Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/106

 76 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO King James's treaty with Spain and Portugal in the following year, broke the tradition of Dutch and Eng- lish friendship based on the joint championship of the Protestant cause. Scruples of sentiment or of religion disappeared, and commercial rivalry became the per- manent factor in the relations of England and Holland. It is not needful to dwell on the early phases of the struggle which ensued. The English Company was the weakling child of the old age of Elizabeth and of the shifty policy of King James; the Dutch Company was the strong outgrowth of the life and death struggle of a new nation with its Spanish oppressors. The Eng- lish Company began with slender resources in 1601 the system of " separate voyages," which the Dutch Com- pany, after a trial of that method on a great scale after 1595, deliberately abandoned in 1602 for the joint sys- tem of a United Company with vast capital— the joint system which the English adopted only after eleven years of painful experience in 1612, and even then in a less stable form. Yet the English boldly stood forth to the natives not only as rivals but as opponents of the Dutch. In 1605 the King of Tidore, in the Spice Islands, appealed to King James for help against the Hollanders, on the ground that his Majesty was in friendship with Spain. The King of Ternate, hard by, inquired after the health of the " great Captain Francis Drake," whose return " we have daily expected," and complained that the Dutch, having driven out the Portuguese, prevented him from granting a factory to the English. The King