BY GEORGE McCALL THEAL, Litt.D. , LL.D. CAPETOWN THOMAS MASKEW MILLER, PUBLISHER 1913 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED LONDON AND BECCLES Exploration by the Portuguese of the Western Coast of Africa and Discovery of the Cape of Good Hope    ...

The discovery of an ocean route from Europe to India, followed by the establishment of the Portuguese as the preponderating power in the East, is one of the greatest events in the history of the world. It is not too much to say that every state of Central and Western Europe was affected by it. The time was critical, for the Turks were then menacing Christendom, and if they had secured a monopoly of the Indian trade their wealth and strength would have been so augmented that it is doubtful whethe

First Voyages of the French and English to India. Early History of the Netherlands. The debt which the world owes to the Portuguese for weakening the Mohamedan power and thus preventing the subjugation of a larger portion of Eastern Europe than was actually overrun by the Turks should not be forgotten, but long before the close of the sixteenth century they had ceased to be participants in the great progressive movement of the Caucasian race. Upon a conquering nation rests an enormous responsibi

Many of the men who had been obliged to leave their homes had turned to the sea for refuge. Legitimate commerce could not absorb them all, even if it had been flourishing as formerly, and so in their desperate condition they became buccaneers. The prince of Orange took advantage of this, and issued a commission to a reckless fugitive noble named William de la Marck to act as his admiral and attack Spanish ships wherever he could find them. De la Marck was a distant relative of Egmont, and had sw

The most exciting part of the scene now changes to the town of Maastricht, an important strategical position in the present province of Limburg. Maastricht contained thirty-four thousand inhabitants, and there was a garrison of a thousand soldiers within its walls. On the 12th of March 1579 Parma laid siege to the town with an army of twenty to twenty-five thousand men, and completely enclosed it. Two or three thousand peasants of both sexes, whose homes had been ravaged, managed to get in befor

It was on the ocean that the Dutch were carrying on the war, and that with marvellous success, for they were already beginning to drive the Portuguese from their most valuable possessions in the eastern seas and to found for themselves a vast colonial realm. During the early years of the war trade was carried on between them and the Spaniards just as in times of peace. The Hollanders and Zeelanders indeed regarded Philippe’s subjects in Spain and Italy as their best customers, and relied upon th

By this time the Dutch had factories or trading stations at Masulipatam, Pulikat, and two smaller places on the eastern coast of Hindostan, they had liberty to trade at Calicut, they had entered into a new treaty with the maharaja of Kandy in Ceylon, they had factories at Bantam and Grésik in Java, and in November 1610 they entered into a treaty with the ruler of Jakatra in the same island, in which they secured the site of the future city of Batavia, they held the protectorate of Ternate, altho

The days of John the son of Peter and Peter the son of John were passing away, though not quite entirely gone, and surnames such as are now in use were becoming generally adopted by working people, when one Adriaan van der Stel, otherwise Adriaan the son of Simon, is found among the citizens of the town of Dordrecht in the province of South Holland. He was by occupation a cooper, and like many of his energetic countrymen at that time he tried to improve his position by entering the service of th

Willem Adriaan van der Stel, as soon as he assumed the administration, looked around for some means of acquiring money. The Cape settlement did not offer such facilities for this purpose as an Indian island or province would have done, still there were means for making large profits on trade even here. One plan that he adopted was by obtaining—purchasing as he termed it, constraining them to sell, as the burghers called it—from the poorer viticulturists their wines at from £3 2 s. 6 d. to £4 3 s

While these events were taking place in South Africa, a commission in Amsterdam was actually making inquiries into the conduct of Governor Willem Adriaan van der Stel. He knew nothing of this, nor did the burghers know how information concerning his conduct had reached the Netherlands. [79] By some means, however, which cannot be ascertained now, the directors had obtained an inkling of the state of affairs, and on the 26th of October 1705 they appointed the members of the chamber of Amsterdam a

No history has yet been written that cannot be improved upon. In the opinion of most students the greatest work of this kind in the English language is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , but if Gibbon were now alive he could certainly improve that masterpiece by means of discoveries that have been made since he last revised it. If this can be said of volumes prepared by a man of means, who was able to devote his whole time and thought to his work, it is infinitely more true of such a boo