They weren't a state group, they actually got sovereign powers for themselves. This is perhaps it makes them what has been called er a kind of company state approach. Even though they have shareholders, they are acting almost like a state within a state. And then when they are outside of european waters, they really are the state. They start demand ing ar that people other foreign ships eventually have to salute their ships and this sort of thing,. as if they are reallya sovereign national power. But i think it's important to get it in at this stage. How this, how original this was in this is a massive enterprise coming out of a small, but powerful and rich state.
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.