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The Dutch East India Company

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch East India Company, which dominated the Asian spice trade in the 17th century and is sometimes called the first multinational corporation.

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 London

Chris Nierstrasz
Lecturer in Global History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, formerly at the University of Warwick

And

Helen Paul
Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Available now

46 minutes

Last on

Thu 3 Mar 2016 21:30

LINKS AND FURTHER READING

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READING LIST:

Leonard BlussΓ©, Bitter Bonds. A Colonial Divorce Drama of the Seventeenth Century (Markus Wiener Publishing, 2002)

Huw Bowen, Robert J. Blyth and John McAleer, Monsoon Traders: The Maritime World of the East India Company (Scala Publishers, 2011)

C. R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800 (Hutchinson, 1965)

K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760 (first published 1978; Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Adam Clulow, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia University Press, 2014)

Femme S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company (Walburg Pers, 2003)

Oscar Gelderblom (ed.), The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic (Routledge, 2009)

Jonathan Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740 (Oxford University Press, 1989)

Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806 (Clarendon Press, 1995)

Els M. Jacobs, In Pursuit of Pepper and Tea: The Story of the Dutch East India Company (Walburg Pers, 1991)

Chris Nierstrasz, Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles. The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700-1800) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

Robert Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters: The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia 1595-1660 (Amsterdam University Press, 2010)

Maarten Prak, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

J. L. Price, The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998)

Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (HarperCollins, 1987)

James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge University Press, 1997)

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Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Melvyn Bragg
Interviewed Guest Anne Goldgar
Interviewed Guest Chris Nierstrasz
Interviewed Guest Helen Paul
Producer Simon Tillotson

Broadcasts

  • Thu 3 Mar 2016 09:00
  • Thu 3 Mar 2016 21:30

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