The first governor-general, Pieter Both, had made Java the centre of administration and had established factories and posts at Bantam, Jacatra and Djapara, not without arousing considerable hostility among the local rulers, jealous of the presence of the intruders.  This hostility was fostered and encouraged by the English, whose vessels had also visited Java and had erected a trading-post close to that of the Dutch at Jacatra.  Already the spice islands had been the scene of hostile encounters between the representatives of the two nations, and had led to many altercations.  This was the state of things when Jan Pieterzoon Koen became governor-general in 1615.  This determined man, whose experience in the East Indies was of long date, and who had already served as director-general, came into his new office with an intense prejudice against the English, and with a firm resolve to put an end to what he described as their treachery and intrigues.  “Were they masters,” he wrote home, “the Dutch would quickly be out of the Indies, but praise be to the Lord, who has provided otherwise.  They are an unendurable nation.”  With this object he strongly fortified the factory near Jacatra, thereby arousing the hostility of the Pangeran, as the native ruler was styled.  The English in their neighbouring post also began to erect defences and to encourage the Pangeran in his hostile attitude.  Koen thereupon fell upon the English and destroyed and burnt their factory, and finding that there was a strong English fleet under Sir Thomas Dale in the neighbourhood, he sailed to the Moluccas in search of reinforcements, leaving Pieter van der Broeck in command at the factory.  The Pangeran now feigned friendship, and having enticed Broeck to a conference, made him prisoner and attacked the Dutch stronghold.  The garrison however held out until the governor-general returned with a strong force.  With this he stormed and destroyed the town of Jacatra and on its site erected a new town, as the seat of the company’s government, to which the name Batavia was given.  From this time the Dutch had no rivalry to fear in Java.  The conquest of the whole island was only a question of time, and the “pearl of the Malay Archipelago” has from 1620 to the present been the richest and most valuable of all the Dutch colonial possessions.  Koen was planning to follow up his success by driving the English likewise from the Moluccas, when he heard that the home government had concluded a treaty which tied his hands.

The position in the Moluccas had for some years been one of continual bickering and strife; the chief scene being in the little group known as the Banda islands.  The lucrative spice-trade tempted both companies to establish themselves by building forts; and the names of Amboina and Pulo Rum were for many years to embitter the relations of the two peoples.  Meanwhile the whole subject of those relations had been in 1619 discussed at London by a special embassy sent nominally