during the greater part of the seventeenth century. The whole Republic, as is observed by an English writer of the time, was virtually an association for the purposes of navigation and trade; the Dutch companies were connected organically with the constitution of the States-General. And since in Holland the people at large were merchants and mariners, their commercial policy was stronger, more stiffly resolute, and better supported than that of states ruled by a court and a landed aristocracy, whose aims and interests were diverse and conflicting.
It has been thought worth while to relate and explain, in some detail, the history of the East Indian trade during the first half of the seventeenth century, because the importance and magnitude of the public interests involved in it at that early stage have not been generally apprehended. In these transactions we may observe the precursory signs of that connection between European and Asiatic politics that has grown closer and has multiplied its points of contact during the last three hundred years. If it had been possible for one great seafaring nation to draw to itself all the sea-borne Asiatic commerce – as the Phœnicians seem to have once almost monopolized the Mediterranean trade – that commerce might have been carried on for a long time peaceably, with as little disturbance as was given by the overland trade to the countries through which it passed. But while the land routes traversed recognizable territorial jurisdictions, the waterways lay open to all, and when the various traders began to
