Dutch East India Spice Routes
The Dutch East India Company's sea lanes to the Spice Islands, run by the first great joint-stock multinational from 1602 to 1799.
Overview
The VOC ran scheduled services from Amsterdam to Batavia via the Cape, including the Brouwer route that rode the roaring forties and cut months off the passage. It enforced clove and nutmeg monopolies with violence, most notoriously against the Banda Islands, and its richest profits came from trading within Asia, Indian textiles for spices, Japanese copper for Chinese silk. It paid dividends for two centuries, then sank under corruption, war with England and national debt, and was nationalized in 1799. As a corporation with shares, directors and a permanent balance sheet, it is a direct ancestor of the modern multinational.
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