COMING OF ENGLISH AND DUTCH 215 



Hunter, " the spirit which had cut the dykes that gained 

 the Spice Archipelago for Holland." 



The Company was both an instrument of commerce The Dutch 

 and a weapon of war. Its captains, excluded from ^j/f^ the 

 Lisbon, blocked the Tagus. They smashed the Spanish East, 1609. 

 fleet in Gibraltar Bay. They routed the Portuguese off 

 Java, and won Sea Power in all the Eastern seas. Sea 

 Power gave them the islands. In dealing with the natives 

 they had, in rivalry with Spaniards and Portuguese, im- 

 portant advantages. They had no crusade to wage 

 against the " Muslims." They wished neither to conquer 

 nor to convert. Their sole wish was to buy and sell, 

 and to buy and sell with a strict monopoly of trade. They 

 treated the natives fairly well, and appeared as deliverers 

 from Portuguese cruelty. Spain became convinced, though 

 not by argument, that it was best to give what could not be 

 withheld. In 1609, while Quiros was writing Memorials, 

 the King of Spain made a truce with the Dutch, in which 

 he promised that he would not interfere with Dutch 

 trade in the East. The Spanish fence was broken down, 

 and the Dutch were allowed to enjoy that free trade 

 without which, as they said, their State " would melt 

 away like snow in the sun." 



The Dutch used the Sea Power to build an Empire 

 in the East, firm in its foundations, and touching the 

 coasts of all the Eastern seas. In 1619 Governor-General Batavia 

 Coen, who " was to the Dutch Indies in the seventeenth 

 century what Albuquerque had been to the Portuguese 

 in the sixteenth, ^ and what Dupleix became to the French 

 in the eighteenth," founded " in a congenial swamp " 

 the city that was destined to be the new Amsterdam of 

 the East. Batavia commanded the whole archipelago, 

 and in an especial way it commanded the Straits of Sunda, 

 one of its two main entrances. Here, in the large rich 

 island of Java, Coen established the Dutch Power, giving 

 it that solid basis in territory and population which the 

 Portuguese Empire had lacked. He wished, but wished 

 in vain, to make Batavia a colony of Dutch settlers. It 

 remained an outpost of commercial Empire; and "the 



