VOC Dutch East India Company Engraved Tumbler c1760

Description

Heading : Dutch East India Company (VOC) engraved tumbler
Period : George II / George III – c1760
Origin : England
Colour : Clear
Bowl : Engraved with a two masted ship with a VOC flag. trade warehouses. a guard dog and a tree.
Pontil : Snapped
Glass Type : Lead
Size :  12.8cm height. 10cm diameter bowl. 7.3cm diameter foot
Condition : Excellent. no chips or cracks
Restoration : None
Weight: 319 grams

The Dutch East India Company is quite possibly the most important company to have ever existed. It was younger than it’s more famous British cousin by about 2 years but. crucially. became the first ever joint-stock company in the world. Following the VOC’s establishment Amsterdam Stock Exchange began trading equities as a secondary market. prior to this the market. and all others like it around the world. traded solely in commodities.

It was formed by an amalgamation of existing compnaies and consequently was granted a 21 year monopoly to carry out the Netherlands’ trade activity in asia. Like it’s British cousin it had the power to strike coins. establish colonies. and wage war and sat in a liminal state between multinational coroporation and a functioning government.

Unsurprisingly this power associates the company with slavery. colonialism. and brutality. Between 1602 and 1795 more than a million Dutch seamen departed from Holland under the flag of the VOC – less than three hundred and fifty thousand returned. Even for a time when sea travel was exceptionally dangerous. this figure stands out. Historian J. L. Van Zanden described the VOC as “Consuming” 4.000 people a year.

By the mid-18th century the VOC had become a giant. corrupt. and inefficient mess. Financially. ethically. and organisationally it had bumped from crisis to crisis; massacres of required internal investigation. employees (underpaid and underfed) were notoriously corrupt and lazy. and the company paid out dividends exceeding profit for almost seventy years straight forcing it to resort short term financing from anticipatory loans.

Despite all of this. it wasn’t poor financial performance that did for the VOC. it was the British. particularly the British Navy. The Fourth Anglo-French war not only forced the Dutch Republic to cede their Indian colonial territories to Britain. but also financially ruined the VOC which had lost half of it’s fleet to the British. Following a number of attempts to reorganise and nationalise the VOC; Britain took control of the vase majority of the VOC’s possessions during the Napoleonic wars.