ited East Indies
Company, which sent large fleets to the Orient each year, easily
ousted the Portuguese from their bases on the coast and islands,
and soon established almost a monopoly, leaving to England only a
small share of trade with Persia and northwest India. The relative
resources invested by English and Dutch in Eastern ventures is
suggested by the fact that the British East Indies Company founded in
1600 had a capital of L80,000, while the Dutch Company had L316,000.
By 1620 the shares of the Dutch company had increased to three
times their original value, and they paid average dividends of 18
per cent for the next 200 years.

In this Dutch conquest of eastern trade, like that of the Portuguese
a century earlier, we have an illustration of what has since been a
guiding principle in the history of sea power--a national policy of
commercial expansion sturdily backed by foreign policy and whenever
necessary by naval force. The element of national policy is evident
in the fact that Holland--and England until the accession of James I
in 1603--preferred war rather than acceptance of Spanish pretensions
to exclusive rights in the southern seas. The Dutch, like the
Portuguese, saw clearly the need of political control. They made
strongholds of their trading bases, and gave their companies power
to oust competitors by force. As a concession to Spanish pride,
the commerce clause in the Truce of 1609 was made intentionally
unintelligible--but the Dutch interpreted it to suit themselves.
As for the element of force, every squadron that sailed to the
east was a semi-military expedition. The Dutch seaman was sailor,
fighter, and trader combined. The merchant was truly, in the phrase
of the age, a "merchant adventurer," lucky indeed and enriched
if, after facing the perils of navigation in strange waters, the
possible hostility of native rulers, and the still greater danger
from European rivals, half his ships returned. The last statement
is no hyperbole; of 9 ships sent to the East from Amsterdam in
1598, four came back, and just half of the 22 sent out from the
entire Netherlands.

From time to time, either to maintain the blockade of the Scheldt
and assist in operations on the Flanders coast, or to protect their
trade and strike a direct blow at Spain, the Dutch fitted out purely
naval expeditions. One of the most effective, from the standpoint
of actual fighting, was that led by van Heimskirck, already famous
for Arc