Portuguese company had to raise money in order to buy pepper, because they didn't have enough to trade with in the east. There was a war in the netherlands at the time, yes? Mighty wars of a long time with spain, yes. And yet they the the how did that affect the dutch attitude to the sea trade? Well, to the attitude and the circumstances, this was an extremely important issue as far as the as the dutch setting up of the east india company and the rest of the trade as a major question.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC, known in English as the Dutch East India Company. The VOC dominated the spice trade between Asia and Europe for two hundred years, with the British East India Company a distant second. At its peak, the VOC had a virtual monopoly on nutmeg, mace, cloves and cinnamon, displacing the Portuguese and excluding the British, and were the only European traders allowed access to Japan.
With
Anne Goldgar
Reader in Early Modern European History at King's College London
Chris Nierstrasz
Lecturer in Global History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, formerly at the University of Warwick
And
Helen Paul
Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton
Producer: Simon Tillotson.