K. J. Saville-Smith. Provincial Society and Empire: The Cumbrian Counties and the East Indies, 1680–1829. Worlds of the East India Company 14. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018. Pp. 296. $83.40 (cloth).

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-211
Author(s):  
Adrian Green
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Provincial Society

Private Trade and Elite Privilege. The Trial of Nicolaas Schaghen, Director of Bengal

Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela McVay
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Court ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
At Home

It is common wisdom among the historians of the Dutch East Indies that everyone in the Dutch East India Company engaged in private trade. That is, ‘everyone’ traded in goods supposedly monopolized by the Company and ‘everyone’ abused his or her position to squeeze graft from the Company's trade. It was, supposedly, to get their hands on the private trade and graft that people joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in the first place. But back in the Netherlands the VOC's Board of Directors (the Heeren XVII) objected vociferously to private trade, which drained Company profits and shareholder revenue. To appease the Heeren XVII back at home, the various Governors-General and Councillors of the Indies (Raad van Indië), who represented the Heeren XVII in Asia, issued annual placards forbidding private trade while the High Court (Raad van Justitie) carried out infrequent desultory trials for private trade. But these prosecutions were inevitably doomed to failure, so the story goes, because everyone engaged in private trade would ‘cover’ for everyone else.

The European Trade with the East Indies

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Erikson
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Organizational Characteristics ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Trading Decisions ◽  
Sustained Innovation ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
European Trade ◽  
English East India Company

This chapter undertakes a comparative analysis of the organizational characteristics of the English East India Company, highlighting the firm's record of sustained innovation through the incorporation of new markets, and the extent to which this may be explained by the degree of militarization in the Company, relations with the state, and the management of employees' private trade. While setting up a comparative argument for why individual-level trading decisions (associated with the private trade) are important to understanding the differences between the English and other East India companies, this chapter also provides the organizational background necessary to understanding why employees of the English Company would engage in certain patterns of behavior.

The Dutch and English conquest of South East Asia.

2021 ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
James F. Hancock
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
East India Company ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
East Indies ◽  
World Power ◽  
European Trade ◽  
Philip Ii Of Spain

Abstract The chapter summarizes the rise of Dutch and English empires. The Dutch path to world power was aided greatly in 1588, when a huge armada sent by Philip II of Spain to invade Protestant Elizabeth I's England was roundly defeated. This decisive defeat of the Spanish Armada greatly bolstered the confidence of the English and Dutch and encouraged them to forge their own routes to the riches of India and South East Asia. The chapter also discusses the first Dutch expeditions to the East Indies in search of spices and how Jacob Van Heemskerck's invasion started the end of the Portuguese monopoly on trade in the East Indies. The establishment of English and Dutch East India Company is also discussed. Finally, the chapter summarizes how the East India Companies affect the European Trade.

Culture and Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1795

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Natural Increase ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Male Population ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities ◽  
Settler Population

In 1652 the Dutch East India Company founded a “refreshment station” in Table Bay on the southwestern coast of Africa for its fleets to and from the East Indies. Within a few years, this outpost developed into a fully-fledged settler colony with a “free-burgher” population who made an existence as grain, wine, and livestock farmers in the interior, or engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Cape Town, the largest settlement in the colony. The corollary of this development was the subjugation of the indigenous Khoikhoi and San inhabitants of the region, and the importation and use of a relatively large slave labor force in the agrarian and urban economies. The colony continued to expand throughout the 18th century due to continued immigration from Europe and the rapid growth of the settler population through natural increase. During that century, about one-third of the colony’s population lived in Cape Town, a cosmopolitan harbor city with a large transient, and overwhelmingly male, population which remained connected with both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. The unique society and culture that developed at the Cape was influenced by both these worlds. Although in many ways, the managerial superstructure of the Cape was similar to that of a Dutch city, the cosmopolitan and diverse nature of its population meant that a variety of identities and cultures co-existed alongside each other and found expression in a variety of public forms.

The Dutch Seaborne Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 862-883
Author(s):  
Leonard Blussé
Keyword(s):  
Limited Liability ◽  
State Intervention ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
Umbrella Organization ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
The Republic ◽  
West India Company

In the course of the seventeenth century Dutch merchants created a seaborne empire that provided them with the primacy in world trade. This chapter focuses on the defining traits of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, or Dutch East India Company, 1602–1799) and the West Indische Compagnie (WIC, or Dutch West India Company, 1621–1674, 1674–1791), both limited liability joint stock companies with monopoly rights on the navigation to, respectively, Asia and the American continent. Both companies were founded as “companies of the ledger and the sword” in the middle of the Dutch Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648) with the Spanish crown, and collapsed in the final years of the ancien régime. The VOC developed with leaps and bounds into an island empire in Southeast Asia that after the demise of the VOC survived into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, first as the Netherlands East Indies and today as the Republic of Indonesia. The WIC never succeeded to wrestle itself loose from close state intervention and, facing the challenges of independent merchants, had to give up its monopolies and simply survived as an umbrella organization for the plantations in Suriname and a couple of islands in the Caribbean. Compared to their neighbors in Europe, the relatively affluent Dutch never felt a strong urge to emigrate and as a result none of their overseas possessions, with exception of the Cape Colony, developed into a settler colony.

Early Policies in the Malacca Jurisdiction of the United East India Company: The Malay Peninsula and Netherlands East Indies Attachment

1972 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.E. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Full Recovery ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies

The report upon the shortcomings of the Malacca jurisdiction which Extraordinary Councillor Willem de Roo sent to Johan van Hoorn, Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies, in November 1705 offered reasons for the initiative which he and his colleagues had taken in relations with the Johor Court: ‘… business in Malacca is wholly fallen into decay, with, it seems to me, little appearance of a big improvement, let alone a full recovery of the formerly flourishing trade, because people have indulgently too long allowed contracts concluded with surrounding rulers and allies to be broken without making much complaint thereupon, or themselves maintaining (the force of the contracts), principally concerning the Johorese …’

scholarly journals Het gebruik van “Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën” van François Valentyn door bewindhebbers van de VOC in de achttiende eeuw

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Siegfried Huigen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Central Government ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the circulation of information extracted from François Valentyn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–1726) during the eighteenth century, both with regards to the central organs of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Netherlands and the VOC establishments in the East Indies. First, three documents are analysed that were part of five VOC directors’ personal archives, with the aim to determine the way these directors made use of Valentyn’s book. It is concluded that for these directors Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was probably the most important source of information about the VOC’s trading empire, while at the same time their epistemic interest was limited to matters of trade. Second, the usage of Valentyn’s book in various VOC establishments in the East Indies is assessed on the basis of correspondence between these establishments with the VOC central government in Batavia. Because of the fact that Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was used simultaneously as a source of information by several actors, both in the Netherlands and in the East Indies, this might have resulted in standardising the operational knowledge of the East Indies within the VOC network.

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