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 CHAPTER XVII

The English secure a Permanent Foothold in India

OT the least singular feature of the great struggle for predominancy in the East which marked the first half of the seventeenth century, was the relations maintained between the three chief protagonists. While, as we have seen, there was a bitter enmity, verging on open warfare, between the English and the Dutch in the Eastern Archipelago, the forces of the two nations were united in opposition to the Portuguese. The alliance grew out of the Treaty of Defence, which provided that each party 256