Page 264 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

264: EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

friendly, it was hoped that the proposal might meet with
favourable consideration. But the Company’s representa­
tives in India had reckoned without the war which broke
out between England and Holland in 1653, and which for
a time completely interrupted the Indian trade. When ■
hostilities ceased, the position had so changed that the
undertaking of any new responsibilities by the Company
was out of the question. The directors had a difficult task
to hold their own in the face of a competition which had
become the fiercer owing to the action of Cromwell in
freeing the Indian trade. Events, however, were shaping ■5
for a realization of the far-seeing aims of the Surat factors.
While English and Portuguese had agreed after a fashion
to sink their differences, the old feud between the Dutch
and the Portuguese existed in undiminished force. An
armistice for ten years had been concluded between the
two nations in 1641, but it was never very carefully ob­
served and as soon as the period for which the arrangement
was made terminated, the fight was renewed on the part
of the Dutch with increased determination. In 1656 a
strong Dutch force after a protracted siege captured
Colombo, which, next to Goa, was the most important
place which the Portuguese then occupied in the East.
Two years later the conquest of the entire Portuguese terri­
tory on the island of Ceylon was made effective by a success­
ful assault upon Jaffnapatam. These successes paved
the way for the further triumph of Dutch arms in Southern
India where in due course the important towns of Cochin
and Cannanore, the last named of which had been in
Portuguese hands for 170 years, were transferred to the
sovereignity of the conquering Hollanders.
An immense effect was produced in Portugal by these

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