THE PROGRESS OF THE DUTCH.

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At first the Dutch , following in the track of the English ,attempted to find their way to India by sailing round thenorthern coast of Europe and Asia . William Barents ishonourably known as the leader of three of these arcticexpeditions, in the last of which he perished.

The first Dutchman to double the Cape of Good Hope Dutchwas Cornelius Houtman , who reached Sumatra and Bantam in 1596. Forthwith private companies for trade with the pan i es .East were formed in many parts of the United Provinces ;but in 1602 they were all amalgamated by the States-General into ‘The Dutch East India Company .’ Within fifty yearsthe Dutch had established factories on the continent ofIndia , in Ceylon , in Sumatra , in the Persian Gulf , and in theRed Sea , besides having obtained exclusive possession of theMoluccas . In 1619 they laid the foundation of the city of TheirBatavia in Java , as the seat of the supreme government ofP™| ress ’the Dutch possessions in the East Indies, which had previouslybeen at Amboyna. At about the same time the Dutch dis-covered the coast of Australia ; while in North America theyfounded the city of New Amsterdam or Manhattan , now New York .

During the 17th century the Dutch were the foremost mari- Dutch time power in the world. Their memorable massacre of the supremacy

1 jj]i Eastern

English at Amboyna, in 1623, forced the British Company to seas, 1600-retire from the Eastern Archipelago to the continent of India , I 7 °°-and thus led to the foundation of our Indian Empire. Thelong naval wars and bloody battles between the English andthe Dutch within the narrow seas were not terminated untilWilliam of Orange united the two countries in 1689. In theEastern Archipelago the Dutch ruled without a rival, andexpelled the Portuguese from almost all their territorialpossessions. In 1635 they occupied Formosa; in 1640 Their

they took Malacca , a blow from which the Portuguese never brilliant. progress,

recovered; m 1647 they were trading at Sadras, on the Palar 1635-69.

river; in 1651 they founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope , as a half-way station to the East; in 1652 they builttheir first Indian factory at Palakollu, on the Madras coast;in 1658 they captured Jaffnapatam, the last stronghold of thePortuguese in Ceylon . Between 1661 and 1664 the Dutch wrested from the Portuguese all their earlier Settlements onthe pepper-bearing coast of Malabar; and in 1669 they ex-pelled the Portuguese from St. Thome and Macassar.

The fall of the Dutch colonial empire resulted from itsshort-sighted commercial policy. It was deliberately based