> [!infobox] <s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 1 topic, 2 evergreens</em></s> #### <s class="topic-title">[[Dutch East India Company]]</s> > [!wikipedia] [Dutch East India Company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch%20East%20India%20Company) > > The Dutch East India Company or the VOC, was a multinational corporation founded by a government-directed consolidation of several rival Dutch trading companies in the early 17th century. It is believed to be the largest company to ever have existed in recorded history. It was established on March 20, 1602, as a chartered company to trade with [[Mughal India]] in the early modern period, from which 50% of textiles and 80% of silks were imported. > In addition, the company traded with Indianised Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade. > > The VOC was an early-modern corporate model of vertically integrated global supply chain and a proto-conglomerate, diversifying into multiple commercial and industrial activities such as international trade, shipbuilding, and both production and trade. > > In the early 1600s, by widely issuing bonds and shares to the general public, VOC became the world's first formally listed public company. > > The company, for nearly 200 years of its existence (1602–1800), had effectively transformed itself from a corporate entity into a state or an empire in its own right. One of the most influential and extensively researched business enterprises in history, the VOC's world has been the subject of a vast amount of literature that includes both fiction and nonfiction works. > > The company was historically an exemplary company-state rather than a pure for-profit corporation. > The company was not only a commercial enterprise but also effectively an instrument of war in the young Dutch Republic's revolutionary global war against the powerful Spanish Empire and Iberian Union (1579–1648). > In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. > > Socio-economic changes in Europe, the shift in power balance, and less successful financial management resulted in a slow decline of the VOC between 1720 and 1799. After the financially disastrous Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784), the company was nationalised in 1796, and finally dissolved on 31 December 1799. All assets were taken over by the government with VOC territories becoming Dutch government colonies. > ##### ^dataviews > [!dataview]+ Related unlinked notes > > - [[The first joint-stock company was founded in 1602]] > - [[Wall street used to be an actual wall]] > [!dataview]- Other unlinked mentions > > No results to show for list query.