VOC

VOC may refer to:

East India

East India is a region of India consisting of the Indian states of West Bengal,Bihar,Jharkhand, Odisha and also the union territory Andaman and Nicobar Islands. West Bengal's capital Kolkata is the largest city of this region. The Kolkata Metropolitan Area is the country's third largest. The states of Odisha and West Bengal share some cultural and linguistic characteristics with Bangladesh and with the state of Assam.. Bengali is the most spoken language of this region and it is also the second most spoken language in India after Hindi. Odia is the only language in east India accorded the status of a Classical Language of India. Together with Bangladesh, West Bengal formed the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal before partition in 1947. The historic region of Bengal which was ruled by Nawabs of Bengal comprises the present, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Bangladesh from where the British started their conquest of India. Modern days Odisha in ancient time know as Kalinga, Utkala and ruled by indigenous mighty rulers of Mahameghavahana dynasty, Eastern Ganga dynasty and Gajapati Dynasty.

East India Company

The East India Company (EIC), also known as the Honourable East India Company and informally as John Company, was an English and later British joint-stock company, formed to pursue trade with the East Indies but ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and Qing China.

Originally chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies", the company rose to account for half of the world's trade, particularly trade in basic commodities that included cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, saltpetre, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India.

The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth on 31 December 1600, making it the oldest among several similarly formed European East India Companies. Wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Company's shares. The government owned no shares and had only indirect control.

The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions.Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown assuming direct control of India in the form of the new British Raj.

Dutch East India Company

The United East Indian Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC), referred to by the British as the Dutch East India Company, was originally established as a chartered company in 1602, when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on Dutch spice trade. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock. It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.

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.