[Leary]

I have found the calculations for these historic companies to be dubious. They mostly calculate the worth of a company in relation to some historical GDP figure and apply that percentage on a modern GDP figure.

Think about it, how can the Dutch East Indies company be worth $7 trillion dollars when the Netherlands today has a GDP of only $900 Billion, which is after centuries of economic growth.

The Dutch East Indies company may have been comparably more powerful in relation to its time though.

[hokumguru]

The VOC basically owned the entirety of trade in SEA. It's not hard to imagine a valuation of 7 trillion when they had a monopoly of an entire continent's worth of trade (spices!) for two centuries.

[Leary]

Let's put it this way. According to Maddison,

https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/relea...

The entire world's GDP in 1700 was $371 Billion (1990 International Dollars). That would mean the VOC's value then was ~10x the global GDP, which I find hard to believe.

Or if that doesn't convince you, consider the world population in 1700 was 700 million people. That would mean the Dutch Indies Company's value per person is $10,000!

[LolWolf]

10,000! is quite a large number, to be fair.

Kidding aside, I agree: I'm also quite dubious of this article's claim on the East India company being worth as much as was computed.