Organization of the Dutch East Indies Company

Information gleaned from the illustrated page:
Title: "Gouvernement de la compagnie des Indes orientales tant en ces provinces que dans les Indes"
Date: 1707 - 1719
Origin: Amsterdam
Engraver: Guedeville
Editor: Chatelain freres
Technique: copper plate
Extracted from: "Atlas Historique"
Size: Sheet 52,5cm x 44,5cm
Size: Print 43cm x 33,5cm

Click to enlarge.

With its headquarters at Amsterdam, the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) appears to have had various branch offices called 'Chambers' located in various places in the Netherlands (which was then known as the United Provinces). Each Chamber may have had a ship or two associated with it thus enabling Dutch merchants to have relatively easy access to trade with Batavia. For the sake of safety and mutual protection these ships would likely rendezvous to form a fleet that departed around Christmas and Easter each year. This 'schedule' enabled merchants in Holland and Batavia to know approximately when mail, passengers and cargo should be arriving since the transit time was approximately 9 months each way.

It is interesting to note that the random collection of notes that Isaac Mathieu Crommelin wrote (in his own handwriting) around 1770 contains information about the initial capitalization of the VOC. The figure he cites (6459840 livres) is identical to the figure presented in this organizational chart.

The two Chambers that Frederic de Coninck and Marie Camin dealt with most often were the Chambres d'Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Hopefully this document will be translated sometime in the future.