AEMI

118 AEMI JOURNAL 2015
Maps of the major VOC settlements along the IOR.
Company fleet – the VOC’s nearest
competitor – was a distant second. Its
total traffic was 2,690 ships that carried
a mere one-fifth of the tonnage of goods
carried by the VOC. In total the VOC
fitted out some 4,785 ships (653 lost),
nearly 1,785 in the seventeenth century
and a good 3,000 in the eighteenth. And
between 1602 and 1700, 317,000 people
sailed from Europe on these ships,
while between 1700 and 1795 the total
reached 655,000. 27
Trade figures confirm the growth of
the business after 1700. The expenditure
on equipage, that is to say shipbuilding
and outfitting as well as the money and
goods that were sent to Asia, which had
reached the sum of fl. 370 million between
1640 and 1700, increased to fl.
1,608 million in the years 1700-1795.
In these same periods the purchase
prices of the return goods shipped home
from Asia reached fl. 205 and fl. 667
million respectively; the sales prices of
these return wares were fl. 577 million
in the first period and fl. 1,633 in the
second. 28 A colossal revenue for NL.
The free trade spirit of the time received
a strong augmentation through
the development of a modern, effective
stock market in the Low Countries
founded in 1602 by the VOC. And although
the banking system evolved in
the Low Countries this was quickly incorporated
into the commercial system
of the well-connected English, thereby
also stimulating English economic output.
Two criteria acquired the Dutch East
India Company (VOC) the nomenclature
- multinational: (1) it issued shares;
and (2) it operated in more than one
country. 29 This worked well for 200
years the length of time the Dutch East