Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time for more details about In Our Time

and for our terms of use please go to bbc.co.uk slash radio4.

I hope you enjoy the program.

Hello, found you in 1602.

The Dutch East India Company was the largest global corporation in the 17th century and

more than any other East India Company of the time transformed the relationship between

Europe and the Southeast Asia.

The company's greatest prize was the spice trade.

So lucrative that 100 years before Columbus had sailed west to find a short cut to it.

For much of the 17th century they dutch at a virtual monopoly on nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon

and cloves.

It was more than their rivals.

They also brought tea, coffee, porcelain and silk to western Europe.

This dominance brought the Dutch into conflict with other European countries in the region.

At first Portugal but soon they were running conflicts with the British.

At one peace treaty the British gave up the nutmeg island of a run while the Dutch gave

up New Amsterdam which is a British renamed New York.

When we did discuss the Dutch East India Company R and Goldgar, reader in early modern

European history, King's College London, Chris Nierstra's, lecturer in global history,

the Erasmus University Rotterdam and Helen Paul, lecturer in economics and economics

at the University of Southampton and Goldgar.

What was the state of the spice trade in the 16th century and who was trading with whom?

...