AEMI

NONJA PETERS
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India Company remained an important
trading concern paying an 18 per
cent annual dividend for almost all that
time. However, in its declining years in
the late eighteenth century it was referred
to as Vergaan Onder Corruptie
(referring to the acronym VOC), which
translates as ‘Perished By Corruption’.
The VOC became bankrupt and was
formally dissolved in 1800, its possessions
and the debt being taken over by
the government to become a colony the
Netherlands East Indies and expanded
over the course of the 19th century to
include the whole of the Indonesian archipelago.
In the mid 20th century it
would form Indonesia. The trade with
the Spice Islands that had evolved with
Europe also benefitted the economies of
the great maritime nations of Britain,
France, Portugal, Spain as well as the
Netherlands and for the next three centuries
they were in play helped engender
the collections of their up coming museums
with amazing and exotic artifacts.
The Dutch East India Company incursion
into the IOR is also responsible
for the European discovery of Australia
in 1606. However, this discovery would
ultimately benefit Britain most as it was
Britain that colonised Australia from
1788 albeit initially as a penal colony.
However, initial British economic interest
was in India and that commenced
around 1600. Initially in opposition to
the Dutch who had established themselves
securely in Indonesia, the British
East India Company (1600–1874) 30
decided to concentrated on setting up
trading posts at Bombay, Madras, and
Calcutta. The area controlled by the
East India Company grew over time.
Eventually, it governed directly or indirectly
an area that included modern
Bangladesh, most of southern India, and
nearly all the territory along the Ganges
River in the north. However, from 1858
these vast areas became a British colony.
Their economic activities also initiated
a first wave diaspora out of Britain into
the colonies that helped relieve some of
the pressure on urban areas in Britain
wrought by the large-scale internal migration
from the countryside into the
urban areas that accompanied the Industrial
Revolution. The immense process
of change it incurred from the late
eighteenth to nineteenth centuries converted
Britain from an agrarian, handicraft
economy to one dominated by
industry and machine manufacture. 31
However, this was not the only change
incurred, the company’s wealth also
helped create a wealthy British middle
class that could afford to purchase some
of the goods and artefacts imported into
Britain by its East India Company.
The mobility of peoples that followed
on from the early trading routes, Age of
Exploration, and the Agrarian and Industrial
Revolutions fuelled an unprecedented
volume of exchange across the
boundary lines of societies and cultural
regions including historical objects into
the cultural institutions of Europe. They
included luxury items, spices biological
species: plants, food crops and animals.
However, this people and goods mobility
is also responsible for the spread of
disease pathogens and DNA into human
populations and regions not previously
visited. These biological exchanges had
differing and dramatic effects on human
populations, destroying some of them
through epidemic diseases while enlarging
others through increased food