Decline of the Portuguese power in India.
But by this time the rapacious extortions of the Portuguese, combined with their cruelties, had so excited the natives of India against them, that there was great rejoicing when the overwhelming naval power of the Dutch dealt a fatal blow to their ascendency in the East. When, however, the Dutch power predominated, the people of India, in shaking off the yoke of their former tyrants, found that they had only changed their oppressors. In 1638 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from the trade of Japan, and in 1656 Ceylon was surrendered to them. Their settlements at the Cape of Good Hope formed from an early period a convenient point whence they could direct their shipping eastwards; and the most common vessels they then employed in the trade (as may be seen from [the imperfect sketch on next page]) were so much in advance of even the best vessels then in the service of the English East India Company, that it is not, for these and other reasons, surprising that the Company should have had considerable difficulties in competing successfully with the Dutch, and at times in raising capital sufficient for their purposes.
A.D. 1621.
The trade of the English in India.
In a return presented to Parliament on the 29th of November, 1621, there will be found an account of the trade carried on by the Company with the East Indies during the previous twenty years, and of the difficulties they had then to encounter. Out of eighty-six ships which they had in that time despatched, eleven were surprised and seized by the Dutch, nine were lost, five were worn out by long service, going from port to port in India, and only thirty-six had returned home with cargoes, the remaining twenty-five being then in India, or on their way home. Indeed it is surprising that they were able to maintain any position whatever in India in opposition to the Dutch, whose settlements at that time prove that they enjoyed a virtual, and sometimes a real, monopoly of the trade in spices, cloves, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, the products exclusively of their Eastern possessions, including the Banda Islands, Moluccas, Ceylon, Sumatra, Tonquin, with part of Bengal and along the coast of Coromandel, besides stations at Surat and Gombroon, and important factories on the Malabar coast.[169]
But though the Dutch have the credit of first introducing tea into general use in Europe, they were unfortunate in their attempts to establish themselves in China. The expensive embassy they sent to Pekin proved of no service to them, and although they afterwards took possession of Formosa, they soon got involved in a war with the Chinese in which they were so rudely handled by the Governor of Tchi-chieng, that they were compelled to evacuate it, and all their attempts to displace the Portuguese, who since 1517 had carried on a trade between the Chinese ports and Europe, proved unavailing.
Increase of other branches of English trade.
Although unsuccessful in the East, as compared to of other the Dutch, the maritime commerce of England now rapidly increased in other quarters. The Merchant Adventurers’ Company still carried on a successful trade, having not yet shaken off the old prejudices in favour of associations, though Lord Bacon had made it a reproach “that trading in companies was most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth that same general vein of a republic which runneth in the Dutch, and serveth them instead of a company.”[170] The Turkey Company now conducted an important and profitable commercial intercourse with the Levant;[171] London having in a great measure superseded Venice in that valuable traffic, even supplying that city with articles of Indian produce. By this time, also, English merchants had become importers of Indian produce into Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and many other Mediterranean ports.
Ships of the Turkey and Muscovy Company.