influence remains to-day predominant in this region.  Their first task was to overthrow the ascendancy of the Portuguese, and in this they were willing to co-operate with the English traders.  But the bulk of the work was done by the Dutch, for the English East India Company was poor in comparison with the Dutch, was far less efficiently organised, and, in especial, could not count upon the steady support of the national government.  It was mainly the Dutch who built forts and organised factories, because they alone had sufficient capital to maintain heavy standing charges.  Not unnaturally they did not see why the English should reap any part of the advantage of their work, and set themselves to establish a monopoly.  In the end the English were driven out with violence.  After the Massacre of Amboyna (1623) their traders disappeared from these seas, and the Dutch supremacy remained unchallenged until the nineteenth century.

It was a quite intolerant commercial monopoly which they had instituted, but from the commercial point of view it was administered with great intelligence.  Commercial control brought in its train territorial sovereignty, over Java and many of the neighbouring islands; and this sovereignty was exercised by the directors of the company primarily with a view to trade interests.  It was a trade despotism, but a trade despotism wisely administered, which gave justice and order to its native subjects.  On the mainland of India the Dutch never attained a comparable degree of power, because the native states were strong enough to hold them in check.  But in this period their factories were more numerous and more prosperous than those of the English, their chief rivals; and over the island of Ceylon they established an ascendancy almost as complete as that which they had created in the archipelago.

They were intelligent enough also to see the importance of good calling-stations on the route to the East.  For this purpose they planted a settlement in Mauritius, and another at the Cape of Good Hope.  But these settlements were never regarded as colonies.  They were stations belonging to a trading company; they remained under its complete control, and were allowed no freedom of development, still less any semblance of self-government.  If Cape Colony grew into a genuine colony, or offshoot of the mother-country, it was in spite of the company, not by reason of its encouragement, and from first to last the company’s relations with the settlers were of the most unhappy kind.  For the company would do nothing at the Cape that was not necessary for the Eastern trade, which was its supreme interest, and the colonists naturally did not take the same view.  It was this concentration upon purely commercial aims which also prevented the Dutch from making any use of the superb field for European settlement opened up by the enterprise of their explorers in Australia and New Zealand.  These fair lands were left unpeopled, largely because they promised no immediate trade profits.