The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the first company to establish a permanent trading post in Indonesia in 1602. In 1800, the Dutch crown took over the company and made all its territories a Dutch colony. Indonesia was only formally independent for a brief period of time in the 1940s.
The VOC had a monopoly on the spice trade in the early seventeenth century and were looking to expand their operations to the East Indies. In 1602, they sent …