60 THE STRUGGLE FOR THE EASTERN ARCHIPELAGO activity. Holland became the printing house of Europe. Her thinkers were the oracles of their age, her painters have left an imperishable influence on art. Leyden was more famous for a time than Oxford or Paris, and it is still a tradition of the Scottish Bar to complete a legal education at the great Dutch university. The outburst of national energy found its chief vent on the sea. The Indian voyage of De Houtman in 1595 fired the popular enthusiasm, and while the London merchants were awaiting the changing moods of Eliza- beth, or extracting subscriptions for a single expedition, no fewer than fifteen fleets sailed between 1595 and 1601 from Holland to the East. This period of " sep- arate " Dutch voyages is so little realized by English historians, yet forms so essential a part of the Dutch precedent closely followed by the English Company, that I give their details below. 1 Of the sixty-five ships sent from Holland in the six years from April, 1595, to May, 1601, Amsterdam supplied by far the larger number; Zeeland, with Middleburg as its centre, came next; and the merchants of minor states competed with companies of their own. The Dutch government sagaciously foresaw the dan- gers to which separate expeditions might give rise in distant and hostile seas: that opposition of interests among rival groups of adventurers of the same nation, and that weakness in the face of a common enemy, to which the English system of " separate voyages " sub- sequently succumbed.. On March 20, 1602, as we have 1 For this information see Appendix n, A.
