Why did they form one company, which iss known general as v o c? Why did they form the united east india company? Well, at a certain when in time, theseer, these merchants in the different cities, started competing with each other. And e there was one of the mostr famous, also statesman of the dutch republic, was jon von old barnefeld. He decided that these companies should be put together. But this was that merchants, the merchants that were running these companies, didn't really like the idea.
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.