ABSTRACT
Although they were dissolved centuries ago, we do not have to look far to find signs of the East India Companies today. In recent years, both organisations have featured prominently in popular culture, in the commercial world and in public debate. In 2009, a Finnish games developer, Nitro Games, released the popular East India Company video game which places players in the role of Governor Director in charge of a process of economic and commercial expansion designed to parallel the real development of these organisations. In the Netherlands, the corporate logo of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC), widely considered to be the oldest in the world, has been used to market a range of products from souvenirs to gin even as the organisation’s legacy has become the object of increasingly intense public debate. 1 When in 2006 the then Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, while addressing the Dutch House of Representatives, called for more optimism and a revival of the ‘VOC mentality’, he voiced a strikingly resilient view of the Company, which is still regularly praised as a dynamic force in global trade and the world’s first multinational. His comments, however, were met with immediate resistance from a range of groups that pointed to the violence and repression also associated with the organisation’s long and frequently brutal history.
