friendly, it was hoped that the proposal might meet with favourable consideration. But the Company's representatives in India had reckoned without the war which broke out between England and Holland in 1653, and which for a time completely interrupted the Indian trade. When hostilities ceased, the position had so changed that the undertaking of any new responsibilities by the Company was out of the question. The directors had a difficult task to hold their own in the face of a competition which had become the fiercer owing to the action of Cromwell in freeing the Indian trade. Events, however, were shaping for a realization of the far-seeing aims of the Surat factors.
While English and Portuguese had agreed after a fashion to sink their differences, the old feud between the Dutch and the Portuguese existed in undiminished force. An armistice for ten years had been concluded between the two nations in 1641, but it was never very carefully observed and as soon as the period for which the arrangement was made terminated, the fight was renewed on the part of the Dutch with increased determination. In 1656 a strong Dutch force after a protracted siege captured Colombo, which, next to Goa, was the most important place which the Portuguese then occupied in the East. Two years later the conquest of the entire Portuguese territory on the island of Ceylon was made effective by a successful assault upon Jaffnapatam. These successes paved the way for the further triumph of Dutch arms in Southern India where in due course the important towns of Cochin and Cannanore, the last named of which had been in Portuguese hands for 170 years, were transferred to the sovereignity of the conquering Hollanders.
An immense effect was produced in Portugal by these
