The Archipelagos lying south of the China Seas were first explored from the west by the Portuguese and Dutch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the steel glove upon which the mailed fist seems afterwards to have been modelled failed to retain a hold upon the territory which it grasped.
The Portuguese, indeed, abandoned their enterprises in the southern seas in favour of developing their trade between Goa and the east coast of Africa. They excelled as navigators and explorers, but the whole of their history shows that they have never formed any conception of the principles of administration.
GERMAN COLONIES IN THE PACIFIC, 1914.
(Reproduced by permission of The Times.)
The Dutch concentrated on Java, Sumatra and Borneo, and ever since have waged war with the natives.
It seems strange that both these nations should have decentralised Colonial interests away from their home countries, in striking contrast to our own country which has pursued a policy binding her oversea dominions closer and closer to the motherland—a policy which has eventuated in the formation of a comity of nations firmly united by the bonds of sentimental tradition and common commercial interest.
The Portuguese made Goa the centre of their East African and Eastern enterprises,[G] and the Dutch placed the Cape of Good Hope (while it was in their possession) under the administration of Batavia in the Island of Java.