162 THE END OF THE STRUGGLE As respects European rivals, the restrictions which the Anglo-Dutch still imposed on Coen, in January, 1623, were removed by the tragedy of Amboyna in the next month, and by the withdrawal of the English factories from the Spice Archipelago. As regards native com- petition, the islanders were compelled to root up their clove and nutmeg trees, where they seemed to threaten the profits of the Dutch. The produce of the most fer- tile regions in the world, cultivated on the severest sys- tem of human toil, was secured to the Dutch and to the Dutch alone. While Coen founded the colonial empire of Holland on the sure basis of the soil, he strengthened it by all the devices of a skilful administration— by a lucrative coasting trade with the African and Asiatic continents, by a great sea commerce with Europe, and by a well- planned system of tolls and local taxation. The rich island empire which he thus projected, he secured by fortresses, built and maintained by the cheap labour of prisoners and slaves. Coen stands out from among all men of European race in the Asia of his day— a states- man of the clearest vision, and an administrator of the firmest hand, half-way between the Portuguese Albu- querque in the sixteenth century and the French Du- pleix or the English Warren Hastings, in the eighteenth. But he could not rise above the morals of his time, and his strong personality during a double tenure of office impressed the stamp of a cruel age on the colonial system of his country. His crime, or his misfortune, was that he stereotyped in Dutch India the disregard
