List of works about the Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) is one of the most influential and best expertly researched companies/corporations in history.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] As an exemplary historical company-state, the VOC had effectively transformed itself from a corporate entity into a state, an empire, or even a world in its own right.[note 1][9] The VOC World (i.e. networks of people, places, things, activities, and events associated with the Dutch East India Company) has been the subject of a vast amount of literature that includes both fiction and non-fiction works.[10] VOC World studies is an international multidisciplinary field focused on social, cultural, religious, scientific, technological, economic, financial, business, maritime, military, political, legal, diplomatic activities, institutional organization, and administration of the VOC and its colourful world. Some of the notable VOC historians/scholars include Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Leonard Blussé, Peter Borschberg, Charles Ralph Boxer, Jaap Bruijn, Femme Gaastra, Om Prakash, Günter Schilder, and Nigel Worden.

Johan Nieuhof's An embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces (1665). The VOC World has long attracted the attention of multidisciplinary scholarship. VOC World studies has been a well-published field since the 17th century.

Replica of an East Indiaman of the Dutch East India Company/United East Indies Company (VOC). An early megacorporation, the Dutch East India Company is often considered by many to be the first historical model of the multinational corporation (or transnational corporation) in its modern sense.[1] The VOC's institutional innovations and business practices laid the foundations for the rise of global corporations and capital markets that now rule the world's economic systems.

17th-century etching of the Oost-Indisch Huis (Dutch for "East India House") in Amsterdam, the global headquarters of the United East India Company (VOC).

The restored conference room of the Heeren XVII, as the VOC's board of directors, in the Oost-Indisch Huis, Amsterdam.

The Castle of Batavia by Andries Beeckman (ca. 1660s). It was in Batavia on the island of Java that the VOC established its de facto administrative center (as the VOC's second headquarters) with a Governor-General (as the VOC's de facto chief executive) in charge from 1610 onwards.

A Japanese Arita porcelain plate with monogram logo of the Company. The VOC's monogram logo was possibly, in fact, the first globally recognized corporate logo.

In terms of global business history, the lessons from the VOC's success and failure are critically important. With a permanent capital base,[11] the VOC was the first permanently organized limited-liability joint-stock company at the dawn of modern capitalism.[12][13][14] As an early pioneering model of the modern corporation, the VOC was the first corporation to be ever actually listed on a formal stock exchange. In the early 1600s the VOC became the world's first formally listed public company (or publicly listed company) by widely issuing bonds and shares of stock to the general public. In many respects, modern-day publicly listed multinational corporations (including Forbes Global 2000 companies) are all 'descendants' of the 17th-century VOC business model.

For almost 200 years of its existence (1602–1800), the Company played crucial roles in business, financial, socio-politico-economic,[note 2] military-political, diplomatic, legal,[note 3] ethnic, and exploratory maritime history of the world. In the early modern period, the VOC was the driving force behind the rise of corporate-led globalization,[15][16] corporate power, corporate identity, corporate culture, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, corporate finance, corporate capitalism, and finance capitalism. It was the VOC's institutional innovations and business practices that laid the foundations for the rise of giant global corporations[17][18][19] to become highly significant and formidable socio-politico-economic forces[20][21][22][23] in the modern world.[24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] These pioneering innovations allowed a single business enterprise like the VOC to mobilize financial resources from a large number of investors and create ventures at a scale that had previously only been possible for monarchs.[34] The Company also played a major role in the rise of Amsterdam as the first modern model of international financial centres. With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in world history, the Company is considered by many to be the first major, first modern,[35][36] first global, most valuable,[37] most important, and most influential corporation ever seen.

In terms of military and political history, along with the Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWIC), the VOC was seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire. The VOC was historically a military-political-economic complex rather than a pure trading company or shipping company.[38] The Company's activities had seminal influence on the early modern history of many countries and territories around the world such as the Dutch Republic (United Provinces of the Netherlands), New Netherland (North America),[note 4] Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Mauritius, Taiwan, and Japan.

In the Golden Age of Dutch cartography (c. 1570s–1670s), VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape cartographic and geographic knowledge of the modern-day world. The commercial network of the VOC provided an infrastructure which was accessible to people with a scholarly interest in the exotic world. In terms of exploratory maritime history of the world, as a major force behind the Golden Age of Dutch exploration and discovery (c. 1590s–1720s), the VOC-funded exploratory voyages such as those led by Willem Janszoon (Duyfken), Henry Hudson (Halve Maen), and Abel Tasman revealed largely unknown landmasses to the civilized world and put their names on the world map. The VOC's navigators and explorers were the first non-natives to undisputedly discover, explore and chart coastlines of mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Fiji, and Tonga. Australia was the last human-inhabited continent to be methodologically explored and mapped. In the 17th century, VOC navigators and explorers charted almost three-quarters of the Australian coastline, except the east coast.

In spite of the VOC's historic roles and contributions, the Company has long been criticized for its monopoly, violence, colonialism, slave trade, exploitation (including use of slave labour), and environmental destruction. In Graham Harman's words (2016), "One of the paradoxes of the Company [VOC] is that the Dutch were the most liberal and humane nation in Europe at that time, and yet they created in the Company a very efficient monstrosity."[note 5][39]

The Company's alternative names that have been used include the Dutch East Indies Company, United East India Company, United East Indian Company, United East Indies Company, Jan Compagnie, or Jan Company.

The following is an (incomplete) list of works relating to the history of the VOC.