The United East India Company, commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.
Gerrit Dou, also known as GerardDouw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe-l'œil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. He was a student of Rembrandt.
François Caron was a French Huguenot refugee to the Netherlands who served the Dutch East India Company for 30 years, rising from cook's mate to the director-general at Batavia (Jakarta), only one grade below governor-general. He retired from the VOC in 1651, and was later recruited to become director-general of the newly formed French East Indies Company in 1665 until his death in 1673.
Pieter Nuyts or Nuijts was a Dutch explorer, diplomat and politician.
Frans Banninck Cocq, free lord of Purmerland and Ilpendam was a knight, burgemeester (mayor) and military person of Amsterdam in the mid-17th century, the Dutch Golden Age. He belonged to the wealthy and powerful Dutch patriciate, the regenten, and is best known as the central figure in Rembrandt's masterpiece The Night Watch.
Johan Nieuhof was a Dutch traveler who wrote about his journeys to Brazil, China and India. The most famous of these was a trip of 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi) from Canton to Peking in 1655-1657, which enabled him to become an authoritative Western writer on China. He wrote An Embassy from the East-India Company about the journey.
VOC chief traders in Japan were the chief traders (opperhoofden) of the Dutch East India Company in Japan during the period of the Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the Edo period.
Femme Simon Gaastra was a Dutch Professor of maritime history at the University of Leiden and a leading expert on the history of the Dutch East India Company.
Pieter van den Broecke was a Dutch cloth merchant in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and one of the first Dutchmen to taste coffee. He also went to Angola three times. He was one of the first Europeans to describe societies in West and Central Africa and in detail trade strategies along the African coast.
Pieter de Graeff was a Dutch aristocrat of the Dutch Golden Age and one of the most influential pro-state, republican Amsterdam Regents during the late 1660s and the early 1670s before the Rampjaar 1672. As president-bewindhebber of the Dutch East India Company, he was one of the most important representatives and leaders of the same after the Rampjaar.
Constanti(j)n Ranst de Jonge was a Dutch businessman employed by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) who was chief of the trading posts in Tonkin and Dutch Bengal and three times opperhoofd of Dejima in Japan.
A series of military actions and diplomatic moves were undertaken in 1635 and 1636 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Dutch-era Taiwan (Formosa) aimed at subduing hostile aboriginal villages in the southwestern region of the island. Prior to the campaign the Dutch had been in Formosa for eleven years, but did not control much of the island beyond their principal fortress at Tayouan, and an alliance with the town of Sinkan. The other aboriginal villages in the area conducted numerous attacks on the Dutch and their allies, with the chief belligerents being the village of Mattau, who in 1629 ambushed and slaughtered a group of sixty Dutch soldiers.
Jan Gerritsz. Bicker was a general contractor, shipping magnate, mayor (burgomaster) and a member of the Bicker family, influential regenten from Amsterdam.
Jacob Jansz. Coeman was a Dutch painter of portraits. Coeman worked in the style of Thomas de Keyser.
Cornelia van Nijenroode was a Dutch merchant in the Dutch East Indies, famous for her conflict with her second husband.
Bicker is a very old Dutch patrician family. The family has played an important role during the Dutch Golden Age. They led the Dutch States Party and were at the centre of Amsterdam oligarchy from the beginning of the 17th century until the early 1650s, influencing the government of Holland and the Republic of the United Netherlands. Their wealth was based on commercial transactions, and in their political commitment they mostly opposed the House of Orange.
An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces... is a book written by the Dutch explorer Johan Nieuhof in 1665, providing a somewhat embellished account of the first Dutch embassy to visit China in 1655, 1656, and 1657. It was promptly translated into French, Latin, and German by the original publisher and then translated into English with some additions by John Ogilby in two editions in 1669 and 1673. Ogilby's translations included the Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell's written rebuttal of the Dutch claims and aims, as well as a partial translation of Athanasius Kircher's recently published China Illustrata, based on other Jesuit accounts. Nieuhof's original account and its translations served as a major influence in the rise of chinoiserie in the early eighteenth century.
Jacob Bicker was a Dutch patrician and merchant. He was a director of the Oostzeevaart, handling grain trade with Riga, since 1618 and a manager of the Dutch East India Company and between 1641-1646 manager of the Wisselbank.
IJsbrand Godske was the second Governor of the Dutch Cape Colony. After the death of Governor Pieter Hackius's on 30 November 1671, Godske was appointed to succeed him with the title of Governor and Councillor Extraordinary of India. For the time it took him to arrive at the Cape, first the Political Council and from 23 March 1672 to 2 October 1672, the secunde, Albert van Breugel, acted as governor.
