ACCOUNT OF THE WRONGS DONE TO THE ENGLISH AT BANDA BY THE DUTCH, IN 1617
AND 1618.[254]
INTRODUCTION.
This section contains a letter from Mr Thomas Spurway, merchant or
factor, addressed from Bantam, "To the Honourable and Right Worshipful
the East India Company of England, touching the wrongs done at Banda to
the English by the Hollanders; the former unkind disgusts and brabling
quarrels now breaking unexpectedly out into a furious and injurious
war." Such is the account given of this section by Purchas, who farther
informs his readers, "That the beginning of this letter was torn, and
therefore imperfect in his edition; but, what is here defective, was to
be afterwards supplied from the journals of Nathaniel Courthop, and
other continuations of these insolences of the Dutch at Banda, by Mr
Hayes, and others." These journals of Courthop and Hayes are so
intolerably and confusedly written, and so interlarded with numerous
letters about the subject of these differences with the Dutch, that we
have been reluctantly under the necessity of omitting them, being so
monstrously inarticulate as to render it impossible to make them at all
palatable to our readers, without using freedoms that were altogether
inadmissible in a work like the present.
[Footnote 254: Purch. Pilgr. I. 608.]
From this letter, and other information of a similar nature, it appears
that the attempts to form establishments for trade at Banda and the
Molucca islands were found to be difficult or impracticable, owing to
the opposition of the Dutch, who were much stronger in that part of
India, and had not only conceived the plan of monopolizing the spice
trade, but even avowed their determination to exclude the English and
all other European nations from participating in any share of it.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 703 of 910
Words from 190705 to 190999
of 247546
