A common historical perspective on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is to portray the VOC as a uniquely powerful military and economic juggernaut that steadily and deliberately constructed the empire that came to be known as the Netherlands East Indies

In the twentieth century, such a view was frequently shared by Dutch colonial officials and Indonesian nationalists, who spoke of "three hundred and fifty years of Dutch rule" in the archipelago.

The truth, however, is more modest.

The VOC was neither the "first (modern) multinational corporation," as has sometimes been claimed, nor the instrument of a state policy of colonial expansion.

It was founded in the Netherlands in 1602 as an effort to manage the competition and risk of the growing number of Dutch expeditions to the Indonesian archipelago (ten companies, ten voyages, and sixty-five ships between 1595 and 1601), and to compete with the East India Company, formed by the English two years earlier, for control of the Asian trade.

The VOC's initial charter establishes its sole right among Dutch enterprises to do business in Asia and gives it exceptional powers, such as those of keeping an army and using military force, making treaties with local rulers, building fortifications, and issuing coinage.

In addition, it calls for little government oversight and does not require the new company to pay dividends to investors at the end of each voyage (as had been the practice), allowing it to amass large sums of money over longer periods of time.

The purpose of this state-supported enterprise is primarily to make a profit.

At home the directors, known as the Heeren XVII (Seventeen Gentlemen), recognize that fighting wars, establishing colonies (rather than simple trading posts and fortifications), and becoming involved in local disputes diminishes profits, and they generally warn against such activities.

Conditions begin to change, however, during the disastrous reign of Sultan Agung's son, Amangkurat I (r. 1646-77), who lacks his father's talents but seeks to further strengthen the realm by centralizing authority, monopolizing control of resources, and destroying all real or imagined opposition.

His misguided efforts to control trade revenues by twice closing the ports of the Pasisir, and even destroying Javanese trading vessels and forbidding Javanese travel overseas, have the opposite effect, in addition to alienating the commercial community and damaging the wider economy of producers.

His obsessive fear of opposition leads him to kill more than five thousand Muslim leaders and their families in a single, well-planned massacre, and to murder hundreds of court officials and members of the aristocracy, including his own family, actions that of course only increase the hatred and intrigues aimed at removing him.

His attitude toward the VOC is ambivalent, for, on the one hand, he admires its apparent wealth and power and considers it a potential ally and protector, yet on the other hand he seeks to bend it to his will and to extract all he can from its representatives in Batavia.

Beginning in the early 1670s, rebellions begin to rise, the most powerful of which is led by Raden Trunajaya (ca. 1649-80), a Madurese aristocrat conspiring with a disaffected son of Amangkurat I and allied with Makassarese and other forces.

Trunajaya's armies win a decisive victory in 1676 and loot the capital the following year.

Mataram is disintegrating.

The VOC had in 1619 seized Jayakerta (Sunda Kelapa), a small but well-protected west Javanese port it had originally contracted from a disgruntled vassal of the sultanate of Banten, renaming it Batavia, forerunner of today's Jakarta.

The resolute Governor General Jan Pieterszoon Coen (in office 1619-23 and 1627-29) had conceived of this port as a kind of fulcrum of the company's far-flung Asian enterprise, and he defends it vigorously against both Banten (allied briefly with England's East India Company) and, in 1628-29, the powerful land and sea forces of the expanding central Javanese state that had taken the name of Mataram, after the ninth-century kingdom.

Mataram's ruler, Sultan Agung (r. 1613-46), is Java's greatest warrior king since Kertanagara nearly four centuries earlier.

Using iron force and a keen sense of traditional diplomatic opportunities, Sultan Agung assembles a realm that consists of all of Java and Madura (including the powerful kingdom of Surabaya) except Banten in the far west and the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom of Blambangan in the far east.

Sukadana and Banjarmasin on Kalimantan also fall under his sway.

He is not, however, able to dislodge the VOC, and after the failed campaign of 1628-29 he appears to have accepted the Dutch presence as a minor irritant.

Contemporaneous Javanese historical works treat the company more as a potential ally than as a serious threat, a view that will persist among many in court circles for another century or more.

And, indeed, at the time the VOC is neither interested in nor capable of tackling the full force of Mataram, which, despite the destruction and political tensions wrought by nearly forty years of expansion, remains a formidable military power.

The company sees itself as a maritime power, a rival for the control of produce and trade rather than territory, and it seeks stable conditions for its activities rather than upheaval.

The VOC nevertheless has a shaping influence in the archipelago.

In what today is eastern Indonesia, the company—with, it is important to reiterate, the help of indigenous allies—between 1610 and 1680 fundamentally alters the terms of the traditional spice trade by forcibly limiting the number of nutmeg and clove trees, ruthlessly controlling the populations that grow and prepare the spices for the market, and aggressively using treaties and military means to establish VOC hegemony in the trade.

One result of these policies, exacerbated by the late-seventeenth-century fall in the global demand for spices, is an overall decline in regional trade, an economic weakening that affects the VOC itself as well as indigenous states, and in many areas occasions a withdrawal from commercial activity.

Others are the rise of authoritarian rulers dependent on VOC support and unrest among groups—traditional leaders, merchants, religious and military figures—who oppose one or the other or both.

Among the most prominent examples are those found in the histories of Ternate in the time of Sultan Mandar (r. 1648-75) and the wars against Hitu and Hoamoal (1638-56), and of southern Sulawesi in the era of the ambitious Buginese (Bone) prince Arung Palakka (1634-96) and the wars against the Makassarese (Gowa) and others.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the glories of the spice trade have faded, and the vitality of the large and small states of the post-Majapahit era has been sapped; the weight of affairs has again begun to shift west, to Java.

VOC representatives far away in the archipelago, appointed after 1610 as governors general, tend to see the warring and political involvement as necessary and pursue them anyway, often vigorously.

Even the more ambitious of their efforts, however, are restrained by certain realities.

Above all, the VOC is never big enough or strong enough to dominate the entire archipelago and its people, and indeed the company finds it impossible to enforce its will in local affairs without Indonesian allies, who frequently exact a high price for their assistance and whose loyalty can never be taken for granted.

It is also the case that even when it has its way—for example, by gaining control of specific trading ports or routes, or of the main areas in which particular spices are produced—interventions by the VOC often have unintended short- and long-term consequences that it can do little to control.

Finally, of course, the VOC's fortunes are subject to the vagaries of a trading system that stretches far beyond the archipelago, including the rise and fall in world demand for spices and, later, for other products on which it will come to depend, such as coffee.

In the course of nearly two centuries, the company will fail to control the spice trade and establish the stable conditions necessary for mercantile growth, and will come to rule over only minute patches of territory, except for small areas in Maluku in the seventeenth century and Java in the eighteenth.

Both sides, in the course of this conflict, request assistance from the VOC, which now faces a momentous decision.

The company seeks political stability and a reliable supply of such key products as rice and teak, and it determines for the first time in more than a half-century that, in order to obtain them, intervention in Mataram's internal affairs is necessary.

Company officials view Javanese kingship through a European lens as a relatively absolutist, centralized form of rule that legitimates succession by, if not strict primogeniture, then something very close to it.

This is a misreading of Javanese (and, indeed, other Indonesian) cultural custom, but nonetheless the VOC gradually comes to see itself as the upholder of order (tradition) and to justify its actions in terms of favoring continuity rather than change.

It makes its choices accordingly, often with the ironic result of creating rather than solving discord and of weakening rather than strengthening the sorts of order it hoped to achieve.

In any case, the VOC decides in 1676 to back the forces of Amangkurat I, who dies soon after having fled to VOC-controlled territory on the Pasisir, and then to support his rebellious son as successor, a project requiring five more years of warfare to complete.

The company gains treaties promising, among other things, access to the products and trading rights it sought, as well as repayment of all its military costs.

That these treaty obligations prove difficult to fulfill does not negate the fact that the VOC has now embarked on a course that will slowly and expensively intertwine its own fate with that of Mataram.

The dark legacy of Amangkurat's tyrannical misrule thus lies not only in eighty years of turbulence in Javanese life, punctuated by three destructive wars of succession, but also in the establishment of patterns of Dutch entanglement in indigenous affairs that are to outlive the VOC itself.

Epidemics in Europe During Major Wars (16th–19th Centuries)

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, epidemics regularly swept through Europe, often exacerbated by wars, poor sanitation, malnutrition, and mass movements of troops and refugees. Wars such as the English Civil War (1642–1651), the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) saw some of the deadliest outbreaks, often causing more deaths than battle itself.

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Key Epidemics During Major Wars

1. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648)

• Typhus ("War Fever"), bubonic plague, and dysentery ravaged both soldiers and civilians.
• Joseph Patrick Byrne estimates that disease caused 90% of war-related deaths, with typhus alone killing over 10% of the German population.
• Mass displacement and famine created ideal conditions for outbreaks, reducing some German regions’ populations by half.

2. The English Civil War (1642–1651)

• Smallpox, typhus, and dysentery spread through crowded garrisons and besieged towns.
• London suffered severe plague outbreaks, as did other urban centers where soldiers and refugees gathered.
• The destruction of crops and infrastructure led to food shortages, weakening immune systems and exacerbating disease mortality.

3. The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815)

• Typhus and dysentery were rampant among Napoleon’s armies, particularly during the Peninsular War (1808–1814) and the French invasion of Russia (1812).
• Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia saw more troops die from disease and exposure than from combat, with hundreds of thousands succumbing to typhus, frostbite, and starvation.
• British troops in Spain and Portugal suffered from malaria, dysentery, and yellow fever, significantly reducing their fighting strength.

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Factors That Made Epidemics More Deadly During Wars

1. Mass Mobilization of Troops

   • Armies carried diseases across Europe, infecting both soldiers and civilians.
   • Long marches, unsanitary camps, and contaminated water sources spread infections rapidly.

2. Urban Overcrowding and Sieges

   • Refugees fleeing warzones packed into cities and fortresses, increasing the spread of disease.
   • Besieged cities often suffered famine and lack of clean water, leading to outbreaks of plague and dysentery.

3. Malnutrition and Weakened Immune Systems

   • Wars disrupted agriculture and trade, leading to famine.
   • Malnourished populations were highly susceptible to infections.

4. Lack of Medical Knowledge and Treatment

   • Most doctors had little understanding of germ theory, relying on ineffective or dangerous treatments.
   • Hospitals were overcrowded and unsanitary, often making conditions worse.

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Conclusion: Disease as a Silent Killer in European Warfare

Throughout the 16th–19th centuries, disease was often more deadly than battle itself. The combination of warfare, famine, and epidemic outbreaks led to massive population losses, shaping the course of European history. It was not until improvements in sanitation, vaccination, and medical science in the late 19th century that wartime epidemics began to decline significantly.

The Devastating Impact of Disease During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648)

The Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, not only due to battlefield deaths but also because of widespread pestilence and famine, which devastated both combatants and civilians. According to Joseph Patrick Byrne, disease accounted for 90% of Europe's war-related casualties, with typhus alone killing more than 10% of the German population (Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues, 2008).

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Major Epidemics During the War

1. Typhus ("War Fever")

   • The most lethal disease during the war.
   • Spread by lice in the unsanitary conditions of military camps and besieged cities.
   • Caused fever, rash, muscle pain, and delirium, often leading to death within two weeks.
   • Responsible for decimating armies and depopulating towns.

2. Bubonic Plague

   • Re-emerged periodically throughout the war, particularly in urban centers and along trade routes.
   • Spread by fleas carried by rats, thriving in the chaos of war and famine.

3. Dysentery ("Bloody Flux")

   • Rampant in military encampments, where food shortages and poor hygiene worsened outbreaks.
   • Led to severe dehydration and death, particularly among weakened soldiers and refugees.

4. Smallpox and Measles

   • Affected both soldiers and civilians, spreading as armies moved across the continent.
   • Caused high mortality rates among children and the malnourished.

5. Malaria

   • Particularly devastating in low-lying, marshy regions where stagnant water allowed mosquitoes to breed.
   • Weakened both civilians and armies, exacerbating wartime mortality.

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The Impact of Disease on the War and Society

• Mass depopulation:

  • Some German regions lost up to 50% of their population due to disease, famine, and war-related destruction.
  • Rural areas were hardest hit, with entire villages disappearing.

• Disruption of agriculture and economy:

  • Farmland was abandoned or destroyed, leading to food shortages and malnutrition, which further fueled disease outbreaks.
  • Commerce and trade collapsed, causing economic devastation across Central Europe.

• Breakdown of medical care and public health:

  • Physicians and clergy, many of whom died from disease themselves, were unable to contain the outbreaks.
  • Hospitals were overwhelmed, often becoming centers of infection rather than treatment.

• Demographic shifts:

  • Many survivors migrated to less affected areas, leading to long-term population imbalances.
  • The loss of skilled labor and agricultural workers contributed to decades of economic hardship.

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Conclusion: Disease as the True Scourge of the Thirty Years' War

While the Thirty Years’ War was a military and political catastrophe, the true cause of devastation was disease, which accounted for the vast majority of deaths. The combination of warfare, famine, and epidemic outbreaks led to one of the worst demographic crises in European history, shaping the continent’s recovery for generations.

The Safavid shah of Iran, Abbas I (1587-1629), is the ruler most affected by the rise of Portuguese power.

The shaykh of Hormuz, during the time he possesses effective control over gulf ports, continues to pay lip service and tribute to the Safavid shah, but when the Portuguese arrive, they force the shaykh to pay tribute to them.

The shah can do little because Iran is too weak to challenge the Portuguese.

For this the shah requires another European power; he therefore invites the English and the Dutch to drive the Portuguese out of the gulf, in return for half the revenues from Iranian ports.

Both countries respond to the shah's offer, but it is England that proves the most helpful.

In 1622 the English, along with some of the shah's forces, attack Hormuz and drive the Portuguese out of their trading center there.

Initially, the Dutch cooperate with the English, but the two European powers will eventually became rivals for access to the Iranian market.

The English won and by the beginning of the nineteenth century will become the major power in the gulf.

Struggles between Iranians and Europeans contribute to a power vacuum along the coast of Oman.

The English attacks on the Portuguese coincide with the rise of the Yarubid line of Ibadi imams in the interior of Oman.

The Yarubids take advantage of Portuguese preoccupation with naval battles on the Iranian side of the gulf and conquer the coastal cities of Oman around 1650.

The imams move into the old Portuguese stronghold of Muscat and so bring the Omani coast and interior under unified Ibadi control for the first time in almost a thousand years.

A battle over imamate succession in the early eighteenth century weakens Yarubid rule, however.

The various parties with interests in the Persian Gulf begin to solicit support from outside powers between the 1730s and the 1750s.

The Yarubid family eventually calls in an Iranian army, which reestablishes Iranian influence on the Omani coast.

This time the Iranian hold on Oman is short-lived.