In Our Time - The Dutch East India Company

Episode Date: March 3, 2016

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 LondonChris Nierstrasz Lecturer in Global History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, formerly at the University of WarwickAndHelen Paul Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of SouthamptonProducer: Simon Tillotson.

Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about In Our Time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com. U.K.S.R.R. 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello. Founded in 1602, the Dutch East India Company was the largest global corporation in the 17th century, and more than any other East India Company of the time transformed the relationship between Europe and Southeast Asia. The company's greatest prize was the spice trade, so lucrative that a hundred years before Columbus had sailed, West to try to find a shortcut to it. For much of the 17th century,

the Dutch had a virtual monopoly on nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and cloves. More than their rivals, they also brought tea, coffee, porcelain and silk to Western Europe. This dominance brought the Dutch into conflict with other European countries in the region. At first Portugal, but soon they were running

conflicts with the British. At one peace treaty, the British gave up the Nutmeg Island of Ron, while the Dutch gave up New Amsterdam, which the British renamed New York. When did he discussed the Dutchie India Company are Anne Goldgar, reader in early modern European history at King's College, London, Chris Niersras, lecturer in global history at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and Helen Paul, lecturer in economics and economic history at the University of Southampton.

Anne Goldgar, what was the state of the spice trade in the 16th century, and who was trading with whom? Well, in the 16th century, the Portuguese had a monopoly on the spice trade as far as the Europeans were concerned. They, started out in the late 15th century by discovering a route around Africa, which was actually quite difficult to get around because of winds and currents. And in 1496, 1497, they found their way there. And then in very quick succession, they conquered spice roots and were able to take over spice centers in a number of places in particular. in Goa, Malacca and Hormuz, all between 1510 and 1515. And those three places are really important because they controlled the spice roots,

all of the spice roots from Asia to Europe, except for the overland trade, which was controlled by Arabs. And so they were able to bring the trade to Europe, to bring products to Europe. And we're able really to dominate the trade for the whole century, doing so by raising money in the East. What was the lure of the spice trade? What spices were they after? Well, the ones that you mentioned, pepper was...

Why was pepper so important? Pepper was important because it was... First of all, it was a commodity, which was very rare in Europe and very expensive. It was used, as all of these were, in both cooking, but also for medicinal purposes. and it was it was it's very important as a preservative as something to give taste to food which was otherwise bland and it was very much desired and they were able to to have a monopoly on this on this trade I mean much of the work that the that the that the Portuguese company did was actually trying to raise money in order to buy the pepper because they didn't have the money they didn't have enough to trade with in the East.

And this is actually a problem for the Dutch as well. The only thing that people in the East were really interested in was silver and gold. And they had to raise the money in the East. And so they did that by selling various products around the East and then using that money to bring the spices back. Sorry, come on to that. There's a war in the Netherlands at the time.

Yes. And the mighty wars of a long time with Spain. Yes. And yet how did that affect the Dutch attitude to the sea trade? Well, it affected the attitude and the circumstances.

This was an extremely important issue as far as the Dutch setting up of the East India Company and the rest of the trade. There's a major... A specific question is, how did it affect that attitude to the sea trade? Okay.

Their attitude to the sea, well, I mean, they were already great seafarers, but they're shipping, they were mainly shippers. And there was a really important shift in the way that, in what they did in the early 17th century and late 16th century because of changes that came because of the war. And the setting up of the trade was something which, which, um, stemmed from that, which I can talk about, if you like. But their attitude was that the trade was partly a means of waging war. But that, you know, that then that had to do partly with the composition of the people who were involved in the trade and the changes, the economic changes that happened.

Because, I mean, the importance of the war, the war really forced the Netherlands into it, or gave the Netherlands an opportunity to be in a very very, different place economically than previously because it gave the Netherlands a lot more capital, a lot more skilled trading population, because the wharf, once the Spanish had conquered the southern Netherlands, what we now call Belgium, in 1585, and particularly the port of Antwerp, which was the main port for Northern Europe, it's a large number of skilled and wealthy merchants left and they went all over the place, but a lot of them went to Amsterdam.

Thank you very much. Now, Chris, how, why did they form the Dutch East India Company? Well, the official name of the Dutch East India Company is not the Dutch East India Company, but it's the United East India Company. So actually, although it was founded in 1602, as you rightfully claimed, in that period before 1602, there was already a period of seven years

when there were different East India companies within the Dutch Republic. And as we've just heard, this was also the time that the Dutch Republic had rebelled against the king of Spain, who also was the king of Portugal. So they were, as, and as rightfully said, they were a bit worried about their position in trade.

And in the period before they started directly trading to Asia, they had already been partaking in the spice trade as they had a contract with the Portuguese to supply them these spices. And these were actually these traders from Antwerp who had that contract for Northern Europe. And at this time, as there was a war going on, the Portuguese couldn't completely do without these wealthy merchants.

So they were thinking of how could we get rid of this contract with Dutch people? So they started looking for other partners like Germans and Italian merchants. And they were planning on giving that contract to these people. So these Dutch merchants, they started thinking, well, they want to shift that contract that we had to other people. So they were thinking maybe we should start this trade ourselves directly with Asia and bypass the Portuguese. At the same time, it was something else happening. Also the English war with the Spanish and the Portuguese. And that meant there was a lot of English privateering going on.

And this meant that the price of pepper went up because a lot of these privateering vessels took the Portuguese ships that returned from Asia with spices. so a lot of these prices were lost or damaged or these ships were sunk. So there was not a lot of pepper coming in. And there was also an alternative route through land, with the Italian cities being very important, importing it through that route. They were not able to import more pepper either. So there was a shortage of pepper. So the price of pepper was going up.

So there's a push and a pool factor in that moment in time when these merchants in different cities in the Dutch Republic, so it's all over Holland. So it's in Amsterdam, it's in Rotterdam, It's in Delft, it's in Enghausen, it's in Horn, but it's also in the province of Zealand. They started thinking, we should go to Asia and get these spices ourselves. Why did they form one company, which is known general as VOC? Why did they form the VEOC, the United East India Company?

Well, at a certain moment in time, these merchants in the different cities, they started competing with each other. So some of these trips that they made were very profitable, other ones were much less profitable and there was one of the most famous also statements of the Dutch Republic was Joan van Oldenfeld. He decided that these companies

should be put together but this was something that merchants the merchants that were running these companies didn't really like at the first side. Yes and the question is why would they actually want to join in one company But the thing that they feared was that if they would do this,

that this company would become a vehicle of state and of war. So there's always this idea. Of course, you had to be... But why did you... We've had why they feared. Yeah, exactly. I'm coming to that point. So they knew that if they would get on board with the state,

it might become a vehicle of war, and that would cut into profitability. So they had to be granted privileges by the state in order to make them believe that they could, get their money out because they were afraid that they would lose their money. That's just how merchant thinks. Can I make a profit or do I lose my money? So what the state gave them was that they said,

okay, we're making your share of the company an impersonal share that you can sell. So this was actually the start of stock capital. And then they said at any moment in time that you think I want to sell my part because I'm fearing that the state will take over and it will become war. You could sell that at the stock exchange at Amsterdam, which in that way became the first stock exchange in the world. So that was the guarantee that they had that they could get their money out at any moment that they wanted.

And they got all sorts of other powers, didn't it? They got sovereign powers. We'll come into that later. When they were at sea, they got sovereign powers as well. Helen, Anne mentioned trade very early on, and trade had increased the appetite or enabled the Dutch, let's call them that, to increase their appetite for working at sea.

Can you talk a bit more, introduced by a trade and war going together at that time in the 17th century. Yes, this is what historians... It seems to mean constant war. We want people in the other place, aren't they? Yes, what she'd think would be antithetical to trade, but actually this is what historians call the fiscal military state approach, where you have states waging war to have trade routes, colonies and trading rights,

and also to have protectionist political policies, and then being backed up by elements of the commercial sector. So you have these kind of quasi-public institutions like the VOC, which have, as you say, some kind of almost state-like powers in some areas. And the idea is that they are part of this whole mixed strategy of trying to dominate other European states, or to keep a balance of power through, combining commercial power and military power.

So it's not the free trade through peace that we're probably expecting. It's more the sense of we know that there's going to be wars in this kind of competitive environment. But to develop the point that Chris was embarked on, once they'd become a united group, they weren't a state, it's very important to distinguish it, but they weren't a state group. They actually got sovereign powers for themselves. Can you develop that a bit which Chris began to do? Well, they got powers that we think of as being particularly today state powers,

like making their own coinage, minting their own coinage, and then having the right to have various to wage war, to declare war in various places. And this is perhaps, it makes them what has been called a kind of company state approach, that they are, even though they have shareholders, they're acting almost like a state within a state. And then when they're outside of European waters, they really are the state.

And they start demanding that people, other foreign ships, eventually have to salute their ships and this sort of thing, as if they are really a sovereign national power. I think it's important to get it in at this stage. How original this was in this, this is a massive enterprise coming out of a state, a small but powerful and rich state enriched.

As again, Anseido and the Spanish drove a lot of the people from the south, as it were, what we now call Belgium. It's very difficult Europe then. It's not too difficult. Anyway, drove them north. But a lot of very rich people came up north who had money to spend. But were we talking about a sort of middle class, merchant class, taking over in a way that wasn't doing anywhere else in Europe

to the advantage of the state? Is that right? Yes, more or less. And certainly it's because of that. very small country with this great, if you like, the trade, the international trade overshadows, anything else. If they had been a big landmass like, or a big country like France with a strong autocratic monarchy, you might not have had this, you would have had the top-down approach.

But with the merchants bringing in so much profit, it's unsurprising really that they have a lot more relative power, politically speaking, within the state, within that. very small state of the Netherlands. Fairly briefly, because there got quite enough on our hands with the Dutch, but at the same time, the British East Company was starting. It had been founded in 16-100, two years before, but it wasn't doing anything like as well. Was that to do with the organisation of the British Britain at the time?

Or what was it to do with? Well, they weren't perhaps as well organised. There were various ways of thinking about this. They weren't, the Dutch, for instance, were very keen to keep records about the sailing routes and to be very precise about that. English were much more ad hoc. And as well, you've got the relative strengths of the Navy, the maritime sector at the time is different.

The Dutch initially started off with a lot more shipping, much more skill, and then overtime eventually that situation reverses. But in the beginning, the Dutch have the advantage. And Galbar, so we've basically got ships from Western European countries going to Asia. very perilous, as you indicated, around the Cape of Covecote, these cross currents and these winds, which were difficult than having, but they got there,

and they were bringing stuff back to Europe. But they were also trading within Asia itself. Can you tell us, with the Portuguese, but let's stick to the Dutch now, because it gets too much information. How they were doing that, and what advantage it brought them? Well, I think the point goes back to what I said before, which is that there wasn't a lot in Europe that the people in Asia wanted.

What they wanted was specie, gold and silver, particularly silver. And the problem was to raise that money. And so the Dutch really took over what is known as the country trade or the port-to-port trade, which the Portuguese had been operating already in the 16th century. And what that involves is bringing species money from silver, particularly from Europe, and then taking it to places and selling, buying things and then selling the two other people in the region in order to raise money. So, for example, going to India buying cloth there, taking that to the Spice Islands and buying Spice Islands and buying Spice. there, taking the spices to China and buying silk there, taking the silk to Japan and getting silver there, taking the silver back to the spice islands to buy more spices, and then taking them back to India. That model that I just gave you was the Portuguese model. But the Dutch did something extremely similar. And essentially, that raised enough capital to be able to finance the trade, while all

also gaining the kinds of items that you spoke of, the spices, but also porcelain, silk, and other items from Asia to sell within Europe. And so they're both operating a trade within Asia, where the products never come back to Europe, but also bringing a lot of things back, which then either get sold on to other countries, which is a very important part of the trade. Or get processed. For example, raw silk comes from Japan and then is processed in Amsterdam by silk merchants and made into cloth and that's then sold on. And that's processing trade, which makes Amsterdam into an entrepaux, is a very important part of this. Chris, Chris Neistras, what were the Dutch able to do, or were they able to do more in Asia than the Portuguese had done? And if so, how? Well, I think they did something similar to the Portuguese, but at the same something, different. And the difference

lies in that they took a step further than the Portuguese did, where the Portuguese were very much aimed at controlling trade and trade routes. The Dutch state decided that if they wanted to have a profitable trade in Asia, then

they should have control over the spice producing areas. Now, that sounds much simpler than it was, because, for instance, Pepper is so widespread throughout Asia that you cannot and nobody ever controlled all those areas. But those small little those small spices that we were talking about, like cinnamon, nutmeg and clothes and mace, they all grow on often relatively small islands, or in the case of cinnamon on what is present

Desilanka, Ceylon, on a slightly different larger island. So what their strategy was for the first around 80 years of their presence in Asia was to get hold of these production areas. Now, that didn't mean that they always mean that they took complete control, in the case of the Nutmeg, so in the Banda Islands and the Molokan Islands, yes, they did take control. They just conquered one island and they

got rid of all the other production in all the area areas. So they had complete control over all the production of these goods in that area. And that gave them a very powerful position. And I pick up the word conquered, because let's get, it's right, there was a lot of brutality went on, if they couldn't get what they wanted by

negotiation. The Dutch particularly, or tell me I'm wrong if I'm wrong, were very brutal and the scars are still there to day in places in Asia? Well, it's a very, it's more complicated in the sense that yes, you were right. If you look at the conquest of these spice islands, it was quite

brutal and many people lost their lives. But you also have to realize that the VUC was all over Asia. And in many other regions, they didn't have that power. They tried to beat, for instance, the Chinese at sea and they, for two times, they failed. They were beaten themselves. In India,

they met with the they had to do with the Mughal Empire. And this Mughal Empire was so powerful that if the VUC wanted something, he could just say no. So they were happy to just trade there. So it's very, it's not just, it's not, you should not think of the situation in Asia

as Europeans coming to Asia, imposing themselves on the Asians because they were superior. That was absolutely not the case. In some places, they saw possibilities and they took advantage of the situations. In other places, you could see the VUC as a subject of the local ruler.

So in the case of the MoG's, Mughal or in Japan, they had to send every year they had to send presents to the Japanese emperor, to the Shogun, in order to get trade done. And in Asia, that's perceived as you saying, I'm subjugated

to your authority, I'm lower than you are. So it's not a case of the Dutcheseeania going to Asia and imposing itself on all others. In the case of the spice islands, yes. But there's a particular goal there, and that is, those spices were not just wanted in Europe, but they were

also wanted in Asia. So they use those spices, those small spices, to open up that trade. And then you get the whole circle that Anne has been describing where these spices went to India, they went to Japan, and then they start trading and they start moving that system of trade. Can I

just take something up with you, Helen? There's mentioned there by Chris but if you talk about it, very good to be told that the moguls just brushed them aside. There'd be supplicants there as the East India company had with a fingernail on India for a long time. And Japan. Japan kept them out of Japan.

They built them a little island. You could say that, but you couldn't come into Japan at all. They controlled them by BOS in later. But China was the big, excuse me, China was the big one. That was the big goal. And China, I love the disdain of China. We had nothing that they wanted at all, except gold and silver, if they had a mind to take it that afternoon.

And so there was this big thing there that was part of the equation. How did it fit in? can't be as crudely as I said. Well, they were the Chinese, the emperor, and of course most of these great mandarins, they didn't think, as you say, that the Westerners had anything to offer them. They had the Middle Kingdom.

They didn't really need anything else. So they allowed trade, but it was very specifically kept to one particular port area. So what's Canton, Guangzhou, how you want to say it, but they would allow foreign shipping to come up to an area called one, Poa and then they had to stop there and they could then go further in Chinese boats.

But they had a very clear sense of authorities. They had these somebody called Hoppo who would come on board the ship and inspect it. And the European ships had to fire gun salutes and they would play music and give presents to this hoppo. And the hoppo would say you can't have your escort warship if you've got one. You can't have it in this area. you've got to leave it in a different mooring. So it was very clearly the Chinese were in control of that. And in this area, you had little factories all next to each other

for the different European traders. And by factory, I mean a kind of office-come storehouse. It's a very good corrective. What Chris was saying, and what you were saying to the general idea, the Western Europe just sweeping him across Asia and taking no prisoners and dominating and bringing the west of the East and teaching them a lesson, that isn't the case at all.

Can I talk about monopolies? You can? Go on then. The idea of having a European monopoly is a bit of a joke when you realise that it doesn't mean anything once you get past the Cape to the people who are the local people. So what they would sometimes do say in India is they might play off the Europeans against each other. And then you've got an issue of whether the Europeans should form any kind of cartel arrangement amongst these monopolies, whether really this spice trade in Europe is a monopoly or is it really an oligopoly of different big players.

But the reason for trying to restrict supply into Europe is to keep prices high but not too high to stop with free trade, what you might expect is a glut in the market and a price dropping and people wouldn't then see spices as a luxury good anymore. So monopoly, such as it is, a bit like the slave trade, Monopoly is a bit of a wish on the European side. It's not necessarily what you see on the ground. You wanted to come in, Chris.

Yeah, I originally wanted to come in on China, but I'll step into this discussion too, because if you look at that monopoly, the monopoly that they were granted is... We're talking about the VOC now. Yeah, the VUC, yeah, and all the other... The Dutchie senior company is not the only one with the monopoly, which sounds strange.

But they all had the monopoly to sell those Asian goods in their own country. So they had a monopoly on that, although there's differences between companies. Because, for instance, the Dutch East India Company, they had the first right to sell Asian products in their country. But if other people would bring Asian products from European countries, that would be all right. For instance, the English East India Company was much more strict. They had the only right to sell these goods in their country.

That means that what that gives to these companies for advantage is that they always know that they, when they buy something in Asia that they can sell it in their own country. So it guarantees the profitability. So it also returns to the first question that you gave me. So these monopolies, they're very much a European thing. And if you move towards Asia,

you can see that those monopolies don't really make sense. Only in the case of these small spices and to a certain extent pepper, there's much more control of the Europeans. But for the rest, if you look at the 18th century when they start evolving, so they move beyond spices and they move in towards, into tea and textiles and coffee.

In those areas, there were many more companies active in those trades, there's no real monopoly. You can't really speak of any monopoly, not even in Europe. And if there was a monopoly, they would bypass it. So, for instance, England is a good case. Everybody's still drinking tea in England. But in the 18th century, massive amounts of tea were smuggled into England across the channel from France and from the Dutch Republic and from Sweden.

So people tried to bypass the monopoly. So it's a bit of an illusion, this idea of a monopoly. And Gagin, what ways Amsterdam's been mentioned as becoming an enormous important for reprocessing as well as you? Can you tell us a bit about that? And how it outclips, eclipsed Antwerp. Okay. Well, I mean, Amsterdam had already been a reasonably important port before the big changes of the 1590s that I mentioned. But it was important largely.

is a place which was involved in shipping and in fishing. The Netherlands is important as a country already because it doesn't have much of an agricultural base. The water table is too high. And that means that there's a lot of labor which is available to be involved in industry, but also in going to sea for one reason or another. And that was true already in the 16th century

that Amsterdam was the place where most of the Antwerp trade was carried by shippers from Amsterdam. And what happens in the 1590s is that with this group of wealthy merchants, moving out to other places, including to London, Cologne, Southern Europe, and so on, and then eventually deciding that things aren't going to get better in the Southern Netherlands, they go to Amsterdam, which is a place where they knew the language, and the institutions seem to be good. And so Amsterdam became a place which had amazing amounts of capital expertise, but also

contact all over the place, which helped to make the trade possible much greater. And so it changed. And Amsterdam grew enormously between the 1590s and the middle of the 17th century grew by three to four times. many industries became important. And as I believe Chris mentioned earlier, there are also institutions which start to develop which make Amsterdam a particularly good place to trade.

There's a stock exchange, there's an exchange bank where everybody had to have their money in order to trade. There were lots of shareholders, though. There's even small shareholders, but there's a lot of trading going on at a low level, as well as a big level. Indeed. People bought in.

Wages of skilled workers, I'm told from your notes were very high, and so they would have a punt. That's right. I mean, there was a lot of excess income, really. And wages were much higher than in surrounding countries. And interest rates were very low. So a lot of Europeans wanted to come and trade there. I want to get to Helen Paul, the realities were.

Amsterdam increased also because the Dutch blockaded Antwerp. And so Antwerp was sort of slowly strangled while Amsterdam was allowed to bloom. Is there anything in that? Well, if you get rid of a competitor, then... But they did do that, didn't they? Yes, absolutely. So, I mean, you've certainly got these inter-rivalries,

internal rivalries as well. I mean, you see that later on with them getting concerned about other Dutch cities that might eclipse Amsterdam and might be a competitor. But really... Please, can you keep talking? Oh, sorry. Really, I suppose they're on the lookout for competitors

wherever they might lurk and using some pretty strong tactics if necessary. Was the sort of... Were the goods changing rapidly in the 17th century? Chris has indicated that further on the 80th and the 90th century other goods came in, or was it fairly steadily based on spices in the 17th century? Well, it starts off really with the spices

because you've got to, I suppose, the customer as to what these other foreign products are. And I suppose spices are a much easier sell than some of the later products. Because it really changes how people live. The introduction of a large amount of things like silk and porcelain changes culture within Europe. In what way? Because people, when you start using China as opposed to, say, pewter, you've got to perhaps be more cautious with it.

You can't slam it on the table. and you maybe have to be introduced to things like tea. So Samuel Pepys, for instance, says in his diary, I had this tea, a china drink. So he has to explain what it is to himself. And you need, I suppose, then, to have all the rituals that are developed around the tea table, having a tea table itself, a tea service, having tea caddies that lock so you can put the tea in it. This is an expensive thing for all that paraphernalia.

and the tea itself. So you need to have a sense that it's not outlandish to have people round for a cup of tea. And changing manners with the wearing of silk and so on. Yes, and silk is a real devil to keep clean at this time. So you can't actually touch it. You're not supposed to touch it very much, and that changes the way that you even move around

whilst wearing these great outfits, if you are allowed to wear them. Okay. One thing that I think is also very interesting is that the exposure to these new products is something which allows Europeans to become much more aware of what else is out there, ethnographically, but also scientifically. And so the East India trade, from the very start, the ships get met by naturalists who want to see the animals and the plants which are coming in. And many new things are introduced.

And this helps to make the Netherlands a really important country for scientific work, especially at the end of the 17th century and into the 18th century. You have people who are actually out in the Indies, for example, the shell collector, the interesting man, blind shell collector, Rumpfius, who writes a book about the shells of Ambon. And that becomes a really important book for people who are getting interested in natural history. And so that's a big aspect of this trade, I think, is the way in which this... Yeah, and the development of maps, the development navigation methods,

and the whole massive culture comes out of that. Chris, I go back to what extent the Dutch were imposing their will on their trading partners in the forest. You've told us very timely that they weren't imposed. They were on China, Japan and India for a start. But that was going on there. But it's a pre-question. In the Atlantic, Spanish were taking abattering

because their fleets, their silver fleets, their fleets were being looted and sometimes captured entire for the money to go to Asia. So we've got a bit of globalization setting in quite early there. Well, are you implying that they stole all that silver from the Spanish silver fleets? No, not all, but a lot was going on.

It was diminishing Spain's power, and therefore diminishing Portugal's power. Of course, yes. So I'm trying to get balance of powers here. They're going down there. The overland route is, the Arab Ovaland Lute is losing its authority because of the sea routes. The Dutch are imposing over there.

I know it's a big ask, but have a go. I'm not sure what you're asking of me. I'm asking how effective the Dutch were in bringing Asia under the control they wanted it to have. Well, I think if you look at the 17th century, they were very effective. If you look at the shipping of the Dutch East India Company, they outstripped all the shipping of all the other East India companies. They were able to impose. themselves, what they did is, and this is something that is maybe slightly different than imposing their wills on the Asians, is that they looked at where the Portuguese were,

and they actually took over the Portuguese settlements of trade. And often they did so, not by themselves, but we cannot see European expansion as something in Asia as something, like I said, Europeans imposing themselves on Asians. the Europeans were very effective at sea. They really had a head start there because of the use of gunpowder. But on land, these cannons didn't really amount too much. And we also have to realize that Europeans, when they arrived in Asia,

they died by the dozens. And this is particularly true for the Dutch East India Company and even more true in the 18th century than in the 19th century. But we have to realize that a lot of these people died. So, for instance, in 1775, there were 370 soldiers that arrived in Batavia, within two years, 80% of them were dead. So there's an astonishing death rate.

And once they start moving from the coastland onwards, they die even quicker. So they are not able to do anything against Asian rulers without the help of other Asian rulers. And they are not able to do anything against the Portuguese without the help of Asian rulers. And for instance, if you look at the island of Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka, the Dutch state, they conquered all the areas of the Portuguese,

but they did so with the help of the local king, which was a king of candy. And what they did is they split up the Portuguese lands between the two of them. So it's not just that the Dutch took over, they didn't take over from Asians there. And then they said to the king, you have a big bet with us,

so you have to give us all the cinnamon. So there's the trading part. So there's a complicated picture there. I'm going to move on. I'm afraid, sorry to be rushing you a bit, but maybe a rather too big subject, but you're well up to it. Can you just, Helen, I'm trying to get an idea,

and if it doesn't work, let's skip it. the global trade chain the Spanish Empire the greatest empire there was in the West Senate was being reduced largely by attacks on its great fleets and that was larger to get the

golden silver to then pass on in international trade is that right well there's certainly points where fleets are taken and certainly well eventually just for that golden silver and you're right there is an outflow of golden silver from Europe

from where, however it's obtained, there's still a lot of concern about the East India trades draining Europe of golden silver at a time of commodity money. No, just a second, you've had a long talk, I'm saying with Helen for a moment. And so there's that,

what about the overland trade, the Silk Road and so on, the Arab trade, overland European trade. Is that diminishing too commensurately? Those routes, because there's only so much you can take on poor roads, really, and then every time you go anywhere, you might get taxed.

So certainly a sea route, as the ships get bigger and bigger, it makes more and more sense to go by sea. And so the relative costs, I suppose, mean it's more likely that you're going to get the carriage trade, a bit like the cargo ships of today. You can take an awful lot by sea.

And similarly, the predominance of the Mediterranean traders, Italian traders and so on, is slipping away to the west, it's going to the Atlantic coast, as it were. That's right, and the kind of shipping they have in the Mediterranean is a different technology to the Atlantic, so they're not able to come out of the meds and compete on the same terms.

Now, Anne, you started to say about the importance it had for the scientific development, but it was really extraordinary what happened in Holland at that time. Now, I'm not saying it was entirely Koffer Dubai, stuff that was coming from Asia. There was all sorts of things going on. But it was an enormous advance in particularly navigational methods and inventions.

We know about the art and so forth. But let's stick to the practical stuff. How good was that? Did they win because their technology was so far ahead? I think that that helped. I don't think that that was the main thing. But I think that there's... What was the main thing?

Well, the main thing was simply... their circumstances in terms of war in peace. The times when they were doing well were the times when they weren't actually fighting. And so the big push, as far as the Dutch were concerned, was in the period from 1609 to 1621 when they had a truce with the Spanish. And that was the point where they really surged ahead.

However, I mean, and then they go back to war, in 1621, and between 1621 and 1649, they continue, 1648, they continue to be a war. And that brings an economic depression to the Netherlands, and it's a lot harder. So really, their relationship with Spain affects their relationship with trade. But I think you're quite right to suggest that their navigational ability, their cartography, the great care that they take in mapping everything, because it is, as Helen was saying, it's a very different thing to sail through open ocean than it is to sail from port to port along a coast,

which is what the Mediterranean trade did. And so they needed to have the scientific instruments. They needed to have the maps. And there was an enormous amount of that. And it was the Netherlands, the Amsterdam was a big center for map printing, for example. Chris, we're coming to the end now. You were there when we began in 1602.

It began to fade away, the Dodgers. When and why? Well, if you look at the decline of the VUC, then we can see that the actual demise started in 1780, so that's something else then the decline, but the actual demise of the East India Company started in 180 when there was a war, the fourth Anglo-Dutch War, as we call it in Holland, between Holland and England,

and a lot of the Dutch ships were lost, and that meant that the Dutch East India Company couldn't pay off his debts anymore because there was nothing coming in. They weren't selling anything. They were helped by the state at that moment in time so they prolonged their existence until 1795 when a new war broke out

and then they were pushed overboard and they almost went bankrupt but the state stepped in, almost like we have seen with the banks a couple of years ago and they took over their possessions in order and continued that as a colonial empire. But those cracks of the Klein already started appearing before because there was a big debt that the VUC had to deal with

And this debt came from the moment that they weren't able to pay their trade from Asia anymore, from the integration trade. Then they started building up a depth and they had to export more silver, which they had to borrow, because they were not willing to share the profits with more shareholders, so they didn't want to enlarge the capital stock. So that meant that they were deeply in depth, and at that moment that war broke out that they were pushed over. Well, thank you very much for that summary. It's been a gallop, but thank you very much for galloping so expertly. Thanks to Anne Goldgar, Helen Paul, Chris Neustras. And next week we'll be talking about the ancient mayor civilization of Central America.

Thank you for listening. And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. What didn't we say that was important? I think one of the things is the movement of people, people who are not European around this system, like the Lasker, the sailors who are from beyond the Cape, the Indian and Indonesian,

and also the slaves have brought in to the Dutch colony of Cape Town that then affects modern day South Africa, this so-called Cape Malay population. It has real world effects even today. One thing that amazed me was this small place, just two provinces of the northern. I exercise so much power so quickly. Not just this small place, but of very few people.

Yeah. I mean, that, you know, I would have said more about the, about the whole labor situation and the fact that really this I mean one of the things that's sort of so important about the Netherlands at this point is that this is all that they have really, you know, agriculture

is the way that every other country sustains itself and England is part of that. The English, this is just icing on the cake to have an East India company, England. Agriculture and wool and cloth which comes from their agriculture is what the English do. And so they just wanted to have

this extra thing, but for the Dutch it became politically vital that they were able to have foreign trade because that was what they lived on. And although they were manufacturing industries, those industries almost entirely brought their raw materials from elsewhere. And so, I mean, some of it did come from Europe by the rivers, but an awful lot of it came from overseas. And that's one reason for the strength of feeling about the Anglo-Dutch rivalry in the 17th century is that the Dutch, they couldn't afford to lose these wars because if they lost their trade

they wouldn't be able to survive they wouldn't have the credit that they needed to have Yeah, before I forget I just wanted to add my my point about silver because you were saying that they were stealing it from the Spanish But in actual fact what the Dutch are doing is something else than the English are doing because what they do is they have a very small country, they don't have a market of their own

Well, a very small market So what they do is their export these goods that come from Asia are meant for export. That means that if you look at the silver, you export a little bit of silver, but you return with a lot of goods from Asia. That means that you sell them to

other people who give you silver in return. So an actual fact for the Dutch, the idea of exporting silver, in other countries, you have huge debates about that. In the Dutch Republic, nobody talks about that. The reason is simply because they re-export everything that they get from

the Asia trade and get silver in return. So for them it's not a problem. They gain more silver from this trade than that they lose. I wish we had time for that. I mean, it's interesting that, I mean, we think about mercantilism as being the system for everybody, but in fact the Dutch claimed, although I don't think accurately, that they believed in free trade. In Europe, yes. Indeed. I mean, in 16... Yeah, exactly. Northern Asia. Yeah, well, I mean, which the English pointed out, you know, but in 1608, Brocious wrote his Mari Libram about how there should be free trade. And that was a big issue in their conflict with the English.

The English said, we have sovereignty in our waters. We have sovereignty over the seas. You need to show respect to us by lowering your flag when you see a ship and so on. And the Dutch refused to do this. And yet when they went to East Asia, I mean, they were as busy trying to capture markets as anybody else. Same thing, yeah. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Interesting the connection with South Africa

which you didn't have time to bring up, isn't it, Helen? Yes, that's right. I mean, if you go to Stellenbosch, it's like a little Dutch town out in the Cape and all these vineyards around it. And, yeah, the Cape Malay, I think I bought chocolate bar which had Cape Malay seasoning on it, which was these spices and the food, the influence on food in South Africa. The wine producing started in the time of the Dutch East Indie company.

They brought in French Huguenots to set up these. Well, the word wine has alerted, as alerted the producer Simon Tillotson, who's about to offer us. Well, I'd offer you tea or coffee, given it's a lot cheaper. There are many more history

and discussion programmes from Radio 4 to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.com.uk slash radio 4.