Asia, beyond the Euphrates, except by a few, was an unknown country to Europeans until Marco Polo in 1271 A. D., in the company of his father and uncle, met Kublai Khan, the Mongol Emperor, won his confidence and esteem and by him was entrusted with the most important missions. During the seventeen years he remained he visited the most important places in China, India and the East Indies, and returned to Italy loaded with the rarest, most precious gems and immense wealth, published a book telling his experience and picturing the East in the most roseate colors, generally emanating from fancy, but in this case resting upon facts of which he was able to furnish satisfactory proof.
The fact established that India—the East Indies had the gold, silver, precious gems and stones, ebony, ivory, cloves, cinnamon, cassia, spices and the most beautiful and costly fabrics, articles not obtainable elsewhere and the great desiderata of the Europeans, the question arose as to how they could the most easily, quickly and cheaply be obtained. They could, without much difficulty, find their way to the Indian ocean, but the transportation thence to Europe must be by “the ship of the desert,” the camel, across the Arabian desert and the Isthmus of Suez, “the bridge of nations” to the Mediterranean or by a more northerly route through the Caspian and Black seas. Caravans must be formed by the merchants and armed troops to protect them against the robbers. The land route by the caravans was slow and very expensive, and the hope was cherished that an all-water route might be found which would not only shorten the time, but greatly lessen the expense of transportation. For a considerable time the Phœnicians, occupying a little skirt of land on the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and the first distinctly commercial nation in the world’s history, virtually monopolized this land transportation; and then distributed the articles along the shore of the Mediterranean, where they had planted colonies clear up to the Pillars of Hercules. But Venice and Genoa, rival and wealthy cities of Italy, with fine harbors on this inland sea, sought the India trade, supplanted Phœnicia and became greatly enriched by it. The great desideratum—an all-water route from western Europe to the Indies—had not yet been found, but after the Italian cities had enjoyed, monopolized the trade with India for a period of 150 years, another little skirt of land on the west end of the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic ocean, Portugal, brought about a complete change in the transportation which deprived Venice and Genoa of that business.
Henry, Prince of Portugal, surnamed the Navigator, far in advance of his time in geographical knowledge and in the science of navigation, introduced the compass and the astrolabe, which he furnished with nautical maps and other guides for his mariners, whom he inspired to sail along the western coast of Africa and double the Cape of Good Hope. This, Bartholomew Diaz, a Portuguese navigator, did in 1486, and then it seemed certain that an all-water route from western Europe to India had been found, but it was not an accomplished fact until Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese navigator, availing himself of Diaz’s discovery of 1486, made a voyage in 1497 from Lisbon to Calicut (not Calcutta) in southwestern India.
Henry “the Navigator” was the father of what may be called ocean, in contradistinction to coast, navigation, scientific, instead of chance navigation, although he died before the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled. After Diaz had doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1486, the furor of every mariner was to point the prow of his vessel toward India to share in its precious gems, its beautiful and costly fabrics, articles of luxury, and its great wealth. The India fever seized all the maritime nations of Europe, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, England, Sweden and Denmark. Christopher Columbus in 1492 sought, and thought he had found India by sailing westward. Then Rodrigo Lenzoli Borgia, a Spaniard, and the Pope, under the title of Alexander VI, assuming to be vice-gerent of the world, made a division of all the newly-discovered, or subsequently to be discovered, heathen lands between the two great Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal, by drawing a line from pole to pole one hundred leagues west of the Azores and the Cape de Verde islands (this line was subsequently changed) and declared that all lands discovered west of that line and not belonging to some Christian prince should belong to Spain, and all similar lands east of that line should belong to Portugal. The two great maritime and exploring nations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were Portugal and Spain—the former in the east and the latter in the west. Alas! their great fame is in the past. Spain hoped to reach the Indies by a shorter all-water route, sailing westward, and that was Columbus’s mission, purpose and hope.
The edict of the Pope did not, in the least, restrain France, England or the Netherlands from attempting to make discoveries, and France, England, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark granted charters to companies of their own subjects, granting them great and exclusive rights, and calling them East India companies. At the close of the year A. D. 1600, Queen Elizabeth chartered the English East India Company with most extraordinary rights and privileges, and thus laid the foundations for Great Britain’s Asiatic empire.
The Dutch East India Company charter was granted in 1602, to trade to the East Indies by the Cape of Good Hope and the Strait of Magellan for twenty-one years, and no other of the East India companies has been so successfully managed. The Dutch have derived large revenue from the islands they still hold there, viz.: Java, the Moluccas or Spice islands, a large part of Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes and several small islands in the Malay Archipelago.
Cornelius Hartman, a Dutch navigator, who had spent some time in Lisbon, Portugal, returned in 1594 to Amsterdam, where he gave such a glowing account of the rich and wonderful products of the East, which covered the quays of the Tagus, in Lisbon, that nine prominent merchants of Amsterdam formed a company, equipped a fleet of four ships, fitted for war (a war then prevailing between Holland and Spain) and for trade, and put Hartman in command. He followed the Portuguese route, and two years later returned with cargoes far surpassing the expectations or even the hopes of the company.
Seeing this Indian wealth upon their own docks, other associations and companies were formed in the Netherlands to engage in this lucrative trade. Rivalry between them became so great as to diminish the profits that a consolidation of the companies was effected by Barneveldt. This company consisted of six branches called chambers, each of which was to be managed by its own directors (originally fifty-three in all) in different parts of the country.
A general council of seventeen directors (Amsterdam eight, Zealand four, Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen each one, and the seventeenth to be chosen by the chamber of Zealand, the Maas and North Holland) were by a majority of votes to determine all voyages. This arrangement was made to protect the small chambers against the power and policy of Amsterdam if against their interests. Each locality was secured in its due proportion of the business of the company. Each chamber had the exclusive management of its ships sent out by it and was held responsible for the property coming into its possession. The general council of seventeen did not meet often, but the subordinate chambers could legislate upon subjects appropriate, and which did not trench upon the general policy and course of the company.
The Dutch East India Company was clothed with extraordinary powers and privileges and became very wealthy; not alone in the pursuit of the East India trade, but by capturing in the West Indies galleons containing great quantities of gold and silver, which the Spaniards, by the most cruel methods, had taken in Mexico and Peru.