Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/41

Rh be mediated. It is worth noticing, as showing the value of the trade even at that early time, that in 1615 the Dutch were reported to have fifty-one ships in the East Indies, with a stock of £900,000 sterling, and £400,000 taken up at interest. The English Company paid £14,000 customs in 1615 for the cargo of two ships, and in 1616 one ship alone was valued at more than £140,000. A proposal by Holland that the Dutch and English should form one Joint Stock Company, divide their spheres of traffic, and combine forces in order wholly to drive Spain out of the East Indies was rejected, partly because James I still leaned toward a Spanish alliance. Thus all attempts to arrest or adjust the earliest disputes of England and Holland over their respective limits and shares in such an enormously lucrative trade naturally failed; indeed they served only to complicate the impending quarrel.

Upon only one point the two Protestant nations agreed cordially – in their inveterate hostility to the Spanish and Portuguese. They spared no pains to beat off and expel from the coast of India the Portuguese, who were, in 1613-1615, in very bad odour with the Moghul government for having seized a great ship in which the emperor's mother was the principal shareholder. The correspondence of the English Company at this period is filled with reports of fierce battles with the Portuguese, in one of which, at Surat, for example, between four and five hundred "Portugals" were slain, burned, and drowned. This rather sanguinary business is mentioned in an ordinary letter, which, without