No More Learning

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.
When Westerwolt on 4 June, 1638, departed for Batavia, he left
Coster behind him as governor of the town.
At about the same time another disaster befell the Portuguese, a
fieet with reinforcements from Goa for Colombo being shipwrecked.
Coster urged the authorities at Batavia to strike while the iron was
hot, and the governor-general and council themselves wrote to the
directors at home (22 December, 1638) that if they would only send
some extra ships and troops, the time had come “to help the Portu-
guese out of India": the Malabar Coast with its rich trade, Ceylon
and Malacca, all seemed within the grasp of the Company.
But quarrels with Raja Sinha supervened, and nothing was
achieved in 1639 except the capture of Trinkomali, useless for the
cinnamon trade, and the special effort which the Company made
towards the end of that year, sending out a fleet of twenty-eight ships
in order to blockade Goa and attack Ceylon simultaneously, still did
not enable them to capture Colombo. But the command of the sea
enabled the Dutch to attack the enemy where he was weakest. In
order to provide for the defence of their capital, the Portuguese had
reduced the garrison of Negombo, and on 9 February, 1640, that town
was taken by the combined Dutch and Sinhalese forces. The first
breach had been made in the strong places protecting the cinnamon
country, but the immediate result was a quarrel between the allies
over the right to occupy the captured town, and the discrepancy
between the two versions of the treaty of 1638 now came to light.
Raja Sinha's indignation can easily be understood, but the Portu-
guese were still the more formidable intruders, and Coster succeeded
in bringing about a reconciliation on the basis of a compromise which
assured to his masters the reality of power. Trinkomali and Batticaloa
were to be surrendered to Raja Sinha in return for ten elephants and
1000 bahars of cinnamon; after the Portuguese had been driven out


## p. 44 (#72) ##############################################

THE DUTCH IN INDIA
of Ceylon altogether, the Dutch were to be allowed to retain one
fortress; they might, however, hold all they took as a pledge till their
expenses had been paid; Colombo was in any case to be dismantled.
This treaty was to take the place of the third clause of the treaty of
1638, which was reconfirmed as far as its other provisions went. Im-
mediately after the conclusion of this arrangement, Coster sailed
southward and laid siege to Galle, which after hard fighting was taken
on 13 March, 1640. No Sinhalese troops took part in the siege.
The Dutch how held two ports in the cinnamon area and expected
to have a good share in the trade. But Raja Sinha, although Trinko-
mali, was given up to him in April when he paid the stipulated price
of ten elephants, still suspected the intentions of his allies with regard
to the captured fortresses. Thanks to their exertions, he now controlled
part of the cinnamon fields, but he never delivered the quantities
which the Dutch claimed under the treaty, preferring to deal with
Arab merchants in spite of its provisions. Coster, who went from
Galle to Kandi to remonstrate with the king, was murdered by his
Sinhalese escort on his way back (August, 1640). Shortly afterwards
the Portuguese were enabled by reinforcements from Goa, where an
energetic new viceroy, d'Aveiras, had taken up the government, to
make a determined attempt to retake Negombo, and although Galle,
where Thijssen had assumed the command after Coster's death, held
out, its position was difficult. The Portuguese now dominated all the
surrounding area with their troops, and not only was no cinnamon to
be obtained, but the town had to be provisioned from Pulicat.
The news of these events aroused the more disappointment at
Batavia as developments had taken place in Europe which threatened
to interfere with the Company's schemes of conquest. A rebellion
A
against Spanish rule had for some time been brewing in Portugal; in
November, 1640, the Duke of Braganza was proclaimed king. Portu-
gal's colonial possessions had for forty years been fair game for the
Dutch East India Company, because Portugal was part of the Spanish
Empire, with which the states-general still continued at war. Now
that Portugal had freed herself and had become Spain's enemy, peace
between Holland and Portugal seemed inevitable. In fact negotiations
with that object were begun at the Hague in April 1641," and the
Batavia government felt that no time was to be lost. The siege of
Malacca, which had been taken in January, 1641, had exacted a high
toll of life, and the forces at their disposal were small. Yet in
September, 1641, they again, as in 1639, sent out a fleet capable of
blockading Goa and attacking Ceylon simultaneously, but nothing
was achieved, although the negotiators in Europe had taken care to
allow as much latitude of time to the Company's arms as decency
would permit. On 14 February, 1642, news was received at Batavia of
1 Prestage, The Diplomatic Relations of Portugal with France, England,
and Holland from 1640 to 1668, p. 175.


## p. 45 (#73) ##############################################

THE TEN YEARS' TRUCE
45
1
a ten-year truce signed at the Hague on 12 June, 1641; but it was only
to come into force in the East a full year after the king of Portugal's
ratification arrived at the Hague. War could go on, therefore, in
spite of the attempts of the Goa government to arrange an immediate
armistice. The ratification was not passed by the king of Portugal
until 18 November, and news of this was only received at Batavia on
2 October, 1642. The delay had not been of any use to the Company.
The Portuguese still kept Galle practically invested on the land side,
and the Dutch had no access at all to the cinnamon fields. But the
resources of the Company's diplomacy were not yet exhausted. A
difference of interpretation as between Goa and Batavia of one
important article of the truce arranged in Europe was used as a
pretext to continue the war. It must be said that the Dutch inter-
pretation seems the correct one, and that the Portuguese viceroy's
attitude was most unyielding. The successes of the last two years in
Ceylon had inspired the Portuguese with a new confidence.
The article in question, the twelfth of the treaty of truce,'
arranged the affairs between the two nations on the basis of uti
possidetis, with the proviso, however, that the lati campi, the country-
side, between fortresses belonging to the contracting parties, were to
be divided by the authorities on the spot in accordance with their
dependence on these fortresses. Basing themselves on this article, the
Dutch demanded that the Portuguese should evacuate the districts of
Matturai and Saffragam, parts of the cinnamon country which had
always been considered as falling within the jurisdiction of Galle. The
Dutch Commissioner, appearing at Goa, which in spite of Portuguese
protests was still being blockaded, on 1 April, 1643, proposed a pro-
visional division of the cinnamon lands until the governments in
Europe had settled the matter. When this was rejected, war was
resumed.
It was not waged by the Dutch only to compel the Portuguese to
accept their interpretation of the twelfth article of the truce. There
still was a state of war between the Portuguese and Raja Sinha; the
viceroy did not recognise the king's authority, in spite of the third
article of the truce, which included all Indian rulers allied to either
of the contracting parties. In Ceylon, therefore, the Dutch pretended
to act on the king's behalf, which meant that they claimed to be
free to extend their conquests. Reinforcements from home made it
possible for the Batavia government to act with vigour. While in the
autumn of 1643 the usual fleet sailed to blockade Goa, a second fleet
of nine ships, manned by 1550 men and under the command of Caron,
made straight for Ceylon. After a battle under the walls of Negombo,
in which the Portuguese were entirely routed, the Dutch penetrated
into the town in the wake of the flying army, and became masters of
1. Dumont, Corps Universel Diplomatique, vi. 214.


## p. 46 (#74) ##############################################

46
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
Negombo once more (January, 1644). Without heeding Raja Sinha's
requests that the town should be given up to him, the Dutch strongly
fortified it.
The viceroy at Goa, regretting his uricompromising rejection of
the offers made him the year before, now wrote to Batavia that he
was willing to accept them. But the Dutch were no longer content
with the cinnamon country near Galle, they also claimed Negombo
with the surrounding area. They claimed it on behalf of Raja Sinha,
to whom, however, they did not dream of surrendering it. Yet when
in the autumn of 1644 the Batavia government once more sent a large
fleet to blockade Goa, its commander, Joan Maetsuycker, was em-
powered to negotiate. The Seventeen, primed by the states-general,
had been remonstrating with their servants in the Indies about the
high-handed war in which they had made war on the Portuguese all
over the Indian Ocean on account of some cinnamon fields in Ceylon,
and it really was a relief to the Batavia authorities when Maetsuycker
succeeded in obtaining from the viceroy a treaty (10 November, 1644),
by which both Galle and Negombo were ceded with the cinnamon
lands divided at equal distances between those places and Colombo.
The viceroy, however, only gave up Negombo under protest, and a
treaty made between the home governments on 27 March, 1645, in
ignorance of what had been done in the East, could still be interpreted
by each party to suit its own interests.
At the same time, Negombo was the cause of serious trouble with
Raja Sinha, whose men were ravaging the cinnarnon lạnds in which
the Dutch hoped to recoup themselves for their expenditure. The
governor of Galle, Thijssen, rashly declared war on the king in May,
1645, and was at once recalled, but before Maetsuycker, who became
his successor, could restore peace, a, military disaster occurred; a
Dutch encampment was surrounded, the troops sent to relieve it cut
to pieces, and the king returned to Kandi with 400 prisoners (May,
1646). In the negotiations which now dragged on for years, Raja
Sinha held a trump card, his prisoners. At last, in 1649, the Dutch
consented to a treaty which restored ihe alliance of 1638, but on
somewhat less favourable conditions; not even the monopoly of the
cinnamon trade was to remain to them once Raja Sinha had paid
off his debts, no doubt a somewhat unlikely contingency. In any
case, the old scheme for the expulsion of the Portuguese was again
being discussed between the king and the Dutch.
While the Portuguese claims to Negombo were still a matter of
negotiation with Maetsuycker, news had arrived, in the summer of
1646, of the rebellion against Dutch rule that had broken out in
Brazil. This settled the matter of Negombo; it served as a sufficient
pretext for its indefinite retention by the Dutch. Relations between
the Dutch Republic and Portugal were greatly strained and the East
India Company's pretensions now had the support of the states-
general. Quite apart from the narrow issue of Negombo, it was clear


## p. 47 (#75) ##############################################

RENEWAL OF WAR
47
that the peace between the two countries was precarious. When the
ten years' truce ran out in 1652, the Company's servants in the East
were apprised that they were again to make war on the Portuguese.
During the next period, the affairs of the Dutch West India Company
kept the war between the Dutch Republic and Portugal alive, and
while the Portuguese were successful in Brazil, and could not make
peace on account of that very success, they lost nearly all they had
left in India, and the schemes of conquest of the Dutch East India
Company, which had been interrupted in 1642, were now to a large
extent realised.
It was not until 1655 that a serious effort was inade. At the urgent
requests of the Batavia government, larger quantities of ships and
men had been sent from home: 13,500 men during the three years from
1653 to 1655. On 14 August, 1655, twelve ships, with 1200 soldiers
on board, left Batavia with orders to attack Colombo; Gerard Hulft,
director-general of India, was the commander. Towards the end of
September Colombo was invested. It was kept closely blockaded
both by land and by sea, and non-combatants trying to escape were
driven back. Famine and disease raged as the months wore on, and
still the Portuguese held out, hoping for relief from Goa. Early in
April a fleet of twenty-two small vessels trying to carry troops and
provisions to Colombo was scattered off Quilon by a single Dutch
ship. At last, on 7 May, after reinforcements had arrived from Batavia,
the town was stormed, and the north-east bastion captured. On 12
May Colombo capitulated, which did not save it from being sacked
by the Dutch soldiers.
Colombo was at once garriscned and the ruined fortifications
rebuilt by the Dutch. Raja Sinha had not taken a very active part
in the siege. His army had most of the time been encamped near
Raygamwatte. Yet his help had been useful in the provisioning of
the Dutch troops, and his relations with Hulft had been most cordial.
The maharaja bravely kept up the fiction of the Dutch being merely
the humble auxiliaries of his august and all-powerful person. Of
Hulft he spoke as “my Director-General”, and of the Dutch army
as “my army". 1 Hulft was killed during the siege, on 10 April, 1656,
and with Adriaan van der Meyden, who took his place, Raja Sinha's
relations soon grew less agreeable. When the capitulation of Colombo
was concluded, in his name and the Company's, but without his even
being consulted, and when it became clear that the Dutch had no
intention of giving up their conquest to him, the king's attitude
became frankly hostile. He closed the mountain passes and forbade
the delivery of cattle and other provisions to the Dutch. He tartly
reproached the Company with faithlessness. In November Van der
Meyden made an end of pretences. A little army was sent against the
camp at Raygamwatte. Raja Sinhą did not wait for it, but broke
1 Aalbers, Rijklof van Goens, p. 53, note 4.


## p. 48 (#76) ##############################################

48
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
camp hastily and retired to his mountains. It was to be feared that
he might be reconciled with the Portuguese, who were still in pos-
session of two strong places on the north of Ceylon, Manar and
Jaffnapatam, and held Tuticorin and Negapatam on the mainland.
The Dutch could not feel safe in the possession of the cinnamon lands,
therefore, until they had expelled the Portuguese from those last
strongholds and "cleaned up that whole corner”. 1
In September, 1657, Rijcklof van Goens, an Extraordinary
Member of the Council of India, who had already served the Company
in many capacities and in many lands with striking success, was in-
structed to effect this. Having expelled the Portuguese from the open
town of Tuticorin, Van Goens dispatched a mission to the thever, the
nayak's vassal, and to the nayak of Madura himself, and continued
on his way. On 19 February, the fleet crossed from the island of
Rammanakoil along Adam's Bridge to Manar, where a number of
Portuguese vessels with great obstinacy tried to prevent a landing.
When it was nevertheless effected, on the 22nd, the fortress surren-
dered at once, most of the garrison having hurriedly evacuated it and
made for Jaffnapatam. Thither, Van Goens, with 850 men, followed
overland; 200 more soldiers, brought from Colombo, joined him
before the town. On 9 March the Dutch troops fought their way into
the town, the Portuguese retiring into the citadel, which as Van Goens
put it, “deserved that name more than any one I ever saw in India”.
The Portuguese garrison numbered about 1000, and in addition there
were 700 or 800 native soldiers. But some thousands of refugees from
the town created confusion and accelerated the consumption of
provisions. After having captured (26 April) the fortress on the islet
of Kays in the mouth of the channel between Ouratura (afterwards
Leyden) and Caradiva (afterwards Amsterdam), Van Goens could
use the cannon of the fleet which was now assembling before Jaffna-
patam, and ten batteries were constructed round the fort. Famine
and disease, however, were the most potent weapons of the besieger,
and at last, when all hope of relief from Goa had vanished, the
Portuguese commander capitulated (23 June, 1658).
As soon as the difficult problem of the great number of prisoners
and of the occupation of the fort was settled, Van Goens sailed for
Negapatam. The garrison of 367 men was too small to hold that large
fortified town, and capitulated at once. Negapatam at first remained
under the governor of Ceylon, but, as has already been stated, in
1689 the Dutch made it the seat of their administration on the
Coromandel Coast. Portuguese power was definitely broken in the
whole of Southern India. The only remaining task was to expel them
from the Malabar Coast, and this, too, was a few years later under-
taken by Van Goens.
1 Instruction for Van Goens, 5 September, 1657, ap. Aalbers, Rijklof van
Goens, p. 66.


## p. 49 (#77) ##############################################

MALABAR CONQUESTS
49
The Malabar Coast was the region on the mainland of India where
the Portuguese had struck root most deeply. The small rulers between
whom the country was divided had been unable to prevent the
intruders from acquiring large political powers, which they used in
ihe first place to secure for themselves the exclusive trade in the only
important export of the region, pepper. In a number of towns there
were considerable settlements of Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism
had made many converts.
The Dutch, although they had never found time to obtain a firm
footing on the Malabar Coast, had been repeatedly in communication
with rulers unfriendly to the Portuguese in that region, particularly
with the most powerful of the Malabar princes, the Zamorin of Calicut.
In September, 1604, Admiral Steven Van der Haghen had concluded
a treaty with the Zamorin 1 but, as we know, all available forces were
needed for the establishment of Dutch power in the Archipelago in
those early days. The piece-goods trade of the Coromandel Ccast
was moreover thought to be of greater importance than the pepper
trade of Malabar, pepper being obtained in sufficient quantities at
Bantam and at Achin. And so, although other fleets stopped at
Calicut, and Van der Haghen's treaty was renewed, and once (1610)
merchants were sent from Tirupapuliyur to conclude a fresh treatv
of friendship and commerce, all these arrangements remained a dead
letter, and in the days of Van Goens the only Dutch port on the west
coast of India was Vengurla to the north of Goa. Here in 1637, when
the policy of annually blockading the Portuguese capital had just
been adopted, the Dutch had built a fort which served as a point
d'appui for the blockading fleets and as a post of observation during
the months when they were not there. The Malabar Coast proper
was still controlled effectively by the Portuguese fortresses.
For some time after the conquest of Negapatam, the war with the
Portuguese was carried on less energetically. The Company, exhausted
by its effort, tried to obtain assistance from the states-general.