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."