atives and on the Portuguese, and, when there was
no one else to offer them resistance, they fought among themselves. By
1602 conditions had become so intolerable that the government of
Holland, in order to tranquillize the Indies, and to stabilize the
spice market at home, decided to amalgamate the various trading
enterprises into one great corporation, the Dutch East India Company,
which was authorized to exercise the functions of government in those
remote seas and to prosecute the war against Spain. When Philip shut
the Dutch out of Lisbon, he made a formidable enemy for himself, for,
though the burghers went to the East primarily in order to save their
commerce from extinction, they were animated in a scarcely less degree
by a determination to even their score with Spain.

The history of the Dutch East India Company is not a savory one. It was
a powerful instrument for extracting the wealth of the Indies, and, so
long as the wealth was forthcoming, the stockholders at home in Holland
did not inquire too closely as to how the instrument was used. The
story of the company from its formation in 1602 until its dissolution
nearly two centuries later is a record of intrigue, cruelty and
oppression. It exercised virtually sovereign powers. It made and
enforced its own laws, it maintained its own fleet and army, it
negotiated treaties with Japan and China, it dethroned sultans and
rajahs, it established trading-posts and factories at the Cape of Good
Hope, in the Persian Gulf, on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, and
in Bengal; it waged war against the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the
English in turn. When at the summit of its power, in 1669, the company
possessed forty warships and one hundred and fifty merchantmen,
maintained an army of ten thousand men, and paid a forty per cent
dividend.

Meanwhile a formidable rival to the Dutch company, the English East
India Company, had arisen, but the accession of a Dutchman, William,
Prince of Orange, to the throne of England in 1688 turned the rivals
into allies, the trade of the eastern seas being divided between them.
But toward the close of the eighteenth century there came another
change in the _status quo_, for the Dutch, by allying themselves with
the French, became the enemies of England. By this time Great Britain
had become the greatest sea power in the world, so that within a few
months after the outbreak of hostilities in 1795 the British flag had
replaced that