Abstract
In 1759, the VOC perpetrated a spectacular blunder. The Company’s management in Batavia took the decision to send an expedition to Bengal in order to hinder the EIC. The result was disastrous: the expeditionary force was defeated and the VOC could henceforth only continue its operations in Bengal at the sufferance of the British. Most historians have interpreted the expedition as ill-conceived. The ideological dimension seems to have gone completely unnoticed, however. This article contends that this should not only be regarded as a strategic error, but also as the consequence of ideological considerations. This case, it is argued, demonstrates the existence of a corporate self-perception – shared, or at least adhered to, by the highest managerial echelons – of the Company as a manifestation of the Dutch nation and the extension of its state. This patriotism was interwoven with overarching discourses on the identity of the slowly dissolving Republic.
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