jostle each other in the Asiatic ports, the Dutch, English, and Portuguese fell out among themselves in the Eastern seas as naturally as Greeks, Italians, and Arabs quarrelled, two centuries earlier, over the same prize in the Mediterranean.
These quarrels affected, and were affected by, the changing course of politics during an age of incessant war in Europe; for while kings and ministers were already influenced by the interests of a trade that constantly aided their treasuries, the acts and relations of European rulers bore directly, then as now, on their foreign commerce. The persecution of the Reformers in Holland by Spain led to the foundation of the Dutch East India Company; the success of the Dutch stimulated English enterprise; and the long quarrel in the East Indies between these two Protestant nations not only diminished and for a time dissolved their natural connection, but also gave to early English enterprise in Asia its warlike character, its taste for armed independence, and latterly its policy of territorial acquisition imitated from the Dutch. Never before or since in the world's history has there been so much bloodshed over commerce as distinguished from colonization, for a very brief experience of the perils of East Indian adventure seems to have convinced the English that they must abandon the hope of peaceful trading in that part of the world. They are, however, justly entitled to the credit of having done their best to confine themselves to commerce throughout the seventeenth century, whereas Portugal and Holland began at once to seize
