VOIC
Company logo
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Company flag
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Native name
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Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) |
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| Publicly traded company | |
| Industry | Multi-industry |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Predecessor | Voorcompagnie / Proto-VOC (Compagnie van Verre, Brabantsche Compagnie, ) |
| Founded | 20 March 1602 |
| Founder | Johan van Oldenbarnevelt |
| Defunct | 31 December 1799 |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, Dutch Republic (main headquarters) Batavia, Dutch East Indies (overseas administrative center) |
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Area served
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Europe-Asia (Eurasia) Intra-Asia |
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Key people
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/Gentlemen Seventeen (Dutch Republic, 1602–1799) Governors-General of the Dutch East Indies (Batavia, 1610–1800) Opperhoofd |
| Products | Spice, silk, porcelain, metals, , tea, grains (rice, soybeans), sugarcane industry, shipbuilding industry |
The Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie abbreviated to VOC), was a publicly tradable corporation that was founded in 1602 and became defunct in 1799. It was originally established as a chartered company to trade with India and Indianized Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade. The VOC was an early multinational corporation in its modern sense. In the early 1600s, by widely issuing bonds and shares of to the general public, the VOC became the world's first formally listed public company. In other words, it was the first corporation to be ever actually listed on an official . The VOC was influential in the rise of corporate-led globalization in the early modern period. With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in world history, the company is considered by many to be the first major modern global corporation, and was at one stage the most valuable corporation ever.
In 1619 it forcibly established a central position in the Indonesian city of Jayakarta, changing the name to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory. To guarantee its supply it established positions in many countries and became an early pioneer of outward foreign direct investment. In its foreign colonies the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. With increasing importance of foreign posts, the company is often considered the world's first true transnational corporation. Along with the Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWIC), the VOC became seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire. To further its trade routes, the VOC-funded exploratory voyages such as those led by Willem Janszoon (Duyfken), Henry Hudson (Halve Maen) and Abel Tasman who revealed largely unknown landmasses to the western world. In the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography (c. 1570s–1670s), VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the modern world as we know them today.
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Wikipedia