Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/196

 enjoyed a virtual, and sometimes a real, monopoly of the trade in spices, cloves, nutmegs, mace, and cinnamon, the products exclusively of their Eastern possessions, including the Banda Islands, Moluccas, Ceylon, Sumatra, Tonquin, with part of Bengal and along the coast of Coromandel, besides stations at Surat and Gombroon, and important factories on the Malabar coast.

But though the Dutch have the credit of first introducing tea into general use in Europe, they were unfortunate in their attempts to establish themselves in China. The expensive embassy they sent to Pekin proved of no service to them, and although they afterwards took possession of Formosa, they soon got involved in a war with the Chinese in which they were so rudely handled by the Governor of Tchi-*chieng, that they were compelled to evacuate it, and all their attempts to displace the Portuguese, who since 1517 had carried on a trade between the Chinese ports and Europe, proved unavailing.

Although unsuccessful in the East, as compared to of other the Dutch, the maritime commerce of England now rapidly increased in other quarters. The Merchant Adventurers' Company still carried on a successful trade, having not yet shaken off the old prejudices in favour of associations, though Lord Bacon had made it a reproach "that trading in companies was most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth that same general vein of a republic