An account of some books, lately publish'd; videl. - Relations of divers curious voyages, by Mons. Thevenot, the third tome, in French; A discourse about the causes of the inundation of the Nile, in French, by Monseiur dela Chambre; De principiis et ratiocinatione geometrarum, contra fastum professorum geometriæ; authore Thoma Hobbes; & King Salomons poutraiture of old age; by John Smith, M.D

1665 ◽  
Vol 1 (14) ◽  
pp. 248-254
Keyword(s):  
Old Age ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
The Third ◽  
Chinese Author ◽  
State Of Affairs

Relations of divers curious voyages, by Mons. Thevenot, the third tome, in French. This Book contains chiefly, the ambassie of the Dutch into China, translated out of the Dutch manuscript: A geographical description of China, translated out of a Chinese author by Martinius: and the account, which the directors of the Dutch East-India Company made to the States General, touching the state of affairs in the East-Indies, when their late fleet parted from thence.

India and the Indonesian Archipelago from the Generale Missiven der VOC (Dutch East India Company)

Itinerario ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Van Goor
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
The State ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The West ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
The People ◽  
State Of Affairs

Regularly, with the ships coming with the monsoon, the Governor-General and the councillors at Batavia received information from their subordinates from all over Asia. The Council of the Indies consisted of older members of the Company's bureaucracy, men who had served in several posts before being nominated to this ultimate position of honour. Together in council they constituted the best informed body on Asian affairs, in the East, as well as in the West. As a body they were responsible for the formulation of the generate missiven, the general letters in which the Heren Zeventien (Gentlemen Seventeen) were briefed on the state of affairs. The missiven had to be signed by all, dissent was not permissable. According to a a set pattern, all factories were dealt with in the same fashion. Any member of the council in principle would have been able to make an overview of the differing areas in which the Company was active. If any, they seem to have been the people able to make a comparison of the Indian subcontinent and the Indonesian archipelago. The following is an attempt to show what insights might have been expected from an interview with an elder servant of the ‘honourable Company’.

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 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.

Soviet Perspectives and Policies toward Reactionary Regimes in the Developing World

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 244-263
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Surovell
Keyword(s):  
Third World ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sector ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
The Third ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Third World

In their assessments during the 1960s and 1970s of the state of affairs of Third World “revolutionary democracies” and nations that had taken the “non-capitalist road to development,” the Soviets employed a mode of analysis based on the “correlation of forces.” Given the seeming successes of these “revolutionary democracies” and the appearance of new ones, Moscow was clearly heartened by the apparent tilt in favor of the Soviets and of “progressive” humanity more generally. These apparently positive trends were reflected in Soviet perspectives and policies on the Third World, which focused confidently on such “progressive” regimes. Nonetheless, so-called “reactionary” regimes continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet policy makers. This study offers a fresh examination of the Soviet analyses of, and policies towards three “reactionary” Third-World regimes: the military dictatorship in Brazil, the Pinochet dictatorship of Chile, and Iran during the reign of the Shah. The article reveals that Soviet decision makers and analysts identified the state sector as the central factor in the “progressive” development of the Third World. Hence the state sector became the focal point for their analyses and the touchstone for Soviet policies; the promotion of the state sector was regarded as a key to the Soviet objective of promoting the “genuine independence” of Third World countries from imperialist domination.

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.

A Pretender on Gowa' Throne. The War of Batara Gowa I. Singkilang in South West Celebes, 1776–c. 1790

Itinerario ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-177
Author(s):  
M.P.H. Roessingh
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives ◽  
State Of Affairs

The subject of this article is the fight for the throne in the kingdom of Gowa at the end of the 18th century, during the decline of the Dutch East India Company, a period which also saw the downfall of Gowa and the supremacy of Bone. The sources for the history of this period are twofold: on one hand the indigenous sources, “lontara-bilang” (diaries) and other records in Buginese and Makassarese; secondly, the European writings, principally the archival materials from the Dutch government at Makassar, supplemented by travel accounts and reports of the English. My primary sources are almost exclusively Dutch, namely the papers of the VOC, as they are preserved in the General State Archives in The Hague. To be more precise, these sources may be in Dutch, but in addition to the letters etc. written by Company officials, they also contain translations from documents drawn up by the rulers of Bone and Gowa or other of Asians. Moreover, the governors of Makassar often made use of indigenous sources, both oral and written, in preparing their lengthy memoirs about the state of affairs in their district. In 1736, the High Government in Batavia decided that two accurate genealogical tables must be prepared of the royal houses of Bone and Gowa.

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.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Southeast Asia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Borschberg
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Business Networks ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Trading Company ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Dutch East India Company, also known by its historic initials VOC, was a chartered trading company that was active between 1602 and 1795. Formed by a merger of six smaller trading firms that traded in the East Indies and backed by a monopoly of trade, this proto-conglomerate emerged as a driving force in globalization, transregional investment, and early European colonization in Asia and Africa. The VOC operated as a profit-driven shareholder corporation and at the apex of its power, around the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, maintained a series of factories and settlements stretching from Cape Town in Southern Africa, the Malabar and Coromandel coasts of India, Bengal, to insular and mainland Southeast Asia and as far as Taiwan (Formosa) and Japan. Chartered companies possessed considerable investments and infrastructure outside Europe, especially with their administrative apparatus, contacts, business networks, and trading knowledge. This in turn laid the foundations for Dutch imperialism during the 19th century.

scholarly journals The value of Admiral Matelieff's writings for studying the history of Southeast Asia,c.1600–1620

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-435
Author(s):  
Peter Borschberg
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Power ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
History Of

Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge (also Cornelis Cornelisz. Matelief) was a director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and fleet commander of a voyage to the East Indies in 1605–08. On his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, he wrote a series of epistolary memorials, or ‘discourses’, in which he recommended sweeping reforms in the way in which the VOC conducted business in Asia. Not only did these recommendations serve as a blueprint for subsequent developments of the VOC during the early seventeenth century, the documents also made astute observations about the dynamics of trade, geopolitics, agency of the Asian rulers as well as political power on the Malay Peninsula, Java, Maluku and Borneo. This article problematises these primary sources and demonstrates how they can be profitably mined for the history of trade and diplomacy of early seventeenth century Southeast Asia.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document