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The Rise of the VOC
The Company of One

Throughout the 1600s, a single Dutch company dominated navigation and trade between Europe and south-east Asia.

VOC house in Amsterdam

VOC house in Amsterdam (Oostindisch Huis), 1750

The largest company in the world at the time, the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, which translates as United East Indies Company but is also known as the Dutch East India Company), brought spices to the world, and also revelations of a new continent, the South Land.

Forty-two of the 54 European ships that sailed into Australian waters before the HMS Endeavour in 1770 flew the flag of the VOC.

Created by the Netherlands government charter in 1602, the VOC was almost a government itself. It had its own private army, the power to wage wars and make treaties. In time, it not only monopolised the spice trade to Europe but also took over much of the shipping in Asia. Under its charter, the VOC had a monopoly on navigation between Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, the narrow stretch of water between Chile and Tierra del Fuego.

Reinier Adriaansz, Pauw, de eerste president van de VOC

Reinier Adriaansz, the first president of VOC

Originally, however, the company had been created to raise through international trade desperately needed funds to defeat the Spanish and Portuguese. The Spanish conquest of the Netherlands, also called the Dutch war of independence, had begun in 1568 and conflict between the two nations would last for 80 years.

In 1580, Dutch access to the lucrative spice trade—at this point the sole preserve of the Portuguese—was curtailed when the harbour of Lisbon was closed to Dutch ships. Without an income from spices, the Dutch were severely hampered in their ability to fund the war.

VOC Flag

VOC Flag
The six chambers of the VOC had their own flags: the VOC cipher with the initial of the town above. This is the Amsterdam chamber flag.
by Mark Sensen www.fotw.net/flags/nl-indco.html

In the 1590s, the Dutch organised several shipping expeditions to find the secret Portuguese route to the spice markets in Asia. In 1595, they finally succeeded in following the route around the Cape of Good Hope and along the southern Asian coasts (the expedition included the Duyfken, the first European vessel to make landfall on the Australian coast).

Once their merchants had established markets, individual provinces of the Netherlands began their own trade. Profits from a successful return journey were enormous and many Dutch seafaring towns founded their own companies to capitalise on the new route.

But competition between companies inflated the price of goods from the East Indies. Rising prices, and the ever-present danger from Spain and Portugal, precipitated the move to combine the trading companies of several major cities under one banner.

VOC-board of the chamber of Hoorn in a meeting

VOC board of the chamber of Hoorn in a meeting
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The result was the VOC, the invention of the Secretary of State of the province of Holland, Johan Van Oldenbarneveldt.

On 20 March 1602, the Netherlands States-General (the Dutch government) granted the charter that established the VOC and its monopoly of navigation between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan and total monopoly over the spice trade for a period of 21 years.

The VOC had six chambers—Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Middelburg Delft, Enkhuizen and Hoorn—which were ruled by the Board of Directors, or Heren XVII (Seventeen Gentlemen), based in Amsterdam. The Seventeen wasted no time in sending their fleets to the East Indies and ousting the Portuguese from their bases.

The company grew rapidly. By the mid-1600s, it boasted 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50 000 employees, a private army of 10 000 soldiers and a network of trading posts that extended all the way from the Persian Gulf to the China Sea.

VOC-Coat of arms

The VOC Coat of Arms
Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum Amsterdam /
Netherlands Maritime Museum Amsterdam

The VOC used the port of Batavia (now Jakarta) as the base for its trade to the Molucca islands in the east, to China and Japan in the north, and to Surat (India) in the west.

Many planned Dutch voyages of discovery to Australia between 1605 and 1644 set sail from Batavia, but there was little commercial gain from these expeditions. Tasman's voyages of 1642 and 1644, while important in establishing the boundaries of Australia, reaped few tangible rewards and it would be another 50 years before another serious effort would be mounted.

Willem de Vlamingh's voyage of 1696 did not deliver the anticipated results either. De Vlamingh's journey added greatly to the mapping of the western coastline, but his findings once and for all established that the VOC would make little profit in New Holland. The Dutch would carry out only limited further exploration in the region.

The late 1700s saw a slow decline in the VOC's fortunes. Following the outbreak of war with England in 1780, the world's first multinational company ceased trading altogether.