VEREENIGDE OOSTINDISCHE COMPAGNIE.

V233 comes from Loeser’s website and V222 from Mark Sensen’s FOTW illustration. The source discusses an orange, white and light blue flag with a black VOC monogram on the white stripe in connection with Hudson’s Half Moon in 1609. For Van Riebeck’s arrival at Table Bay on 6 April 1652, the cited account assumes that the old orange-white-pale-blue company flag flew alongside the red-white-blue national flag; Rosanoski explicitly questions how safely that can be assumed without definite records.

V223 and V224 are Amsterdam variants with the small letters A and OC. The Flag Book of the United States suggests that Hudson may also have carried the Amsterdam chamber flag, with red, white and black stripes, distinct from the company’s orange-white-blue flag. This possible use is not asserted as certain.

Sensen’s V227 has the small letters D and OC, V228 E and OC, and V229 H and OC, representing the respective chamber variants.

V226 is Loughran’s Middelberg company flag; V230 is Sensen’s FOTW illustration for the chamber named Middleburg in that passage.

V231 and V232 have the small letters R and OC. A Ludolf Backhuysen painting of Rotterdam harbour shows a yacht with a white flag bearing the Rotterdam cypher and red-white-blue stripes along the top and bottom. Jos Poels records similarly striped white flags for administrators of naval admiralties; the suggestion that this was a VOC Rotterdam administrator’s flag remains tentative.

V225, Bakker’s Cape flag made using Sensen’s images, is expressly labelled doubtful. Bakker cites Ensiklopedie van Suidelike Afrika, 1967, as suggesting flag use after 1652, while Sensen says that the small-c Cape cypher is known but its use on flags is not. Andre van de Loo notes that Brownell describes the VOC cypher with a small C for Cabo and separately mentions company flags, without explicitly combining the two. Pama also illustrates the cypher. Early drawings use Cabo, offering a reason for C rather than K. Van de Loo had found no evidence of the combined cypher on land or ship flags; possible use by a travelling governor or Cape-based ships is only his supposition. Whitehorn drew attention to another web version, and the Cape-specific cypher should not be treated as a general East Indies emblem.

The AOC versions are disputed. Loughran gives Algemeene Oostindische Compagnie, a “Universal East India Co.” founded before 1609, and associates it with the later Tweede Westindische Compagnie; Rosanoski questions the relationship. The design has a large black A with O and C at the ends of its crossbar. Sensen presents A852 as another VOC version, with A interpreted either as Amsterdam or Algemeene. Whitney Smith explains AOC readings as misread upside-down VOC monograms. Rosanoski points out that simply inverting the monogram would reverse the C as well. Bakker had not seen an AOC monogram in his observations of seventeenth-century art and regards Van der Laars’s apparent A as an inverted V with a small V between O and C. Loughran’s red-topped A851 is assigned to Hudson in 1609–1621, although his own account says orange continued until 1650; Rosanoski therefore argues that the illustrated colour should be A852. Loeser instead calls A851 a modern variant. D. Prothero supplied an A851 example from an anonymous 1813 flag book edited by Brightly and Childs.

The later correspondence does not settle the question. Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg found Algemeene references in the VOC Surat registers, including outgoing messages naming Governor-General Petrus Albertus van der Parra on behalf of the Netherlands and its “algemeene Oost Indische compagnie”. He rejects Rosanoski’s suggested “commonly known as” interpretation on historical capitalisation and grammatical grounds. Rosanoski clarifies that he meant a shortened general company name, not a C for “commonly”, and continues to question the orientation needed to produce AOC. An online text dates the establishment of algemeene Oost Indische Compagnie to 20 March 1602, the same foundation date used for VOC. He therefore raises, without resolving, whether Algemeene was an original name replaced by Vereenigde at or soon after formation, or whether a separate minor company existed. Unless an original flag or logo can be found, he regards the AOC design as suspect.