Dutch Discovery of Bali by Cornelis Houtman
- When
- 1597
- Where
- Bali
- Episodes
- 1
In 1597, Dutch merchant-explorer Cornelis de Houtman arrived in Bali during the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies. The voyage demonstrated that the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade was vulnerable, despite yielding only modest profit.
Episodes
Background and detail
Background. Cornelis de Houtman was a Dutch merchant seaman who commanded the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies. The voyage was financed by the Compagnie van Verre, a company formed in 1592 by his cousin Reynier Pauw and other Amsterdam merchants.
Arrival in Bali. In 1597, Houtman's expedition reached Bali. Although the voyage was difficult and yielded only modest profit, it successfully showed that the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade was vulnerable, leading to a flurry of subsequent Dutch trading voyages.
People involved
- Cornelis de Houtman · Dutch merchant-explorer and commander of the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies
Sources
- Bali Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-19
- Cornelis de Houtman Wikipedia, revision of 2026-05-03
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.