The VOC as a Company-State: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion

Abstract

What was seventeenth-century Dutch expansion in Southeast Asia all about? In the traditional historiography, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was predominantly presented as a multinational corporation and non-state colonial actor. Recent research, however, has significantly challenged this view, stressing instead the imperial aspects of VOC rule. This article aims to break new ground by analysing the vocabularies used in seventeenth-century reasoning about Dutch expansion overseas. Focusing on three critics of the VOC from the 1660s and 1670s, Pieter van Dam, Pieter de la Court, and Pieter van Hoorn, the article shows how voices within and outside of the ranks of the Company tried to make sense of the many-faced VOC as a commercial company that was also, in different ways, a state. In an on-going debate that centred on the issues of colonisation, conquest, free trade, and monopoly, the VOC was characterised as a distinctive political body that operated as an overseas extension of the state (Van Dam), as a competitor of the state (De la Court), or as a state as such (Van Hoorn). Following Philip J. Stern's recent analysis of the English East India Company, the VOC should therefore be considered to be a particular political institution in its own terms, which challenged its critics to think about it as a body politic that was neither corporation nor empire, but rather a Company-State.

Requests from the Indies. Asian Agency in the VOC’s Currency Supply to Eighteenth-Century Java

“…In Java, only the third type of monopoly existed, in both manifestations. 95 This section concentrates on the monopolistic trade in two commodities, rice and coffee. For rice, the direct interaction with local producers increased during the eighteenth century, although the deliveries through the Javanese elites remained in place.…”

Power and Profit at Sea: The Rise of the West in the Making of the International System

“…The verdict of recent historians is that "the VOC should therefore be considered a particular political institution in its own terms, one that challenged its critics to think about it as a body politic that was neither corporation nor empire, but rather a company-state." 82 Both Dutch and foreign contemporaries endorsed this view of the VOC as an essentially hybrid institution. In the 1680s, a Dutch politician proclaimed that the VOC was "not only a Company of commerce, but also a Company of State."…”

Translation, international relations and diplomacy

“…In some cases, then, merchant-diplomacy took the form of individual merchants operating on behalf of their native European states; in others, this entailed mercantile companies, such as the Dutch and British East Indies Companies, taking on diplomatic roles. In fact, they were so powerful that they assumed some of the characteristics of states themselves (Weststeijn 2014;Stern 2011). In the parlance of contemporary IR, as sub-national communities with the capacity to operate their own diplomatic agendas aside from the kinds of agendas and restrictions of 'states', they were engaging in 'para-diplomacy'.…”