Kolonialisierung als Lernprozess. Portugiesen und Holländer im Asienhandel des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts

Abstract The paper starts by emphasizing three characteristics of colonial trade: It is Europeans who systematically explore and open a new trade route to Asia; they operate in and they monopolize a new space for transport and trade - the oceans; this necessitates the development of a new means of transport, the self-reliant and well-armed ship, fitted out for expeditions and trade ventures. But in order to establish such an exclusively European, exclusively sea-borne and exclusively expedition-based trade empire, both the Dutch and the Portuguese had to learn to master two challenges. They had to solve the technical problems resulting from the extreme distances which their ships had to cover. They had to solve the economic problems accruing from the extraordinarily high transportation costs, limited storage space and unpredictable markets. It was the Dutch Trading Company, the VOC, which first succeeded in mastering these two sets of problems: on the basis of a new form of trade organisation, monopoly trade, it contrived to make the new trade route profitable.