Over half of the million or so men who embarked from Holland’s wharves for the East never returned. In the words of the economic historian Jan de Vries, “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Company swept the city streets of beggars and the unemployed.”38 The low quality of these recruits would eventually be the Achilles’ heel of the VOC. By contrast, the EIC realized that it needed men who could sail, handle cargo, and fight to serve on its relatively small and undermanned Indiamen. The English Company selected only the most qualified applicants and granted them exemption from the
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