Dutch East India Company

One of the most influential and best expertly 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.

The Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) is one of the most influential and best expertly researched companies/corporations in history.

However, VOC was in fact a proto-conglomerate company, diversifying into multiple commercial and industrial activities such as international trade (especially intra-Asian trade), shipbuilding, and both production and trade of East Indian spices, Formosan sugarcane, and South African wine.

The early history of South African wine can be traced to the founding of a supply station at the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company.

In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.

The following were trading posts owned by the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, presented in geographical sequence from west to east:

Along with the Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWIC), the VOC was seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire.

The Dutch colonial empire (Het Nederlandse Koloniale Rijk) comprised the overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies (mainly the Dutch West India and the Dutch East India Company) and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815.

In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.

The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, often known as VOC) was a chartered company which issued a considerable series of coinage in bronze, silver and gold for its territories in the Far East between 1602 and 1799.

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.

Halve Maen (Half Moon) was a Dutch East India Company vlieboot (similar to a carrack) which sailed into what is now New York Harbor in September 1609.

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.

Abel Janszoon Tasman (1603 – 10 October 1659) was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

In 1619, the Company forcibly established a central position in the Javanese city of Jayakarta, changing the name to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta).

The founding of Batavia by the Dutch in 1619, on the site of the ruins of Jayakarta, led to the establishment of a Dutch colony; Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Company's trading network in Asia.

The name 'Dutch East India Company' is used to make a distinction from the [British] East India Company (EIC) and other East Indian companies (such as the Danish East India Company, French East India Company, Portuguese East India Company, and the Swedish East India Company).

The venture was inspired by the success of the Dutch East India Company and the British East India Company.

The name 'Dutch East India Company' is used to make a distinction from the [British] East India Company (EIC) and other East Indian companies (such as the Danish East India Company, French East India Company, Portuguese East India Company, and the Swedish East India Company).

The French East India Company (Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales) was a commercial Imperial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the English (later British) and Dutch East India companies in the East Indies.

In 1619, the Company forcibly established a central position in the Javanese city of Jayakarta, changing the name to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta).

The "old city", close to the sea in the north, developed between 1619 and 1799 during the era of the VOC.

The name 'Dutch East India Company' is used to make a distinction from the [British] East India Company (EIC) and other East Indian companies (such as the Danish East India Company, French East India Company, Portuguese East India Company, and the Swedish East India Company). They also served as the direct model for the organisational reconstruction of the English/British East India Company in 1657.

These Dutch companies amalgamated in March 1602 into the Dutch East India Company (VOC), which introduced the first permanent joint stock from 1612 (meaning investment into shares did not need to be returned, but could be traded on a stock exchange).

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.

Janszoon is first recorded as entering into the service of the Oude compagnie, one of the predecessors of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), in 1598 as a mate aboard the Hollandia, part of the second fleet under Jacob Cornelisz. van Neck, dispatched by the Dutch to the Dutch East Indies.

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 1609, he landed in North America and explored the region around the modern New York metropolitan area, looking for a Northwest Passage to Asia on behalf of the Dutch East India Company.

The name 'Dutch East India Company' is used to make a distinction from the [British] East India Company (EIC) and other East Indian companies (such as the Danish East India Company, French East India Company, Portuguese East India Company, and the Swedish East India Company).

The Portuguese East India Company (Companhia do commércio da Índia or Companhia da Índia Oriental) was a short-lived ill-fated attempt by Philip III of Portugal to create a national chartered company to look after interests in Portuguese India in the face of encroachment by the Dutch and English following the personal union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns.

VOC headquarters were located in Ambon during the tenures of the first three Governors General (1610–1619), but it was not a satisfactory location.

Ambon was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company, consisting of Ambon Island and ten neighbouring islands.

In February 1603, the Company seized the Santa Catarina, a 1500-ton Portuguese merchant carrack, off the coast of Singapore.

Santa Catarina was a Portuguese merchant ship, a 1500-ton carrack, that was seized by the Dutch East India Company (also known as V.O.C) during February 1603 off Singapore.

In 1619, Jan Pieterszoon Coen was appointed Governor-General of the VOC.

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629) was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, holding two terms as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; VOC) was a megacorporation founded by a government-directed amalgamation of several rival Dutch trading companies (voorcompagnieën) in the early 17th century.

A voorcompagnie (pre-company) is the naming given to the trading companies from the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands that traded in Asia between 1594 and 1602, before they all merged to form the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

Along with the Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWIC), the VOC was seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire.

When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded in 1602, some traders in Amsterdam did not agree with its mono politics.

This post later became a full-fledged colony, the Cape Colony, when more Dutch and other Europeans started to settle there.

The Cape Colony (Kaapkolonie) was a Dutch East India Company colony in Southern Africa, centered on the Cape of Good Hope, whence it derived its name.

To prevent the Portuguese or the English from ever recapturing Sri Lanka, the VOC went on to conquer the entire Malabar Coast from the Portuguese, almost entirely driving them from the west coast of India. Through the seventeenth century VOC trading posts were also established in Persia, Bengal, Malacca, Siam, Formosa (now Taiwan), as well as the Malabar and Coromandel coasts in India.

Dutch Malabar, also known by the name of its main settlement Cochin, was the title of a commandment of the Dutch East India Company on the Malabar Coast between 1661 and 1795, and is part of what is today collectively referred to as Dutch India.

When the VOC tried to use military force to make Ming dynasty China open up to Dutch trade, the Chinese defeated the Dutch in a war over the Penghu islands from 1623 to 1624, forcing the VOC to abandon Penghu for Taiwan.

The Sino–Dutch conflicts were a series of conflicts between the Ming dynasty of China and the Dutch East India Company over trade and land throughout the 1620s, 1630s and 1662.

This ended with a notorious but disputed incident known as the 'Amboyna massacre', where ten Englishmen were arrested, tried and beheaded for conspiracy against the Dutch government.

The Amboyna massacre was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island (present-day Maluku, Indonesia) of twenty men, including ten of whom were in the service of the English East India Company, and Japanese and Portuguese traders, by agents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), on accusations of treason.

Through the seventeenth century VOC trading posts were also established in Persia, Bengal, Malacca, Siam, Formosa (now Taiwan), as well as the Malabar and Coromandel coasts in India.

Bengal was a directorate of the Dutch East India Company in Mughal Bengal between 1610 until the company's liquidation in 1800.