Dutch East

Once valued at close to seven trillion dollars by today’s standards, the Dutch East India Company, formed in 1602, became the world’s first multinational corporation. In the nearly 200-year reign of their empire at sea, the Dutch East India Company amassed unfathomable fortunes, laid the foundation of the modern globalized world, and built monopolies that controlled the economy of the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the East Indies.

Huge international companies and corporations are a normal part of our everyday lives today. For most, their unimaginable wealth and power, rivaling even some of the smaller countries of the world, is something we take for granted. And we see them as the living embodiment of the capitalist system, regardless if we take it as a good or a bad omen. However, this wasn’t always the case.

Perhaps the most famous – or as many would put it, infamous – of these naval corporations was the Dutch East India Company, also known as VOC. Established around the beginning of the 17th century, this nautical behemoth of a corporation was determined to squeeze everyone else out of the market. Vested with the power to wage war and exterminate any who dared stand in their way, the rest of the world stood by as the unstoppable force took over the whole of international maritime trade.

Long before Australia started to be considered one of the best places in the world to live, it was thought to be completely unlivable. In the 15th century, the European race to claim land began. Despite the fact that Australia was a large landmass, no nation believed it was worth colonizing. The land was claimed by the Netherlands. However, little exploration happened there. Many countries actually believed it to be uninhabitable. However, the Aboriginal populations had already been thriving on the land for millennia.

March 1943. The Usurper’s War has resumed, with disastrous results for the Allies. The Imperial Japanese Navy, flush with victory after securing their eastern flank, turns their gimlet gaze towards the ultimate prize for their Emperor: The Dutch East Indies. For Commander Jacob Morton, XO of the U.S.S. Houston, the oncoming Japanese storm is not unexpected. The Houston and her Allied companions will have to fight against overwhelming odds, at night, against an enemy who claims the darkness as their own.

The Dutch East India Company, officially the United East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie; VOC), was a megacorporation created in the early 17th century by a government-directed merger of many competing Dutch trade services. You might think that Amazon or Google is big, but the VOC is still thought to be the world's biggest corporation in documented history.

This three-in-one audiobook includes three books on the captivating history of India. The first book covers the history of India from the ancient times to the modern era. The second book focuses on the East India Company, and the third book is about the Dutch East India Company. Learn more about India with this audiobook.

Dutch explorers discovered for Europe many of the major island groups in the Pacific, while meting out immense brutality and privation. Some set out as pirates and privateers, others as traders seeking a new route to the Spice Islands. The voyagers left men in Hawai`i and the Tuamotus, and described for the first time the appearance and habits of many of the cultures of Polynesian islands as well those near Australia. They were the first Europeans to visit Australia, Easter Island, Fiji, Hawai`i, New Zealand, Samoa Tasmania, Tonga and many other islands.

During World War II, the Japanese invaded a Dutch colony located in South East Asia called the Dutch East Indies (today known as the Republic of Indonesia).This story follows the trials and tribulations of a Dutch family while living on the idyllic island of Java. This pertinent story of innocent lives caught up in world politics illustrates how a happy and carefree childhood changed overnight into a seemingly never-ending nightmare.

Si usted quiere descubrir la fascinante historia de la Compañía holandesa de las Indias Orientales, siga leyendo....