Page 43 - Zhangzhou Or Swatow The Collection of Zhangzhou Ware at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, Netherlands

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The Trade to The Netherlands

The Dutch were relative late participants in the Asian trade. They had served as middle men between
Northern and Southern Europa and used their position to make high profits reselling luxury items like
porcelain and other exotic goods imported by the Portuguese via Lisbon and Antwerp, where the Dutch visited
regularly.

In 1602 they established the powerful Dutch East India Company , Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)
as a chartered company, to trade directly with China. The Netherlands became the most dominant maritime
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traders in Asia in the 17 century.
The VOC had started out looking for the riches of the East, and tried to establish sea routes to the East
interfering with the Portuguese monopoly on sailing the route round the Cape of Good Hope, and was granted
exclusive trading rights east of the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1595 Cornelis de Houtman (c. 1565-1599) led an expedition round the Cape, which the following year
reached the port city of Bantam on the north-west coast of Java, close to the Spice Islands, the Moluccas or
Moluccan Islands. The profits were not as high as expected, but it was instrumental to getting direct access.

In 1617, the Dutch seized from the sultan of Bantam (Banten) a small port of nearby Jakarta in Java, and were
authorized to trade in Jayakarta, which was renamed Batavia. The town became the regional headquarters of
the VOC, the Dutch East India Company, with a central government, the Hoge Regering, which supervised and
administered all trade in Asia.
The Dutch had used military power and heavily armed ships to eliminate competition. In order to dominate the
maritime trade they repeatedly attacked and looted the ships of the Portuguese and Spaniards and the junks of
the Chinese which were loaded with the goods they desired.

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