Citation Needed - Dutch East India Company

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

The United East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie [vərˈeːnɪɣdə oːstˈɪndisə kɔmpɑˈɲi], abbreviated as VOC, Dutch: [veː.oːˈseː]) and commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and the first joint-stock company in the world.[2][3] Established on 20 March 1602[4] by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia.[5] Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces (Dutch Republic) and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets (one of which became the Amsterdam Stock Exchange).[6] The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[7] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[8] Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.[9][10]

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts, because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm no one, I'm going to be chairing this meeting, but to do that I'm going to need my board of directors, first up, two board members that get all the more board every time I speak Heath and Todd. I really just came for the bagels and left his plane bottoms somehow. Kelly, isn't it?

If you don't like a plane bottom. I am definitely not your guy Is that a raisin in there it's happening here And also joining us tonight the treasurer and his treasured Eli and I'm always keeping an eye on your best Sometimes the tables are turned one of us us got the other Christmas gifts this year. So I got you Christmas gift. What? Got you Christmas gift. How dare you spread the slander that I can get you a Christmas gift.

We made with the Rocklet. It was really good. The gift you got me is awesome. Oh, was it good? He's cheers. Cheers to you. Cheers. Cheers.

Cheers to you. Oh, and that advent calendar. Delicious stuff.. Cheers. Cheers to you. All that. And that advent calendar. Delicious stuff. That's all I'm saying. We're such good friends. Such good friends. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. There was a cookie. Cookies. I will pull this podcast

My mother fucking cookie basket, I know she's higher. You won your beautiful signed copy of the name of the winners much better than He'll never acknowledge that though, please can we just Just need to be like the entire I will wake up in the morning with him just like his eye is a centimeter from my somehow I've filled your mouth impossibly with cookies while you slept the key is to dry the tongue with a paper towel before the cookie goes down. You got to clear them like Kobayashi. Yeah, thank you. And before we make with anything except cookie jokes, I want to take a quick second to remind

everybody that if it wasn't for our patrons, we'd have to take to the high seas to pillage foreign lands too. So if you'd like to learn how to join the race, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us Cecil, what person plays thing concept phenomenon or event? What would we be talking about today? Today, we're gonna be talking about what some consider the richest corporation in history,

the Dutch East India Company, or as it was known in the Netherlands, the Varenga-de, Oostendiesh, Kompenegi, or as I will refer to it for the rest of the episode, the VOC. Man, here's the thing, like I don't pronounce it guacamole either, dude. Don't correct my pronunciation. I'm American. I have no idea how you say all those words with all the consonants.

When a word starts with two O's you have no chance, right? Right. Exactly. Which O do I put my emphasis on? Anyway, it's the VOC. The VOC was the first multinational corporation at its height. It had a fleet of 150 merchant ships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and 40 warships. Holy shit, there is militarily formidable as like a medium large sized American police force.

Fewer boats, but yeah, the company was in business for almost 200 years and made the Dutch government so much money that they were able to reclaim about 1650 square kilometers of land from the taxes Do the Dutch do land tax? I'll get to it. I'll get to how they reclaimed it later. Don't do it wrong. On the one hand it's cool, but now it would feel impractical these days, right? Like, don't you turbo tax? Does it get deposited? And that's why the Dutch retain to this very day their deep international political and military relevance. Way to make a fucking enemy of the Dutch town.

Wow. Jesus Christ. Tarrew is coming for you, Tarrew. If that's where they're from. Tarrew is not. Pretty sure they are. Nope. Maybe. Not maybe. Maybe.

Not even maybe. Where? Where? No, not. Nope. Nope. Maybe, not maybe. Maybe. No, not. No. No. No. Think about it. So before we start our story about the VOC, we have to go back about 113 years prior to no illusions birthday. Okay. In 1487, a small fleet of boats left Lisbon, Portugal. They were captained by Bartolomudias. And he was the first European sailor to navigate around Africa's southern tip, Caliente, proving that the optimal route south for vessels

is through the open sea, Caliente, significantly west of the African shoreline. I don't know what I'm doing. A dozen years or so later, Vasco de Gama, another Portuguese captain, used Diaz's route to pioneer the oceanic passage that connected Europe and Asia, bridging the Atlantic and Indian oceans. It was his trip that allowed the Portuguese government over the next several decades to establish trade routes with the countries east of Africa to obtain spices from these lands, which were worth more than their weight in gold.

Okay, as a man who's bought saffron in the last decade, not much has changed. Can I tell you or not? Yes, it is. Well, yeah, the whole worth more than gold thing, it sounds super impressive, but spices do a thing, right? Like gold is literally just, I know it does shit, but like the only reason we value it is it shines. Also, maybe comparing the values of things, I walk does give some referential context.

We should consider that gold weighs 80% more than lead by volume. So maybe some other metric beyond weight is called for. Like everything's more. You know, I agree. Just every single thing that I read about this, they all use that exact same metric. More than weight and gold.

Everything you ever read about this has to point that out. The Portuguese did their best to conceal their trade routes. And in order to operate in the Indian Ocean, you had to have what they call the Cartaz license. This was basically a hall pass distributed by Portugal that allowed them to create a monopoly on trade with the region. It also allowed the Portuguese government to tax ships that worked in the area. And if you didn't have one and you were caught by Portuguese merchant ships in the area, they would attack you, steal your shit, and possibly sink your boat.

Yeah. And if your treasure was a 1099, you had to get Cartaz license pro. Portuguese basically controlled that region and their trade routes were mostly undiscovered. But people knew they were making fatty banks off something. In 1592, a carac, which is a smaller shipping vessel at the time, was transporting goods for Portugal, and it was captured by the English. The ship was called the Madre de Deus, and here was its cargo. Quote, chess filled with jewels and pearls gold and silver coins amber grease rolls of the highest quality cloth fine tapestries 425 tons of pepper

45 tons of cloves 35 tons of cinnamon 3 tons of mace 3 tons in nutmeg 2 and a half tons of Benjamin which is a highly highly aromatic balsamic resin used for perfumes and medicines, 25 tons of cauchneal, and 15 tons of ebony." And this capture was worth about 800,000 pounds. And Specter's checking to make sure the mace is pure by rubbing some on his guns. Does the same thing with the amber grease. What the fuck? Is this whale vomit?

That's off. Why do we have this? What is this? Okay, amber grease is disgusting, but fun fact, raspberry and strawberry flavoring used to be made from the gunk inside of a beaver's anal gland. And by used to, I mean it is still used today in limited amounts because people are gross. So come on. So. Come on.

Yeah, seriously? Yup, that is absolutely true. I guess if you pick up a beaver and smell its ass, it's delicious. Yeah, it smells like red obviously. This feels like you're tricking me into doing any lingus on a beaver again. Again.

I feel like I want to lift a beaver up and put its ass to my underarm pants, you know, just to see. Yeah, right, right. In the words of our president, you know, just to see. Right, right. In the words of our president, fool me, don't get fooled again, Tom. Side note here about this ship. As it was brought into port at the Azores,

everyone started plundering all the cargo. Here's the quote. Quote, the mariners were so mad keen to delve into this ship's treasures, their candles had set the hold on fire in five separate incidents. Mad Keen? Mad Keen, bro. Whoa!

Mad Keen. Continuing the quote, significantly, the Madre de Dios was 1.5 meters higher above the waterline when it made it to England than it had been when it left the East Indies It arrived in England and endured another plundering before being sold off for about a hundred and forty thousand pounds This was still a tremendous haul even though three-quarters of the cargo had been taken by the sailors and captains This alerted the rest of Europe to what was going on in that region. You hear that guys? We can get captured and looted twice in the same voyage.

It was around this time that there were commercial spies trying to glean as much information about these trade routes as they could. Jan Hugen, Jan Hugen von Linnstolten. Sure. I love it, dude. I love it. Yeah, Amber K. John Hugen, John Hugen von Linstolten. Sure. I love it, dude, I love it. Sure. Amber Creek, I think it's like Amber Creek.

I'm guessing the entire time I'm saying his name, I'm guessing. I think it's J H V L. I can't believe you would say that about Taurus grandfather. Like, anyway, that guy got a job in Lisbon on a merchant ship and he would spend some time in Goa, a state in the southwestern coast of India. There he would take meticulous notes about the region and keep a journal. He gained access to maps and exclusive details regarding the trade and Portuguese maritime

routes in Southeast Asia, leveraging his expertise in cartography and illustration to replicate and create new maps. This allowed him to compile a significant amount of navigational and commercial knowledge. Many of the maritime maps he replicated were closely guarded secrets of the Portuguese for over a hundred years. He then returned to the Netherlands and he wrote a book called, Discours of Voyages into Yeast and West Indies, which described these roots and their riches. The Indies were like working for the Trump presidency.

Once you were in, you were getting a book deal. You know, you just had it just built right in. So, like, so I get how like having their maps helps and all, but the other way to find out that information was to go there and just write down what you looked at, right? I mean, did De Portugale put huge blurrers over the coastlines and islands? Yeah, it's called cannons and merchant ships. Sure. Yeah, pulling this all spycraft seems somewhat grandiose. I get this as technically industrial espionage, but it's just so fucking basic.

It's like the pumpkin spice Uggs of spying. This is just, I saw it. With cloves that were worth its weight in gold, thank you very much. I wanna mention that much of what is considered rich here is the spices. And while it's easy to walk around your supermarket today and see shelves full of spices,

back in 1600, you had little or no spices to speak of in Europe. Still true in England. Europeans knew about spices and for several hundred years, they had a lot of trade with the people in the Middle East through Constantinople. But once that became Istanbul, they lost a lot of trade with the east.

So the routes to get to India were difficult, controlled by the Portuguese ships, as we already discussed. So this ensured that spices were in low supply and therefore expensive. Spices also at this time were thought to have medicinal qualities. And while some do because they're antibacterial and such, the people at the time, they believe that they cleaned out your humors or whatever. So a pound of spices, again, would be worth, what is, what do we say, class?

What would be worth more than a pound of ambergris? There you go. That's rough, but like we thought growing up with rubs some dirt and it was bad, but like great grandpa was getting fucking cumin in there. I hate that. Actually, my grandpa used to use grand paprika and paprika. I prefer my mother's help though.

She used part of mom. The pain would go away in a sin a minute. The pain would go away in a sin of minute. Wow. Using the information that yarns whatever the rest of his name is. Fuck. Gathering his book. I didn't even do anything with it. Stupid.

That's an insult to puns right there. Oh, bravo. Nicely done. Nice. It took me a second. So, insult. Run it around. Using the information that Jan rest of his name gathered in his book, Explorer Cornelius Day Outman sailed for the region around the Cape of Good Hope to trade with the countries in the east. He was the leader of three ships and about 250 men. Right after they rounded the Cape, the crew got scurvy.

So they stopped off and made a gas car and they quickly buried 71 people. Then they set sail again and they arrived in Java. There they found the Javanese had sold all their crops of spices to the Portuguese. If they wanted, they could just wait around until the next crop came in. The Dutch, thinking that the people there were inferior,

were totally rude and then the Sultan told them to leave without any spices at all. They left and when they left, they were attacked by pirates. Good. After the pirates they headed to Madura and they were mad at the Japanese for turning them away, pirates for attacking them and at vitamin C for abandoning them to the scurvy so they landed and attacked the Madurans killing and raping them. I used to fly with Noah when he was a smoker and they just say, Okay, okay. I'll admit to some occasional light murder, but I didn't rape. It's true. It's true. You did.

They left their pillaging and traveled to Bali. When they arrived, they traded for a few pots of peppercorns in spring of 1597. Now a few of the crew members decided to stay. OK, all right. Look, not the shit on the Netherlands too much, but I officially do not feel any sympathy for anyone who decides not to stay in Bali. Like, I am afraid to go there on vacation because I'll just abandon the kids and stay there for half with a fuck goes back.

You would do that if you went to a circle, OK, come on, man. OK. It's a good hot dog. True. i don't like this thing for the hot dogs keep some warm yeah all around the whole every side evenly so the crew members stay and they only had enough people to fill two boats so they scuttled one and they headed back to holland on the voyage back it seems like they didn't need to scuttle a boat. They could have just left. Yeah, they just being mean at that point.

Fuck it, let's fucking sing it. They think someone's gonna chase them in it. Like what was the problem with just leaving that boat? I don't understand. On the voyage back, they wanted to stop for some water and supplies in St. Helena, which is a Portuguese controlled island off the southwestern coast of Africa.

They were turned away. So they limped back to the Netherlands with 87 people out of 250 that had set out on the voyage. All the fame numbers were not exactly, but like they sold their meager spices, they were able to procure. And this voyage was deemed a huge success. While it was probably break even on cost,

it was proof of concept and it was the blueprint that Dutch needed to get started on their own trade routes. Okay, that whole thing, it was bleak and definitely racist and we didn't make any money, but other people are gonna lose money? Let's put a Walmart in every town. That's like an amazing business model, right? Yes.

At the time, you could invest in a single ship if you had extra capital. People would go to the dock and then give cash as investments to ships that were leaving for the Far East. This was a really risky investment though, because you were putting all your spices in one basket. You could get an amazing return when the ship came back or the ship could sink and you could get nothing. But if you won, you can win big. One of the ships that sat out in 1598 was led by Jacob Van Neck and they bought spices. They came back to the Netherlands and they had a 400% profit. Okay. But did they get a picture of a monkey?

Everybody gets the picture of the monkey. 1602 the Dutch government sponsored quote a single United East India's company that would also that also granted a monopoly over the Asian trade and quote They funded the company with 6.5 million guilders which today would be about worth about a hundred million dollars They invited people from each of the Dutch provinces or states to sit on a board of directors so that one state wouldn't have more control than another. The board was called the Herron 17 or the Gentleman 17 and they called the company the

VOC and it was formed 422 years ago today. I mean, next week it was supposed to be today like the 20th, but that's So So this would go on to be the first multinational company by selling stocks in their fleet They lowered the risk on the investment the cost to get in the investment was also lower, so more and more middle class could afford to do it. They also allowed people from outside the country to buy stocks, which made it different from the British East India Company, which had formed a few years earlier. The charter of the business

allowed for powers endowed in a company never seen before and we will get to all that After the break. All right, you heard that listener. We got some hot corporate Charter action coming after the break We'll try not to leave you each ship saw a 300% profit return. Oh amazing. Jelly good. Ah, say. And say, you say there are more of these spices? Oh yes, yes, yes, much, much more.

More than the eye can see, in fact, indeed, in some places. What glorious luck! I'd like to think all that wealth with no people living there. Oh, yeah. Uh, hmm. Uh, people do live there. They do? Well, my goodness, they must be a wealthy nation indeed.

Not, uh, not particularly. They do? Well, my goodness, they must be a wealthy nation indeed. Not, uh... Not particularly. No. Oh, so... They don't know the spice is worth. Yeah, they value something else, perhaps. No, no, I, um... No, they value the spices.

Greg? Yes. Yes. Is this business based on genocide and stealing? Yes, perhaps a little. There this business based on genocide and stealing? Yes. Perhaps a little. Just a touch of genocide and stealing. Come on.

Again. Why are all your businesses based on genocide and stealing? It's old timey times. There aren't a lot of options. I feel like there are. There's a total of them. There's a total of them. And we're back. We last left off.

Vengeful murder rapes were a thriving business in Europe. So, uh... Jesus Christ. I was just saying, that's where we are. So, where do we go from there, Cecil? Down, deep, deep down. Okay, so when the company went public, there were 1,150 investors in the IPO.

The charter was for 21 years and it needed to be renewed each time it expired. The charter allowed for the company to protect its interests and was allowed to form its own military, which it did by creating warships for its navy and hiring troops as mercenaries. The company could negotiate its own treaties, wage its own wars, put people on trial and execute them. It could issue its own currency and set the price of that currency. They were also given jurisdiction over the Indian Ocean.

This is not what a company does. The company's nation stuff. The kind of info, yeah. The company's board of directors were capitalist and they really only cared about one thing, profit. And the VOC delivered on that nicely. Jeff Bezos is so hard right now. I'd say Jeff Bezos doesn't listen to our show, but I have an Alexa somewhere in the house.

Yeah, he's technically listening to the show. For example, a year after the company was formed, Merchant Vessels captured a Portuguese ship, the Santa Catarina. The ship was, again, a Carrick, and the value of the property was about 2.2 million guilders, or about a third of the original public offering for the VOC itself. Jesus. In one ship. And that shows you just how much money was at stake

in this trade region. This capture of the ship really ticked off the Portuguese, who immediately went to the Dutch government to complain, but the Dutch government explained that it was a private company and they couldn't control them. The Portuguese then declared war on the Netherlands, a war that would last 60 years and allow for a bunch more profit through piracy. Okay, I'm picturing like a pirate raid by very light pirates with like super progressive

politics and they speak every language fluently. Super cool. Everyone, hands in the air and preferred pronouns. The company set up a place for the chief operating officer in the region, or as they called him, the governor general. They put him in Ambon, Indonesia, and then eventually he would be relocated to the city of Jakarta, which would be renamed Batavia by the Dutch That may make you stop and think wow they sound like a bunch of colonizing assholes

Well, yeah, you don't even know a fraction of it Okay, can I say it's weird if you stopped and thought that now right? Yeah Now is the thing that's weird if you're thinking that now. Okay. I thought earlier too. I was But also now Also as well. He didn't say exclusively now apology Well then this paragraph should fucking do it actually This next paragraph will definitely tilt the scale actually this next paragraph will definitely tilt the scale.

Let's talk about the Banda Massacre. That sounds bad, right? Banda Massacre sounds super cute. Those are the ones that eat bamboo while they do the massacre. Right. Tones was. Oh, I thought that was the little thing that job of the hut that sat beside job of the hut and laughed. That's not. Yeah. I bet so.

The Dutch sent Peter Williams, Varenhof to the islands of Banda to negotiate trade for Nutmeg. At this time, this was the only source for Nutmeg in the entire world. The VOC, of course, tried to force a trade deal and the people of Banda killed Peter and a bunch of his crew. One of the men who escaped was Jan Petersen Cohen. Now pinning that for later. Chase, they were chased off the island without any nutmeg.

And then the Dutch decided to take several places nearby, lose them and take them again. And eventually they returned to Banda. OK, I think they're committing genocide and shit. I know, but they keep doing it to the Benny Hill music. And I don't know if that makes it better or worse. Yeah. So this time though, the Dutch have a new commander,

Jan Petersen Cohen, the guy who survived the original negotiations with the band. They also have a force of Japanese mercenary samurai with them. Wait, now you're just making it up. I am not making it up. They had mercenary samurai. And then Ronin show up. Hey, Krillin're just making it up. You're just making it up. You had mercenary samurai. And then Ronin show up. A crew of Ronin show up.

Remember when the Japanese samurai in the Dutch? No, go lay down. This is made up. This is your lying Cecil. You write out of ideas for your episode and you're lying. These mercenary Ronin, they basically round up the leaders of the band Ronin they basically round up the leaders of the band island and they were quote

Forced at gunpoint to sign an unfeasibly arduous treaty one that was in fact impossible to keep Thus providing Cohen an excuse to use the superior Dutch force against the Bandonese The Dutch quickly noted a number of alleged violations of the new treaty in response to which Cohen launched a punitive massacre. And quote, OK, but that just seems like they added steps to massacre. Where they come home with an inappropriate amount of massacre paper. We're not a red tape. One guy's just like, hey, you can you can just yell stop resisting. We don't need a whole treaty. And like paper or. guys just like, Hey, Yon, you can, you could just yell stop resisting. We don't need a whole tree.

So Cohen used the Ronin samurai to round up the leaders of Banda and they had them beheaded. And then he put their heads on spikes like you do. And then he tortured some of the Bandonese chiefs. Now the VOC claims they waterboarded them, but they probably did some other horrible torture stuff to him too. So then they destroyed the entire country. They either murdered, starved or enslaved anyone that was left stop laughing Eli. And then all the stuff they start laughing make up your mind. Of the 15,000 inhabitants of the island, it is said that only a thousand survived and they were enslaved Okay, well that I mean that part wasn't to yakety sacks, but you know

Yeah, I guess I'm misunderstanding because if you're killing everyone Every what exactly is the message of the heads on the spikes right? That's just decorative What exactly is the message of the heads on the spikes? Right, that's just decorative now. I mean, I guess like another way to ask it is like, if a head is spiked in a forest and there's no one around to see it, is it even spiked? That's so fucked. They took the land that they ethnically cleansed and split it up into parcels. These parcels were given to Dutch farmers who were employed to grow nutmeg,

using the displaced people as slaves. The farmers would get one one hundred and twenty second share of the profits of the sale for nutmeg. And while it doesn't seem like a lot, they actually made these families incredibly wealthy. Fuck. Just all of Iowa listening to this being like, wow, slavery nutmeg plantations in the 1600s had it fucking made, right? Capitalism used to be fucking sweet. Little guy, Yon would go on to secure a clove monopoly in addition to his nutmeg monopoly He conquered Jakarta and then he turned it into the city of Batavia where he built canals like they had in Amsterdam

to the city of Batavia where he built canals like they had in Amsterdam. So it could be cozy like home. And then he was the governor general of the VOC twice from 1618 to 1623 and from 1627 to 1629. Here is a quote that is attributed to him that I think tells you all you need to know about this guy, quote, despair not spare your enemies not for God is with us. And quote, not for long, though, you thankfully died at dysentery in the conquered city of Batavia in 1629. Okay.

Not to take away from the seriousness of these historical events, but the spices make the whole thing way more festive, right? Yeah. Like it's the peppermint genocide and the rape of all spice. It just sounds so much more Christmasy, you know. I hate Timmy, you finish everybody your dinner. There are kids starving in Jakarta right now. We made sure of it.

In fact, that's why the cake has such a lovely aroma. Jesus Christ. VOC would go on to commit other atrocities. They settled Cape Town and then they turned that area into farmland so they could resupply ships as they resupplied their trade routes back and forth. The people of Cape Town that were farming were not allowed to trade with anyone other than the members of the VOC. The VOC also provided an enslaved Africans so they could work on the plantations there, thus not only creating apartheid in South Africa, but also birthing the African slave trade.

All right, well, now this just sounds like a lazy prequel where they're trying to squeeze all this shit in in one movie. The VOC really bad show, really bad show on the WB or whatever the fact is. The VOC was able to create an amazing trade route system in the East Indies that included a great deal of countries. Compliment sandwich. Thank you. Besides the genocide, there was also a very amazing trade route. They traded slavery job creator potato.

Trade with several countries. Japan I mentioned earlier, China, India, and most of the islands in Indonesia, as well as countries now in the Middle East and Africa. But they were not happy with the current trade route system and continued looking for new countries to trade with. So they sailed south and east. William Janssen is credited with the first European discovery of Australia. He landed in what is now Cape York in Queensland, and he declared that land New Zealand, which is named after the Dutch province.

I guess the natives did not like being called New Zealanders because, quote, ten of his men were killed on various shore expeditions and, quote, I probably knew that the term would come to be associated with right comfort. Right. Right. The best. The OC also employed Abel Janssen Tasman, who was also an explorer who would go on to discover Tasmania for the Europeans, as well as the other New Zealand. The explorers encountered the Maori people and here is a short account.

Quote, in the evening, about one hour after sunset, we saw many lights on land and four vessels near the shore, two of which betook themselves toward us. When our two boats returned, the ships reporting that they had found not less than 13 fathoms of water, and with the sinking of the sun which sank behind the highland, they had been still about a half mile from shore.

After our people had been on board about one glass, people in the two canoes began to call out to us in gruff, hollow voices. We could not in the least understand any of it. However, when they called out again, several times we called back to them as a token answer, but they did not come any nearer than a stone shot. They also blew many times on an instrument which produced a sound like a Moors trumpet. We had one of our sailors who could play somewhat on a trumpet, play some tunes to them in answer. And then a group of Maori came out in a canoe and use paddles called a Patu to club four soldiers to death.

Hasmann called it Murderers Bay. And then went on to go explore somewhere else. Okay. Well, that, I mean, that sounds unprovoked, but consider that this dude's go to for distance was not quite close enough to throw a rock at him. You know, so you gotta wonder at least. It is so sad that we can't listen to a recording of that.

Undoubtedly horrible trumpet moment. Like the Maori guy plays this beautiful thing and fucking Hans is just fucking it up. It's like, and he can't do it right. Thanks, Mark. He's like, dude, they're going to murder us and we're going to deserve it. We're going to get clubbed with like paddles or something. See, I assume they were doing Jackie Sacks, but that guy's getting beaten with the club. He looks over just his last breath like, G sharp.

Really G sharp Hans got this is on you. They're band teacher looking down from heaven. I told those boys to focus. Now I already mentioned that at its height, the company had an army and a navy, but they were also worth according to inflation, 7.5 trillion dollars. Jesus fucking what?

Trillion? That is worth more than several of our largest companies today combined. Now it should be noted that this is according to inflation. And I'm sure there are other factors economists would take into account if they were to value something like this. There are several articles disputing the inflation valuation and I'll let people who understand both history and economics sort that out. But it was just a huge company and it took in a ton of money and the taxes

that it collected help pump the seawater out of the Netherlands to claim about 20% of its landmass. I know everything about the story is fucking terrible and genocide, but at least they paid their fucking taxes. Also, I'd love for economists to not focus on like the inflation problem in this valuation of the Dutch East India. Maybe do something for now instead of for that. By the mid 18th century, the VOC had faced a significant decline, attributed to five factors over a 50 year period from 1730 to 1780.

The volume of its trade and money that it had made on trade had shrunk. They shipped from a hub in Batavia and that centralized system wasn't as quick or as efficient. They treated their employees poorly and gave them poor wages at the end. And that made them find other ways to supplement their income by ripping off the company.

Fourth, people who worked for the company died a lot and that wasn't great for replenishing the ranks. And finally, it gave out too many dividends to shareholders. And it's a good thing companies learn their lesson about mistreating employees for the benefit of shareholders, huh? Yeah, I know, right? So, so the VOC would come up for renewal of charter in 1799 and they would not renew it. And thus the VOC died 200 years after it was created, company that basically started the business world as we know it would die of late stage capitalism. Nice.

So if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? You can solve all of capitalism's problems with just one small bad at a time. Are you ready for the quiz? I'm going to go down swinging. Fuck yeah. All right, Cecil. What's the best name for my spice race action pirate lick? A. The humanuman Centipede.

That's absolute. Thank you. Saffron in 60 seconds. Not as good. Not as good. The Amazing Mace. We really should have closed with Human Centipede. The Cuman Centipede is not the matter. The other two were race.

You could have done the thing where you just do one. Definitely a. Definitely a. Cumin, sanapede. Correct. All right. So great stuff on Cumin, sanapede. Jokey stuff is fun.

It's fun. But which of the following Cecil is the best song from the serious musical called a spice odyssey about the Dutch East India Company. A, seasonings of love. B, modern majorum general. C, maybe this time, T.H.Y.M. We're spread out on the page. I think it's from Cabaret. D, bl out the page. I think it's from Cabaret D.

Plunder the sea. That's a toss between B and D, but I think I'm going to go with D. Plunder the sea. That is correct. I just want Cecil to keep singing it. Plunder the sea. What'd you just add now? All right, Cecil, as Noah mentioned previously, maskers and mayhem do need a good I'm gonna want to take it from me. Nice. Which is end up. Alright Cecil, as Noah mentioned previously, maskers in Mayhem do need a good soundtrack. Who were some of the biggest bands from that time that could have filled this role?

Hey. So many puns. The all spice girls. B. Berga Motley Crew. I'm so good. C. Vanilla Ice. D. Salt and Pepper.

Old standards. I'm going to go with kissing your cheek lightly right now. It's B. Burger Motley Crew is my favorite. So yes, it was. Now I'm kissing your other cheek heavily. Alright, well, somehow or another another I think Tom has won. I don't know sure Oh, Tom Tom was supposed to win cuz I was supposed to be supposed to be but I don't know who do is assas this but definitely Tom's reading the next

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