PROFITS OF THE INDIA TRADE. 13 



relations were formed with the King- of Achin, in Sumatra ; and a factory established at 

 Bantam, after which the ships returned to England richly laden. 



A serious rival was, however, in the field. The separation of the Dutch provinces from the 

 crown of Spain had caused their merchants to be sent abnad to seek new fields of commerce, 

 and as they had gained an intimate knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese affairs, they were 

 then the predominant naval power in the Indian Seas, and were quite ready to contend against 

 any supremacy on the part of England's traders. English merchants were, however, ready 

 for them, the profits on the first expedition having incited them to grander efforts. They 

 obtained a new Charter in 1609, and the Company constructed a vessel of larger size than 

 any hitherto employed in the English merchant service, which they named the Trades' Increase. 

 She was 1,200 tons, and even her pinnace was 250 tons. At her launch, the Company gave 

 a great banquet, at which the dishes were of china ware, then a great novelty in England. 

 With these and two other vessels Sir Henry Middleton set sail, touching at Mocha, on the 

 Red Sea, where, entrapped ashore by the Mohammedans, eighty of his crew were massacred, 

 sixteen others disabled, and he himself severely wounded. Proceeding to Bantam, the Trades' 

 Increase was unfortunately shipwrecked, and poor Middleton died heartbroken at the failure 

 of the expedition. But other voyages followed, which were enormously profitable to the 

 Company. One expedition is mentioned which, " though absent only twenty months, earned 

 in that time a profit of no less than 310 per cent." " Factories " trading posts or forts 

 were established, and the Company obtained the favour of the Moghul Emperor, Jehangir, 

 more especially after they had been fortunate enough to repel some of the Portuguese who 

 were attacking his posts. They even contrived to obtain a footing in Japan, through the 

 influence of William Adams, a Kentish man, who had been pilot on one of the earliest Dutch 

 expeditions, and who stood high in the Emperor's favour. The intercourse then opened was 

 allowed to die out, and has only been re-established late in our own time. In seventeen years 

 after the first establishment of the Company its affairs had become so prosperous that its 

 stock reached a premium of 203 per cent., and the Dutch East India Company suggested an 

 amalgamation of the two corporations with a view to exclude and crush their common enemy, 

 the Portuguese. This was never carried into effect, but in 1019 a treaty of trade and 

 friendship was established. They were to " cease from rivalry, and apportion the profits of 

 the different branches of commerce between them/' Alas ! all this amicable billing and cooing 

 were to speedily end; such self-abnegation was found hardly practicable between business 

 rivals. A series of hostilities ensued in the following year; a number of Englishmen were 

 massacred by the Dutch at Amboyna, and sea-fights occurred between the vessels ; the result 

 being that the Dutch had it all their own way in a few years afterwards. The directors of 

 the English Company even meditated winding up its affairs. Something similar happened 

 more than once afterwards before they became a grand company and the real governors of 

 India. The rise of British powel there is one of those surprising revolutions which never 

 before occurred in history. The managers of a trading company in London first became the 

 lords of a manor a dozen times the size of England, and controlled the destinies of kings 

 and princes, engaging in war or peace as occasion seemed to demand. Think of the affairs of 

 a great country settled in a counting-house ! But at length the anomaly had to cease, and, 

 as most readers will remember, the East India Company lost its powers and privileges in 1858, 



