1799 - The Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company’s charter expired after 198 years in which stockholders had received annual dividends averaging eighteen percent (18%). 

The Dutch East Indies Company (also known as Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie [VOC] – literally, United East Indies Company) was formed in in 1602 by the merger of several separate companies founded in the 1590s for trade in the Indian Ocean.  It was a joint stock company, that is, the separate holdings of the shareholders were not distinguished in the operations of the company; profit and loss were shared equally according to stock holdings.  Under its charter from the States General, the company had an official monopoly of all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Magellan Straits and the right to exercise sovereignty in that region on behalf of the Dutch state.  General company policy was set by the Heeren XVII (Seventeen Gentlemen) who met in turn in the different provincial cities of the Netherlands and appointed a governor-general to govern the company in Asia.  From 1619, the company’s headquarters in Asia was at Batavia.

The VOC aimed from the beginning to gain a monopoly of the spice trade in Maluku, using military force to impose restrictive treaties on indigenous states, to exclude foreign competitors, and to destroy spice trees outside Dutch territories.  In 1641, the company seized Melaka from the Portuguese and in 1666-1669 conquered Makassar to deny it as a base for competitors, while in 1682 it successfully excluded foreign traders from Banten.  The VOC also sought to control the so-called inter-Asiatic trade, especially between the archipelago and India.  They established major interests in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast for the purchase of cotton cloth to be exchanged for spices.  Java became important for the supply of rice and wood.   

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the VOC expanded its territorial holdings in the archipelago, making use of wars of succession, especially on Java, to extend its control.  In the eighteenth century, however, the spice trade declined and with it the company.  The increased costs of administering a land-based empire, together with rampant inefficiency and corruption, led the company to bankruptcy, and the States-General allowed its charter to lapse on December 31, 1799.  All debts and possessions were taken over by the Dutch government.