than even that portion of it which had already been laid down upon the map. A generation earlier, it had already become an axiom that the princes of Europe habitually enlarged their dominions upon the regions of the other three continents.1 Of Asia, Africa and America, however, the great bulk was inaccessible and unknown. For two centuries to come, islands and the coasts of the sea and of the greater rivers were to comprise most that was reckoned of value overseas. New England, it was said, was useful only to supply the West Indies, and in 1763 statesmen hesitated between Canada and Guadeloupe. Even Choiseul opined that Corsica was worth more to France than Canada had been or could become.2 Vast as the globe might seem, and few the Europeans, the search for new coasts and waterways had not yet become superfluous in the days of Charles II. Although in the western nations bold adventurers were not lacking, exploration for the moment languished. To reach Cathay by a northwestern passage remained a dream which few attempted to realise. It would be wiser, men urged, to start from the South Seas and sail past the island of California towards Hudson Bay or homewards by the shores of Tartary.3 Frenchmen from New France found the Mississippi and followed it to the sea, while their Government urged them to restrain their roving fancies unless they could light upon an outlet from the Great Lakes to the Pacific.4 To Englishmen, the discovery to the east of southern South America of lands with climates demanding kerseys and heavy woollens seemed the most profitable line of research. For more than half the period, however, the maritime nations were struggling for their lives, and even in the breathingspaces buccaneering proved more attractive than exploration. In colonising the known world, on the other hand, greater progress was effected. Such expansion of the European peoples has been caused in various ways. From the days of Abraham to our own, races have found the land too strait for them, and the human hive has swarmed. For seventeenth-century Europe, the simple trek which peopled Siberia or the Transvaal must be represented by a costly and perilous journey overseas, while there was little surplus population of normal men and women. Princes in general welcomed foreign immigration, if its religious complexion were not too bad, and they would not readily give their own subjects permission to depart. Colonisation meant transporting fresh labour to land hitherto waste or underpeopled, within the confines of the State. It implied the action of Government, in contrast with spontaneous emigration. Some bold spirits, none the less, were prepared to seek by honest labour overseas the fortune that seemed to be unattainable at home, 1 Speed, J., A prospect of the most famous parts of the world, p. 155. 2 Mémoires du duc de Choiseul, 1719-1785, p. 245 (Memorandum of 1770). 3 Dampier, W., A new voyage round the world (4th edn. London, 1699), 1, 273; Defoe, D., A new voyage round the world, 1, 136. 4 Clément, P., Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, ш, ii, 579. THE MISSIONARY MOTIVE IN COLONISATION 303 and many were prompted or compelled to cross the ocean by the divergence between their opinions and those of their rulers on matters of morals and religion. Colonies of Catholics and Dissenters in British North America already bore witness to these motives, and Darien was to lend them a lurid illustration. But the French as yet preferred to send to the galleys such elements as Cromwell had utilised to supply the West Indies with white slaves, and the Dutch had no men to spare. The West Indies indeed remained almost the only regions that possessed a real attraction for the ordinary settler. The missionary motive which had inspired much of the colonial effort of an earlier age had for the moment declined in force. Roman Orders, notably the Society of Jesus, still formed missions, organising the Indians into simple communities of a few hundreds or thousands, whose main object could still be an orthodox and unambitious life. The knowledge and devotion of the "religious", indeed, was of vast service to the colonial movement in general, for it gave that culture which a nascent community must ordinarily forgo, and provided men competent to calculate, survey and build. The heretic nations, however, scarcely attempted propaganda, and they were the chief by sea. Mere pride as a cause of annexation belongs in the main to a later age, when communications are easy, and great masses can read journals and interpret maps. Louis XIV, indeed, was ready to commission his subjects to acquire lands overseas for his glory, and he understood the effect upon France of the feeling that distant races revered and obeyed her King. But republics, Colbert said, "make no conquests except by the bad example of their liberty",1 and in that age the English were as unostentatious in their colonial acquisitions as were the Dutch. The day of establishments in remote regions for strategic purposes had likewise barely dawned. It was commerce that in the age of Louis XIV mainly promoted colonies and determined their governance and type. The migration of workers on the land, like the self-expatriation of missionaries or producers, counted then for far less than the desire of merchants to secure fixed points upon the coasts of countries with which it was profitable to trade. The resolve to keep all the trade to themselves and to buy cheap in the native markets might lead on to wars and conquests, but it was profit, not dominion, at which men primarily aimed. The factory or depôt, the fort, the presidency, the dominion, grew from the seed of barter, and the flag half reluctantly followed trade. Such was the origin of the Dutch Empire in the East Indies and of British India, and it was in the steps of the Dutch and British that such aspirants as the Great Elector strove to follow.2 Before Utrecht, it had become clear to men like Davenant that by holding India England “might become as 1 Clément, Lettres de Colbert, m, ii, 220 and 222. 2 Westergaard, W., The Danish West Indies under Company rule, chap. iii. Rome...the fountain of law and the spring of power...throughout an immense Empire",1 but the translation of the idea into policy did not follow for many years. 3 In 1664, moreover, it was rather the Dutch than the English who threatened to drive every competing trader from the field, and to appropriate to themselves all commerce. They had attained their unique position by a mixture of skill, industry and good fortune. Absolutely dependent upon sea power and trade, they gave to those objects the trained minds of a rich and well-educated people.2 "Their North Pole", it was said, "is their traffic, measuring all things only by that." They had learned how to build the cheapest ships in the world, how to freight them intelligently, and how to secure the interested co-operation of the crew. Colbert, bent on capturing their trade with the French West Indies, laments that without extraordinary strictness this is impossible, "such is their habit in carrying on all the trade, and in this all the inhabitants favour them".4 A similar difficulty arose in persuading Orientals to sell to rivals of the Dutch who, through want of skill and of cheap capital, would be ruined if they paid Dutch prices. In the East Indies, however, their trade was of a nature so peculiar as to excite tyranny and violence in its defence. Nutmegs and cloves, cinnamon and pepper, are commodities of which a small quantity may command an enormous price, while a larger output may easily outstrip the demand and make prices fall. Hypnotised by their early successes, the Dutch clung to the policy of small supply and rigid monopoly of production. They treated with equal brutality the natives of the islands and the foreign merchants who intruded, and they organised forts and troops and navies to preserve their absolute domination. Their East India Company, it was said, could equip a fleet as great as the French fleet at the death of Mazarin,5 while its army was reported to exceed 10,000 men. "The Dutch", it was widely believed, "ever will be underhand dealers and destroyers of your trade and people by all the ways and means they can invent."6 Other nations had recourse to costly Navigation Acts and still more costly wars to prevent the Dutch from everywhere absorbing commerce.7 In an age when three dozen horses in five days could transport a statue little more than half a mile on the road from Nancy to Paris,3 the coasting trade and inland navigation bore a highly important relation to the total volume of exchange. Apart from these, commerce fell mainly into five divisions, each hampered by some artificial 1 Pollard, A. F. (ed.), The British Empire, p. 573. 2 Cf. Jonge, J. K. S. de, De Oorsprong van Neerlands Bezittingen op de Kust van Guinea. 3 Thurloe, J. (ed. Birch, T.), A Collection of the State Papers (London, 1742), ví, 525; Lucas, C. P., Introduction to a Historical Geography of the British colonies, pp. 77, 81. 5 Ibid. 1, 456, 457. 4 Clément, Lettres de Colbert, m, ii, 491. Sir D. Thomas, cit. Davenant, v, 218. Child, Sir J., A new discourse of trade (2nd edn. London, 1694). 8 Clément, Lettres de Colbert, v, 310, 525, 528. COMMERCE IN THE AGE OF LOUIS XIV 305 danger of its own. From the Baltic, "the Indies of the materials of shipping",1 came supplies indispensable for navigation, in exchange for oriental goods and the luxuries of western Europe. At the gateway of the Baltic stood the King of Denmark, resolute to profit by his hold upon an international highway. Through him, the Dutch had gained such power that the oaken keys of the Sound, they boasted, lay in the docks of Amsterdam.2 Trade through the Straits of Gibraltar and with the Levant, the so-called "India of the Provençals", was more ruthlessly preyed upon by the Barbary pirates. That towards Latin America suffered from the iron restrictions of the Spaniards, who forbade their colonies to foreign merchants on pain of death. Fleets of Spanish galleons, therefore, collected European goods at Cadiz in exchange for the precious metals, thus giving to Iberian slowness its maximum effect. Tropical eastern America and its islands at the same time offered a new and lucrative market for slaves. In Barbados negroes were styled "the life-blood of this place" and it was computed that (with God's blessing) they would earn their cost in eighteen months. In Dutch eyes they were "an essential part of the fruits of the land and without which the soil is nothing worth".5 They shared with gold dust the foremost place among the exports of West Africa, a theatre of commercial war between the western nations and exposed to the attacks of buccaneers. There, as in northern America, the West Indies and Brazil, diversity of ownership made for a certain freedom, but in the Pacific short of the coast of China rigid monopoly reigned. The Spaniards restricted trade with the Philippines to a single galleon to and from Acapulco every year, while the Dutch strove to close the East Indian archipelago to every rival. The traffic of the American Pacific coast was confined to a few Spanish ships, and if a hostile force rounded Cape Horn, trade was simply suspended until the danger passed. There remained the great peninsula of India with its dependent islands. Here again the Dutch, rising upon the ruins of the Portuguese dominion, strove for monopoly. "All the prudent men among them", wrote Temple, "confess that they have more already in their hands than they can manage with so small a stock of men. "'6 But the Dutch in India proved no more liberal than the Spaniards in Mexico in admitting the moral claims of other nations to what they owned but could not enjoy. "Enemies to all Europeans but such as are under their own government", they attempted by securing the approaches to India to monopolise its trade. The Cape of Good Hope, 1 Gardiner S. R. (ed.), Letters of Sir Thomas Roe, p. 2. 2 Edmundson, G., History of Holland, p. 230. Philippson, M., Das Zeitalter Ludwigs des Vierzehnten, p. 83. Beresford, J., Sir George Downing, p. 44. Temple, Letters, p. 150. 6 Ibid. p. 193. Dampier, W., A Voyage to New Holland...in the year 1699, Continuation (London, 1709), p. 51. CHBEI 20 established as a victualling station in 1652, developed as the century progressed into the only true colony which the Dutch possessed, with the possible exception of Surinam.1 In 1658, the Portuguese were likewise driven from Ceylon. French acquisitions on the island and in southern India could not be maintained. The English were dispossessed at Pulo Run (Polaroon) and were thought to be in peril in Barbados. The policy of the Dutch, in a word, lent colour to the charge that their natural tendency is towards extremes.2 The commerce of the world, despite every danger and prohibition, was yet too large and various to be monopolised by a single people or compressed into a brief formula. Even after the war of 1688-97 had been extended from the political to the economic sphere, the French ambassador regretted that his country bought from England enormous quantities of horses, mohair, ribbons, lace, cider, beer, glass, bottles, Spanish wine, cloth, lead and tin. But those parts of commerce which most aroused the cupidity of the western nations consisted in the supply of tropical products to Europe, the supply of negroes to America, and the acquisition by any means convenient of the gold and silver of Mexico and of Peru. The attraction of these prizes, in regard to which Portugal and Spain had played so poor a part, was evident in the efforts of Denmark, Sweden, Scotland, Brandenburg and Hamburg to secure a share. The only serious competitors, however, were the Dutch, who approached monopoly wherever there was anything like free access,1 and the English, their superiors in man-power and in martial ardour, and resolved at least to maintain what commerce and colonies they already had. When 1664 dawned, the two nations were plainly drifting into war. Although in the absence of a simultaneous struggle between France, the protector of the Dutch, and Spain, their ancient tyrant, it was hard to expect decisive success, the English were too much incensed to calculate. "Refusing us the restitution of Pulo Run and denying us trading in all the coast of Guinea", wrote one,5 "showing scorn to all the English...of Surat, . . . hanging the...St George under the Dutch flag", wrote another-devising all manner of tricks to secure a monopoly everywhere, as men believed-the Dutch "made our merchants mad" and Clarendon was overwhelmed. In March 1665 the second war broke out, which was destined to exhaust both nations and to suggest to a pious observer "that the Divine Providence did always set bounds to the victors, like as He had done long since to the seas whereon they fought: hitherto shalt thou come and no further"." 1 Bonnassieux, P., Les grandes compagnies de commerce, p. 77. 2 Grew, E. and M. S., The Court of William III. 3 Grimblot, P., Letters of William III and Louis XIV, 1687-1700, II, 227. • Child, Discourse, p. 194. Pepys, Diary, 15 February 1664. 5 Beresford, Sir George Downing, p. 184. ' Colenbrander, H. T., Bescheiden uit vreemde archieven omtrent de groote nederlandsche zeeorlogen, 1652-1676, 1, 343. |