off with you any natives against their will". And, sad to say, such
injunctions were often imperiously necessary!]

And this same eminent manager of the Company's interests in India lived
to see at the end of his official career far narrower views about
colonial policy not only take root in the mother-country (where isolated
opinions that way had found utterance long before), but even get the
upper hand in the Company's councils. Van Diemen's policy came ultimately
to be condemned in the Netherlands, whatever homage might there be paid
to his eminent talents, whatever acknowledgment vouchsafed to his great
merits! It may almost be called a matter of course that great differences
of opinions were bound surely, if slowly, to crop up between the Managers
on one hand, and able Governors-General on the other, touching the line
of conduct to be followed by the Netherlanders in the East. The Managers
were in the first place the directors of a trading company: they hardly
looked beyond the requirements of a purely mercantile policy. Eminent
Governors-General on the contrary were conscious {Page xvi} of being more
than this: they were not only the representatives of a body of merchants,
they were also the rulers of a colonial empire which in the East was
looked up to with dread, with hatred also sometimes, to be sure, but at
the same time with respect and awe! There lay the ultimate cause of the
fundamental difference of opinion respecting the colonial policy to be
followed [*]. Van Diemen dreamt a bold dream of Dutch supremacy in the
East and of the East India Company's mastery "of the opulent Indian
trade." To this end he deemed necessary: "harassing of the enemy [**],
continuation and extension of trade, together with the discovering or new
lands." But if he had lived to read the missive [***], his grand projects
would have received an effectual damper as he perused the letter
addressed to him by the Lords Managers, on September 9, 1645, and
containing the passage following: "[We] see that Your Worships have again