Founding of the VOC (1602)

Properties2
tagsevent, dutch, colonial, voc, organisation, 1602, atjeh, trade, monopoly, staten-generaal
aliasesOprichting van de Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, VOC founding 1602, Unification of the Voorcompagnieën 1602, VOC charter of 20 March 1602, Octrooi of 20 March 1602

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The founding of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) on 20 March 1602 — the unification of the various Dutch voorcompagnieën into a single chartered company by the charter (octrooi) of the Staten-Generaal of the United Provinces, granting the new company a monopoly of Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of Magellan for twenty-one years, with the right to build fortifications, maintain armed forces, conclude treaties and wage war in the name of the States-General — is the foundational institutional event of Dutch commercial and political power in the East Indies and the proximate cause of the consolidation of the Dutch position at Atjeh after a decade of fragmented competition. The founding is treated by Johan van der Woude in his Van der Woude (1948) as the institutional turning-point of the early Dutch-Indies trade.

Background: the voorcompagnieën (1595-1602)

The Dutch trade to the East Indies had begun with the first voyage of Cornelis de Houtman to Bantam in 1595-1597. In the years that followed, separate companies were formed in Amsterdam, Middelburg (the Middelburgsche Compagnie of Balthasar de Moucheron), the Maze (Rotterdam and Delft), and the Noorderkwartier (Hoorn and Enkhuizen), each sending its own fleets to the Indies. By 1601 the situation at Atjeh — where the Middelburgsche Compagnie and the Nieuwe Brabantsche Compagnie competed for the same pepper — showed the costs of fragmentation: prices were driven up, factories could not be defended, and the several companies’ agents sometimes operated against each other. The English and French arrival at Atjeh in 1602 sharpened the case for unification.

The States-General, with Johan van Oldenbarneveldt as Raadspensionaris, took the lead. Van der Woude notes that “Oldenbarneveldt uit de eerste hand op de hoogte was van dit streven” and that the Staten-Generaal “steeds hadden vermeden, den groothandel te belasten met belemmerende bepalingen; de vorming van kapitaal was een van de middelen om het succes van den opstand te stabiliseeren”. The political motive — strengthening the Republic against Spain — was as important as the commercial.

The charter of 20 March 1602

The charter (octrooi) of 20 March 1602 — printed by Van der Woude as Bijlage I of his book — created the VOC as a company with a twenty-one-year monopoly (renewable in ten-year accounting periods) of Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and through the Strait of Magellan. The Company’s capital was divided among six kamers (chambers): Amsterdam (half), Zeeland (a quarter), and the Maze (Rotterdam and Delft), Hoorn and Enkhuizen (each an eighth). The supreme governing body was the Heeren Zeventien (Lords Seventeen): eight from Amsterdam, four from Zeeland, two from the Maze, two from the Noorderkwartier, and a seventeenth member chosen in rotation by the smaller chambers. Any inhabitant of the United Provinces could subscribe; the first subscription produced a capital of over six and a half million guilders.

The charter’s most consequential clauses granted the Company the right to build fortifications, to maintain armed forces, to conclude treaties with native rulers, and to wage war in the name of the States-General. The Company was thus not merely a commercial firm but a quasi-sovereign body — what Van der Woude calls “een lichaam dat den Staat vertegenwoordigde”. The States-General retained a supervisory role: in cases where the Heeren Zeventien could not agree, the dispute was to be referred to the States-General for decision.

The strategic turn at Atjeh

The founding of the VOC immediately changed the Dutch position at Atjeh. The first VOC fleet to arrive at Atjeh after the charter was that of Cornelis Matelieff in 1606 on his way to Malaka — by which time the Atjeh trade had lost most of its significance for the Dutch, who were drawing their pepper increasingly from the west coast of Sumatra. The Zeeland lodge “Zeelant” that the Zeeland Company’s mission of 1601 had founded had burned down on 13 January 1602 — three months before the charter — and was not rebuilt; the VOC preferred to operate at Atjeh through visiting fleets rather than a permanent factory. The charter, however, gave the VOC the institutional capacity to maintain a sustained presence in the East Indies — a capacity that the voorcompagnieën, with their one-voyage-at-a-time structure, had lacked — and thus the strategic depth to attempt the great operations of Matelieff’s Malaka campaign of 1606, Verhoeff’s Malaka expedition of 1608 and the subsequent interventions at Djohor.

The early VOC at Atjeh

The early VOC retained the diplomatic framework that the voorcompagnieën had established at Atjeh. The Atjeh embassy of 1601 had produced a treaty of friendship and commerce between the sultan and the States-General; the VOC inherited this treaty and continued to operate under its terms. The Company’s factors at Atjeh continued to buy pepper, though in declining quantities as the trade shifted to the west coast and to Bantam; the sultan’s court continued to receive Dutch, English and French visitors and to play them against each other. The sultan of Atjeh’s death in 1604 and the eventual succession of his son — the sultan who would attack Djohor in 1613 — preserved the same balancing policy.

Significance

The founding of the VOC is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal institutional event of the early Dutch-Indies trade and the proximate cause of the consolidation of the Dutch position at Atjeh after a decade of fragmented competition. The charter’s grant of quasi-sovereign powers — fortification, war, treaty-making — was the legal foundation of the Coen programme of monopoly-by-force that would define VOC policy from 1609 onward. The early VOC inherited the diplomatic framework of the voorcompagnieën at Atjeh — the treaty of 1601, the lodge “Zeelant”, the practice of buying pepper from visiting fleets — and continued to operate within it for the first decade of its existence, while the strategic centre of Dutch-Indies policy shifted south and east to Banda and Jacatra. The founding also marks the moment at which the Dutch-Atjeh relationship ceased to be a private commercial venture and became a state-backed enterprise — a transformation that would, in the long run, lead to the Atjeh-oorlog of 1873-1903.

See Also

Source

Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk I and Bijlage I “Het Octrooi der Vereenigde O.I. Compagnie” (pp. 7-49, 365-374).

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