Themes
Relations with the Royal Family
King William I (1772-1843), founder of Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij. Oil painting by Jan Willem Pieneman, 1832.
Although Nederlandsche Handel-Maatschappij was never a state-owned company, and never bore the title
'Royal', it enjoyed close links with the royal household from the start. In fact NHM owed its existence to
the perseverance of Holland's merchant monarch, William I.
NHM was founded in 1824 in an attempt to rebuild the Dutch economy following its collapse in the late
eighteenth century and under the French occupation (1795-1813), and particularly to breathe new life into
Holland's Asian trade. The king was actively involved in its establishment. Investors in the nascent company
were guaranteed a 4.5 percent return by the royal patron. He also set the example by purchasing 4,000 shares
himself, effectively contributing four million guilders, as the register of shareholders testifies. The
monarch's special status among the shareholders is reflected in the title of the company's statutes (which
remained in force until 1934): Articles of Agreement. These were more in the form of a contract between the
king and the other shareholders than an arrangement between equal partners. Besides a number of concrete
royal privileges - including the appointment of directors (abandoned in 1929) and a personal oath of
integrity and secrecy - the statutes were formulated to allow the monarch to intervene in the company's
business as he considered fit, which he often did. A number of wild, grandiose and unprofitable commercial
schemes, in places like South America and China, are directly attributable to royal initiatives. The king
treated NHM as a personal intelligence service, banker, commissionaire and his representative in the East
Indies administration.
After William I abdicated in 1840 and the end of the royal guarantee in 1850, the monarch's influence
declined. Yet members of the Dutch royal family continued to maintain a major shareholding in Nederlandsche
Handel-Maatschappij. Registered shares were issued to William II, William III, Princess Marianne, Prince
Frederik and Queen Wilhelmina.
This relationship with the House of Orange remained close in the twentieth century. In 1936, while engaged
to Princess Juliana, Prince Bernhard spent three months working at NHM's head office on Amsterdam's
Vijzelstraat, to acquaint himself with the Dutch economy and that of Dutch East Indies. Even after the
merger with Twentsche Bank in 1964, the flags continued to be hoisted on royal birthdays and each branch was
supplied with a state portrait of the sovereign.