Holland in the West. From the beginning of the century the Eastern trade had been a make-weight and a perceptible element in the regulation of our policy abroad, for the London merchants had never been without means of influencing the Court or the Parliament; but the adjustment of this important national interest to the varying exigencies of the general situation in Europe had about this time become peculiarly difficult. During the interval between the Restoration (1660) and the Revolution (1688), when our commerce increased and throve mightily, we had to make head in Asia against the jealous antagonism of the Dutch; while in Europe the Dutch were our natural allies against the arbitrary aggressiveness of France. In the East it was of vital importance to our commerce that the power of Holland should be repressed, in the West we were vitally interested in upholding it; the balance of trade in Asia was inconsistent with the balance of politics in Europe. It was remarked by a contemporary diplomatist that England's problem was to keep the peace with Holland without losing our East India trade; for if we supported the Dutch against France they went on elbowing us out of Asia; while in joining France against Holland we were breaking down one maritime power only to make room for another that might become much more formidable. The organization of the French navy had now been seriously taken up; and in 1664 was founded the French East India Company, which in 1665 had fitted out a squadron for the East Indies. In 1672, when England and France were allied against Holland, a French armament under De la Haye sailed for India, occupied the excellent harbour of Trincomalee in Ceylon, and took possession of St. Thomé, close to Madras.

The English could not decently oppose the emissaries of a friendly nation, although this first appearance of the French on the Coromandel coast-where in the next century our contest with them was fought outcould not but excite considerable uneasiness. Nor was the situation much improved in our favour when both places were subsequently captured from the French by the Dutch.

The foreign relations of England at this period were unsettled and curiously complicated. In 1665 Holland and England were at war; in 1666 France joined Holland against us; but in 1668 England, Holland, and Sweden had formed the Triple Alliance against France; while in 1672 France and England combined to attack Holland; and in 1678 the English again made a defensive league with Holland against France1. The motives for these rapid changes of attitude were largely connected with Asiatic commerce.

The three wars against Holland into which England drifted during the seventeenth century (between 1652 and 1672) were all prompted, more or less, by commercial and colonial animosities. For the quarrel in Cromwell's time had arisen directly out of grievances against the Dutch in Asia; and we have seen that their determined attempts to thwart and repel the expansion of English commerce in the East Indies produced the rupture of 1665. France joined Holland in 1666, when some desperate naval engagements ensued, until the invasion of Spanish Flanders by Louis XIV so alarmed the Dutch, that they consented to pacific proposals from

1 It may be noticed, as showing the strength, even at this early time, of the English Company, that they were required by the Government to send out a large body of men to defend Bombay; they also employed an armed fleet of some thirty-five vessels.

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the English, and signed the Treaty of Breda', upon the basis of Uti possidetis as to territory, and the amicable adjustment of all commercial disputes. England also made peace with France, but as Louis XIV nevertheless pushed on his invasion of Spanish Flanders, the Triple Alliance was formed to stop him by insisting on France and Spain coming to some arrangement. Then followed a fresh shuffle of the cards, for in 1670 the French and English kings agreed, by their secret treaty of Dover, to make a joint attack upon the Dutch. It is a mistake to suppose, as is commonly thought, that Charles II was induced to join France in 1672 merely by French bribes and his sympathy with Roman Catholicism. His alliance with France was undoubtedly aimed against civil and religious liberty at home; but abroad one of its objects was to cut down the naval and commercial growth of Holland, with whom we had many unsettled quarrels both in America and in Asia. By a secret treaty projected between France, England, and Portugal in 1673, the three powers were to send a joint naval expedition against the Dutch possessions in Asia, which were to be seized and divided among the allies. It is thus clear that there were strong and recurrent motives for hostility between the two nations, closely connected with Asiatic affairs 2. Even Sir William Temple, the negotiator of the Triple Alliance, discusses in one of his essays the question whether we should derive greater advantage than France from the ruin of Holland. Whether in that case we could manage to bring over to England the Dutch trade and shipping,

1 1667.

2 'Us they distrust, Spain they despise, Holland they hate.' Letter of Marquis de Ruvigny, French Ambassador in England, 1672, to his own government.

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seems to him doubtful; yet he fears that, unless England joins France against Holland, the two continental States might combine against England. In 1671, accordingly, ▸ England did join France in

as we were concerned, in war which ended, so far

1674, when the Dutch agreed to salute the English flag in the narrow seas, and to refer to arbitration all commercial differences. Louis XIV, on the other hand, went on capturing town after town on the Flemish border; his great armies were overrunning Holland, and the Prince of Orange had declared that he would die in the last ditch. Finally, when the English had made a defensive treaty with Holland to save her from ruin, a general peace was ratified at Nimeguen in 1678, on terms very favourable to France, who retained many of the barrier towns in the Netherlands.

The upshot of these long continental wars was manifestly to strengthen England and to weaken Holland. In 1677, when the French invasion had thrown the Dutch into peril and distress, the commerce of England was prospering wonderfully 1. Moreover, the truce of 1678 was soon broken by fresh hostilities; and from that time up to the end of the century the French king had become entirely engrossed in his ambitious and extravagant wars, while the Dutch were fighting desperately for their existence; so that the only two maritime powers from which England had anything to fear in the East were entangled in a great struggle on the European Continent. From these contests Holland emerged, at the Peace of Ryswick (1697), with enfeebled strength,

1 'The king,' says Brisbane, in a letter to the Earl of Danby, hath 'succeeded in the improvement of trade and navigation beyond the hopes of those who talked of it seventeen years ago... and now the trade of England is at such a height, that it is hard to think it can continue so, as it was hard to believe once it would ever rise to it.' June 25, 1677. Danby's Letters, 315.

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with her commerce severely damaged, and with her resources for distant expeditions materially reduced. But the Dutch had done much injury to the earliest French settlements planted under Colbert's auspices in the East Indies; and France had been so much occupied on the land, particularly when the fortune of war began to turn against her, that she was now incapacitated from pursuing Colbert's wise and far-reaching schemes of commercial and colonial expansion. Her naval development was checked; her maritime enterprise took no fresh flight until after the Peace of Utrecht'. In short the French and Dutch had mutually disabled each other, to the great advantage, for operations beyond sea, of the English; who thenceforward begin to draw slowly but continuously to the foremost place in Asiatic conquest and commerce.

From this period of great continental wars in Europe we may date the beginning of substantial prosperity for our East Indian trade; for it was then that the English made good their footing on the Indian coasts. We learn from Macaulay's History that during the twenty years succeeding the Restoration, the value of the annual imports from Bengal alone rose from £8,000 to £300,000, and that the gains of the Company from their monopoly of the import of East Indian produce were almost incredible. In 1685 the headquarters of their business on the Western side was transferred from Surat to Bombay; in 1687 the chief Bengal agency was • removed from Hooghly to Calcutta; and Madras had' become their central post on the eastern shores of the Indian peninsula. The Company were liberally encouraged by the government of the two last Stuarts, who granted ample charters, and even despatched

1 1713.