esolved to attempt a direct trade to India. We have
already mentioned the voyages of Barentz in search of a north-east passage;
these proving unsuccessful, the Dutch began to despair of reaching India,
except by the Cape of Good Hope; and this voyage they were afraid to
undertake, having, at this time, neither experienced seamen nor persons
acquainted with Indian commerce. A circumstance, however, occurred while
Barentz was in search of a north-west passage, which determined them to
sail to India by the Cape. One Houlman, a Dutchman, who had been in the
Portuguese Indian service, but was then confined in Lisbon for debt,
proposed to the merchants of Rotterdam, if they could liberate him, to put
them in possession of all he knew respecting Indian commerce; his offer was
accepted, and four ships were sent to India in 1594 under his command. The
adventurers met with much opposition from the Portuguese in India, so that
their voyage was not very successful or lucrative: they returned, however,
in twenty-nine months with a small quantity of pepper from Java, where they
had formed a friendly communication with the natives. The arrival of the
Dutch in India,--the subjugation of Portugal by Spain, which circumstance
dispirited and weakened the Portuguese, and the greater attention which the
Spaniards were disposed to pay to their American than their Indian
commerce, seem to have been the causes which produced the ruin of the
Portuguese in India, and the establishment of the Dutch.

The Dutch pushed their new commerce with great vigour and zeal. In the year
1600 eight ships entered their ports laden with cinnamon, pepper, cloves,
nutmegs, and mace: the pepper they obtained at Java, the other spices at
the Moluccas, where they were permitted by the natives, who had driven out
the Portuguese, to establish factories.

In consequence of a wild and ruinous spirit of speculation having seized
the Dutch merchants, the government, in 1602, formed all the separate
companies who traded to India, into one; and granted to this extensive
sovereignty over all the establishments that might be formed in that part
of the world. Their charter was for twenty-one years: their capital was
6,600,000 guilders (or about 600,000_l_.) Amsterdam subscribed one
half of the capital, and selected twenty directors out of sixty, to whom
the whole management of the trade was entrusted.

From this period, the Dutch Indian commerce flourished extremely: and the