Duit voor Nederlands Indië uit Holland,1803 1803

This coin was produced in 1803 by the Batavian Republic to be used in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The coin's imagery and function offer insight into the complex social, economic, and political relationship between the Netherlands and its colonies. The coin features the VOC logo, the Dutch East India Company, above the year. The VOC was a powerful trading company with a monopoly on trade with Asia. This coin reminds us that the company was an early form of multinational corporation, with the power to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, and coin money. Coins such as this one, and the global trading networks that sustained them, involved an unequal distribution of power and resources, both in the Netherlands and in the Dutch East Indies. To better understand this history, we can research the records of the VOC, preserved in Dutch state archives and libraries, as well as accounts of colonialism from Indonesian historians. The coin becomes a lens through which to understand the economic and political conditions of the time.