216 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



ingathering of a multitude of people from all parts," which 

 Coen desired " to people our country withal," gave Batavia 

 a character of Asiatic cosmopolitanism that reminds 

 one of the European cosmopolitanism of the New Amster- 

 dam that became New York. Batavia grew into a city 

 large, prosperous, strong, the seat of incomparably the 

 The Dutch greatest power in the Eastern World. It dominated 



Eastern an jsian^ extensive, fertile, and populous, providing 

 cheap labour and large revenues. Over the whole Spice 

 Archipelago the Dutch ruled with omnipotent and tyrannic 

 sway. And this was but the centre of a huge maritime 

 Empire, which extended " from Madagascar to Japan, 

 from New Guinea to the Red Sea." St. Helena was 

 occupied for the refreshment of their ships, the Cape as 

 the essential half-way house between West and East, 

 Mauritius as a basis for the slave-trade in Madagascar, 

 and for explorations in the far South. They traded in 

 the Red Sea and in the Persian Gulf. They conquered 

 Ceylon, and established factories in India. The capture 

 of Malacca gave them command of one entrance to the 

 Spice Archipelago, as the foundation of Batavia had 

 given them command of the other. They had factories 

 in Cambodia, in Formosa, and in Japan. They threat- 

 ened China with the Mailed Fist. According to Coen's 

 plans there was to be a Dutch garrison in some Fortress 

 to be captured or to be erected on the Chinese Coast, 

 and a sufficient Dutch Fleet, to be permanently placed 

 on this station, was to " bend the Chinese to our will." 

 " It is," he writes, " our fixed intention not to allow in 

 future any Chinese to sail to any other port than Batavia, 

 on pain of being declared our enemies, and treated as 

 . such." The Dutch possessed all the gates of the Indian 



Ocean, as the Arabs and Portuguese had possessed them 

 in the past, and as the British were to possess them in the 

 future. 



The Dutch Thus the rival of England in the Far East was not Spain, 



monopoly ^ ut Holland. Very curious is the story of the relations 



of trade, of these two Protestant States in the later sixteenth cen- 



tury and in the seventeenth, swinging between a friendship 



