Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/110

 80 THE STRUGGLE EOR THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO servants that was unknown in the English factories. While the London Company sent out volumes of ser- mons and forced back the first English wife, the Dutch governor-general carried with him thirty-six goodly young women as mates to their countrymen in the East. It was not till more than half a century later that the English Company, moved by the scandal of a half-caste population, followed their example. The English factors and captains in the Archipelago were in truth outmatched at every point, and the Lon- don Company found itself compelled to seek support nearer home. In 1611 it opened negotiations at Amster- dam. A letter of Robert Middleton to the burgomas- ters of that city proposed " that as our nations have long continued in firm bonds and league of amity, so we might peaceably proceed to trade jointly together without troubling of either states.' ' The Dutch replied in an amicable spirit, and proposed to approach the States-General on the subject. But meanwhile the Lon- don merchants realized that the struggle was a national one, not to be settled by the two Companies alone, and had declared to the Lord High Treasurer of England that they " are enforced at last to break silence and complain their griefs." The tale they told was one to Which no English sov- ereign could turn a deaf ear. They had " long and patiently endured sundry notorious wrongs and injuri- ous courses at the hands of the Hollanders,' ' and being now reduced to extremities " but having no means of remedy, do humbly implore your Lordship's honourable