The VOC’s mapping of the Maldives: navigation, shipwrecks, and cartography in the heart of the Indian Ocean

The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was founded in 1602 and began its trading activities in Iran and the Gulf in 1623, when factories (trading stations) were established in Bandar Abbas and Isfahan, after a favorable commercial treaty had been concluded with Shah Abbas I. This was the beginning of a very profitable trade for the VOC, which throughout the 17th and in the beginning of the 18th century was Iran's most important foreign trading partner. VOC activities in Iran were not restricted to Bandar Abbas and Isfahan: the VOC also had a trading station in Kirman (1697–1739) for the collection of goat's wool, and in 1738 its sphere of activities was extended to Bushire.

There was much contact between the Dutch Republic and Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) (1602-1799) undertook extensive commercial activity in the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago, where many Muslims lived. The VOC established trading posts in Bengal, across the Indian sub-continent, in Persia, the Yemen, and at its headquarters in the East Indies at Batavia. Whilst people in these areas practised several religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, most of these areas had significant Muslim populations, often with Muslim rulers. I am undertaking a project to analyse who spoke and wrote Dutch to whom and when in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Given the scale of the Muslim world, it will be useful to divide it into two parts: one that focuses on the Indonesian archipelago and another on other countries with Muslim populations. This article examines what the second part of this project might look like, mapping out the form and content of a project on contact between Dutch and languages spoken in the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This paper aims at exploring the history of the Nan-shih Amis from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century by employing the documents left by the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) in the seventeenth century and those in Chinese since the eighteenth century. The first objective is to reconstruct the settlements of the Nan-shih Amis in different historical profiles. Then, I explore the population structure of the Nan-shih Amis and further endeavor to offer an acceptable interpretation to the late nineteenth-century society of the Nan-Shih Amis based the demographic data available in the documents. Finally, I treat the settlement as the basic unit and further try to investigate the possible transformation of the power structure of the village blocks within the Nan-Shih Amis between the seventeenth century and the late nineteenth century.

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

Early modern chartered companies like the Dutch East India Company (VOC) are widely seen as the precursors of the modern corporation. However, the relation between the two remains mired in confusion. While writers working in a Neo-Classical or New Institutional Economics framework highlight the seemingly modern features of their company constitutions, they see their violent monopoly strategies and state-like warring functions as typically pre-capitalist rent-seeking behavior. Critical scholars on the other hand, pointing to the violent operation of modern multinational corporations, tend to treat the chartered companies simply as a form of proto-imperialism. Both approaches deny the historical specificity of early-modern capitalism, in which the hybrid or brokerage form between company and state taken by the VOC and its counterparts was the rule rather than the exception. This article examines how corporate sovereignty was constitutional to the Dutch East and West India Companies. Comparing these two warring companies, it shows how similar corporate constitutions could lay the basis for very different historical trajectories of development. Finally, the article traces the debates leading to the dissolution of these companies, in order to better understand the changes in the company-form that accompanied the emergence of fully developed capitalism and imperialism.

The overland communications between Asia and Europe were of crucial importance to the economic and military survival of the East India companies. This applies equally to the English, French and Dutch East India companies - and even to the Portuguese empire.At some of the most crucial moments of its history, the very survival of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC) depended on the thin thread connecting it overland to Europe. One of these crises occurred in the mid-seventeenth century when during the first Anglo-Dutch war, English fleets challenged Dutch naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean. Reflecting on the defeat of the British fleets and the near eradication of the English East India Company or EIC's naval presence there in 1654, the Dutch director of Surat commented: ‘We would never have gained such an easy victory if the English had reacted more promptly or had we not received warnings so promptly [tijdig].’ Similarly, the catastrophic defeat suffered at a later date by the French admiral De la Haye is normally attributed to De la Haye's hesitations. Yet is is doubtful whether the VOC would have been able ot assemble a fleet quickly enough to destroy De la Haye's fleet had the VOC not received messages overland.

Fetishizing the Foot: Mobility and Meaning in Indian Ocean Sandals

As an exercise in trans-oceanic history, this article focuses on the Dutch IndianOcean World in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from the Dutch EastIndia Company or VOC’s permanent colony at Cape Town, South Africa, inthe Far West to its seasonal trading factory at Canton (Guangzhou), in the FarEast. It argues that the ‘seismic change’ after 1760 noted by Michael Pearsonand associated with the British move inland from their Bengal ‘bridgehead’should be extended to the contemporary polycentric Dutch expansion intothe interior of, most notably, South Africa, Ceylon, Java, and Eastern Indonesia.Demographic measuring points include the number of Dutch citizens andsubjects, comprising European settlers, mixed peoples, and indigenous populations; and: the size and composition of the population of central nodal places in the Dutch Indian Ocean thalassocratic network in the late seventeenth and late eighteenth centuries. By the end of the period, both ‘John Company’(EIC) and ‘Jan Kompenie’ (VOC) effectively were, to some extent, reversingthe colonial gaze inland turning from maritime merchants into landlords andtax collectors. These seismic changes with multiple epicenters were the harbinger of tidal waves about to sweep both the littoral and interior of the modern Indian Ocean World.

This chapter briefly discusses the organization of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). Of all the trading companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch United East India Company, which was created in 1602, was indubitably the most successful. 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. Although the charter of 1602 was incisive and detailed in the way in which it laid down the organization of the VOC in the Dutch Republic, it was conversely vague about the administrative structure in Asia. All the VOC establishments in Asia (including that at the Cape of Good Hope) were subject to the Governor-General and Council in Batavia.Keywords: Asia; Batavia; Dutch East India Company; Europe; Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company. The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography. The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar. Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company. The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography. The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar. Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

A zooarchaeological investigation into the meat industry established at the Cape of Good Hope by the Dutch East India Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . Rutgers University, 2011....

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Dutch East India Company (VOC) played an important role in the transport of live animals across the Indian Ocean and beyond. The ocean’s geological framework provided the company with the opportunity to introduce natural wonders to society at home and to utilise the resources of the Asian coastal areas as a means for trade. This chapter focuses on the VOC’s entrepreneurship and what this meant for the animals of the Indian Ocean World that they transported.

This article discusses the development of port cities in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea area between approximately 1720 and 1840. It analyses flows of commodities, shipping and financial networks, the mobility of traders and the activities of trading organisations, such as the Dutch VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) or the EIC (British East India Company). The article also critically assesses the role of country trade and of the VOC and EIC and the British Empire in the macro-region. It finally takes the reader to raise the question of to what extent the Europeans and European colonialism actually qualitatively changed the economic system that had prevailed across the Indian Ocean for centuries. The article shows that while quantitatively speaking much more commerce was going on in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than previously, qualitatively speaking the changes were not so great as has been frequently assumed.

Our goal is to study the Portuguese East India Company. How was it created, what was its social composition? and the rules for accepting members of the company, what goods they traded, where the trade routes stretched geographically, what ultimately led to the unsuccessful end of this company's existence.After the Great Geographical Discoveries, trade routes shifted to the countries of the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins. Those states that had access to the ocean prospered economically, which is why they advanced: Promoted: Britain, France, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden and Holland. Joint-stock companies were established: British (1600), Dutch (1602), Danish (1616), Portuguese (1628), French (1664), Austrian (1717), Swedish (1731), which engaged in trade with the East and colonial expansion.In August 1628, the Portuguese East India Company was established by a charter of Philip IV. It was initially established for a period of 6 years, which could be renewed for another 6 years.The decline of the Portuguese East India Company's position in the East was due to competition from the British and Dutch East India Companies. In Portugal, the production and trade of goods did not develop in a capitalist way, as it did in Britain, so the import and export of Eastern countries fell into British hands. The company was dependent on the royal government for the transportation of goods and passengers, and for personnel changes. The company could not resolve issues independently. Government officials and private individuals were not sufficiently interested in expanding trade and colonial expansion. The main financier of the company was the royal government, and therefore the company was completely dependent on it. The differentiation of membership in the joint-stock company was established in the company in order to encourage and expand the amount of money invested. Also, any foreign merchant was freely accepted as a member of the Portuguese joint-stock company, but all this ultimately did not create the conditions for the success of the Portuguese joint-stock company. The company did not follow the rules of trade, resorted to violence and religious persecution against the locals, which caused hatred towards them and lost the company's name. The Portuguese joint-stock company received instant profits and could not become a source of permanent income, like the British and Dutch joint-stock companiesThus The Portuguese East India Company, although it existed for a short time (1628-1650) and was ousted from the Eastern markets by such influential and wealthy companies as the British France, and Dutch East India Companies, Still, it played an important role in the development of the country's navy, the influx of Eastern goods: gold, silver, silk, cotton, porcelain, and spices, and the colonization of Eastern countries.