Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/232

2lG COMMERCE WITH notwithstanding the vices and violence of their ad- ministration, prospered exceedingly. Malacca, fam- ed as a commercial emporium under its native so- vereigns, lost none of its reputation under the Por- tuguese. An active and unlimited intercourse ex- isted between the Indian islands and China, and be- tween them and Japan, of a beneficial nature un- known to their successors. Their reign in the Ar- chipelago, which barely lasted a century, has now been virtually suppressed for two ; yet more mo- numents of their arts, their religion, and their language, exist in the country than of those who succeeded them, whose authority has been twice as long established, and who are at this moment in the actual exercise of it. The benefits of the Portuguese government and commerce, merely the result of the unfettered influ- ence of European manners and institutions, and by no means arising cut of any scheme of policy ori- ginating in the wisdom of the government, was confined to the Indies. Europe gained no advan- tage from the discovery of the maritime route to the Indies. By their wars in the Moluccas the production of spices was diminished, the ancient carriers of the trade were plundered, and the Per- sian Gulf and Red Sea, the avenues by which the commodities of India reached Europe, were either seized or blockaded by them. The consequence of all this w^as, that the commodities of India were