Capitalism and the Dutch East India Company: Crash Course World History 229

In which John Green teaches you about the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, doing business as the VOC, also known as the Dutch East India Company. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch managed to dominate world trade, and they did all through the pioneering use of corporations and finance. Well, they did also use some traditional methods like violently enforced monopolies, unfair trade agreements, and plain old warfare. You'll learn how the Dutch invented stuff like joint stock corporations, maritime insurance, and futures trading. Basically, how the Dutch East India Company crashed the US economy in 2008. I'm kidding. Or am I?

Citation 1: William J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World. Grove Press. 2008. p. 218
Citation 2: Stephen R. Bown. Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900. New York. St. Martin’s Press. 2009. p. 28
Citation 3: Bernstein p. 223
Citation 4: Bernstein p. 228
Citation 5: Bown p. 53

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[Sam-xdxt]

The VOC was the only company in the history to achieve a megacorporation status. Large armies of mercenaries and a private fleet of warships, the power to imprison and execute convicts. Imagine a modern version of this, and you'll basically have your everyday 'evil' company in video-games.

[DarDarBinks]

HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE CONTROLS THE UNIVERSE!

[Sjors_]

Fun facts:
-The VOC has the first recorded use of shares. Needless to say, this method of determining ownership of a company has become very popular today, although back then it wasn't always easy to track down every shareholder.
-The VOC is arguably the first multinational corporation in the world, depending on your definition of "corporation", since it was partially owned by the government (and partially by shareholders).
-The legendary ghost ship, The Flying Dutchman, was a VOC ship. According to legend, it set sail on a moonless night right before Easter (despite being specifically ordered not to by superiors), and never arrived for it's scheduled stop at Kaap de Goede Hoop. Reported sightings of the ship aimlessly floating about sparked the stories of a ship cursed by the devil himself.
-While the VOC is, as mentioned in the video, a trading corporation and pseudo-state, the WIC (West-Indische Compagnie) were little more than privateers employed by the government to hamper other nations' trade with their American colonies.
By the way, John's pronunciation is hilarious if you actually speak Dutch. It's not even close.

[davimattos]

"No trade without war and no war without trade"... that IS someting to think about.

[MikeMafiaII]

Thanks for mentioning us!

~ The Dutch

[PaintTheSpace]

I'm an Indonesian and throughout my years of education the name VOC was mentioned so many times yet I realised I had no idea what they really were. We were just told that they were really horrible and went to torture everyone. Never really understood the system whatsoever. Oh well. Thanks for this!

[JeffGR]

So, the Dutch invented the stock market—that's super cool.

[OldFritz]

I'm Indonesian, and i think history about colonialism in our education was too one sided (cause it was one of the main source of our nationalism tough). Generally, they just taught us that 'our people was a good guy' and 'the dutch was a bad guy'. I think it had become a major problem here. And i just curious about what they taught in Netherland about this.

 I know that colonialism was a black history in western nations. My teacher who had studied in Netherland said that some of the university teachers there still have a stance that colonialism was good for Indonesian, they said the dutch brought 'modernization' here, etc. Personally i don't reject that, it was partially true that colonialism was 'good', but the suffering because of the massive exploitation both on our people and our land was very true too.

 I hope we can see history in a broader perspective. I believe nobody was 'all good' or 'all bad'. So, always open-minded, especially in history.

-Sorry for my English

[PieterPatrick]

The video forgets one important thing! The Dutch had a lot of windmills.
They changed them into sawmills thanks to a great invention in that time.
Thank to all those sawmills they could build a lot of ships really fast.

[Fed-npez]

In the point of view of an Indonesian, as a kid we’ve grown up reading about the dutch, the VOC and their violences everyday in our textbooks. We know full well about the suffering that was bestowed upon our people. The dutch colonized our country for 350 years, and their violations of human rights were nothing minor. How easy it is to turn towards hatred and revenge the racism that were directed towards us. But truth is, ever since the independence, our people has maintaned a very good relationship with The Netherlands. Educational exchanges and trades have made the Netherlands one of our closest ally nowadays. We are not ignorant. This does not mean that we have simply forgotten all about the past.
Hatred is a choice.
As is present in history, when money comes in play, greed beats the common sense of every man. Europeans were the leading example of human intelligence and conscience at that era. They wrote great philosophical debates, build great monuments, invent incredible technologies, yet they were also the pioneers of colonialization and slavery. But for us, the idea of hating the current dutch people who have no hands on the occurences of 60 years ago is just stupid. This attends also the problem of world racism and discrimination nowadays. It’s the same as hating all Muslims because of a terror attack done by a certain number of them, or having prejudices for all germans because of what the Nazis have done in the past. We forgive but we do not forget. History is there to teach us a lesson; of human greed, of their foolishness. It is there so it can never be repeated. When we give way to hating, we are only starting the same mistake. It is up to us whether to forever live in the shadows of hatred or work together in harmony towards a better world.

[pramitbanerjee]

this makes me want to play dutch civilization in age of empires 3

[theorderoforange]

For anyone wondering thy the dutch hang the spanish flags there: Thats the ridderzaal (knighshall), the staten generaal(state general) hang the flags of captured or destroyed hostile ships (mainly spanish but also english and swedish)

[klaasbarends]

One thing that I think is equally important for the grow of the Dutch is the fact that the bigger countries (England and France) were quite unstable at the time. The had a lot of intern turmoil so their focus was a lot more on that. This enabled the Dutch to go out and do their thing. Later when both the English and French stabilized, they quickly grew stronger than the Dutch.

[soletrador]

The Dutch East India Company history teaches a valuable leasson: After the separation between the State and Religion, must occur other important separation: the State and the Market, the State and the Market Corporations. At same way the State must don't have religious leaders creatings laws and making actions in favor their faith, driving the whole society into a theocracy; the same State must don't have companies executives creatings laws and making actions in favor their corporations, bringing the society into the corporatocracy.

[joshschilmeister]

"No trade without war and no war without trade" My man was making EU4 walkthroughs before it was cool.

[edisonmichael]

I live in Brazil. Part of the country, for a short period, was taken in war by the Dutch, and held by the Dutch West India Company. We got lucky and received an awesome governor (prince John Maurice of Nassau) who invested in infrastructure, legislation and a banking system. That made the locals him, but was SO expensive the Dutch W.I.Company "deported" him back to Europe.

Funny thing is, believing every administrator would be like Maurice of Nassau, most if not EVERY SINGLE Brazilian student like to say that if we had being kept in Dutch hands and not Portuguese, we would now live in a perfect Paradiseland. Oh, naiveté!

History is a lot about perception!

[deepbludreams]

I am sensing some Capitalism hating incoming.

[ayushisetia]

teacher: What was the main cause of the VOC?
you: Nutmeg!

[alexiagaertner]

I'm Dutch, and this was very helpfull, because I have to do a school project themed to the Dutch VOC.

I learned more of our own history in this video then I did in school and on Wikipedia...

[OrdinaryXtreme]

Wow, I've been studying VOC and Dutch colonialism in Indonesia since 6th grade and only now I understand, 4, 5 years later. I've been looking for good videos that discuss this for a while and I finally found it. Now I finally know both perspectives of the story. Thanks, John! Greetings from Jakarta.