Changes

==History==

==History==

The VOC was originally founded in 1602, as the result of the merger of a number of different firms which had previously been in competition with one another; these firms united under a board of directors known as the Seventeen Gentlemen, forming the United East India Company.<ref>Matsuda, 77.</ref> Based at Amsterdam, a city with perhaps the most efficient money market and lowest interest rates in the world, the VOC raised ten times the capital of the [[English East India Company]].<ref name=tignor/> Like the English East India Company, the VOC was granted a monopoly on all trade “East of the Cape of Good Hope but also in and beyond the straits of Magellan,” and (so far as the Dutch authorities had power to say so) access to all “Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Creeks, Towns, and Places” in that vast region; though they faced competition from the English, Portuguese, and various groups of Asian merchants, the VOC were to have no competition from other Dutch organizations. The Company enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, and even state-like powers, including engaging in diplomacy, deploying military forces, and claiming territory, even as it simultaneously enjoyed considerable support from the Dutch Republic.<ref>Adam Clulow, “Like Lambs in Japan and Devils outside Their Land: Diplomacy, Violence, and Japanese Merchants in Southeast Asia,” ''Journal of World History'' 24:2 (2013), 352.</ref>

The VOC was originally founded in 1602, as the result of the merger of a number of different firms which had previously been in competition with one another; these firms united under a board of directors known as the Seventeen Gentlemen (''Heren Zeventien''), forming the United East India Company.<ref>Matsuda, 77.</ref> Based at Amsterdam, a city with perhaps the most efficient money market and lowest interest rates in the world, the VOC raised ten times the capital of the [[English East India Company]].<ref name=tignor/> Like the English East India Company, the VOC was granted a monopoly on all trade “East of the Cape of Good Hope but also in and beyond the straits of Magellan,” and (so far as the Dutch authorities had power to say so) access to all “Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Creeks, Towns, and Places” in that vast region; though they faced competition from the English, Portuguese, and various groups of Asian merchants, the VOC were to have no competition from other Dutch organizations. The Company enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, and even state-like powers, including engaging in diplomacy, deploying military forces, and claiming territory, even as it simultaneously enjoyed considerable support from the Dutch Republic.<ref>Adam Clulow, “Like Lambs in Japan and Devils outside Their Land: Diplomacy, Violence, and Japanese Merchants in Southeast Asia,” ''Journal of World History'' 24:2 (2013), 352.</ref>

The Dutch originally established their presence in Japan with a [[factory]] in [[Hirado]] in [[1609]]. [[Nicolaes Puyck]] and [[Abraham van den Broecke]] led a small mission to [[Sunpu]], where they presented two cases of raw [[silk]], some [[lead]], and two gold goblets to [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]] as gifts, promising that later ships would have much more considerable cargoes. Ieyasu granted their request for trade, and presented them with a sword, a sign of the binding of a relationship.<ref>Cynthia Viallé, "In Aid of Trade: Dutch Gift-Giving in Tokugawa Japan," ''Tokyo daigaku shiryôhensanjo kenkyû kiyô'' 16 (2006), 58.</ref> Representatives of the Company continued to receive swords, suits of armor, and other gifts from the shogunate on numerous occasions over the course of the Edo period. However, it was Company policy that gifts given to VOC envoys (e.g. by the shogun) could not be kept, but had to be forwarded to their superiors. Much of the collections of the ''stadtholders'' (chief magistrates of the United Provinces of the Netherlands) was dispersed in conjunction with the French invasion of the Netherlands in the 1790s, and as a result the current whereabouts of these numerous Japanese swords, suits of armor, etc. are unknown.<ref>Viallé, 59.</ref>

The Dutch originally established their presence in Japan with a [[factory]] in [[Hirado]] in [[1609]]. [[Nicolaes Puyck]] and [[Abraham van den Broecke]] led a small mission to [[Sunpu]], where they presented two cases of raw [[silk]], some [[lead]], and two gold goblets to [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]] as gifts, promising that later ships would have much more considerable cargoes. Ieyasu granted their request for trade, and presented them with a sword, a sign of the binding of a relationship.<ref>Cynthia Viallé, "In Aid of Trade: Dutch Gift-Giving in Tokugawa Japan," ''Tokyo daigaku shiryôhensanjo kenkyû kiyô'' 16 (2006), 58.</ref> Representatives of the Company continued to receive swords, suits of armor, and other gifts from the shogunate on numerous occasions over the course of the Edo period. However, it was Company policy that gifts given to VOC envoys (e.g. by the shogun) could not be kept, but had to be forwarded to their superiors. Much of the collections of the ''stadtholders'' (chief magistrates of the United Provinces of the Netherlands) was dispersed in conjunction with the French invasion of the Netherlands in the 1790s, and as a result the current whereabouts of these numerous Japanese swords, suits of armor, etc. are unknown.<ref>Viallé, 59.</ref>