of that empire is by common imagination so often ascribed. On the contrary, it provided, in the hands of a free and wealthy people, a very powerful instrument of colonial and commercial expansion. The prize in dispute was a share, or if possible the monopoly, of the commerce between western Europe and all the ports of Asia from the Red Sea to China and Japan. The early records of the East India Company show that along the whole accessible coast line of the Asiatic continent and among the islands, at every point where trading could be done--on the Arabian seaboard, in the Persian Gulf, from the western side of India to north-eastern China-the European nations were now contending vigorously for commercial profits and privi-leges. The value of the prize for which they were competing was even then perfectly well known; and subsequent history has proved that the wealth, liberties, and political predominance at home of the contending nations depended considerably on their failure or success. It was the foreign imports that brought the revenue which maintained the great fleets and armies of Spain; it was maritime trade that fed the stubborn. power of resistance displayed by the Dutch Republic; and the greatness of England has been manifestly founded upon her world-ranging commerce. By far the most important branch of sea-borne traffic was, in the seventeenth century, the exchange of goods with Asia, and each national government took part, directly or indirectly, in the struggle for it. The first maritime explorers from the despotically-governed States of Spain and Portugal seized lands and claimed navigation rights in the name of their crown, which at once treated all these captures as increments to its complete sovereignty. Between the Dutch Republic and its East

India Company the connexion was exceedingly close; although a formal distinction was always maintained. In 1618 this Company, as we learn from an English report, was composed of the greatest part of the Privy Council, the nobility, judges, and gentry, and was furnished with an assured stock of £1,600,000. When, in 1617, the English East India Company raised its second Joint Stock, the sum of £1,620,040 was at once subscribed in London; and the records of 1622 state that goods bought in India for £356,288 had produced £1,914,600 in England. Here were two great commercial associations with power and resources quite equal to those of the minor States at that period. But while the State of Holland was, so to speak, incorporate in its Company, the English adopted from the beginning, and preserved up to the end of the eighteenth century, a system under which the State held a position not unlike that of partner en commandite, taking no risks, acknowledging very slight responsibility, interferingoccasionally to demand a share of profits or to lay a heavy fine upon Charter renewals, and assisting the Company only when to do so accorded with the general political interests of the nation. Armed with a valuable monopoly, and left to their own devices, the English Company relied not so much upon State aid as upon their own wealth and energy; they underwent some perilous vicissitudes and performed some remarkable exploits.

The extent to which unofficial war was practised, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, by the roving nations of Europe, is perhaps hardly appreciated in this age of international law and ubiquitous diplomacy. If our merchants in India or the Persian Gulf had been obliged to refer home for remedy of grievances or

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settlement of disputes with Dutch, French, or Portuguese, they would have been very soon exterminated 1. They did no such thing; they took to their own weapons, and their military operations were often upon a considerable scale. In 1622 there was formal peace, between Portugal (which then belonged to Spain) and England; but the English East India Company were at bitter war in the Indian Ocean with the Portuguese, who had disturbed their trade and molested the Honourable Company's ships. So the English Company fitted out at Surat a small fleet, and sent it up the Persian Gulf with orders to assist Shah Abbas, the ' Persian king, in turning the Portuguese out of the island of Hormuz, which they had held for a century, and which gave them exclusive command of the Gulf. The business was done, with the aid of the Persians, very thoroughly; there was a regular bombardment of the fortress, and a naval action with the Portuguese royal fleet, until the island was surrendered, the fortifications razed, and the Portuguese garrison transported to Goa.

We do not hear that Portugal made any serious remonstrance against these proceedings, which would certainly startle modern diplomacy; but it stands on record that James I and the Lord High Admiral (the Duke of Buckingham) exacted large sums of money from the Company as the royal share of the profits. Another heavy fine was again demanded by Buckingham

''He that shall call to mind what strange effects sudden and resolute enterprises have brought to pass both in India amongst those naked heathens, yea, even in Christendom itself, will never conclude that either the Portugal or the Fleming hath attained their footing in these parts with manners or shallie shallie, as the world doth truly take notice.'-Letter of Thomas Batten, 'Land Captain,' from Java (1620).

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from the Company before he would permit them to " despatch a fleet for the protection of their commerce against Portuguese reprisals. Probably the English might have claimed to set off against the affair at Hormuz other similar irregularities on the part of the Portuguese; for among the nations then engaged on the East India trade there was little scruple about ways and means of dealing with rivals.

But the Dutch, though formally our friends and allies, soon became much more dangerous enemies in Asia than the Portuguese, and were now inflicting heavy damage on our East Indian trade, which the English Company was by no means disposed to endure. The two Companies were rapidly drifting into a rather ferocious war, quite uncontrolled by international law or military usage, in which little quarter was given and nothing spared that might extirpate the enemy. Both Įsides possessed armed ships and fortified stations; but although the Dutch had many more forts and a much larger territory than the English, their policy of seizing all the points of vantage had this drawback, that it involved them in quarrels with the native chiefs, and crippled their capital by heavy military charges. After protracted negotiations, however, a treaty was at last arranged between Holland and England in 1619 on the basis of mutual restitutions and compensations. The news, we learn from the correspondence, reached India just in time to prevent 'a bloody encounter between II of our best ships and 17 of the Dutch.' This treaty, which was made for twenty years, actually lasted less than twenty months, and seems to have been little regarded in the East Indies, where the necessities of commercial competition went on multiplying disputes and reciprocal violence, until one particularly atrocious

outrage brought matters to a climax. The massacre by the Dutch of almost all the English at Amboyna (in the/ Moluccas) in 1623, was a piece of cruel iniquity that bred long and fierce resentment against Holland among the English merchants and mariners of that generation, and heated the animosities that broke out later between the two nations in Europe.

The preponderance of the Dutch in the Spice Islands, and their dangerous enmity, had undoubtedly much weight in diverting English trade toward the Asiatic continent, and thus in making the factories on the Indian sea-coast the principal object of our attention. On the western side of India the English had settled first at Surat, in 1612, under a firmán of the Moghul government, with special privileges procured by Sir Thomas Roe's embassy1 from James I to the Emperor Jehangir. In 1630 the English and Portuguese fleets fought a respectable battle in that roadstead, without prejudice to international relations at home. And as the Dutch were now making virulent attacks upon the possessions of Portugal in India and Ceylon, her power had by this time fallen into a rapid decline. When, in 1640, she recovered her independence as a kingdom, she made some feeble attempts to hold her ground in Asia; but after the Treaty of Munster (1648) which limited her Indian possessions, Portugal fell irremediably into the background. In 1638 Surat became the English Company's chief establishment; and by 1643 they were established on the east coast at Masulipatam and Madras, with a factory up the Hooghly river for the Bengal traffic. Their influence at the Moghul's court was substantially promoted by the deputation of Mr. Boughton, a surgeon in the East 1 1615-18.