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COMMERCIAL ASCENDENCY OF HOLLAND 29 favourable to the security of Holland on the land, ren- dered her a very serious rival to England on the sea. The Dutch were throwing the English into the shade; they had founded their East Indian empire; they had made good a footing in Brazil; they had captured in West Indian waters the Spanish ships that carried a rich cargo from Mexico to Havana; they had anni- hilated the fleet of the Infanta Isabella. They were becoming masters of the narrow seas at home; they were threatening, with the aid of France, the Spanish Netherlands; and the English were feeling much alarm lest Holland and France together should possess them- selves of the whole coast line over against England across the Channel. These were the advantages that gave Holland pre- eminence in Asiatic commerce during the greater part of the seventeenth century. She had stripped Portugal of some of her most important possessions in the East and had fixed her trading-posts firmly in well-chosen places. Under Cromwell's vigorous rule, however, the English began to recover their position in the East Indies. The jealousies, political and commercial, between the two Republics culminated in the war of 1651 - 1654, when East India merchants, whose grievances had formed one of the chief grounds of hostility, prayed for permission to fit out an armed fleet against the Dutch in Asia, who had been making depredations on the English shipping in Indian waters. In 1654 a peace was patched up upon payment of compensation