The Rise of Chinese Mercantile Power in VOC East Indies

Abstract

In the VOC times, Chinese merchants not only kept on playing a prominent intermediary role in the traditional external trade of the East Indies with East Asia, but also began to play a prominent intermediary role in the internal trade all over the archipelagos. This article argues, from an organizational perspective, that economic complementarity between the Dutch East India Company and Chinese business networks was responsible for Chinese mercantile success. It also shows how incentive constraints and adaptive inefficiency led to the decline and fall of the VOC.