Talk:Dutch East India Company/Archive 2

Merger proposal
I propose that Dutch East India Company in Indonesia be merged into Dutch East India Company. The reason is that all the content in the "Dutch East India Company in Indonesia" article is, or should be, in the "Dutch East India Company", and the "Dutch East India Company" article is of a reasonable size in which the merging of "Dutch East India Company in Indonesia" will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. DeVerm (talk) 16:14, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Support - as initiator of this merge proposal I support it of course. The reasons are the first three points of the WP rationale for merger DeVerm (talk) 16:30, 20 January 2011 (UTC).
 * Comment A merge in Dutch_East_Indies is also possible. Joost 99 (talk) 17:01, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I contributed that background section recently and after some intensive editing/compacting rounds between editor Merbabu and me, we ended up with the current version which has not a single place/settlement listed anymore, with which I agree because it is just background for the article, which is about the post 1800 period of the East Indies.
 * I wonder if you would support the merge here instead, or would you oppose that? DeVerm (talk) 19:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose - the VOC article is about, well, the company. The VOC in Indonesia article was intended to be about that period of Indonesian history. This is a stand alone topic and notable in its own right. The article is not good quality but can be developed further, with time and effort. The existence of an article is based on notability alone. Not, based on article quality. Please see WP:N: Notability does not directly affect the content of articles, but only their existence. Ie, the solution to a poor quality article on a notable topics is to fix it, not delete it.--Merbabu (talk) 19:28, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * (after edit conflict) I would go for a oppose, because it would break the History of Indonesia series, (although the article History of Indonesia points to the Dutch East-india Co article, and not to the separate Dutch East India Company in Indonesia). The best option imo would be to expand/improve the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia page, because that now just treats the period till 1620 (and also to avoid this article getting to large). But that is not something I would be able to do. Joost 99 (talk) 19:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Joost. This is exactly my thinking. There is indeed an attempt to keep periods of Indonesian history together. Indeed, calls to delete the "in Indonesia" article are ostensibly sensible with the article in such poor shape and the scope ill-defined. There is a degree of logic to the merge proposal, but it is not the full picture. However, it is notable, and it should expand it further. There is a lot in the VOC company article with little relevance to Indonesian history and one has to pick one's way through it to find bits related to Indonesia. (a list of VOC ships is completely irrelevant to Indonesian history as is most of the "Growth" section). There is no clear narrative from an Indonesian history perspective. Similarly, an Indonesian period article would have much that didn't necessarily relate to the VOC as a company. Ie, it's 2 centuries of Indonesian history.
 * Perhaps a name change could also help - say "Indonesia during the Dutch East Indies era"? Or even "Early European colonialism in the Indonesian archipelago" (and they're just the first two things that came into my head without much thought). The latter highlights that it initially it was not just the Dutch.
 * This is all good inspiration for me to develop the article further. In summary, one article is about a company. The other (was at least intended to be) about a period of history in Indonesia.--Merbabu (talk) 19:55, 20 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Oppose and see Template:History of Indonesia for the context. --Tenmei (talk) 20:16, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment I don't object to the title at all... I object to the article contents, no edits since 2008 when the "let's wait for expansion" argument was used, and the links to it that are put in other articles, especially when used for Main article links, because it is far from that for this period of Indonesian History. Also, a very disappointing reader experience when the main article has less detail and only a couple percent of history timeline compared to the summary that links to it. I did not go for delete because the VOC article could use better coverage of this subject too. However, I agree that expanding the article would be the best solution. DeVerm (talk) 22:38, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * An immediate but temporary solution is therefore to link to the VOC article, because on balance, it is currently the better of the two articles, even if there is still a need to develop the other article as described above. Or better still, might be to do as you propose and redirect now - but temporarily. The history is there, and the redirect can be reverted once the article is developed. cheers --Merbabu (talk) 22:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * redirect until article is developed sounds much better than hunting links now and again later when article has developed. I don't see any technical issues with it (link to redirect is okay, right?). I'll let this discussion run a bit more to cover timezones and if nothing changes, implement redirect and remove merger tags. tnx --DeVerm (talk) 03:19, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Seems ok to me. Only question: where did the page go? Maybe a link to the work in progress would be nice so people can still contribute (although as I understand the article slept for the last two years). Joost 99 (talk) 12:43, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The content of the page before it was redirected is at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dutch_East_India_Company_in_Indonesia&oldid=408995645 R'n'B (call me Russ) 19:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

The article should display the exact location of Holland proper on the outline map or proper map of Netherlands, please!
Dear friend , In view of the confused use of the word for both the proper Holland as wll as whole of Netherlands it is desirable to include a map of Proper Holland inside the Map of Netherlands in order to have a proper comprehension of its location. Thanking you. Warm regards. R N Jha, Patna ( Bihar),India contact:  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.250.242.121 (talk) 08:58, 14 April 2012 (UTC)


 * That is not for this article because this is not about geography of the Netherlands or Holland. I would suggest you look at those articles.
 * In the context of this article this issue makes no reals sense if you note that the Dutch East India Company was not an exclusively Hollandic Enterprise. The chamber of Middelburg (Zealand - not Holland) held about 25% of the company and was the second largest after the Amsterdam Chamber. Arnoutf (talk) 11:38, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Boundaries between plagiarism, quotes, citations ....
A few words, fine, a whole sentence, yes, if in quotations marks - but NOT entire paragraphs,as here "Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC’s nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.". This was taken from the publication cited. Also I see there is an earlier query about the figure of one million "sent" to Asia,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dutch_East_India_Company#I_deleted_amount_of_people_sent_to_asia. This number is grossly exaggerated for the times, no matter what source is cited. Numbers that size came into reality only with migrations to the United States and South America. Rui &#39;&#39;Gabriel&#39;&#39; Correia (talk) 23:04, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I deleted amount of people sent to asia
I deleted the amount of europeans sent to asia by the dutch east india company because most of those europeans would have been repeat travelers so there was not 1 million different individual europeans brought to asia by the dutch east india company. It makes it sound like the dutch invasion of asia was 1 million people while in reality it was only about 1000 dutch east india workers in asia at one time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.103.140.243 (talk) 17:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Here are the edits in question. It seems good to me.  Thanks for checking in on the talk page.   Blue Rasberry    (talk)   17:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)


 * Beg to differ. Checked the cited Unesco ref for original text. It is exact and reliable. So changed it back. Do not delete a reliably cited text without providing superior refs pls. Rgds,

KARL RAN (talk) 21:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Someone just asked me about this - I checked the reference again.
 * It is published on the UNESCO website but is only a paper collected from their archives, and there is no claim that anyone has ever checked this paper. It is not even a published paper- it is just some kind of draft posted on their website. This is an extraordinary claim and the sourcing is weak.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   23:49, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
 * It is published on the UNESCO website but is only a paper collected from their archives, and there is no claim that anyone has ever checked this paper. It is not even a published paper- it is just some kind of draft posted on their website. This is an extraordinary claim and the sourcing is weak.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   23:49, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Redirect from Spice Wars
Is this still appropriate? I got to this article from an attempt to link to Spice Wars and found very little of use to me in the article. It appears from the rationale given for the redirect that the information was redundant, which makes me think it might have referred to information that has since been edited out of this article. I don't have the familiarity with the revision history of this article (nor the free time to attempt to delve into said history) to know for sure. Other articles are mentioned as containing "redundant" information from the old Spice Wars article so one of them might be a more appropriate redirect. Either that or restoring whatever information (if any) was lost either to this article or a recreated Spice Wars article. Personally I'd like to see the latter. 70.51.115.177 (talk) 20:33, 20 March 2013 (UTC)

Problem in the "Decline" section
The decline section includes the extract below, I have highlighted the inconsistency: it says from 1690-1760 only one decade (1710-1720) saw dividends greater than profits, it then says after 1730 it changed and in every decade but 1760-1770 the payout was more than profit... there is an overlap of 1730-40 and 1740-50 and 1750-60 where this suggests the company both did and did not payout more than their profits in dividends... I dont have access to the original source to confirm how this should be altered but it is clearly wrong!

"A self-inflicted wound was the VOC's dividend policy. The dividends distributed by the company had exceeded the surplus it garnered in Europe in every decade but one (1710–1720) from 1690 to 1760. However, in the period up to 1730 the directors shipped resources to Asia to build up the trading capital there. Consolidated bookkeeping therefore probably would have shown that total profits exceeded dividends. In addition, between 1700 and 1740 the company retired 5.4 million guilders of long-term debt. The company therefore was still on a secure financial footing in these years. This changed after 1730. While profits plummeted the bewindhebbers only slightly decreased dividends from the earlier level. Distributed dividends were therefore in excess of earnings in every decade but one (1760–1770). To accomplish this, the Asian capital stock had to be drawn down by 4 million guilders between 1730 and 1780, and the liquid capital available in Europe was reduced by 20 million guilders in the same period. The directors were therefore constrained to replenish the company's liquidity by resorting to short-term financing from anticipatory loans, backed by expected revenues from home-bound fleets." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.11.134.11 (talk) 04:44, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Key Dutch Sources
I've found this section in the wiki code, and it seems quite detailed and vital to the section, but it won't show up actually on the article no matter what I try in a sandbox. Can anyone help? It's below 'Further Reading' in the code. I can get ti to appear above 'Further Reading', but now eher it currently is below it. Cheers Skinny87 (talk) 20:25, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * They were commented out with this note:
 * Hope that helps. J.d ela noy gabs adds  20:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Hope that helps. J.d ela noy gabs adds  20:59, 20 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, that's what means, sorry. Thanks for the help! Skinny87 (talk) 10:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

The section is there now. I'm not sure if the sources are used, but not all sources are primary Dutch sources, or in Dutch. Thus there is no logical coherence for this section. This section should probably be redone as "Important Primary Source Publications" which would include very different materials, but would be of greater value. Any other books which are worthwhile should be moved into the further reading section. (Dewobroto (talk) 09:31, 25 May 2014 (UTC))

Pera
Perak isn't even mentioned on its dab page, but it was the period spelling at least for the Dutch. — Llywelyn II   06:51, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Dutch East India Company wars with Asian nations
In the Trịnh–Nguyễn War in Vietnam, the Dutch East India Company allied with the Trinh against the Nguyen. The Nguyen defeated a Dutch at a major naval battle in 1643. <!-- A Cambodian Prince was convinced to convert to Islam by Malay merchants in 1642, and took control of the country. He and the Malays declared a jihad and initiated a massacre in Phnom Penh of Dutch Christians, and in 1643-1644 waged a war against the Dutch in the Mekong delta which the Cambodians won. The Dutch were defeated and driven out. 
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The Dutch were driven out from the Pescadores by Ming Chinese forces in the 1620's, several Dutch raiss were defeated and dutch sailors taken as POWs. <!--
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The Dutch were defeated at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay by Zheng Zhilong

The Dutch east India company rule was ended on Taiwan at the Siege of Fort Zeelandia by Zheng Chenggong

The Durch East India company was also defeated by the Sulu Sultanate

Rajmaan (talk) 20:45, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * What point are you trying to make in this very long post? Arnoutf (talk) 13:48, 24 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Something about anticolonialism, I think, but probably the effect was something closer to "how much easier it is to cut and paste URLs than to use a source." I've commented out the laundry lists of URLs to try to make his underlying claims come through more clearly. — Llywelyn II   06:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Problem With $7 Trillion Valuation for VOC
This is my first time editing or communicating with Wikipedia editors in any way, so I apologize if I'm breaking any rules of etiquette. I think it would be a good idea to remove any mention of the present-day dollar value of the Dutch East India Company, and in particular the statement "At its height, the VOC was valued at USD 7 trillion in 2015 dollars." should be deleted. There is actually no good source for any present-day dollar value to the best of my knowledge.

I've been involved in some discussions on the /r/askhistorians subreddit over the historical valuation of the Dutch East India Company, and I discovered that the article in The Atlantic cited for the seven trillion dollar figure does not warrant the claim at all. If you look at the article in question, Lafrance's source for a seven trillion dollar valuation is this article in Bloomberg. If you look through that article you'll see that the only price mentioned is an auctioneer's estimate for the value of a paper share of the VOC as a collector's item. Is she saying that the historical value of the VOC is equal to the number of shares issued times the price of a paper share at auction in 2015? She has no evidence for that figure, and the citation implies an entirely invalid method for calculating the value. I don't think that the source can be taken seriously, and I think it might be a good idea to remove that statement from the article.

In fact, I think it is more likely that she took the seven trillion dollar value from a fairly widely-circulating article from the Motley Fool in which a 78 million guilder value is given during the tulip mania bubble of 1637, which is said to be a sum of $7.6 trillion in 2012 US dollars. But that would require 1 fl. (1637) = $95,000 USD (2012), when the true value of a 1637 guilder adjusted for inflation is probably something like $14 USD. That article from 2012 is the earliest source I can find for a seven trillion dollar VOC. No method is given and no specific source is cited for these values (ironically, it does cite "Wikipedia" as a source for its graph of largest companies in history).

It is interesting to note that these trillion-dollar valuations for the VOC are always mentioned in comparisons to Apple in order to say that it isn't the most valuable company in history. I'm not sure if that is significant; I just found it an interesting coincidence. GnomeyGustav (talk) 08:50, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * I erased it-- it is not based on any reliable source who is familiar with the Company. It multiplies the supposed $700,000 value of one antique share certificate by 10,000,000 (the number of shares originally issued.)  Antiques are valued by their rarity and only four or five now exist. if there were  thousands of the these antique certificates on the market in 2015, they would sell for a dollar each. Rjensen (talk) 11:35, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * That's exactly what I figured she did. Thanks! GnomeyGustav (talk) 10:18, 26 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Actually, I still have questions about this. Where does the figure of 10,000,000 total shares come from? GnomeyGustav (talk) 20:53, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Any ideas on what the value of the company was? NeoStalinist (talk) 04:22, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Protection for this page
I want this page to ether have all edits by IP addresses and new user to be subjected to review or semi-protection to prevent vandalism. 202.62.16.78 (talk) 00:20, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Slavery section
I deleted the slavery-section. Although it is an interesting topic, copy/pasting copyrighted material is wrong. Moreover, WP:UNDUE came into account for describing the Cape Colony-situation.Jeff5102 (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Questionable Comparison
The article contains the following piece, twice: "Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century." The stated source confirms the data for the VOC itself, but the other data is not mentioned. And some of it looks a bit questionable. The VOC sent "almost a million Europeans", fine. But "the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795". We know that, 882,412 people? Not 882,411 or 882,413? From what I can tell, this number is just made up. There is no way we would have such a precise number for the rest of Europe combined in that era. And if that number is made up, then maybe so is the rest.Elanguescence (talk) 14:12, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Single editor's article
Since January 2017 this article has been extended by User:Zingvin in many dozens of edits, such that the current article text is theirs almost exclusively. It may be wise to have a thorough check on all of this. Marcocapelle (talk) 22:32, 29 May 2017 (UTC)

Category clutter
There is an enormous category clutter at the bottom of the article. I would suggest we remove most categories that are not in the tree of Category:Companies, especially removing all categories by country or continent, because this article is really about the company and mentions the history of any colonized country only in passing. Any objections? Marcocapelle (talk) 08:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)


 * To make matters worse, we have an IP who is adding links to categories within the lead. They also appear to be adding overlink throughout the article, linking the same words and phrases again and again, and cross-linking to different sections within the article. I have put a message on their talk page asking them to review policies for WP:OVERLINK and WP:LEAD. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 15:07, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Notes - References and Bibliography
I noticed that this article now use notes and references both in a numbered version. That is confusing and I would suggest that it is changed in such a way that notes use characters (a,b,c) and references numbers. (as is done in e.g. the The Hague article).

Secondly I noticed that the referencing is done in the historical way - that is mentioning a source (but not the complete reference) and adding the page numbers. This is resulting in my opinion in a maintenance nightmare - where a separate bibliography has to added and maintained in which full references of all cited sources can be found, but that at the same time does not get bloated with miscellaneous other sources that are not used in the article and provide an indiscriminate library listing of VOC sources (as seems to have happened here). Personally I would prefer that the references contain the full citation info, making a separate bibliography redundant. But I do not know how to add page numbers without creating redundant full source citations. Anyone has suggestions here? Arnoutf (talk) 09:31, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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History templates
According to WP:OVERLINK, a test for adding links is "whether reading the article you're about to link to would help someone understand the article you are linking from." Here, the history of the VOC informs those histories, but not the other way around: links to the ancient history of Indonesia tell us nothing about the VOC. They are tangential. The MOS notes that most links are never clicked at all, and that links on a page compete for the attention of readers. This page already has a glut of links -- in the first two paragraphs, nearly 20% of the words are linked, including numerous common terms that the Overlink policy discourages linking to. Further, these templates disrupt the formatting of the page creating clutter and a logjam of displaced images. On my laptop screen, these templates displace images all the way down to the Shareholder activism section. They add little about the VOC and destroy the page formatting. They are not necessary, and please stop adding them to the page. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 15:30, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
 * (What's more, I can't help but wonder if IP is another sockpuppet of  aka, who was indefinitely blocked by  for sockpuppeting. Zingvin similarly added massive overlinks, categories, and templates to the page.) Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 15:49, 16 November 2017 (UTC)


 * I agree with Laszlo Panaflex on both counts. Yes the VOC help understanding the history of e.g. Taiwin, but the non-VOC history of Taiwan is of little relevance for understanding of the VOC making this addition WP:UNDUE. Also these large template are overburdening the article shifting down image unacceptably. I would add a third reason the selection (Indonesia, Taiwan, South Africa, Mauritius included, but not Netherlands itself, nor any of the other important trading post listed under Dutch_East_India_Company) seems arbitrary which raises concerns in relation to WP:NPOV. So yes - I fully support removal. If you disagree please provide compelling arguments why these templates are essential for understanding VOC (a simple statement "this is important" is not convincing as it is a value judgement which is meaningless without backing of undeniable facts and reasoning) Arnoutf (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070220113704/http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=454 to http://www.gresham.ac.uk/event.asp?PageId=45&EventId=454

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My blanket revert of 1 week of frantic anon additions
The last week (since 24 January) over 30 edits were made by anon editors, mainly adding a substantial amount of material to the lead. No content relevant edit summary as to why this was added was given either here or in edit summaries. As the lead was already overly long and convoluted (see WP:LEAD) these additions (however well intended as I have no reason to doubt the good faith of these edits) have in my view done more harm than good.

As it is simply infeasible to track through each of these many edits to judge what elements are relevant and not, I have blanket reverted to the situation of 24 January. Before re-adding I would ask the editors to carefully consider (a) whether the material should be part of the lead (which should be a very concise summary of the article) or in the article proper (b) to provide at least content relevant edit summaries and preferably a talk page argument why this additional material should be added at all (c) show as much constraint in adding material at all as the article is already fairly lengthy as (see WP:LENGTH) and indiscriminate addition of details, illustrations etc, is likely to make readability (and thus the article as a whole) worse rather than better. Arnoutf (talk) 10:15, 3 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, this week of edits is pretty similar to most weeks. Dozens of additions, mostly to the lead, adding every tangential notion, link, or list of pages even vaguely connected to the subject. Many of the notes in the lead are just lists of pages. The page is over 220k and growing, nearly twice as large as recommended. Laszlo Panaflex (talk) 14:14, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

bloating of gallery
In the last few weeks the gallery at the bottom of the page has been increased from 18 to 48 images (or in other words it has been almost tripled). This was mainly done by anon user Special:Contributions/203.205.34.102. While the editor clearly shows interest in the topic, it is fairly unclear why all these images including a lot of generic bronze statues of people important within the VOC were added. Per WP:NOTIMAGE I would argue we need to prune down the current gallery to a more focussed selection and make sure it does not grow too large. If there are no objections I will do so in a few days time. Arnoutf (talk) 12:12, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * As there have been no objections in a month I take this as consensus that the gallery needs to be pruned. I did so trying to (1) keep as much as possible a distribution across geographical interest of VOC (2) removing stuff that is only tangentially related (image of wallabies - really?) (3) removing images where VOC heritage is not clear (low quality image, unrecognisable porcelain). I am happy to accept a different set, but let's keep the number of images under control. Arnoutf (talk) 09:15, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

lead
I made a first attempt to edit the lead. The problems I encountered were (a) way too long (b) poorly written (endless lists, redundancies across paragraphs, etc) (c) overly detailed. Although it only has three paragraphs now, the first two are still a bit longer than I would like, and some copyediting would be needed. But can we please not extend it too much beyond its current length. If you think your material warrants inclusion - put it in the main text. Arnoutf (talk) 10:04, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

trivia lists
Somehwere halfway through the article, the prose is getting slowly replace by neigh endless sections of listings, sometimes even without explanation. Per WP:IINFO this is not what Wikipedia is about. I suggest to clean out (read remove) sections. The material might be brought back later as prose, but not as such trivia listings please. Arnoutf (talk) 10:17, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Main competitors
This section needs citations. How would they have had to compete with the Levant Company? Prinsgezinde (talk) 22:13, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

latest changes...
The Warwick Funnell & Jeffrey Robertson quote is an excercise in futility, since that point was made in the lede. Mentioning "Eurasian people" is less than useful, especially since the specific groups have already been mentioned and "Eurasian" includes Turks, Mongols and Chinese. Kleuske (talk) 08:16, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

Voice
In parts of this article, (History/Origins in particular), some of the phrasing is overly ornate. The narrative voice verges on the dramatic.

This... "The stage was thus set for the four-ship exploratory expedition by Frederick de Houtman in 1595 to Banten, the main pepper port of West Java, where they clashed with both the Portuguese and indigenous Indonesians.

Could just as well say... "In 1595, Frederick de Houtman led a four ship exploratory expedition led to Banten, the main pepper port of West Java, where they clashed with both the Portuguese and indigenous Indonesians. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1503:E16B:E07F:2580:4CF2:E45B (talk) 01:55, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Spelling errors seem to be British English
There's a heading that suggests fixing the misspellings in this article, but I can only spot British English variants of words. Those can be kept the same, right? --Edward Versaii (talk) 18:17, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes - the article is in fact tagged for British English. The tags, which I've removed, probably relate to the section above. I don't agree with him, & he could try editing iot himself. There are far too many tags on this article. Johnbod (talk) 18:36, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ha. I have just turned up from GOCE to give this article a copy edit. But it seems that the tag has been removed, so I am saved the work. Best of luck with the article. Gog the Mild (talk) 12:04, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

Initial trade with Mughal India is incorrect
Why does this article incorrectly say trade initially with Mughal India? Clearly later in the article it states Indonesia and Java as the inital point of trade. This is clearly incorrect and conflates mainland India with insular India (as Indonesia was once known). Could someone correct this who owns the page. Thanks. In fact Indonesia was a Dutch Colony and main focus of the Dutch Company for most of its history. Its puzzling that mainland/Mughal India should be nominated in a quote that clearly was about the British East India company and that was also wrong too! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C4:4B8F:C800:D431:8072:BD0A:6B60 (talk) 13:34, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Nobody owns the page. The requirements for making a correction are mainly that you support the new text with reliable sources. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 05:04, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * A check against Vereenigde_Oostindische_Compagnie suggests that the objection above is legitimate, but I do not have access to the sources. nl: states that the scope of the patent (charter?) is for trade "East of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan", and does not mention Mughal India. &middot; &middot; &middot; Peter Southwood (talk): 05:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Mughal India was "East of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Strait of Magellan", so it would fall within the Company's limits; that doesn't, of course, mean the company actually did trade with Mughal India, only that it was within its patent/charter to do so.MayerG (talk) 02:36, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 * for f****'s sake, as the article says, way way down, we have an entire group of articles on Dutch India, a major thing spanning 3 centuries. Johnbod (talk) 19:18, 29 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Please see also this map (from 1907): File:Joppen1907India1700a.jpg. Trading with the Mughals Empire can mean trading with one of the little Kingdoms that were tributaries of the empire, and not necessarily regular ones.  For a different European Company, the Portuguese, for example, and a different Indian empire Vijayanagara Empire,  see here  It should be noted that the European presence in India predates that of the Mughals.  Vasco da Gama arrived ashore in India in 1498; the Mughals swept down the plains of the Punjab in 1526.   Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:35, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

What did the dutch trade for the "spices"?
What did the dutch trade to the asians and indians to purchase the spices from asians and indians? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.40.220.230 (talk) 16:34, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure about the Dutch, but in general European Companies paid in gold or silver. Much of the gold of the Indian princes was from South America.  Fowler&amp;fowler  «Talk»  10:45, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

Map
Perhaps a map from the Spice trade article could be implemented into this article? --TimTheDragonRider (talk) 10:58, 8 February 2022 (UTC)