Dutch East India Company's (VOC) anniversary fete stirs controversy
Dutch East India Company's (VOC) anniversary fete stirs controversy
Gerald de Hemptinne, Agence France-Presse, The Hague
The 400th anniversary of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is being celebrated by some as the birth of world trade but others remember it as the beginning of Dutch colonial exploitation.
Established on March 20, 1602, the VOC is being celebrated at an official level in the Netherlands as the world's first multinational with Queen Beatrix officially launching the festivities this week.
But many Dutch of Indonesian and Maluku descent see the mega- trading company as the forerunner for colonial exploitation of the archipelago by the Dutch for many centuries.
For Indonesians, "the VOC is synonymous with repression and destruction of local political and economic entities," said Indonesian human rights activist Reza Muharam quoted by the daily het Financieele Dagblad.
"Kompeni" the Indonesian word for the VOC is still a swear word, he said.
"It maybe a source of pride for the Dutch, but it conjures up mostly heartache for us," a spokesman of the Indonesian embassy said earlier this year.
Indonesia did not send any official representative to the ceremony held Wednesday marking the start of the celebrations but Indonesian Development Minister Kwik Kian Gie did deliver a message from Jakarta.
While acknowledging that the Dutch East India Company helped Indonesia develop its economy, this was coupled with "oppression, exploitation and abuse of power," said Gie.
In the Knights Hall, close to the Dutch parliament, the queen and the ambassadors of countries which had dealings with the VOC signed a symbolic charter similar to the one signed in 1602.
That document gave the Dutch East India Company sweeping powers, granting it the monopoly on trade from Asia, the right to wage war or sign peace settlements with local sovereigns, the right to build fortresses and the power to appoint ambassadors.
The VOC was founded in the 17th century, known as the Dutch Golden Age, to circumvent the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade in Asia.
In the Maluku islands, also known as the Spice Islands, the company fought bloody wars with local inhabitants who were forced to cultivate spices such as nutmeg and cloves for the Dutch.
In 1650, the VOC was the largest trade organization in the world with its Indonesian headquarters in Batavia, the site of modern day Jakarta.
For 200 years, ships from the company left the Netherlands laden with gold and silver to return from southeast Asia with pepper, tea, silk, porcelain and countless other treasured cargo.
The Dutch government dismantled the company in 1799 after it was no longer profitable.
For the 400th anniversary, the organizers of the year-long festivities have chosen to focus on the start of world trade, blossoming international relations and the discoveries made by VOC ships and crew in a series of exhibits and lectures throughout the Netherlands.
Critics however point out to the Dutch that the company only started trading with the locals when it realized that it could not enslave them.
To gain its foothold in Asia, the VOC razed villages to the ground, countries were bled dry of their natural reserves and left hundreds of thousands of victims.
"The commemoration of the establishment of the VOC, which showed the long relationship between the Netherlands and its former colony is no cause for celebration," the Algemeen Dagblad paper wrote in its editorial.
"The company's traders were too focussed on their own personal gains and there were too many atrocities committed by the Dutch."