In the seventeeth century, i think if you look at the duch east india company, they outstripped all the shipping of all the other east india companies. But we have to realize that a lot of these people died. So for instance, in 17 75, there were 370 soldiers that arrived in batavia. Within two years, 80 % of them were dead. And once they start moving from the coast land inwards, they they die even quicker. The overland route is the arab overland loutis rous is losing its authority because of the series the dutch are imposing over there. It was diminishing spain's power after diminishing portug
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.