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Dutch East India Company

Dutch trading company
Also known as: United East India Company, VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie(Show More)

Dutch East India Company, trading company founded in the Dutch Republic (present-day Netherlands) in 1602 to protect that state’s trade in the Indian Ocean and to assist in the Dutch war of independence from Spain. The company prospered through most of the 17th century as the instrument of the powerful Dutch commercial empire in the East Indies (present-day Indonesia). It was dissolved in 1799. The Dutch government granted the company a trade monopoly in the...