DUTCH STRATEGIES AND THE ESTADO DA ÍNDIA荷蘭人策略和葡屬印度
The article analyzes how the actions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the first half of the seventeenth century were guided by a strategic logic that interwove mercantile objectives and military means. Departing from the conceptualization of "strategy" as a decision-making guide and an instr...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
October 2007
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40024/3685 |
| Summary: | The article analyzes how the actions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the first half of the seventeenth century were guided by a strategic logic that interwove mercantile objectives and military means. Departing from the conceptualization of "strategy" as a decision-making guide and an instrument for coordinating alliances, the author argues that, although modern language may seem inadequate for the period, the VOC effectively operated as a state-like entity "outside the state," using war to achieve business ends and, simultaneously, to support the foreign policy of the United Provinces against Iberian interests.
The methodology combines a critical reading of official instructions, commissions, letters, and royal and corporate statutes of the VOC, articulating them with concrete episodes of navigation, confrontation, and maritime capture. The evidence discussed reveals an initial phase marked by caution: the Dutch sought to avoid zones of strong Portuguese State of India presence, diversify supply sources, and, when possible, circumvent the Portuguese commercial barrier in accessing China. However, from the growing alignment with the juridical-political rhetoric associated with Grotius and with the directives of the States General, the commissions expanded authorization for private war. Thus, the VOC's "strategies" shifted from avoiding Portuguese positions to selectively attacking them, highlighting moments of success and failure in consolidating routes, ports, treaties, and military capabilities within the space of the State of India. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |