COMMERCIAL ASCENDENCY OF HOLLAND 29
favourable to the security of Holland on the land, ren-
dered her a very serious rival to England on the sea.
The Dutch were throwing the English into the shade;
they had founded their East Indian empire; they had
made good a footing in Brazil; they had captured in
West Indian waters the Spanish ships that carried a
rich cargo from Mexico to Havana; they had anni-
hilated the fleet of the Infanta Isabella. They were
becoming masters of the narrow seas at home; they
were threatening, with the aid of France, the Spanish
Netherlands; and the English were feeling much alarm
lest Holland and France together should possess them-
selves of the whole coast line over against England
across the Channel.
These were the advantages that gave Holland pre-
eminence in Asiatic commerce during the greater part
of the seventeenth century. She had stripped Portugal
of some of her most important possessions in the East
and had fixed her trading-posts firmly in well-chosen
places. Under Cromwell's vigorous rule, however, the
English began to recover their position in the East
Indies.
The jealousies, political and commercial, between
the two Republics culminated in the war of 1651 - 1654,
when East India merchants, whose grievances had
formed one of the chief grounds of hostility, prayed
for permission to fit out an armed fleet against the
Dutch in Asia, who had been making depredations
on the English shipping in Indian waters. In 1654 a
peace was patched up upon payment of compensation
