No More Learning

These princes were 'Ali II, the Adil Khan of Bijapur, Murtaza Nizam
Shah of Ahmadnagar, and the Zamorin of Calicut. So great was the
confidence of these princes in their ability to drive these unwelcome
strangers out of India, that they had arranged beforehand exactly how
the Portuguese possessions should be divided among them; the Adil
Khan had gone so far as to nominate certain of his officers to posts
in Goa, at the same time promising them certain Portuguese ladies,
famous for their beauty, in marriage. Ignoring all treaties, the Adil
Khan marched against Goa at the head of 100,000 men; and Murtaza
Nizam Shah against Chaul. To protect Goa the viceroy had at his
disposal 650 active troops and about 250 aged and infirm; having
dispatched 600 to reinforce the commander of Chaul. He sent these


## p. 21 (#49) ##############################################

SIEGE OF GOA
21
troops to defend the most vulnerable points of attack, while the
defence of the town of Goa was entrusted to Dominicans, Franciscans
and other priests numbering some 300 in all. In addition to this he
organised 1000 Christian slaves of various nationalities into four
hands, and placed 1500 native Christians under selected Portuguese
officers, with a sprinkling of reliable Portuguese soldiers. His council
strongly urged the abandonment of Chaul and the concentration of
all efforts on the defence of Goa, but the viceroy was resolved that
the enemy should pay dearly for all they might take. The attack
on Goa at the end of December, 1569, opened with the bombardment
of the Pass of Benasterim, which the viceroy himself took command.
The defence of Goa forms one of the most brilliant feats in Portuguese
annals, and the courage and resources shown by Dom Luiz de Atayde
in the face of such overwhelming odds entitle him to rank among the
great soldiers of the world. Although during the siege, which lasted
ten months, he received reinforcements in ships and men, it must be
remembered that he was able not only to send troops to other threat-
ened ports along the coast, but even to dispatch the trading ships
with their annual consignments to Lisbon, as if nothing unusual were
toward. Hardly less remarkable was the defence of Chaul by the
small garrison of Portuguese against the superior forces of the king of
Ahmadnagar which lasted all through the summer, and terminated
in the signing of an offensive and defensive alliance between Murtaza
Nizam Shah and Dom Sebastian of Portugal. The part played by the
Zamorin was of little or no account, and it was not until the beginning
of June, 1570, that he made an attack in force on the fort of Chale,
near Calicut, where a small garrison was only saved from surrender
by the arrival of reinforcements in September. Not until December,
1571, was a final treaty concluded between the new viceroy and the
Adil Khan, whereby the local princes were compelled to recognise
the rights of the Portuguese to their Indian possessions. Thus did
Dom Luiz de Atayde, by his unflinching valour, his single-minded
devotion and his military genius, succeed in re-establishing for a time
the prestige of Portugal in the East, by withstanding the most serious
confederacy that had ever taken arms against her. Dom Luiz returned
in the same year to Portugal, where he was received with great honour.
The newly appointed viceroy, Antonio de Noronha, arrived at Goa
in September, 1571, before the siege of that town had been raised.
Chale, in the meantime, was holding out against desperate odds, and
the reliefs sent by the new viceroy immediately after the conclusion
of peace with the Adil Khan, arrived only to find that the garrison
had surrendered conditionally to the Zamorin. With the appointment
of Antonio de Noronha the administration of the Portuguese posses-
sions in the East were divided, as we have seen above, into three
governments, Noronha becoming viceroy of India, while governors
were appointed to the other two provinces. This experiment led at
once to disputes between the viceroy and Antonio Moniz Barreto,


## p. 22 (#50) ##############################################

22
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA. 1498–1598
the governor of Malacca, and ultimately involved the viceroy's recall
in 1573.
It is necessary at this stage to revert to the events which were
passing in Gujarat. Ever since the invasion of that country by the
emperor Humayun, and the tragic death of Sultan Bahadur in 1537,
the kingdom of Cambay, as Gujarat was called by the Portuguese,
had been in a state of almost continuous civil war, the nominal kings
being merely figureheads at the mercy and disposal of whichever of
the rival nobles was able to capture and hold them. Such a state of
affairs was, no doubt, very greatly to the advantage of the Portuguese,
who were able to play one chief off against another, as we have seen
in the case of Surat. Although Humayun had virtually conquered
Gujarat, he had withdrawn without making any arrangements for the
incorporation of that country into the Moghul Empire; and not till
1572 did his son, the great Akbar, who had then been seventeen years
on the Moghul throne, think fit to undertake the reduction of this
rich province. The political situation in Gujarat at this moment has
already been described. It may here suffice to say that it was with
two distinct classes of opponent that Akbar had now to contend. First,
the Gujarat nobles, who were divided always into two or more factions,
the one or the other having the person of the puppet king, and
secondly, the so-called Mirzas, members of the royal house of Tamer-
lane, residing for their personal safety outside the Moghul Empire,
who with the prestige of their descent were able to command a certain
following wherever they went. The Mirzas were a constant source
of trouble to their imperial cousin, especially in Gujarat, and it was
due to them rather than to the Gujarat nobles that the final absorption
of that country into the Moghul Empire was delayed.
The nominal king of Gujarat at this time was Sultan Muzaffar,
and the leading noble was the I'timad Khan who has been mentioned
above. It was at the invitation of the latter that Akbar, towards the
end of 1572, entered Ahmadabad and received the submission of
I'timad Khan and his partisans and later of Sultan Muzaffar, who
was found lurking near Akbar's camp. It was after his entry into the
capital that Akbar visited Cambay, where for the first time he saw
the sea and made acquaintance with the Portuguese, receiving there
certain of their merchants who came to pay their respects. Mean-
time, the Mirzas, headed by Ibrahim Husayn, had collected their
forces in Broach and were plotting against Akbar; and when it
reached the emperor's ears that they had murdered Rustam Khan,
the lord of Broach, who had expressed his intention of obeying Akbar's
summons; Akbar resolved on immediate vengeance and set out at
the head of 200 men for Surat, which was occupied by Muhammad
Husayn. On his way he encountered and defeated Ibrahim Mirza
in superior force at Sarnal (December, 1572). but the Mirza escaped
i Camb. Hist. of India, m, chap. xiti.


## p. 23 (#51) ##############################################

RELATIONS WITH THE MOGHULS
23
to Delhi where he tried to stir up the common people in order to
necessitate Akbar's withdrawal from Gujarat, only to perish shortly
afterwards in Multan. In January, 1573, Akbar began siege opera-
tions against Surat. It was during this siege that Akbar first entered
into negotiations with the Portuguese. The accounts are confusing
but it would appear from a collation of the narratives of Abul Fazi
and Couto, that the besieged in Surat had offered to hand over that
port to the Portuguese if they would help them against Akbar, but
that, when the Portuguese contingent realised the strength of the
Moghuls, they changed their rôle from that of enemies to ambassadors,
and were well received by the emperor who "made enquiries about
the wonders of Portugal and the manners and customs of Europe".
It was, no doubt, a source of great vexation to the emperor to find
that important ports like Diu, Daman and Bassein, were in the hands
of these alien merchants, but the failure of the triple alliance of 1569
had clearly shown that without the co-operation of a powerful fleet
it would be impossible to dislodge the Portuguese from these coastal
strongholds; and it was not within the competency of the Gujaratis,
still less of the Moghuls, to build ships of the requisite strength.
Akbar, therefore, confined his military activities to the reduction of
the ports which still remained in the hands of the Gujaratis, notably
Cambay, Surat and Broach.
To return to the Portuguese, in 1573 Antonio Moniz Barreto
became governor in Goa, and it was during his term of office that
a curious incident occurred which may be fitly recorded here. The
annual pilgrimages of Muslim Indians to Mecca, whose route lay
through Gujarat (which was called the Gate of Mecca) had been for
some years interrupted by the domination of the Arabian Ocean by
the Portuguese and also by the disorder prevailing in Gujarat. Now
that order had been restored in this province and Akbar's relations
with Goa were of a friendly nature, it was considered safe for the
ladies of the imperial household to fulfil a long-cherished desire of
performing this chief act of Muslim piety (for although Akbar himself
in his religious experiments had almost abjured Islam, his family had
remained devout Muslims). The party reached Surat in safety at the
end of 1575, but it was not till the following season that satisfactory
passes were furnished. The ladies, who included the famous Gulbadan
Begum, performed the pilgrimage and returned safely in 1582.
In 1578, under the viceroyalty of Dom Diego de Menezes, Antonio
Cabral (who had met Akbar at Surat in 1573) was accredited to the
emperor's court as ambassador, and it was the conversations of Akbar
and Cabral on religious matters which resulted in the dispatch of the
first Jesuit mission to the Moghul court in 1580. 1 Like Kubilai Khan
in the thirteenth century, Akbar was disposed to give Christianity
a fair hearing, but he had to reckon with the spiritual forces of Islam
1 See Payne, Akbar and the Jesuits.


## p. 24 (#52) ##############################################

24
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA, 1498-1598
which he was obliged to conciliate outwardly at least throughout his
progress towards the new religion which was forming in his mind.
In the meanwhile, events of far-reaching importance for the
history of India were passing in Europe.
In August, 1578, Dom Sebastian, then only wenty-five years of
age, was killed in battle near Fez, fighting like a hero in a hopeless
enterprise against the Moors. Philip II of Spain had long coveted the
kingdom of Portugal, and on the death of the cardinal Dom Henrique,
who had assumed the title of king, he invaded that country and totally
defeated the Portuguese at the battle of Alcantara (1580), and in April
1581, was crowned king at Tomar. Portugal thus became a part of
the kingdom of Spain, but it was stipulated that the commerce of
Africa, Persia and India should be reserved to the Portuguese, and
carried only on their vessels.
The first viceroy sent to India under the new régime was Dom
Francisco Mascarenhas, who had already considerable experience of
India. Among the many happenings of his period of office may be
mentioned the rebellion of the ex-sultan of Gujarat, Muzaffar, who,
escaping from captivity, managed to raise an army of some 30,000
men and recovered a large part of his former kingdom (1583). In the
confusion which ensued, the viceroy thought an opportunity possibly
offered of "laying hands on Surat at small cost” , but his plans were
frustrated by the sudden arrival of a Moghul army.
By reason of the assistance given by Queen Elizabeth to the
Netherlands in their revolt against Spain, a declaration of war became
merely a matter of time, and in 1548 diplomatic relations were broken
off between England and Spain, and consequently Portugal. In 1586
six ships sailed from Lisbon for India. Off the Azores they fell in with
Sir Francis Drake, who brought into Plymouth a cargo valued at over
a hundred thousand pounds. This success taught the English and the
Dutch that what the Portuguese had achieved in Indian waters was,
no doubt, equally possible for themselves. Though the merging of
Portugal into the kingdom of Spain may be said to have hastened the
end of Portugal's monopoly of Indian trade, rival European adven-
turers were bound to appear in Indian waters sooner or later in an
age which produced and encouraged such men as Francis Drake.
The only wonder is that other seafaring nations allowed her to enjoy
for so long the advantages she had gained. By the time she had
recovered her independence after “sixty years' captivity", the Dutch
had already deprived her of the greater part of her possessions and
her trade.
The neighbouring island of Ceylon had been discovered by the
Portuguese more or less by accident. It was during the viceroyalty
of Dom Francisco d'Almeida that the Muhammadan merchants, in
1 Couto, x, 6.


## p. 25 (#53) ##############################################

CEYLON
25
order to avoid their new rivals, began to make a detour by way of the
Maldives when proceeding with their spice ships to the Red Sea. In
November, 1505, the viceroy sent his youthful son Lourenço with a
fleet of nine vessels to try and intercept these merchantmen, and while
searching for them Lourenço was driven on to the coast of Ceylon in
the neighbourhood of Galle, where he replenished his stores, and then
proceeded to Colombo. According to some accounts a treaty was
then concluded with the king of Ceylon, whereby the king agreed to
pay tribute in cinnamon and elephants to the Portuguese, who, in
return, undertook to protect Ceylon against all enemies. Seeing that
the next official visit to Ceylon did not take place until 1518, when
Lopo Soares actually secured similar terms from the local king, it
would appear that the first treaty was not regarded very seriously,
although we hear in the interval of Portuguese merchants trading in
cinnamon at Colombo. The only evidence which remains of Dom
Lourenço's visit is a stone, still standing, bearing the royal arms of
Portugal surmounted by a cross, but marked with the unaccountable
date of 1501.
The report sent to King Manoel from Cochin, dated 22 December,
1518, contains the following entry : "Lopo Soares has returned from
Ceylon, where he was erected a fortress of mud, stone and clay, and
obtained tribute of ten elephants and 400 baharis of cinnamon".
In 1520 Lopo de Brito, bringing with him 400 men, arrived in
Colombo, and at once set about the rebuilding of the little fort, which
had suffered badly from the torrential rains. He had scarcely had
time to complete his defences when the inhabitants showed open
hostility, which led to a siege of the little garrison, who were only
saved at the end of six months by the timely arrival of a Portuguese
galley. Hostilities ceased shortly after this and friendly relations were
re-established. The Portuguese had, however, made themselves
thoroughly disliked by the Sinhalese, and the constant exposure of
the garrison to attack led them finally, in 1524, to dismantle the fort
at Colombo, and to confine themselves to a factory under the protection
of the Sinhalese king. In 1538 the Zamorin of Calicut dispatched a
fleet of fifty-one vessels carrying 8000 men to attack Ceylon. A
Portuguese fleet set out in pursuit, and inflicted a severe defeat on
the Zamorin's forces after a very fierce engagement; the grateful king
rewarded his allies with a handsome contribution towards the
expenses of the expedition, but further assistance to meet a renewed
attack by the Zamorin in alliance with the king's brother was not
forthcoming as the Portuguese were at that time too busily engaged
in and around Diu to spare any ships or men. In the following year,
however, the required help was sent, and peace was restored in
Ceylon. Shortly after this (1541) a Sinhalese embassy was sent to
Lisbon carrying, among other gifts to the Portuguese king, an image
of the child who had just been declared heir apparent to the throne.


## p. 26 (#54) ##############################################

26
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA, 1498–1598
1
The coronation of the image was celebrated with stately ceremony
and the day was observed as a holiday throughout the land. The
name of this child was Dharmapala, and on the death of his grand-
father in 1550 he ascended the throne. In 1556, thanks mainly to the
wave of religious enthusiasm kindled by the missionary activities of
Francisco Xavier, Dharmapala and his queen were baptised and
received into the Catholic Church. Had the priests by whom he was
surrounded acted with moderation, or even with understanding, this
conversion might have had momentous results; but, no doubt with
the best of intentions, they did everything that was possible to offend
the Buddhist inhabitants of the island; without making any effort to
enquire into the nature of the Buddhist religion they determined to
destroy it by every means in their power, and by their ruthless action
only succeeded in undoing the labours of twenty years. It was at
this time that we find introduced among the Sinhalese that curious
medley of Portuguese names and the high-sounding title of Dom. From
1559 to 1565 the Portuguese were engaged in constant war with the
Sinhalese by whom they were so much hated, and on more than one
occasion were very near to being altogether ejected from the island.
In 1560 matters became so serious that the viceroy, Dom Constantino
of Braganza, himself led a great expedition against the Sinhalese. The
headquarters of the Portuguese had hitherto been Kotte, but in 1565
it was decided to remove the garrison and factory and the native
inhabitants to Colombo, and the ancient capital, thus abandoned,
soon became the haunt of wild beasts. The rest of Ceylon remained
in the undisputed possession of the Sinhalese monarch, the grand-
uncle of Dharmapala, who was now a refugee under the protection
of the Portuguese. In 1578 the old king, feeling he had no longer
the strength to cope with the increasing aggressions of the Portuguese,
abdicated in favour of his son, Raja Sinha, who, in the following year,
laid siege to Colombo, but was driven off. In the meantime Dharma-
pala executed a deed of gift, by which, after setting forth his own title
to the throne, and explaining that nothing had been left him by his
rivals but Colombo, he made over all his claims to the king of Portu-
gal, Dom Henrique, and in 1583 executed another instrument by
which Philip II, who was now lord of Portugal, was made heir to
Dharmapala. Raja Sinha meanwhile devoted all his energies to
raising an efficient army and to erecting strong forts, which became
a source of much anxiety to the Portuguese, who on their side were
engaged in strengthening the fortifications of Colombo. Constant
appeals for assistance were sent to Goa, but seldom met with a satis-
factory response. In 1587 Raja Sinha, with an army of 50,000 men,
made his first great assault on Colombo. The carnage was terrible,
but the half-clothed Sinhalese could not cope with the fully armed
soldiery of Europe, and the assault was turned to a siege, during
which large reinforcements in men and munitions arrived from
Cochin, and later on from Malacca; and finally, in February, 1588,
2


## p. 27 (#55) ##############################################

CEYLON
27
the Portuguese had acquired such superiority over the enemy that
they were able to make a sortie in force, and Colombo was saved. In
1597 Dharmapala died and a convention of delegates was held, which,
after two days spent in negotiations, agreed to recognise Philip II as
the king of Ceylon, provided the Portuguese "would guarantee on his
behalf that the laws and customs of the Sinhalese should be maintained
inviolate for ever".
In considering the achievement of the Portuguese in the Indian
Ocean, it is our duty to recognise the important part they played,
having regard for the future history of India, in successfully frustrating
all the attacks made on them by the Turks. Although we have no
documentary evidence for believing that the Turks ever entertained
the idea of establishing a naval, and still less a military base in India,
it is quite conceivable that if one of their fleets had succeeded in
driving the Portuguese out of their fortresses on the Indian coast, the
establishment of the Christian powers in India might have been
indefinitely postponed.


## p. 28 (#56) ##############################################

CHAPTER II
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
THE first Dutch vessels to sail round the Cape of Good Hope an:
to cross the Indian Ocean in search of trade left the Texel on 2 April,
1595. The owners were a group of Amsterdam merchants who had
formed a company for Indian trade in 1592. The Netherlands had
long been a most important centre for the European trade in the
produce of the colonial world. The wares which the Spaniards and
Portuguese transported from America and the Indies to Seville and
Lisbon were carried further north very largely in Holland and Zee-
land ships. Antwerp had been the great distributing centre for Nor-
thern and Middle Europe, but after its fall in 1585 and the consequent
closure of the Scheldt by the more successful rebels of the northern
provinces, the trading towns of Holland and Zeeland, and particularly
Amsterdam, had inherited its position. The circumstances of the time
made the use of the Iberian ports, all obeying Philip II after the
conquest of Portugal in 1580, as centres of Mediterranean and colonial
trade a perilous practice. Even though the economic dependence of
Spain and Portugal on the Netherlands rebels was too great to permit
the king to adopt a consistent policy of prohibition with respect to
Netherlands trading, the embargoes of 1585 and 1595 served to create
a sense of insecurity in Netherlands trading circles.
To venture out into the vast, unknown regions of the Indian world
however, was an enterprise not lightly to be undertaken. Knowledge
of the route to India was of the vaguest, and ignorance exaggerated
the power of the Spanish-Portuguese Empire to defend its claims.
At first, therefore, attempts were made to reach the Indies by the
north of Asia, although a plan for an expedition round the Cape of
Good Hope had been conceived as early as any of the northern
expeditions. But years of preparation preceded the execution. The
first act of the Company formed in 1592 was to send Cornelis de
Houtman to Lisbon to collect information about the conditions and
methods of Indian trade, and in 1595 it was he who led the expedition.
The famous geographer Petrus Plancius, a Reformed minister who
had fled from Flanders, and who in 1592 had published a map of the
world based, in so far as the Indies are concerned, on Portuguese
data, was commissioned to instruct the skippers and mates who were
to take part in the expedition in the newest discoveries of the science
of navigation. And invaluable was the advice of Jan Huyghen van
Linschoten, whose Reysgeschrift van de navigatein der Portugaloysers,
a seaman's guidebook to India and Far Eastern navigation, appeared
in 1595, while the Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygher:


## p. 29 (#57) ##############################################

EARLY VOYAGES
29
van Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugails Indien, although published
only in the next year, must have been printed earlier, since we know
that de Houtman took a copy with him on his voyage.
The number of Netherlanders who made the voyage to India in
the Portuguese period and served the Portuguese in some capacity
or other must have been considerable. Some were engaged in trade
out there, and many served on the Portuguese ships, particularly as
gunners. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten in 1583, after some years
spent in Spain and Portugal, accompanied the newly appointed
archbishop of Goa to his post in the capacity of secretary. He was
still a very young man, having been born in 1563. He stayed at Goa
from September, 1583, to January, 1589. He came back to Holland
in September, 1592, and settled at Enkhuizen. He became an active
promoter of the plans for direct trading with the Indies which wers
already in the air. In 1594 and 1595 he took part in fruitless attempts
to find out the North-east Passage, yet in spite of that found time to
work out the notes collected during his travels into the two works
above cited.
Of the two, the Reysgeschrift was probably of the greater imme-
diate use, but it is on the Itinerario that Linschoten's fame is chiefly
founded. It is much more than the ordinary traveller's story. In fact,
Linschoten's personal observation of India was practically confined to
Goa, but in the Itinerario he gives an encyclopaedic, account of the
whole of the extensive area which the Portuguese looked upon as
their special preserve. He describes towns and harbours, the political
organisation, the social conditions and the religions of the various
peoples, and the produce and industries of particular regions; through
it all he traces the ramifications of the Portuguese Empire and of
Portuguese trade, explaining how it works, where it is weak and where
it is strong. One fact he stresses over and over again which must have
stimulated the spirit of enterprise of his countrymen--and no doubt
that was his intention-namely that the Portuguese system was
vulnerable in the extreme, undermined by abuses and corruption,
while Portuguese methods of navigation in particular were far inferior
to those of Dutch seamen. At the same time Linschoten did not
under-estimate the strength of the Portuguese fortified establishments,
and he pointed to the Malay Archipelago as the most suitable area
for Dutch enterprise on account of Sunda Straits being undefended:
there was not a Portuguese fortress on either Java or Sumatra, which
nevertheless offered great opportunities to the European merchant;
Bantam in particular was the centre of a trading, movement to Malacca
on the one side and the Spice Islands, or Moluccas, on the other.
It was excellent advice and it was taken. Houtman set his course
straight for Java, where he found the inhabitants quite willing to
enter into commercial relations with rivals of the Portuguese, and
although he spoiled his chances by injudicious behaviour and this first


## p. 30 (#58) ##############################################

30
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
expedition yielded no profits, in August, 1597, Houtman, with three
out of his four ships, reappeared before the Texel, and the mere fact
of his having accomplished the voyage was encouragement enough.
The pent-up enterprise of the Dutch commercial class burst forth
as if a dyke had been cut. New companies for the Indian trade
sprang up in several towns of Holland and Zeeland. Twenty-two ships
left for the Archipelago in 1598, and about forty more in the next
three years. Some of the so-called Pre-companies made enormous
profits, but it soon became apparent that their keen competition would
in the long run spoil the market both in the East and in Europe,
while their jealousy made it impossible for them to co-operate in
order to secure the new trade against the attempts of the Portuguese
to enforce their monopoly. The foundation of the English East India
Company (1600), which at once sent an expedition in the track of the
Dutch, to Java, drove home the conclusion that unity was necessary.
The Government, anxious lest a promising new source of wealth
should dry up, and realising that the energies of commercial enter-
prise might be so directed as to help the country in its war with the
Spanish Empire, took action. It was the Advocate of Holland, Johan
van Oldenbarnevelt, who initiated negotiations for an amalgamation,
on the basis of a national monopoly. For although public opinion
in the Netherlands was strongly averse to monopolies, in this parti-
cular case it was realised that the amalgamated companies must be
protected from further competition. In December, 1601, delegates of
the various companies, at the invitation of the states-general, met
at the Hague. It was far from easy to reach agreement, Zeeland
interests in particular proving refractory. The Advocate, however,
exerted all his influence and at last a scheme was evolved by which
the Pre-companies consented to be merged into a monopolist char-
tered company and this was at once embodied in a resolution of the
states-general (20 March, 1602).
The United Company was a very powerful organism. The directors
of the Pre-companies, who now became directors of the United
Company, had every time put up their capital for one expedition
only. New capital was now invited from the general public-a total
of 6,500,000 guilders (about £540,000) was subscribed—and that for
ten years; the directors were to be liable only for the amount they
subscribed as shareholders. In fact the return of the capital on the
expiration of the period named in the charter never took place, nor
had the shareholders ever any effective control over the direction of
affairs. In its administrative organisation its origin as the result of
an amalgamation appeared very clearly. It was composed of six
"chambers" which traded each with its own capital, but profit and
loss were pooled. The directors of the several chambers, who held
office for life, were appointed by the government of the town in which
the chamber was situated (by the Provincial States in the case of the


## p. 31 (#59) ##############################################

THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
31
Zeeland Chamber) out of three persons nominated, on the death of
a director, by his surviving colleagues. The Amsterdam Chamber
was by far the most important and appointed eight of the seventeen
general directors. “The Seventeen”, who met three times a year,
could only lay down general lines of policy, the execution of which
rested with the several chambers. This complicated organisation,
intended to reconcile the warring interests of various groups and
political entities, particularly of Amsterdam and Zeeland, lasted as
long as the company.
To this body the states-general by the charter of 20 March, 1602,
delegated important sovereign powers. Not only was the Company
given the exclusive right to trade in all countries between the Cape
of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan, but within that area it was
empowered to carry on war, to conclude treaties, to take possession
of territory, and to erect fortresses. The Pre-companies had had littie
thought of colonisation or of attacking the Portuguese, whom on the
contrary they sought to avoid. Only on the outskirts of the Portuguese
sphere of influence, in the Moluccas, had the desire to control th:
spice trade inspired attacks on Portuguese posts. The states-general,
by their interference, set a new direction and made the United
Company a great instrument of war and conquest.
The powerful fleets, of about a dozen large ships each, which the
Company sent out annually during the first years of its existence,
boldly attacked the Portuguese Empire at its vital points. Mozam-
bique, Goa, Malacca, were all attacked, but in vain. The Dutch had
the command of the seas, they hindered and interrupted communi-
cations between the Portuguese ports, they even prevented the sending
of reinforcements from the mother country. But they failed to
break Portuguese power ashore. Only in the Moluccas did they
succeed in ousting the Portuguese and securing a foothold for them-
selves. Even there, however, the Portuguese, supported by the Spani-
ards from the Philippines, offered a strong resistance, and the deter-
mined attempt of the Company to become masters of the Moluccas
-in an instruction of 1608, the directors described this as their
principal aim-for a number of years claimed much of its energies.
For a considerable period these were in any case concentrated on the
Malay Archipelago. The spice trade of the Moluccas was looked upon
as the great prize of the Indian world. Java, moreover, was proving
as important as Linschoten had foretold. Factories were established
at Bantam and Jacatra, and these insensibly became the centre of
the trading movement which the Dutch were developing and which
already embraced the Moluccas in the east, China and Japan in the
north, and Coromandel and Surat in the west. In 1609 unity of
command over the scattered ships and posts in the East was secured
by the institution of a central authority, the governor-general and
the council of the Indies. The first governor-general was Pieter Both


## p. 32 (#60) ##############################################

32
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
and his instructions, endorsed by the states-general, ordered him to
establish some fixed seat for the central government in the Indies,
and suggested Johore, Bantam or Jacatra for that purpose. It was
years before these instructions were acted upon, and it was done, not
by Both, but by his second successor, Jan Pietersoon Coen, the real
founder of the Dutch Eastern Empire. In 1619 Coen conquered
Jacatra and founded Batavia on its ruins. At the same time his ruth-
less energy saved the Dutch from being superseded by the English,
whose chances in the Archipelago were in the course of a few years
effectually ruined, and who thenceforward concentrated their atten-
tion on India. Great exertions were stili required of the Dutch, how-
ever, to defend their new capital against the Javanese themselves,
and altogether it was not until the governor-generalship of Antonie
van Diemen (1636-46) that the ruling powers at Batavia felt them-
selves sufficiently secure in the Archipelago to resume the earlier
policy of aggression against the strongholds of Portuguese power in
the Indian Ocean.
In 1633 the Dutch had already begun to blockade Malacca, which
finally they took in 1641. Meanwhile from 1636 onwards a fleet had
been sent every year to blockade Goa during the winter months, the
only time when the port was accessible. In the spring of 1638 the
fleet returning from that blockade attacked Batticaloa and a twenty
years' struggle began in which the Dutch wrested from the Portuguese
all they possessed in Ceylon and in the southern part of the mainlan:
of India itself.
A long time before they made those conquests, the Dutch already
had acquired factories on the Coromandel Coast, in Gujarat, and in
Bengal. Except for the fortress Geldria at Pulicat, these settlements
were merely unfortified trading posts, and the position of the Dutch
in India for a long time remained essentially different from that in
the Archipelago. And the Archipelago was not only the strategic and
administrative centre of their system, it was also the economic centre.
It was pepper and spices, the produce of Sumatra, Java and the
Moluccas, then so much in demand for the European market, that
had originally drawn the Dutch to the islands, and from the early
years of the United Company they set themselves to obtain a mono-
poly in these articles. What took them to India in the first instance
was rather the requirements of the Archipelago than of the European
market; in other words, it was a distinctly subsidiary interest. The
Dutch traders were not slow to discover that the system of paying in
money for the pepper and spices had grave disadvantages. At the
same time they saw that there was an active commercial movement
in existence, with Bantam, and especially Achin, as its intermediary
centres, by which the populations of the Archipelago exchanged their
own products for cotton goods from Gujarat and from the Coromandel


## p. 33 (#61) ##############################################

COROMANDEL COAST
33
Coast. The idea naturally arose of controlling that movement, elimi-
nating the Arab and Indian middlemen, and paying for the spices
by imported cotton goods.
As early as October, 1603, the Seventeen directed the attention of
the admiral (Van der Haghen) of a fleet they were just then fitting out
to the Coromandel Coast and particularly to Masulipatam as a place
well fitted for the buying of cotton goods. Even before this, an
attempt had been already made to start trade on the other side of the
peninsula, at Surat and on the Malabar Coast, but it had ended in
disaster. The two Zeeland merchants who had ventured out into
those parts had fallen into the hands of the Portuguese and been
hanged at Goa. So the United Company looked to the east coast, and
a circumstance which especially recommended Masulipatam, was the
weakness of the Portuguese in that northern region. Admiral Van der
Haghen, from Calicut where he then was, while going on himself to
Bantam with the main fleet, dispatched the yacht Delft to open up
trade with the Coromandel Coast.
Masulipatam belonged to the king
of Golconda, and although there were Portuguese merchants in the
town, their rivals were welcomed by the Indian authorities and the
senior merchant Pieter Ysaac Eyloff remained behind with a small
number of assistants to set up a permanent factory when the Delft
left early. in May, 1605, with the first cargo of cotton goods for Achin
and Bantam.
The beginning was thus very easy, and another factory was
founded at Petapoli (Nizampatam), also in the kingdom of Golconda,
but many difficulties were still to be overcome before the new settle-
ment could work smoothly and profitably. The governors of the two
ports imposed crushing import and export duties in the most arbitrary
fashion, and interfered in the intercourse between the factors and the
native weavers and dyers. The export trade in textiles was highly
technical, and the servants of the Dutch Company wanted to be free
to instruct the native craftsmen as to the requirements of the Archi-
pelago markets and actively to supervise their work. A mission to the
Golconda court in 1606 secured farmans fixing import and export
duties at 4 per cent. , but the governors did not heed them much. In
1608, hoping that the fear of their going away altogether would
check their tormentors, the Dutch factors sent out some of their sub-
ordinates to found a new settlement at Devenampatnam to the
southward. A treaty guaranteeing the same tolls as in Golkonda was
obtained from the nayak of Jinji, in whose province the port was
situated. After some trouble due to the influence which the Portu-
guese, themselves established at St Thomé and Negapatam, preserved
at Vellore, the Dutch obtained permission to rebuild an old fort at
Devenampatnam and to build a factory at Tirupapuliyur to be armed
with four pieces of cannon, while the Portuguese were expressly
forbidden access to either place. In 1610, by direct negotiations with


## p. 34 (#62) ##############################################

34
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
the king, permission was obtained to found another factory at Pulicat,
and again, in spite of their attempts to dissuade the king, the
Portuguese were expressly excluded from the port. The Dutch were
thus extending their position on the Coromandel Coast, although at
the same time the main forces of their Company were so fully engaged
in the Archipelago that no Dutch vessels appeared on the coast
between October, 1608, and March, 1610. The king of the Carnatic
began to doubt whether the Portuguese, whose trade the newcomers
threatened with ruin, might not after all be the more valuable friends.
But by means of a present of elephants from Kandi and other bribes
the Dutch retained his favour, while the Portuguese, who made one
or two fruitless attacks on the Dutch at Pulicat by sea from St Thomé,
only displayed that inferiority in naval power which was the real
cause of the ruin of their Indian Empire
Meanwhile the Seventeen, before the news of the settlement at
Pulicat had reached them, had realised the need for unity of adminis-
tration on the Coromandel Coast. In December, 1610, the council
at Bantam, acting upon their instructions, organised the administra-
tion of the Coromandel factories. The senior merchant of Masuli-
patam and Petapoli, Van Wesick (Pieter Ysaac had died), was
appointed to be General Director. The Portuguese, however, had not
yet learnt to acquiesce in the presence of their rivals. On 9 June,
1612, they carried out a successful raid on Pulicat from their neigh-
bouring settlement of St Thomé. The Dutch factory was destroyed.
Wemmer van Berchem, Van Wesick's successor as Director, was absent
in Golconda; but some of the factors were killed and the senior mer-
chant, Adolf Thomassen, carried off to St Thomé, whence he only
escaped over a year later. Wemmer van Berchem realised that, if the
factory at Pulicat was to survive, it would have to be fortified. The
local authorities, as well as the raja at Vellore, professed great indig-
nation at the action of the Portuguese; liberal presents secured
freedom to proceed with the work; and with the aid of the crews of
two ships, which happened to call in March, 1613, the fortress, called
Geldria after Van Berchem's native province, was completed. In the
very next month it had to withstand an attack by a native chief,
Etheraja, behind whom Van Berchem naturally suspected the Portu-
A direct attack by the Portuguese, both by sea and by land,
soon followed, but was beaten off. For some time the Dutch still
feared that, although the neighbouring Portuguese settlements had
proved too weak to dislodge them, the viceroy at Goa might send an
armada to restore Portuguese monopoly on the east coast. An attempt
was actually made in 1615, when a Portuguese fleet sailed to Arakan
to expel the Dutch; but the king of Arakan's ships, assisted by a
single Dutch yacht, the Duif, compelled the assailants to return. Both
in Golconda and the Carnatic the native authorities and the Dutch
factories prepared jointly to resist the Portuguese fleet, which sailed
>


## p. 35 (#63) ##############################################

PULICAT
35
south along the coast; but at no point did it venture to attack.
Portuguese prestige never recovered from this failure, and Geldria
never again had to fear attack from them.
Fort Geldria, meanwhile, played a part of growing importance.
For several years after 1614, the kingdom of the Carnatic was shaken
by a disputed succession and civil war. The Dutch castle was a fixed
point in the midst of turmoil, and many natives, and even many
refugees from St Thomé, sought its protection, so that almost at once
it became the nucleus from which a new territorial power might
have sprung. When the anarchy in the Carnatic led to its falling
under the sway of the kings of Golkonda, conditions in that region
were not greatly changed. The Dutch Company continued to coin
its own gold pagodas at Pulicat, out of imported gold, as did the
English later on at Madras. At Masulipatam, however, so much
nearer the capital, no such developments took place. That town was
ruled despotically by its havildar, while the Dutch factory, like the
English one, remained a trading settlement pure and simple. The
Company had soon obtained another farman by which the king of
Golconda remitted the 4 per cent. duties for an annual payment of
3000 “old pagodas” (25,000 guilders). Even this did not save the
Company from the exactions of the local authorities, and embassies
to Golconda were frequently needed to solicit the king's interference.
On the whole, however, the advantages of the new settlements
far outweighed the drawbacks. The Coromandel Coast soon played a
very important part in the life of the Company. As early as 1612, it
was described as "the left arm of the Moluccas and neighbouring
islands, since without the cottons from thence trade is dead in the
Moluccas”. ? The export of textiles for the Archipelago market always
remained the chief business of the Coromandei factories, although
soon considerable quantities were exported to Europe as well, and
the export of rice and vegetables and of slaves (for Batavia) became
important;? diamonds also were exported; while the hinterland of
Masulipatam supplied indigo. Both the indigo and the textile trades
required considerable skill on the part of the Company's servants.
As regards the latter, the requirements of the Archipelago market
were exactly studied. Patterns were sent from Bantam or Batavia,
and minute instructions were given to the weavers and dyers who
worked for the Company in towns and villages within a wide radius
of the factory.
The Dutch were able to carry on their trade to a large extent by
importing other articles in exchange for those of the country. This
3
1 Daghregister gehouden int Casteel Batavia, 1, 229.
? F. Heeres, Corpus Diplomaticum Neerlando-Indicum, p. 134.
8 Daghregister, 1, 189, 221; II, 445 sqq.


## p. 36 (#64) ##############################################

36
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
>
was one of the great problems for the European Companies. The
Indian market could not absorb any considerable amount of European
articles. Neither the English nor the Dutch Company could export
an unlimited supply of money from their own countries. In India
money could be borrowed only at an extortionate rate of interest.
Two ways lay open to the European Companies who did not want to
fall into the hands of the native moneylenders. They could raise money
by trading in countries where imports were paid for with cash; the
trade with China and Japan was the most fruitful in this respect, and
here the Dutch had a practical monopoly. Secondly, they could escape
the necessity of importing money by importing non-European articles
for which there was a demand in India, and here again the Dutch
were fortunate in their control of the supply of spices. Apart from
spices, the chief articles which they imported on the Coromandel Coast
were sandal wood and pepper from the Malay Archipelago, Japanese
copper and certain Chinese textiles from the Far East.
In 1617 the directorate of the Coromandel Coast was raised into a
gouvernement, its chief at Pulicat being given the title of governor
as well as becoming an Extraordinary Councillor of the Indies. In
1689 the governor's seat was removed from Pulicat in the centre to
Negapatam in the south, which as will be described in a subsequent
paragraph, had been taken from the Portuguese in 1659. No doubt the
decision to make it into the capital of the coast, which was adversely
criticised by many who praised the situation of Pulicat as ideally
central, was inspired by the consideration that in the troublous times
ahead, now that Aurangzib was master of Golconda, Negapatam, close
to the Company's new stronghold of Ceylon, was the natural strategic
basis of the whole gouvernement. A new castle was at once con-
structed, at a cost, it was said, of 1,600,000 guilders, which far surpassed
Fort Geldria in size and strength.
We possess a very vivid account of the conditions in the Dutch
factories on the Coromandel Coast just about the time when this
transfer was taking place in the travels of Daniel Havart.
The society into which Havart introduces his reader is purely
official. The "Free merchants" whom early governors-general had
wanted to encourage had been driven away by the severely mono-
polist policy on which the Seventeen insisted. There were only the
servants of the Company left, who enriched themselves (although
Havart does not say so) by infringing that very monopoly which was
so dear to the directors' hearts. During the last years of Havart's stay
on the coast this little society was shaken to its foundations by the
appearance of a commissioner, Van Reede tot Drakensteyn, entrusted
by the Seventeen themselves with extraordinary powers to put down
corruption and reform abuses. Several officials, chiefs of factories
among them, were broken by this ruthless reformer, whose social
9
1 Moreland, From Akbar to. Aurnngzeb, pp. 58 sqq.


## p. 37 (#65) ##############################################

COROMANDEL COAST
37
position (he was a member of the Utrecht nobility, a very unusual
rank among the servants of the Company) added to the awe which
he inspired.
By Havart's time some of the early factories, Petapoli and Tiru-
papuliyur, had been abandoned. On the other hand several new
ones had been founded. Proceeding northward from Negapatam,
Havart enumerates : Porto Novo, Devenampatnam, Sadraspatam,
Pulicat, Masulipatam, Nagelwanze, Golconda, Palakollu, Daatzerom
and Bimlipatam. Of these, Porto Novo, founded as late as 1680, was
a prosperous centre for the collection of cottons. Sadraspatam and
Palakollu were important on account of the especial excellence of the
textiles to be had there. Devenampatnam and Masulipatam were the
busiest factories, both for export and import, although Masulipatam
had lost some of its importance since the establishment, in 1660, of
a factory at Golconda, the chief of which, apart from his commercial
duties, acted as the Company's resident with the king of Golconda,
although special embassies continued still to be sent after as before
1660. Nagelwanze was the centre for the indigo trade. At Palakollu
the Company had had a factory since 1613, and carried on a profitable
dyeing industry. From 1653 the village was administered by the
Company which held it from the king at an annual rent of 1000
pagodas.
In all these places the Dutch Company had buildings, more or less
fortified, and large enough to accommodate the factories, their slaves,
and sometimes a small body of soldiers. The number of factors varied
a good deal. At Sadraspatam, although a very successful trading
centre, there were only four; at Nagelwanze, at the time of its highest
prosperity about 1680, eighteen. Many of the factors were married,
and if the factory could not house their families, they lived outside.
At Masulipatam eight or ten were married, when the Commissioner
Van Reede strictly prohibited (except for the chiefs of factories)
what was regarded as an abuse, and sent many families to Europe or
Batavia. The factors in the Company's services were called merchants,
and their ranks were assistant, junior merchant, merchant, and senior
merchant. This nomenclature was preserved even in possessions
where the duties of the Company's servants were not primarily com-
mercial, but administrative, as in Ceylon. At the head of a factory
there were as a rule two chiefs, the first and the second chief, who
might be junior merchant, merchant, or senior merchant in rank. The
Coromandel instructions of the Pulicat governors of 1649 and 1663 1
laid it down that the first chief presides over the council, on which
the other factors also sat; he had the general supervision over the
factory's affairs, kept the money, negotiated with native traders,
contracting for textiles, etc. , and corresponding with the central
administration, with the director or governor, as the case might be,
1 Havart, Op- en Ondergang van Cormandel, m, 57.


## p. 38 (#66) ##############################################

38
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
but consulting his secundo. The second himself kept the trading
accounts and looked after the warehouses.
At Pulicat—Havart knew the place before Van Reede ordered the
transfer of headquarters to Negapatam—the governor's house and
those of some other high officials were within the castle. But in the
town, there were “many streets where none but Dutchmen live, and
among them one whole row of houses all built in the Dutch way, with
three rows of trees in front of them”. The governor, who had to
consult his council about most matters of importance, corresponded,
not with the directors in Europe, but with the government at Batavia.
The Geldria fort, as Havart observes, was by no means so fine a castle,
as the English castle at Madras, and on the whole, the English factories
surpassed those of the Dutch in size and beauty, if not in trade,
all along the Coromandel Coast. Particularly after the reductions of
1678, when the Company ceased supplying chiefs of factories with
horses and palanquins, and the number of servants in each factory
was greatly cut down, Havart feared that Dutch prestige in the eyes
of the natives would suffer irreparable damage.
In fact, bad times, but not only for the Dutch, were fast approach-
ing. Relations with the court of Golconda had on the whole been
very friendly. In 1676, on the occasion of a visit to Masulipatam, when
the king insisted that the Dutch ladies should visit his wives, and
when he himself attended service in the Dutch church, he remitted
all the annual payments which the Company owed him in respect of
freedom of tolls or possession of lands. In 1686, a quarrel broke out
about a debt which the Company had outstanding at Golconda. It
had just been settled after a display of vigour on the Company's part
--the inland factories had been evacuated and Masulipatam occupied
by a force shipped from Ceylon—when the army of Aurangzib
appeared before Golconda; the king was deposed and the country
overrun. The Dutch factory at Nagelwanze was destroyed, and alto-
gether a time of dearth and insecurity began in which trade declined.
The profits of the Coromandel gouvernement, which in the years 1684
and 1685 appeared in the Company's books as exceeding 1,200,000
guilders, fell to 445,000 guilders in 1686 and 82,000 in 1687. 1 Nor
was the high water mark of the years before Aurangzib's conquest of
Golconda ever reached again. Towards the middle of the eighteenth
century. there was an improvement, but it was not maintained, and
the figures generally moved between 200,000 and 400,000 guilders
profit, which indeed still made a good showing in the Company's
books when, as will be shown in a subsequent paragraph, so many of
its establishments were worked at a loss.
In the days before the amalgamation of the companies, two
a
1 Kierk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Ueberblick der Niederl. Ostindischen
Compagnie, VRTD, Beilage IX.


## p. 39 (#67) ##############################################

GUJARAT
89
Zeeland merchants, as has been briefly mentioned above, had tried to
open up relations with the ports on the west coast of India, but had
been hanged by the Portuguese at Goa. Their reports on Gujarat,
however, had been most sanguine, and the United Company was
anxious to follow up their pioneer work and secure Gujarat cottons
for the markets of the Moluccas and the west coast of Sumatra and
Jambi as well as for Europe. In 1604, and again in 1605, the admiral
commanding the annual fleet was instructed to detach two ships to
Surat; whether the order was carried out in 1604 does not appear; in
the following year, at any rate, it was set aside because reports of an
impending attack by the Portuguese made a concentration of all
forces in the Archipelago seem imperatively necessary. A Dutch
merchant was at Surat in 1606 and 1607, but, wrought upon by
nervous fears that the Portuguese were succeeding in setting against
him the mind of the Khankhanan, Jahangir's representative at
Burhanpur, he committed suicide. The English soon were more
successful, and, stimulated by their example, and urged moreover by
the shahbandar of Surat, the Dutch governor of Coromandel in May,
1615, sent one of his officials, Gilles van Ravesteyn, to Surat, where
he arrived after a six weeks' journey on horseback. Van Ravesteyn,
who went to Burhanpur in the company of Sir Thomas Roe, on his
return advised against the establishment of a factory. Political con-
ditions in the Moghul Empire did not seem to him to promise security
to foreign traders; in any case a farman signed by the Great Moghul
himself would be required and would be very difficult to obtain.
Coen, however, who in the capacity of director-general of trade at
Bantam was already the leading spirit among the authorities in the
East, considered the cottons of Gujarat indispensable for the Molucca
trade, the more so as the factory at Achin, where they could be
obtained, if at much higher prices, was exposed to intolerable vexa-
tions and had soon to be withdrawn. Even before Van Ravesteyn's
report had been received, therefore, Coen had dispatched a yacht
under Pieter van den Broecke to Gujarat. After touching at Mokha,
which became the usual practice, as cash useful for the purchases to
be made at Surat could be obtained there, Van den Broecke arrived
at Surat in August, 1616, and asked permission to establish a factory.
Sir Thomas Roe did what he could to excite the Great Moghul's
suspicions against the newcomers, but the Surat merchants feared
that in case of a refusal the Dutch might attack their shipping, and
the governor of the town gave a provisional permission. The next
year two senior merchants, Van Ravesteyn and Adriaan Goeree, were
left in charge of the Surat factory, and they had to struggle througn
some very difficult years. Van Ravesteyn succeeded, to the morti-
fication of Sir Thomas Roe, in negotiating, not it is true with Jahangir
himself, but with his son Prince Khurram. a satisfactory treaty of
1
1 Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe (ed. 1926), pp. 202 sqq.


## p. 40 (#68) ##############################################

40
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
commerce (1618), but all his and his colleague's efforts were in vain
since no ships appeared to carry away their indigo and cottons. Van
den Broecke, sent from Bantam for the third time in December, 1618,
was immediately recalled on account of the outbreak of the war with
the English, which necessitated the concentration of all available
forces in the Archipelago. The two factors at Surat were driven
almost to distraction by their false position until at last, in October,
1620, Van den Broecke, after having called at Aden, arrived at Surat.
Coen had appointed him director of both Mokha and Surat, and he
took up his residence at the latter place. A number of the Company's
other servants arrived overland from Masulipatam later in the year,
and factories could then be organised in the inland towns, explored
during the preceding years, Broach, Cambay, Ahmadabad, Agra, and
Burhanpur, where indigo and textiles of various kinds were to be had.
A more prosperous time now began for the settlement. There was
a dangerous conflict in 1622 with the Gujarat authorities, especially
with Asaf Khan, Prince Khurram's powerful father-in-law, over the
activities of a Dutch ship which had sailed along the Arabian and
Persian coast, seizing native craft belonging to Portuguese ports, and
had confiscated property belonging-or so it was alleged to that
dignitary. The factor at Cambay, who was within the reach of Asaf
Khan's resentment, nevertheless took a high tone and threatened
Coen's vengeance in a way eloquent of the self-confidence engend-
ered by the events of 1619. He was, however, arrested and sent to
Agra, and Van den Broecke had to pay an indemnity before the
Cambay factory could be recovered. Incidents like these were typical
of trade in a strong but despotic empire like the Moghul's, and did not
prevent the Gujarat factories from producing larger and larger profits.
Coen was impatient with Van den Broecke for sending him indigo,
when he wanted textiles. In course of time, however, the indigo trade
came to be as important as the trade in cottons. In 1624 the first ship
sailed from Surat direct for Holland; its cargo consisted mainly of
indigo. In those years three or four ships were sent annually from
Batavia to trade with Gujarat and Arabia. The English Company,
which, after its defeat in Java, was beginning to develop Gujarat as
the centre of its eastern system, was still somewhat ahead of its rival
here. But the advantages of the Dutch which have been mentioned
in connection with their Coromandel trade told in Gujarat as well,
and the directorate of Surat-the factories farther to the west were
soon formed into a separate directorate-came to be one of the most
profitable of all the establishments the Dutch Company possessed.
In 1627 the governor of Coromandel sent some of his subordinates
to found a trading establishment in Bengal. At first the new post was
kept within the jurisdiction of the Coromandel gouvernement, but
1 Colenbrander, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, m, 184.


## p. 41 (#69) ##############################################

BENGAL AND CEYLON
41
distance and its growing importance caused the government at
Batavia in 1655 to give it a separate organisation as the Directorate
of Bengal. Pippli, the first place where the Dutch had established
themselves, was soon abandoned for Balasore. When in 1653 a firm
.
footing was obtained at Chinsura up the Hugli river, Balasore was
retained only for the convenience of the ships. Chinsura, Kasimbazar
and Patna, however, became the centres of an exceedingly prosperous
and profitable trade. Although the Dutch in Bengal never attained
to the position of independence which they enjoyed in the Carnatic,
they were given considerable liberties by the nawab of Bengal, from
whom they held the villages of Chinsura and Bernagore in “perpetual
fief”, with wide jurisdiction even over natives. They were allowed to
construct a fortress at Chinsura, called Fort Gustavus, which at any
rate safeguarded them against any sudden attack by native forces.
They were always exposed, nevertheless, to the exactions of native
authorities, but the profits of the Bengal trade enabled them to suffer
many losses and to pay many bribes with equanimity.
The articles of export were textiles and silk, saltpetre, rice, and
particularly, opium. The opium, which was sent to Java and China,
yielded enormous profits. Even when in the eighteenth century the
Company's position in Bengal had become precarious, the establish-
ments there continued to be among the most profitable in all the
Company's domain. .
Ceylon had attracted the Dutch from the early days of their
colonial enterprise.
In 1602 Joris van Spilbergh, in command of three ships owned by
Balthazar de Moucheron, called at Batticaloa, which was not occupied
by the Portuguese, and travelled up to Kandi. Before the year was
out, another three ships (detached from the first of the United Com-
pany's fleets) appeared at Batticaloa, and their commander, Sebald
de Weert, followed Spilbergh's example and visited the “emperor”.
"Dom João" was eager to enlist the help of the Dutch against the
Portuguese, and De Weert arranged with him to go to Achin for
reinforcements with which to blockade Galle by sea while the Sin-
halese attacked it by land. On 25 April, 1603, De Weert was back at
Batticaloa with a fleet of seven ships, but before the expedition against
Galle could be undertaken, a quarrel arose, and the Dutch commander
was slain with a number of his companions.
This misfortune naturally had a discouraging effect on the Dutch
Company, and for many years to come it devoted its energies to the
strengthening of its position in the Malay Archipelago. Ports on the
Coromandel Coast and Gujarat were a necessary corollary to the
enjoyment of the monopoly of the Molucca trade, but the building
up of a new monopoly in Ceylon could wait. Relations were not
broken off altogether. When the Dutch had founded a factory at


## p. 42 (#70) ##############################################

42
THE DUTCH IN INDIA,
Devenampatnam in 1608, the new king (Dom João had died in 1604)
sued for their help again, and in 1610, and again in 1612, treaties were
concluded. The man who had negotiated the latter treaty, de
Boschhouwer, rose into high favour with the king and left Ceylon in
1615 full of zeal for the plan of an immediate attack on the Portuguese
in the island. Both in Java and in Holland, however, he found the
authorities immersed in their cares for the Moluccas. At last he
persuaded the Danish Government to fit out an expedition to Ceylon,
but he himself died on the way out, and without him the Danes
achieved nothing at Batticaloa.
The Portuguese now woke up to the danger threatening their
position, and closed the ring round the king of Kandi by occupying
and fortifying both Trinkomali and Batticaloa. An attempt to take
Kandi, however, failed disastrously.
.
Soon afterwards (1632), the throne of Kandi was occupied by an
energetic young ruler, Raja Sinha, who resumed the policy of setting
the Dutch against his arch-enemies the Portuguese. On 9 September,
1636, he wrote a letter to the Dutch Governor of the Coromandel
Coast at Pulicat-it took his envoy six months to elude the watch-
fulness of the Portuguese and deliver the letter-in which he asked
for a fleet of five vessels to blockade the Portuguese fortresses while
he attacked them from the land side; he promised the Dutch leave
to build a fortress of their own and the repayment of all the expenses
of the expedition.
These proposals now found ready acceptance. The Company,
securely established in the Archipelago, was thinking of expansion,
and under the energetic leadership of the governor-general Van
Diemen a determined attempt was being made to break down the
Portuguese Empire. The main effort was directed against Malacca,
but at the same time Goa, the nerve-centre of the Portuguese system,
was paralysed by an annual blockade (this policy had been started
in 1636), and the Dutch felt strong enough to try and wrest from the
Portuguese the places which provided the valuable pepper and
cinnamon, on the west coast of India and in Ceylon.
In January, 1638, the admiral of the fleet before Goa, Westerwolt,
detached two yachts under the command of Coster to begin the siege
of Batticaloa. When the south-west monsoon necessitated the break. .
up of the blockade, he himself appeared on 10 May with four ships
and landed 300 men; Batticaloa surrendered after a bombardment
without awaiting a storm.
The only importance of Batticaloa lay in that it established com-
munications with the independent ruler of the interior. Westerwolt
at once obtained Raja Sinha's consent to a new treaty prepared
beforehand and which assured enormous advantages to the Company.
By it the Company promised to supply the troops and ships required
for the expulsion of the Portuguese from the island; the king was to


## p. 43 (#71) ##############################################

CONQUEST OF CEYLON
43
make good all expenses thus incurred by deliveries of cinnamon,
pepper, etc. ; the Dutch were moreover to have complete freedom of
commerce in the island to the exclusion of all other European nations.
Clearly the king thought hardly any price too high that would help
him to re-establish his authority over the coastal towns. By the third
clause of the treaty, as Westerwolt sent it to Batavia, however, the
king, on top of all this, consented that the Dutch should garrison the
fortresses captured from the Portuguese. One wonders why he should
have thought it worth while to pay the Dutch so heavily merely
to step into his enemies' place. But the mystery is solved when the
Dutch copy of the treaty is compared with the Portuguese translation
handed to Raja Sinha: in the only version known to the ruler of
Kandi the clause in question contains an addition making the gar-
risoning of the fortresses by the Dutch dependent on his approval.
The deception remained undetected for some time, as the king,
pleased with his allies and conscious of his impotence against the
Portuguese, made no objection to the Dutch retaining Batticaloa.