What was the Tragedy of Amboina? Was it, as the English of the time asserted, a massacre, under judicial forms, of innocent trade rivals for sordid motives? Or was it, as the Dutch contended, an act of justice perpetrated upon a body of unscrupulous conspirators? It is not difficult to answer the questions. Time has unlocked many of the official secrets of that period and with the •documentary evidence available much is made clear which two or three centuries ago was involved in obscurity. The truth would appear to lie between the two extremes. The Dutch were not bloodthirsty murderers venting their private vengeance on unoffending men: nor were they patterns of justice meting out punishment to proved -criminals. They were simply men inspired by unholy zeal for a bad cause. They sincerely believed that a conspiracy was afoot against them and that the Englishmen were implicated in it. Having this fixed idea in their mind they worked upon it with the unscrupulous energy of the type of police official who makes his evidence fit the theory he has formed of a crime. When, however, we have said this much in their favour we have said all. Nothing can extenuate the horrible brutality with which the so-called evidence was got together, or the ruthless—and even from the extreme standpoint of Dutch policy—unnecessary severity with which the course of justice was directed. The whole business was a judicial crime of the blackest and most infamous type—one which even after three centuries cannot be regarded without a feeling of indignation.
This sombre episode of Amboina, besides putting a period to the lives of Towerson and his associates, set a decisive limit to the ambitions of the English to play a
