All these measures for strengthening the East India trade angered the Dutch, who were also alarmed by the sale of Dunkirk to France, which let the French into the narrow seas, and by the weakening of the Spanish barrier of the Netherlands between France and Holland. The quarrel with England over Eastern affairs became sharper and more virulent; for the Dutch were resolved to check and beat back the encroachment of the English on their Asiatic trade; and the English, on their side, were continually exasperated by the acts of violence committed against their traders in the East. In 1664 the French ambassador reported from London that England was ready to come to blows with the Hollanders, but it was then the policy of Louis XIV, who had just been induced by Colbert to launch the French East India Company, to preserve peace. He feared that if war broke out it would end by giving irresistible naval superiority to the nation that won, and as his navy was not ready, he was anxious to maintain a balance of naval power on the French coast. Nevertheless, the quarrel grew so bitter that war did begin in 1665, when the French king was reluctantly obliged to join the Dutch, being under treaty obligation to do so.
In short, at the beginning of the seventeenth century the desire to destroy the colonies and commerce of Spain and Portugal united against them the Dutch and English in the East Indies. Then, as the power of the Spanish empire waned, the two Northern nations, having the Asiatic field to themselves for a time, turned
