The Dutch East India Company (VOC)

The Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the Dutch East India Company, was founded in 1602 by the union of the companies that had sent the first Dutch fleets to the East Indies since 1595. Chartered by the States General with a monopoly of trade east of the Cape of Good Hope, it became the largest commercial enterprise of the seventeenth century, with its own fleets, forts and colonies from the Cape to Japan, and it lasted until 1799.

The Company was born in print. Linschoten's Itinerario of 1596 supplied the route; the journals of the first voyages, printed by Cornelis Claesz from 1598, supplied the news; and the collections of Colijn (1619), Commelin (1645 to 1646), Hartgers and Saeghman kept the voyages before the public for a century. The engraved plates in these books are the first European images of Bantam, Banda, the Moluccas, Ceylon and Mauritius.

This page brings together the works in our collection that concern the Company and the Dutch voyages to the East: journals, collections of voyages, single plates and maps.