In our time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonous material fom melvourne and his guests. One thing that amazed me was this small place, thes, just two provinces of the northern exercise so much power so quickly. Not just thi small place, but a very few people. I mean not, you know, i would have said more about the about the whole labor situation. But for the dutch, it became politically vital that theyare, were able to have a, a foreign trade, because that was what they lived on.
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.