While companies like Apple and Google might be some of the largest and most valuable today, they don’t come anywhere near to what the Dutch East India Company was worth in its heyday. When calculating for inflation, if the Dutch East India Company were around today they would be worth an insane $7.5 trillion dollars. To give you some perspective, Apple has a market capital of $736 billion dollars, while that’s very high it doesn’t even come close to the Dutch East India Company. So who were they and why were they so valuable?
The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 when the State of the Netherlands gave them a 21-year monopoly to be the sole trader carrying goods out of Asia, something that would obviously not fly today. This monopoly allowed them to become extremely valuable, and even when it ended, they were so big that no one could compete. Imagine if there were only one car company who had a 21-year advantage over the competition, you simply could not face them. They were the worlds first multinational corporation and the first company ever in history to issue stock. The company was so powerful they even attained quasi-legal governmental powers allowing them to imprison people, wage war, establish colonies, or negotiate treaties. They even had their own currency and even their own private arm. They employed millions of people and their trade routes stretched nearly all over the globe.
Initially they made the vast majority of their money trading spices until a new sought-after good came along. In the 17th century tulip bulbs blew up similarly to the dot.com bubble of the 1990’s, only times one thousand. It was the hottest commodity at the time, and only one company was shipping it to Europe. After that bubble popped they moved back to trading spices, tea, textiles, silk, and a variety of other goods. The company would eventually disband in 1799, but not after leaving their mark as the most valuable company of all time.
Photo from asiawelcome.com
