarta

• 

  The Isle of Amboina, a 17th-century print, probably English

• 

  Graves of Dutch dignitaries in the ruined St. Paul's Church, Malacca, in the former Dutch Malacca

• 

  Dutch East India Company factory in Hugli-Chuchura, Mughal Bengal. Hendrik van Schuylenburgh, 1665

• 

  Dutch settlement in Bengal Subah.

• 

  Eustachius De Lannoy of the Dutch East India Company surrenders to Maharaja Marthanda Varma of the Indian Kingdom of Travancore after the Battle of Colachel. (Depiction at Padmanabhapuram Palace)

• 

  The Oost-Indisch Huis (Reinier Vinkeles, 1768)

• 

  Purchase Contract signed July 5, 1797, between 'Committee for the Affairs of East India Trade and Property' (on behalf of the Batavian Republic) and De Coninck Firm, notarised by Jan Harmsen. Since the VOC had incurred debts of millions, its Indian merchandise in Batavia was sold to the firm. The VOC was unable to send its ships; the firm itself was responsible for collecting the merchandise from Batavia. The merchandise included spices (Nutmeg, Cloves, Black and Brown pepper), dyes (Indigo, Sappan wood, Caliatour wood), Coffee, and Powdered sugar.

• 

  Various VOC soldier uniforms, c. 1783

• 

  Both sides of a duit, a coin minted in 1735 by the VOC

• 

  Scale model of Dutch trading post on display in Dejima, Nagasaki (1995)

• 

  Ground-plan of the Dutch trade-post on the island Dejima at Nagasaki. An imagined bird's-eye view of Dejima's layout and structures (copied from a woodblock print by Toshimaya Bunjiemon of 1780).

• 

  Overview of Fort Zeelandia (Fort Anping) in Tainan, Taiwan, painted around 1635 (National Bureau of Archives, The Hague)

• 

  The Dutch Square in Malacca, with Christ Church (centre) and the Stadthuys (right)

• 

  Gateway to the Castle of Good Hope, a bastion fort built by the VOC in the 17th century

• 

  The shipyard of the United East India Company (VOC) in Amsterdam (1726 engraving by Joseph Mulder). The shipbuilding district of Zaan, near Amsterdam, became one of the world's earliest known industrialized areas, with around 900 wind-powered sawmills at the end of the 17th century. By the early seventeenth century Dutch shipyards were producing a large number of ships to a standard design, allowing extensive division of labour, a specialization which further reduced unit costs.

• 

  Jan Vermeer's View of Delft (ca. 1660–61). During the Dutch Golden Age, the VOC significantly influenced Delft's economy, both directly and indirectly.

• 

  A replica of the VOC's Halve Maen (captained by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch Republic) passes modern-day lower Manhattan, where the original ship would have sailed while investigating New York harbor

• 

  A typical map from the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. Australasia during the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (c. 1590s–1720s): including Nova Guinea (New Guinea), Nova Hollandia (mainland Australia), Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), and Nova Zeelandia (New Zealand).

• 

  Detail from a 1657 map by Jan Janssonius, showing the western coastline of Nova Zeelandia

• 

  The VOC's economic activity in Mauritius largely contributed to the extinction of the dodo, a flightless bird that was endemic to the island. The first recorded mention of the dodo was by Dutch navigators in the late 1590s.

• 

  Natives of Arakan sell slaves to the Dutch East India Company, c. 1663 CE.

• 

  Charles Davidson Bell's 19th-century painting of Jan van Riebeeck, the founder of Cape Town, arriving in Table Bay in 1652

• 

  The statue of Willem de Vlamingh with the Hartog Plate, Vlieland

• 

  Monument to the "Tsar-Carpenter" Peter I of Russia (Peter the Great) in St. Petersburg, Russia. In order to learn more about the 17th-century Dutch maritime power, Tsar Peter I came to work incognito as a ship's carpenter at the VOC's shipyards in Amsterdam and Zaandam/Saardam, for a period of four months (1697).

• 

  The Flying Dutchman by Albert Pinkham Ryder, c. 1887 (Smithsonian American Art Museum). The legend of the Flying Dutchman is likely to have originated from the 17th-century golden age of the VOC.

• 

  Johan Nieuhof's An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces (1665).

• 

  The cover of the Hortus Malabaricus by Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein.

• 

  Title page of Rumphius's Herbarium Amboinense (1741–1750)

• 

  Title page of Hortus Cliffortianus (1737). The work was a collaboration between Carl Linnaeus (Carl von Linné) and Georg Dionysius Ehret, financed by George Clifford III, one of the directors of the VOC.

• 

  Title page of Musa Cliffortiana (1736), Carl Linnaeus's first botanical monograph.

• 

  Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg was a VOC physician and an apostle of Linnaeus.

• 

  Black swans on the shore of the Swan River (Western Australia), with the Perth skyline in the background. The thousand-year-old conclusion "all swans are white" was disproved by the VOC navigator Willem de Vlamingh's 1697 discovery.

See also

In Spanish: Compañía Neerlandesa de las Indias Orientales para niños