Especially Ternate and Tydor were objects of unending strife.  Chinese, Malays, Persians, Arabs, had struggled centuries long for their possession; those races successively or simultaneously ruling these and adjacent portions of the Archipelago.  The great geographical discoveries at the close of the fifteenth century had however changed the aspect of India and of the world.  The Portuguese adventurers found two rival kings—­in the two precious islands, and by ingeniously protecting one of these potentates and poisoning the other, soon made themselves masters of the field.  The clove trade was now entirely in the hands of the strangers from the antipodes.  Goa became the great mart of the lucrative traffic, and thither came Chinese, Arabs, Moors, and other oriental traders to be supplied from the Portuguese monopoly:  Two-thirds of the spices however found their way directly to Europe.

Naturally enough, the Spaniards soon penetrated into these seas, and claimed their portion of the spice trade.  They insisted that the coveted islands were included in their portion of the great Borgian grant.  As there had hardly yet been time to make a trigonometrical survey of an unknown world, so generously divided by the pope, there was no way of settling disputed boundary questions save by apostolic blows.  These were exchanged with much earnestness, year after year, between Spaniards, Portuguese, and all who came in their way.  Especially the unfortunate natives, and their kings most of all, came in for a full share.  At last Charles V. sold out his share of the spice islands to his Portuguese rival and co-proprietor, for three hundred and fifty thousand ducats.  The emperor’s very active pursuits caused him to require ready money more than cloves.  Yet John iii. had made an excellent bargain, and the monopoly thenceforth brought him in at least two hundred thousand ducats annually.  Goa became more flourishing, the natives more wretched, the Portuguese more detested than ever.  Occasionally one of the royal line of victims would consent to put a diadem upon his head, but the coronation was usually the prelude to a dungeon or death.  The treaties of alliance, which these unlucky potentates had formed with their powerful invaders, were, as so often is the case, mere deeds to convey themselves and their subjects into slavery.

Spain and Portugal becoming one, the slender weapon of defence which these weak but subtle Orientals sometimes employed with success—­the international and commercial jealousy between their two oppressors—­was taken away.  It was therefore with joy that Zaida, who sat on the throne of Ternate at the end of the sixteenth century, saw the sails of a Dutch fleet arriving in his harbours.  Very soon negotiations were opened, and the distant republic undertook to protect the Mahometan king against his Catholic master.  The new friendship was founded upon trade monopoly, of course, but at that period at least the islanders were treated with justice and humanity by their republican allies.  The Dutch undertook to liberate their friends from bondage, while the King of Ternate, panting under Portuguese oppression, swore to have no traffic, no dealings of any kind, with any other nation than Holland; not even with the English.  The Dutch, they declared, were the liberators of themselves, of their friends, and of the seas.