The organization of the VOC

F.S. Gaastra

Of all the trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch United East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC), which was created in 1602, was indubitably the most success ful. Soon after its incorporation the VOC succeeded in firmly forcing back the Portuguese, who had established their commercial empire in Asia a century earlier, and pretty well eliminating them as competitors in the trade between Europe and Asia.

The principal competitor of the VOC, the English East India Company (EIC), which had been founded in London in 1600, initially lacked the financial capacity, the organizational ability and governmental support to offer the Dutch Company any real threat. It was only at the end of the seventeenth century that the EIC developed into a potent rival worthy of its steel, which would cut the ground from under the feet of the VOC in various regions in the course of the eighteenth century. None the less, until the end of its existence as a trading company in 1800, the VOC remained the largest of the Asiatic companies [1]. A number of factors which had a bearing on the rapid growth of the Dutch Company can be singled out. To begin with, the capital affluence available in the Dutch Republic provided the VOC with a substantial head start. By means of this the VOC was able to finance the costly military operations which were necessary to win it the world monopoly on fine spices. The conquest of the Banda Archipelago in 1622 gave the Company the monopoly on nutmeg and mace. It took longer to achieve the monopoly in cloves. By extirpating the clove trees on various islands in the Moluccas, the VOC succeeded in concentrating the cultivation of this crop in Ambon. The capture of Makassar in 1667 meant that the last harbour where European and Asian merchants could purchase ‘contraband’ – that is to say traded outside the VOC – cloves had fallen into the hands of the Company. The monopoly on the trade in cinnamon was obtained by ousting the Portuguese from Ceylon. This took place in two stages: between 1637 and 1642 and from 1654 to 1658.