The VOC as a Company-State: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion
The VOC as a Company-State: Debating Seventeenth-Century Dutch Colonial Expansion
复制标题
荷兰东印度公司作为一个公司国家：关于 17 世纪荷兰殖民扩张的争论
DOI：
10.1017/s0165115314000035
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
0.8
通讯作者：
A. Weststeijn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Weststeijn
17世纪荷兰在东南亚的扩张是怎么回事？在传统史学中，荷兰东印度公司（VOC）主要被视为跨国公司和非国家殖民行为者。然而，最近的研究极大地挑战了这一观点，取而代之的是强调VOC统治的帝国方面。本文旨在通过分析17世纪荷兰海外扩张推理中使用的词汇来开辟新的领域。这篇文章聚焦于1660年代和1670年代对VOC的三位批评者，Pieter van Dam， Pieter de la Court和Pieter van Hoorn，展示了公司内部和外部的声音是如何试图理解作为一个商业公司的多面VOC，它也是一个国家，以不同的方式。在一场围绕殖民、征服、自由贸易和垄断问题的持续辩论中，VOC被描述为一个独特的政治团体，作为国家的海外延伸（Van Dam），作为国家的竞争对手（De la Court），或者作为一个国家（Van Hoorn）。根据菲利普·j·斯特恩（Philip J. Stern）最近对英国东印度公司（british East India Company）的分析，VOC因此应该被视为一个特殊的政治机构，这挑战了它的批评者将其视为一个既不是公司也不是帝国的政体，而是一个公司国家（Company- state）。
Abstract What was seventeenth-century Dutch expansion in Southeast Asia all about? In the traditional historiography, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was predominantly presented as a multinational corporation and non-state colonial actor. Recent research, however, has significantly challenged this view, stressing instead the imperial aspects of VOC rule. This article aims to break new ground by analysing the vocabularies used in seventeenth-century reasoning about Dutch expansion overseas. Focusing on three critics of the VOC from the 1660s and 1670s, Pieter van Dam, Pieter de la Court, and Pieter van Hoorn, the article shows how voices within and outside of the ranks of the Company tried to make sense of the many-faced VOC as a commercial company that was also, in different ways, a state. In an on-going debate that centred on the issues of colonisation, conquest, free trade, and monopoly, the VOC was characterised as a distinctive political body that operated as an overseas extension of the state (Van Dam), as a competitor of the state (De la Court), or as a state as such (Van Hoorn). Following Philip J. Stern's recent analysis of the English East India Company, the VOC should therefore be considered to be a particular political institution in its own terms, which challenged its critics to think about it as a body politic that was neither corporation nor empire, but rather a Company-State.