ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and its establishment. It presents a significant but hitherto neglected source that changes how we understand both the dissemination of the San Giorgio model and the history of the VOC. A few days before the founding of the VOC, Paul de Choart de Buzanval—an influential intellectual with ties to Hugo Grotius—wrote to the French court from Zeeland announcing the event. He envisaged the possibility that the VOC might become a body with military and territorial power. More importantly, he wrote that people there believed the VOC was like the Casa di San Giorgio in Genoa, because San Giorgio had developed into a territorial power that absorbed many resources from the Commune, which the VOC also hoped to do. The chapter analyzes the letter extensively and presents newly uncovered information on its author.
