Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/137

 COEN MADE DUTCH GOVERNOR AT JAVA 99 toirs). In 1617 the Council of Seventeen appointed him governor-general, with a ratification from the States- General and a commission direct from Prince Maurice of Orange— powers so ample as afterwards to warrant him in questioning orders of the directors unless ap- proved of by the States-General. In June, 1618, he entered on his high office at Java. " If the King of England does not make it his particular care," a shrewd French observer reported, " the English run the risk of having the worst in the Indies, as being weaker than the Flemings are in that country." Coen was to the Dutch Indies in the seventeenth century what Albuquerque had been to the Portuguese in the sixteenth, and what Dupleix became to the French in the eighteenth. He resolved to found the Dutch power on a lasting territorial basis. His clear vision of a Dutch empire in the East met with opposi- tion from narrower minds— the antagonism which Albu- querque's policy had encountered from the honest Al- meida, and which the schemes of Dupleix were to re- ceive from a corrupt French court. But the Dutch Company, like the English Company in after days, knew a great man when they got one; and in spite of internal differences and a temporary eclipse, Coen was supported, rewarded, and honoured. His two gov- ernor-generalships, from 1618 to 1623, and from 1627 to 1629, form the seed-time of the Dutch greatness in the East. A strongly fortified capital, commanding the western entrance to the Archipelago, yet centrally situated, was