Talk:Dutch East India Company

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 6 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NHarmonicPun (article contribs).

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"During the Dutch Golden Age, the Dutch – using their expertise in doing business, cartography, shipbuilding, seafaring and navigation – traveled to the far corners of the world, leaving their language embedded in the names of many places. Dutch exploratory voyages revealed largely unknown landmasses to the civilised world and put their names on the world map. During the Golden Age of Dutch exploration (c. 1590s–1720s) and the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography (c. 1570s–1670s), Dutch-speaking navigators, explorers, and cartographers were the undisputed firsts to chart/map many hitherto largely unknown regions of the earth and the sky."

Is this an appropriate phrasing? Particularly "revealed largely unknown landmasses to the civilized world" strikes me as unacceptable. Suggested alternatives? Pfirestone (talk) 19:36, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Why tag in formative years

I might have found a citation for the destruction fo the local economy from here: https://www.indonesia-investments.com/culture/politics/precolonial-history/item123

This states that competition drove local prices up while an increase in supply drove them down in Europe, with the monopolization and direct annexation of the spice islands it could be reasonable to assume that the local economy would be destroyed as far as international trade was concerned, at least for the locals. 118.193.95.68 (talk) 03:28, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Burying the lead

The summary at the top hardly mentions the fact that the VOC was responsible for many massacres, slavery, etc. In the interest of historical context, that should probably be expanded on. Like the paragraphs make it seem like it happened to be a particularly successful company that may have done some unsavory things. But my understanding is that, in reality, those unsavory things made it as profitable as it is. 184.17.241.228 (talk) 19:11, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The title of this topic is not very informative but the comment has value. The intro is rather long now and focusses almost entirely on the business organization part. The atrocities are linked to the exceptional charter mentioned near the end of the first paragraph of the lead "The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[7] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[8]". But that is only a very short comment (especially given the long introduction). To balance it all, I think reducing the company organisation and say more about the powers and the bad things done by their abuse makes sense. Perhaps reorganise the entire lead starting with a short section (1) What was the VOC (2) What was its business model / organisation (3) What where its special powers and how did these contribute to profit and horrible action (4) Demise and end of the VOC. Arnoutf (talk) 10:16, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

"first joint-stock company in the world"

The British East India Company predates the Dutch East India Company by 2 years. The Muscovy Company predates both by 45 years. The Chinese created the first joint stock companies in the 1200s. 113.41.178.130 (talk) 07:49, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

it is the first publicly traded corporation 2601:646:200:E290:A404:13C0:F6E2:A9EB (talk) 00:52, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

Crazy gendering of wikilinks on this page!

Today the page has links to 183 pages about men, but links to ZERO pages about women. This is horrific. Can we please find some historical women to mention, or some women historians to cite? Dsp13 (talk) 21:20, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I hope we mention people on pages because they are relevant to the article, not because they are women. DavidDijkgraaf (talk) 21:41, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, but a gender distribution of 183-0 suggests some peculiarly restricted notion of relevance has crept in. So I don't believe there need be quite the choice you suggest here. My impression is that there's been increasing historical interest in the way colonial trading was sustained by and helped sustain particular gender relations. (Also that, in this area of history as in others, women do history.) Dsp13 (talk) 22:25, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

a gender distribution of 183-0 suggests some peculiarly restricted notion of relevance has crept in.

I don't see how? We are talking about the 17th and 18th centuries, there were very few women who had a notable impact on this company, or at least one notable enough for this article. Unless you want to argue that their womenhood is notable enough. DavidDijkgraaf (talk) 22:38, 10 September 2024 (UTC)

I concur with DavidDijkgraaf here. Dsp13, wouldn't it be more productive to add relevant women to the article page instead of complaining on the talk page? DonBeroni (talk) 19:44, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Consensus is the site's engine; sometimes complaining genuinely helps! Remsense ‥ 论 19:58, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Absolutely it would be more productive DonBeroni! But I know disgracefully little about the Dutch East India Company, so thought others might do so better than me. I see the Dutch WP has a section on women travellers. (Though few women may have had a notable impact on it, it impacted the lives of many thousands.) Dsp13 (talk) 20:02, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Even in that section about women on the Dutch wiki there are zero links to pages of women. DavidDijkgraaf (talk) 20:21, 12 September 2024 (UTC)