How one of the most profitable companies in history rose to power - Adam Clulow
During the 17th century, the three letters “VOC” formed the world’s most recognizable logo. These initials belonged to the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or the Dutch East India Company—widely considered the most profitable corporation ever created. Starting in 1602, it cornered the booming spice market and pioneered trade routes between Asia and Europe. But such success came with an overwhelming cost in human life.
When the Dutch state created the Company, it granted the organization the power to wage war, conduct diplomacy, and seize colonies throughout Asia. The Dutch East India Company was intended to make money and battle competing European empires. The Asian market was the largest at the time, and spices were in great demand throughout Europe. Nutmeg was among the most precious, but it was only cultivated on Indonesia’s Banda Islands. If Dutch officials could seize exclusive control over nutmeg, they'd make their investors rich, ensure the Company’s long-term survival, and deprive their adversaries of the same gains.
However, their plan hinged on the submission of the Bandanese people. This was something Company officials, like the ruthless Jan Pieterszoon Coen, were willing to go to great lengths to ensure. Home to around 15,000 people, the Banda Islands were composed of village confederations controlled by rich men called orang kaya, who were expert traders. They'd retained their virtual monopoly over nutmeg for centuries, selling at the highest price to Asian and European merchants.
When the Dutch East India Company arrived in the early 1600s, its officials persuaded a group of orang kaya to sign a treaty. It guaranteed protection in exchange for monopoly rights to their nutmeg. Bandanese leaders had made similar agreements before but were able to break them without serious consequences. The Dutch represented a new threat. They attempted to build forts to control trade and stop smuggling, and insisted that all nutmeg be sold to them at deflated prices. Many Bandanese refused, and relations continued to deteriorate.
In 1609, a group of villagers ambushed and killed a Dutch admiral and 40 of his men. Over the next decade, tensions escalated as treaties were broken and re-signed. The Company and Jan Pieterszoon Coen, its Governor-General, began considering new strategies. The Bandanese, one official wrote, should be “brought to reason or entirely exterminated.” Coen himself believed that there could be no trade without war.
In 1621, with the approval of his superiors, he staged a massive invasion and made Bandanese leaders sign another document. But this time, the terms didn’t recognize the Bandanese as a sovereign people—they were the Dutch East India Company’s colonial subjects. Soon, Dutch officials claimed they'd detected a conspiracy against them. Coen used this to eliminate further resistance. He ordered his soldiers to torture Bandanese leaders to extract confessions.
Over the following months, Company troops waged a brutal campaign that decimated the population. Many Bandanese people were starved to death or enslaved and sent to distant Dutch colonies. Others jumped from cliffs rather than surrender. Thousands fled, emptying out whole villages. Some survivors resettled on other islands, where they preserved remnants of Bandanese language and culture.
When the Company’s violent campaign was over, the indigenous population had plummeted to less than a thousand, most of whom were enslaved. The Dutch East India Company sliced the islands into plantations and imported an enslaved workforce. It was, by many measures, an act of genocide. By securing this global monopoly over nutmeg, the Company supercharged its economic development, contributing to the Dutch Golden Age.
Although Coen faced criticism, he was celebrated as a national hero well into the 20th century. 400 years after the massacre on Banda, Coen’s statue still stands in the city of Hoorn—despite mounting pressure for its removal. Coen and the Dutch East India Company brought a prized commodity under their control, and profits soared. But they achieved this by violently tearing another society apart.