What was the first publicly traded company?
What was the first publicly traded company?
Learn about how the Dutch East India Company secured a commercial empire for the Dutch Republic.
Contunico © ZDF Studios GmbH, Mainz
Transcript
NARRATOR: The Haag, the second of March 1602 - the Dutch are in the midst of the Eighty Years' War with Spain. They are secretly devising plans on ways to harm their wartime adversary. They want to destroy the Spaniards overseas trade so they can usurp their place and increase their own wealth. This would lead to the inception of history's first publicly traded company. The VOC, or United East India Company, was devised to use money from private investors to launch trade ventures in Asia. This enterprising plan is a resounding success. Ten years later hundreds of ships were sailing under the VOC flag. For two centuries it was the world's largest commercial empire.
JURRIEN VAN GOOR: "On the one hand, the United East India Company was founded as a commercial trading company. On the other hand, there were political motives for establishing it, i.e. to harm the Spanish. The Dutch believed that if they could expel the Spanish from the lucrative Asian market then they would no longer be able to finance the war in Europe. So from the very start the VOC was a partially state-run company that was at once in the business of war and in the business of commerce."
NARRATOR: But Spain and Portugal had long laid exclusive claim to dominance of global trade and they had the Pope's blessing. But the Dutch refuse to bow to papal authority in worldly matters. In 1609 the famous thinker Hugo Grotius wrote the book Mare Liberum, "The Freedom of the Seas." In it he posited a revolutionary idea that the seas are international territory, where anyone is free to travel. The only exception to this rule is the area along a nation's coastline that extends out as far as a cannon can be fired. This idea later led to the current three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction on the seas. With this work, the Dutch managed to undermine the Pope's authority. Soon after this Dutch ships began sailing to the far of coasts of Asia to exotic islands that had not even been mapped. They set out to find some of the most precious products of that time, spices. The Dutch were astute seafarers and used this expertise to become the world's greatest economic power, a dominance they were able to maintain into the 20th century.
JURRIEN VAN GOOR: "On the one hand, the United East India Company was founded as a commercial trading company. On the other hand, there were political motives for establishing it, i.e. to harm the Spanish. The Dutch believed that if they could expel the Spanish from the lucrative Asian market then they would no longer be able to finance the war in Europe. So from the very start the VOC was a partially state-run company that was at once in the business of war and in the business of commerce."
NARRATOR: But Spain and Portugal had long laid exclusive claim to dominance of global trade and they had the Pope's blessing. But the Dutch refuse to bow to papal authority in worldly matters. In 1609 the famous thinker Hugo Grotius wrote the book Mare Liberum, "The Freedom of the Seas." In it he posited a revolutionary idea that the seas are international territory, where anyone is free to travel. The only exception to this rule is the area along a nation's coastline that extends out as far as a cannon can be fired. This idea later led to the current three-mile limit of territorial jurisdiction on the seas. With this work, the Dutch managed to undermine the Pope's authority. Soon after this Dutch ships began sailing to the far of coasts of Asia to exotic islands that had not even been mapped. They set out to find some of the most precious products of that time, spices. The Dutch were astute seafarers and used this expertise to become the world's greatest economic power, a dominance they were able to maintain into the 20th century.