ABSTRACT
An important key to the erection of the English East India Company was the very marked success of the Dutch voorcompagniën, nine joint-stock companies formed by Dutch merchants in the 1590s for the purpose of trading with Asia by the oceanic route. These proved to be the precursors of the mighty United Dutch East India Company formed by their union in 1602 and usually referred to for convenience by its Dutch acronym as the VOC. The voorcompagniën were formidable in their own right. Their total capitalisation was not far, if at all, short of that of the VOC, and they carried much smaller overheads than that body was to elect to carry so they were very profitable once they had overcome their teething problems. There was therefore always an element of rivalry with the Dutch in the pressure which a group of wealthy London merchants placed upon the government of Queen Elizabeth to charter the English East India Company, usually referred to by historians for convenience as the EIC. If such a body had not been set up, Elizabeth's subjects would have ended up buying Asian imports from the Dutch. They were not likely to buy these goods openly from the pioneers of European oceanic trade with Asia, the Portuguese, for Elizabeth had been at war with Philip II of Spain since 1585, and he had been the ruler of Portugal since 1580. To surrender the oceanic routes to Asia to the Dutch was to pay them the middleman's profit, which was not going to be modest.
