Page 180 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

180 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

collision with the Portuguese who, with their historic
stronghold at Malacca, were able to impose a formidable
barrier to the progress of the adventurers. The Hollanders
accepted the challenge with a spirit which doubtless took a
keener edge from the memory of wrongs perpetrated in the c
Low Countries by the predecessors of the then ruler of
Portugal and Spain. In one great fight off Malacca in
1606 the Dutch lost no fewer than 600 men killed. There
were other actions less deadly, but whose cumulative effect
must have been to place a great drain upon the Company’s
resources. With such stubborn determination was the
war carried on that in 1607 it was stated in a communica­
tion from the English Ambassador in Spain to the Govern­ I
ment in England that the losses incurred in the East Indies
by the allied nations at the hands of the Dutch were of such
a character as to have inflicted “ in those places a wound
almost incurable.” In point of fact, within ten years of
their first appearance in the Eastern Seas the Dutch had
firmly established their power almost throughout the region
in which the spice trade was actively prosecuted.
It would have argued an exceptionally generous tempera­
ment on the part of the Dutch, in view of the enormous
sacrifices in blood and treasure they had made to secure a
paramount position, if they had regarded the efforts of the
English to engage in the spice trade in the Archipelago
otherwise than with distrust and dislike. Rightly or
wrongly they considered themselves the sole inheritors
by virtue of their conquests of the Portuguese and Spanish
monopoly, and they were the more disposed to adopt this
view as they had from the very outset concluded with the
native chiefs of the various islands, and notably with the
King of Ternate, one of the Moluccas group, who stood

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