Australian Geographic - 09.2019 - 10.2019

September. October 91

I

N 1602 SEVERAL rival Dutch trading companies

were amalgamated into the Dutch East India

Company, offi cially the United East India Company

or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC).

The VOC was granted a monopoly on Asian trade

by the Dutch government to end fi erce competi-

tion that had forced up the purchase price of spices

and glutted the market in Europe.

By the mid-1600s, the VOC boasted some

150 merchant ships and 50,000 employees,

a private army of some 10,000 soldiers and trading

posts from the Persian Gulf to the East China Sea.

It was, in eff ect, a “state outside the state”, with

the power to wage war, punish and execute crimi-

nals, create new colonies, and strike its own coins.

The VOC became a trading colossus; it was the

world’s fi rst multinational company and the fi rst

company with a logo. The VOC’s dominance was

such that between 1602 and 1796, it sent nearly

a million Europeans to work in Asia, its ships

making nearly 5000 voyages to various ports in

the region. The rest of Europe combined sent out

only a fraction of that number of people.

The VOC was a trading company – the return

to shareholders was their purpose. They had

no interest in taking land beyond that which

secured their operations. Colonising Australia

was never considered.

BATAVIA

Batavia was the VOC’s headquarters in the

East Indies, established in 1619 on the site of the

destroyed city of Jayakarta, on the north-west

coast of Java, in Indonesia. The name derives from

“Batavi”, the name of an ancient Germanic tribe

then believed to have been the ancestors of the

Dutch people. The city’s name was changed to

Jakarta aft er Indonesian independence.

Senior merchants of the VOC such as

Jacob Mathieusen, painted here with

his wife and possibly a slave (left ),

lived in relative luxury in the VOC’s

thriving HQ, Batavia, in the 1600s.

THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY