East India House

In front of you is the building from which a large share of 17th-century world trade was run. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, was founded: a company with shares, its own army and the right to sign treaties and wage war in Asia. Its Amsterdam chamber, the most powerful of all, moved in here in 1606.

1The first great multinational

The building is attributed to Hendrick de Keyser, the city architect of the day. It was the first one built specifically for the Company, with meeting rooms, offices, warehouses and an auction room. This is where they decided which ships would sail, what would be bought, and at what price the pepper, nutmeg and cloves arriving from Asia would be sold. Shareholders, many of them ordinary townspeople, followed every scrap of news anxiously.

Much of the wealth that built Amsterdam's canals passed through these offices.

2The other side of the wealth

The VOC's success came at an enormous cost to other peoples. In 1621, Company troops led by Jan Pieterszoon Coen conquered the Banda Islands, in present-day Indonesia, to control the nutmeg trade; the local population was massacred, deported or enslaved. The Company also took part in the slave trade in the Indian Ocean. Today the Netherlands debates this past openly.

The VOC went bankrupt at the end of the 18th century and was dissolved in 1799. The building now belongs to the University of Amsterdam.

3What to look out for

• The bands of pale stone alternating with the brick, typical of De Keyser's style.
• The inner courtyard, reached from Oude Hoogstraat.
• The plainer canal front, best seen from the bridge over the Kloveniersburgwal.