By the time that Coenraad van Beuningen, director of the VOC Amsterdam chamber, worded his concerns on the management of the Company in 1685, the VOC had acquired itself an empire. Apart from being the largest European shipping firm operating on the Cape route, the Company operated a large intra-Asian trade and had acquired for itself a position as a territorial power in parts of littoral Asia and southern Africa, with all the trappings of sovereignty that that entailed. In the eastern Indonesian archipelago, on parts of Java, especially around Batavia itself; in the coastal lowlands of Ceylon; in parts of Malabar; as well as around the recently founded city of Cape Town the VOC was an administrator and ruler, as well as a merchant. This dual role brought with it inherent tensions which could not easily be resolved. These tensions between merchant and ruler explain the debates that were waged within the Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on issues such as colonization and the rights of colonists, the maintenance of monopolies, conquest, and territory. The inherent problem, that it was difficult being a jealous monopolist and a fair administrator at the same time, would never be solved by the Company. These debates on the very nature of the Company had obvious repercussions for the decision whether to build fortifications, at which locations, and at which moments in time, as well as the possibility of using citizen militias to garrison them. To understand the debates on fortifications it is therefore necessary to give a brief introduction to the organization of the VOC, in both Europe and Asia. This chapter will therefore first present an introduction to the VOC, as well as a more detailed overview of the south Asian possessions of the Company in India and on Ceylon.