Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/96

 66 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO new Asiatic titles and to bring the kingdoms of the East within the Christian fold, but by establishing a sufficient degree of sovereignty over the islands to pre- vent them from selling their spices to any European nation but herself. Where she found a stringent su- premacy needful, she established it; where a less con- trol sufficed, she was at first willing to leave the princes and peoples very much to themselves. The whole process is laid bare in the documents copied for the English East India Company during our occupation of Java (1811 - 1818) and now preserved in the India Office. I intend, as in my sketch of the Portuguese policy in Asia, to exhibit briefly from the manuscript records the methods, rather than the military operations, by which the Dutch built up their supremacy in the East- ern seas. So far as it is possible to generalize, the Dutch kept three points steadily in view. First, the sovereign authority of Holland must be acknowledged by the island-chiefs. This was asserted sometimes as the result of conquest, but frequently in the form of a protectorate, the native princes consenting to hold their territories as a kind of fief under the Dutch suze- rainty. Second, all other European nations, and espe- cially England, were to be excluded from the island trade; and in many cases specific engagements were entered into for war against Portugal and Spain. Third, as the Dutch tightened their grasp on the Archi- pelago, they adopted more drastic provisions for the maintenance of their monopoly. The natives were for-