part he had taken in bringing the Synod of Dort to a
successful termination of its labours, but in reality to settle several
threatening trade disputes. Almost the only result of the prolonged
conferences was an agreement (June 2, 1619) by which the East India
Companies were for twenty years to be virtually amalgamated. The English
were to have half the pepper crop in Java and one-third of the spices in
the Moluccas, Amboina and the Banda islands. Forts and posts were to
remain in their present hands, but there was to be a joint council for
defence, four members from each company, the president to be appointed
alternately month by month. Such a scheme was a paper scheme, devised
by those who had no personal acquaintance with the actual situation.
There was no similarity between a great military and naval organisation
like the Dutch Company and a body of traders like the English, whose
capital was small, and who were entirely dependent on the political
vagaries of an impecunious sovereign, whose dearest wish at the time was
to cultivate close relations with the very power in defiance of whose
prohibition the East India Company's trade was carried on. The agreement
received indeed a fresh sanction at another conference held in London
(1622-23), but it never was a working arrangement. The bitter
ill-feeling that had arisen between the Dutch and English traders was
not to be allayed by the diplomatic subterfuge of crying peace when
there was no peace. Events were speedily to prove that this was so.

The trade in spices had proved the most lucrative of all, and measures
had been taken to prevent any undue lowering of the price by a glut in
the market. The quantity of spices grown was carefully regulated,
suitable spots being selected, and the trees elsewhere destroyed. Thus
cloves were specially cultivated at Amboina; nutmegs in the Banda
islands. Into this strictly guarded monopoly, from which the English had
been expelled by the energy of Koen, they were now by the new treaty to
be admitted to a share.

It was only with difficulty that the Dutch were induced to acquiesce
sullenly in the presence of the intruders. A fatal collision took place
almost immediately after the convention between the Companies, about the
trade in the spice islands, had been renewed in London, 1622-3.

In 1623 Koen was succeeded, as governor-general, by Pieter Carpentier,
whose name is still perpetuated by the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north
of