I am doing a case with a group of lawyers located in Perth, Australia. Western Australia is an intriguing part of the world for me for some reason and I have no explanation for that. One of my old high school pals in Rome was from Perth, but it’s hard to believe that has anything to do with it. I suspect that it has more to do with the fact that the western side of an entire continent is a place where I have never had any business or touristic reason for visiting. Western Australia’s economy is dominated by mining and resources by a wide margin. The key sectors are iron ore, oil and gas (LNG), gold, lithium, nickel, alumina, and various critical minerals. There’s also a fair bit of agriculture (wheat, barley, and sheep farming). Western Australia is also a genuine tourist destination, though it’s less globally famous than the east coast (Sydney, Great Barrier Reef, Melbourne). Its appeal is different since it’s vast, remote, and dramatic rather than urban. The main draws are the Ningaloo Reef, the Margaret River (wine region south of Perth, known for wineries, surfing, and caves), The Kimberley (remote, rugged wilderness in the north; gorges, waterfalls, and Aboriginal rock art, popular for expedition cruises and 4WD trips), Karijini National Park with dramatic red gorges and swimming holes, the Pinnacles (otherworldly limestone rock formations in Nambung National Park), and lots of beaches. While I find the area interesting, I doubt I will ever visit (never say never, right?). So, when I stumbled across a book about Western Australia, I was drawn to it.
The book is Peter FitzSimons’ Batavia (2011). In 1629, the Batavia, a flagship of the Dutch East India Company, set sail from Amsterdam on its maiden voyage to the Dutch East Indies, loaded with treasure to pay for the highly demanded spices available in the East Indies. Off the coast of Western Australia, the Batavia struck a reef and wrecked. The commander, Francisco Pelsaert, and the skipper set out in a small boat on a roughly 1,500-mile journey to Java to summon help, leaving over 250 survivors stranded on a small group of islands (Houtman Abrolhos). Left behind, one of the ship’s senior officers, Jeronimus Cornelisz, a charismatic but mentally unstable man already involved in a mutiny plot before the wreck, seized control. He orchestrated a brutal reign of terror, organizing the systematic massacre of over 100 men, women, and children to conserve resources and eliminate anyone who might oppose him if a rescue ship arrived. A group of soldiers led by Wiebbe Hayes, stranded on a separate island, discovered fresh water and became the resistance, fighting off Cornelisz’s men. When Pelsaert finally returned with a rescue ship, he found the massacre’s aftermath, put down the mutineers, and had Cornelisz and other ringleaders tried and executed on the islands. The story is often described as a real-life Lord of the Flies, a study of how quickly civilization can collapse into tyranny and violence under isolation and desperation. FitzSimons’ version of the tale leans into vivid, novelistic dramatization rather than a more rigorous historical account.
The book is teaching me a great deal about history, especially about areas like the Dutch East India Company or VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), which was one of the most significant and powerful commercial enterprises in history. It was established by the Dutch government, which granted it a 21-year monopoly on trade in Asia, including the exclusive right to wage war, negotiate treaties, coin money, and establish colonies, essentially operating as a quasi-sovereign state. It was formed by merging several competing Dutch trading companies to consolidate the spice trade and better compete against Portugal and later England. The VOC is widely considered the world’s first modern multinational corporation and the first company to issue tradable shares to the public, effectively creating the first stock exchange (Amsterdam). This let it raise enormous capital for expensive, risky long-distance voyages. At its height, the VOC dominated the spice trade in nutmeg, cloves, pepper, and cinnamon, controlling production in the Indonesian archipelago (particularly the Moluccas/Spice Islands). It established its headquarters at Batavia (modern Jakarta) in 1619, which became the center of Dutch power in Asia. The company built a vast trading network stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, maintained its own army and navy, and forcibly monopolized certain spice markets, sometimes through brutal means, including the massacre of the Bandanese population to control nutmeg production. The VOC connected Europe, Africa, and Asia, trading spices, textiles, porcelain, and other goods, and it played a central role in the Dutch Golden Age, generating immense wealth for the Netherlands. By the 18th century, corruption, mismanagement, heavy debts, and increasing competition (especially from the British East India Company) eroded its position. The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780–1784) badly damaged its trade. The company was formally dissolved in 1799, with its debts and possessions taken over by the Dutch government. Its territories becoming the basis for the Dutch East Indies, which remained a colony until Indonesian independence in 1945-49. The VOC is remembered both as a landmark in corporate and financial history (shareholding, corporate governance) and for its violent colonial practices like forced labor, monopolistic coercion, and wars against local populations to secure trade dominance.
When I learn about things like the VOC and the Batavia incident I am forced to think about our world and our situation today. These historical stories fall into the category of realizations that man has struggled forever with the balancing act of power and progress versus humanity and caring. Neither Donald Trump nor Vladimir Putin invented the idea of putting power ahead of all else. Through history there have been many “Power-focused” leaders who ruthlessly consolidated power, pursued empire-building ambition, tried to exercise sheer control over their subjects. From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Qin Shi Huang (the first emperor of unified China), Genghis Khan and Ivan the Terrible, the ancient and medieval world was full of them. In more modern times, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-Sung, Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini all went down that path. The common threads people point to for these leaders is a willingness to use violence or coercion, the elimination of rivals, a disregard for existing institutions/laws when inconvenient, and often genuine skill at building loyalty or fear-based control systems. They weren’t all as openly commercial or transactional as the VOC or Donald Trump, but they all operated with one overriding goal…to place power over people rather than honor the intention of giving power to the people.