Oost-Indisch Huis: Headquarters of the VOC
Why is it significant?
Step through the gateway from the Oude Hoogstraat into the courtyard and let the street noise fall away.
Key Facts
| Place | Oost-Indisch Huis: Headquarters of the VOC |
|---|---|
| Address | Oude Hoogstraat 24, 1012 CE Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.37100, 4.89800 |
| Part of Walk | Spice, Ships and Shadows: Amsterdam's Golden Age Harbour and the Dutch East India Company |
| Generated | Generated |
Step through the gateway from the Oude Hoogstraat into the courtyard and let the street noise fall away. Brick wings with rows of tall windows close in around you, students lock their bikes, someone hurries past with a laptop... and nothing tells you that this was once the nerve centre of the most powerful company on earth.
This is the Oost-Indisch Huis, the East India House, built in 1606 and usually credited to the city architect Hendrick de Keyser. It was the headquarters of the VOC's Amsterdam chamber, by far the biggest of the six. Here the directors met, ledgers were kept, sailors were paid, and pepper, nutmeg, mace and cloves were stored and auctioned. The supreme board, the Gentlemen Seventeen, met in Amsterdam six years out of every eight.
The VOC was not simply a trading business. The Dutch state gave it the right to build forts, raise armies, wage war and sign treaties in Asia. In 1621 its governor-general, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, conquered the Banda Islands, the only source of nutmeg in the world. By most estimates the islands had around fifteen thousand inhabitants. Within a few years only about a thousand remained: the rest had been killed, starved, enslaved or driven away.
The nutmeg groves were then handed to Dutch planters and worked by enslaved people brought from across Asia. Slavery ran through the whole VOC world, from Batavia on Java to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Company itself owned and traded enslaved people. That is the other half of the profits that once passed through this courtyard.
The Company did not last for ever. Corruption, war and debt drained it, and in 1799 the VOC was dissolved, its debts taken over by the Dutch state. Today the building belongs to the University of Amsterdam, where students argue about exactly the history you have just heard. Now make your way east, across the bridges, to the Oudeschans canal, and look for a tower with a slender spire rising straight from the water.