ABSTRACT
Historians of the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) and its activities generally view the 18th century as a period of steady decline and deterioration of this Company’s commerce in Asia. 1 The widespread acceptance of this view has kept them from looking too closely at Dutch trade in its multifarious comptoirs and factories of Asia in this period. While this view is generally sound, looked at from a long historical perspective, and is authenticated by an overall picture of the Netherlanders both at home and abroad, it should not blind us to the fact that for a greater part of this century the V.O.C. maintained its substantial participation in Asian commerce. It would be misleading, for students of Asian commerce, to dismiss Dutch activities as on the decline and concentrate their attention solely on the expanding commerce of the English and the French. It is of course true that while Dutch trade had stopped growing, that of their two competitors was expanding rapidly. The English expansion, in particular, had left the Dutch behind in many important sectors of Asian commerce. But this did not mean a fall in the volume of Dutch trade. The Dutch were able to more than hold their own in their share of the trade in the face of fierce competition. In absolute terms, as will be shown in this article, the extent of Dutch participation in one very important region of this trade — the Coromandel Coast — is as high as at any period of their prosperity.
