Ships to Asia: The Dutch East India Company by the Numbers

Amsterdam and the Race for Asia

1After Vasco da Gama reached India by sea in 1498, Portugal built forts at ports such as Goa and Malacca and controlled much of Europe's sea trade with Asia for almost a century. In the 1590s, merchants in the Dutch Republic began sending their own fleets around Africa. Soon several small Dutch companies were racing one another. Their ships crowded into the same Asian ports to buy pepper, and when they returned, they flooded Dutch markets with it.

2In 1602 the Dutch government joined these rivals into one firm, the United East India Company, known by its Dutch initials, VOC. It was a joint-stock company. More than a thousand people in Amsterdam alone bought shares, from wealthy merchants to some craftspeople and servants. The company kept the money invested for years, but a shareholder who needed cash could sell his share to someone else at the Amsterdam exchange. The government's charter gave the VOC the only right among Dutch merchants to trade in Asia for 21 years. It could also build forts, keep soldiers, make treaties with Asian rulers and wage war.

3The VOC used those powers. In 1619 it made Batavia, now Jakarta on the island of Java, its Asian headquarters. The tiny Banda Islands were the world's only source of nutmeg, and in 1621 VOC forces conquered them. Most of the Bandanese people were killed, enslaved or driven away, and the company brought in enslaved workers to grow nutmeg for it. The VOC also traded between Asian ports. Its ships carried Japanese silver to India to buy cotton cloth, which was then traded for spices in the islands of Indonesia.

4Many European leaders of the time believed in mercantilism: a nation grew strong by gathering gold and silver, selling more than it bought and keeping trade profits away from rivals. English leaders worried as Dutch ships carried more and more of Europe's trade, including goods bound for England. In 1651 England's Parliament passed the Navigation Act. Goods from Asia, Africa or the Americas could enter England only on English ships, and goods from Europe had to come on English ships or ships of the country that produced them. The next year, England and the Dutch Republic went to war.