The volume and contents of the cargo brought to Europe by the Dutch East India Trading Company (from now on VOC), fluctuated from time to time and from ship to ship. As such it is very hard to give a generalisation and say that every ship carried so much of this and so much of that.

The cargo of a Europe bound VOC ship, depended heavily on where in Asia it came from. In the 1640s, the VOC (and the Dutch Republic in general) was reaching its peak of wealth and power and the VOC had trading posts all over Asia. A ship coming from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) would have a different cargo than a ship coming from Dejima, Japan, where the VOC had a trading post from 1641. However: as a rule of thumb you may assume that the cargo was for 50% pepper, 20% other spices, 30% textiles, porcelain, paints, sugar and other commodities. Goods like tea and coffee were not yet that popular in Europe that they were shipped in large quantities. That changed around the 1670s, when tea became more popular and in 1707 the first coffee plantation on Java opened. Another factor was of course the type of ship. The VOC used a lot of different types of ship, although the spiegelretourschip (East Indiaman) was the most commonly used type for the long voyage between Asia and Europe. The replica of the Batavia can give you a good idea of what a spiegelretourship of the VOC looked like during the first half of the 17th century.

In order to obtain spices and other tradable goods (like porcelain), the VOC heavily depended on what they called ‘inter-Asia trade’. Apart from silver and gold, Asian rulers were not much interested in European goods and to solve this problem, the VOC built a trading network in Asia. Heavily summarized: the VOC bought metals in one part of Asia and traded those for luxury commodities in another part which were traded again somewhere else for spices. What was exactly on board a ship bound for Europe, depended on what the merchantman on board said ship, could obtain during his specific voyage.

Every detail of what a ship carried was written down. Money had to be made and everyone involved, from the most low crew of the ship to the shareholders in Europe, expected their money. Income and expenses were written down to the very last penny. Also, there were elaborate charts on what was placed where in the cargo hold. This was done for two multiple reasons, most importantly to keep track of where all those valuable goods went, and safety. I found a summary lists of the cargo of a small fleet of six ships that returned to Amsterdam in 1635. For some reason it is printed in Italian (but that may me more helpful than written 17th century Dutch…). I can't read Italian however, so I can only post this link for you.

Also, I found a summary of a letter from the Lords XVII in the Republic to the Governor-General in Batavia, which gives some information on the quantity and the revenue of the cargoes that arrived in the Republic, compared with what they knew about the performance of the English East India Company. Those letters are from 1619-1625, are hand written and not transcribed.

On page 7there is a small list of what a fleet returning from the East Indies brought to Amsterdam in 1622 and 1623. It's hard to give proper quantities, since the metric system was not yet invented and any other measuring system was not yet centralized in the Dutch Republic and the VOC used measurements that are not used anymore. One that was often used was the ‘last’, that roughly equals to 1976 kilos. But there are lots and lots of other measurements. Also, measurements of weight and volume are used somewhat side by side in some of these accounts, which makes it even harder. (again, note that the scan of this document is not accompanied by an official transcription, so what follows is my own, somewhat hastily made transcription and translation)

• 7500 sacks of pepper at 350 pounds per sack (Amsterdam pounds, one pound equals 494 grammes)
• 1200 quarteel cloves (a quarteel is a 17th century measure of volume) (no weight given)
• 1000 quarteel nuts (I make the assumption that is nutmeg) and mace, devided 50/50 350 pounds (again Amsterdam pounds)
• 1200 thousand guilders worth of rough silk and wares
• 500 thousand guilders worth of indigo
• 200 thousand guilders worth of diamonds from the sultan
• 300 thousand guilders worth of wares from coromandel
• A number of ‘rarities’, (something that I cannot transcribe and translate, I think it says ‘geeijschte drogue’, I think they mean rare plant species) / porcelain.

See https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/onderzoeken/archief/1.04.02/invnr/5001/file/NL-HaNA_1.04.02_5001_0007 for scans of the entire document.

Something about these archives: The VOC wrote down and archived allmost everything and those archives are pretty well preserved. That means that an estimated 25% of the complete archive that the VOC created all over the globe during its 200 years of existence, remains today. Much of it is in the Netherlands, where the archives take up around 1200 meters of bookshelves. However, most of what has been preserved is from the 18th century. If you’re somehow able to read and transcribe 17th century Dutch, you might find a lot more documents like these, with more detail. There are lists of basically everything, from which ship left a Dutch port on which date, to detailed accounts of expenses and income.