This should not be downvoted, it is historically accurate, the VOC imported 10's of thousands of slaves to do work that they were not prepared to pay for.
It's a nice example of there being a huge crime at the foundation of huge riches, the VOC was definitely not a clean company by any stretch of the imagination and to this day the names of those who were responsible for the worst atrocities are proudly on display in the streets of various Dutch cities. Nothing to be proud of.
Slaves were merchandise for the VOC but they did not import many slaves to do work [1]. They typically (ab)used the local population to do that. Still nothing to be proud of, but it is a different story than slaves that were brought to the Americas to work on plantations. Exploitation of the local people would certainly be unethical by today's standards, it wasn't unethical back then and it also wasn't a crime (although you probably meant the word "crime" figuratively).
[1]> the Dutch had only a relatively insignificant share in the Atlantic slave trade—never averaging much more than 5–6 per cent of the total.
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/545
It's an interesting discussion. Liverpool was a huge trading port and a powerful city for a long time, mostly built from the slave trade. No local slaves, but plenty of people who became rich from slavery.
"Overall, Liverpool ships transported half of the 3 million Africans carried across the Atlantic by British slavers."
We should include the enslaved countries (in Asia, Africa, etc), and whole nations made to work for them and their pockets. 2/3rds of the world were subjects to the East India companies and related colonizers...
I don't agree. Why are you so sure that you know what is obviously right and obviously wrong? That is a viewpoint which is both arrogant, and also has no objective grounding to talk about.
Murder, slavery, child molestation... some things are obviously wrong. If you feel that you need a societal framework to determine whether those are wrong or not then there is an ethical issue.
It's a nice example of there being a huge crime at the foundation of huge riches, the VOC was definitely not a clean company by any stretch of the imagination and to this day the names of those who were responsible for the worst atrocities are proudly on display in the streets of various Dutch cities. Nothing to be proud of.