Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/279

 THE DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY 219 East India Company on the Dutch quasi-national basis really meant. The States-General, in reorganizing the East India companies of the several States into one association in 1602, granted to the new body corporate the exclu- sive right of navigation to the east of the Cape of Good Hope and to the west of the Straits of Magellan for twenty-one years. The chief shareholders were the great merchants of Amsterdam and of the other subscribing States, but all inhabitants of the Low Countries were, on payment, entitled to join. The republic vested in the company the power to make war or peace, to seize foreign ships, to establish colonies, construct forts, and to coin money. On the other hand, the States-General enforced from the company not only an oath of fidelity and certain customs-dues, but also the right to call for and supervise its accounts. The whole charter reads like a Protestant counterpart of the privileges granted to Portugal by the Bull of 1493, except that religious proselytism drops out of view, a commercial company takes the place of the king, and instead of the poena excommunicationis latae against rivals or in- truders, we have the direct arbitrament of the sword. This strongly knit corporation had a governing body not unworthy of its national character. The board con- sisted of sixty directors, assigned to the several states in proportion to the subscriptions received from them. It was closely connected, both in the person of its direct- ors and in its public policy, with the States-General. Hardly had it been established than it began to build