ABSTRACT
In his letter of August 1619 Jan Pietersz Coen, Governor-General of the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), unfolded an ambitious plan to give the Dutch Company dominance over intra-Asiatic trade. Coen observed that Indian textiles, Bantamese and Sumatran pepper, Indonesian spices, Japanese silver, Sumatran and Chinese gold and reales bought in Arabia could be profitably exchanged against one other, so that once the cycle was set in motion it would no longer be necessary to send silver or gold from Europe. Nevertheless as Coen emphasized, one must spend money to make money and he urged his masters time and again to send a good number of ships and a handsome amount of silver “to prime the pump”. 1
