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Rh amalgamated by the States-General into 'The Dutch East India Company.' In 1619, the Dutch laid the foundation of the city of Batavia in Java, as the seat of the supreme government of their possessions in the East Indies. Their principal factory had previously been at Amboyna. At about the same time the Dutch discovered the coast of Australia, and in North America they founded the city of New Amsterdam or Manhattan, now New York.

Dutch Supremacy in the Eastern Seas.—During the 17th century, the Dutch maritime power was the first in the world. Their-memorable massacre of the English at Amhoyna, in 1623, forced the British Company to retire from the Eastern Archipelago to the continent of India, and thus led to the foundation of our Indian Empire. , The long naval wars and bloody battles between the English and the Dutch in the Eastern seas, were not terminated until William of Orange united the two countries in 1689. In the Indian Archipelago the Dutch ruled for a time without a rival, and gradually expelled the Portuguese from almost all their territorial possessions. In 1635, they occupied Formosa; in 1640, they took Malacca—a blow from which the Portuguese never recovered; in 1647, they were trading at Sadras, on the South-eastern coast of India; in 1651, they founded a colony at the Cape of Good Hope, as a half-way station to the East; in 1652, they built their first Indian factory at Pálakollu, on the Madras coast; in 1658, they captured Jaffnapatam, the last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon. In 1664, they wrested from the Portuguese all the earlier Portuguese settlements on the pepper-bearing coast of Malabar; and in 1669, they expelled the Portuguese from St. Thomé and from Macassar.

Short-sighted Policy of the Dutch.—The fall of the Dutch colonial empire resulted from short-sighted commercial policy. It was deliberately based upon a strict monopoly of trade in spices, and remained from first to last destitute of sound economical principles. Like the Phoenicians of old, the Dutch stopped short of no acts of cruelty towards their rivals in commerce; but, unlike the Phoenicians, they failed to introduce their civilization among the natives with whom they came in