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Dutch East India Company (VOC)

Type Object Region Netherlands Time 1602–1799

Founded in 1602 by charter of the Dutch States General, the VOC held a monopoly on Asian trade, could raise armies and mint coin, and dominated India…

Timeline

  1. 1602–1610The Hague (chartered by the States General) · South HollandOn March 20, 1602 the States General merged several earlier voyage companies, granting the VOC a 21-year Asian trade monopoly, powers of war and peace, fort-building and coin-minting, and publicly issuing shares in Amsterdam and elsewhere.
  2. c. 1611–1620Java (Banten–Jakarta area) · JavaIn the 1610s the VOC contested the clove monopoly in the Moluccas; in 1619 Coen led troops to capture Jakarta and founded Batavia as the Southeast Asian headquarters, forming the core of Dutch East Indies colonial administration.
  3. c. 1620–1780Batavia (administrative center of the Dutch East Indies) · IndonesiaThereafter the VOC controlled the trade network from the Strait of Malacca to Nagasaki in Japan, accumulating enormous profits from spices, coffee, textiles, and the slave trade, becoming one of the wealthiest commercial organizations in the 17th-century world.
  4. c. 1780–1799Amsterdam · NetherlandsAnglo-French wars, managerial corruption, and intensifying competition led to the VOC's financial collapse; on December 31, 1799 the Batavian Republic formally dissolved the company, with its assets taken over by the state.

Sources