The Dutch East India Company

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.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Anne Goldgar No other episodes
  Reader in Early Modern European History at King's College London
• Chris Nierstrasz No other episodes
  Lecturer in Global History at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, formerly at the University of Warwick
• Helen Paul 8 episodes
  Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton

Reading list

• Bitter Bonds. A Colonial Divorce Drama of the Seventeenth Century
  Leonard Blusse (Markus Wiener Publishing, 2002) Google Books →
• Monsoon Traders: The Maritime World of the East India Company
  Huw Bowen, Robert J. Blyth and John McAleer (Scala Publishers, 2011) Google Books →
• The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800
  C. R. Boxer (Hutchinson, 1965) Google Books →
• The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660-1760
  K. N. Chaudhuri (Cambridge University Press, 2008) Google Books →
• The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan
  Adam Clulow (Columbia University Press, 2014) Google Books →
• The Dutch East India Company
  Femme S. Gaastra (Walburg Pers, 2003) Google Books →
• The Political Economy of the Dutch Republic
  Oscar Gelderblom (ed.) (Routledge, 2009) Google Books →
• Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740
  Jonathan Israel (Oxford University Press, 1989) Google Books →
• The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806
  Jonathan Israel (Clarendon Press, 1995) Google Books →
• In Pursuit of Pepper and Tea: The Story of the Dutch East India Company
  Els M. Jacobs (Walburg Pers, 1991) Google Books →
• Rivalry for Trade in Tea and Textiles. The English and Dutch East India Companies (1700-1800)
  Chris Nierstrasz (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) Google Books →
• Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters: The Development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) Shipping Network in Asia 1595-1660
  Robert Parthesius (Amsterdam University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century
  Maarten Prak (Cambridge University Press, 2005) Google Books →
• The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century
  J. L. Price (Palgrave Macmillan, 1998) Google Books →
• The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age
  Simon Schama (HarperCollins, 1987) Google Books →
• The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750
  James D. Tracy (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 1990) Google Books →
• The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815
  Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude (Cambridge University Press, 1997) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b071vl2l

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071vl2l

Auto-category: 382 (International commerce and commercial policy)