Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/255

EUROPEAN NATIONS. 289 In 1719 the misconduct of the Company's ser- vants had completely estranged the natives of Ben- coolen from them, and their pusillanimity induced them to abandon their post, to which the natives, in terror of the Dutch power, once more invited them to return. It must not be supposed that the delusion of expecting profit to the trading companies, by restricting the commerce of the natives, and de- stroying the incentives to industry, the sure me- thods of ruining all commerce, belonged only to the earliest and rudest periods of the Eu- ropean connection with the Indian Islands. The principle at least has actuated the conduct of the Companies and their servants, without in- terruption, down to the latest times. In 1749, for example, the Dutch formed a settlement at Banjarmassin, and soon ruined it, so that for pro- duce and population, it is no longer to be recog- nized for the place it was a century back. The flourishing Malayan settlements of Pontianak had been formed but a few years, when it attracted the cupidity of the Dutch, who established a factory, a fortress, and all their concomitants there, in 1778. From thence they destroyed the rival, flourishing, and independent states of Mampawa and Succadana. Pontianak itself, as usual and in- evitable in such cases, fell to insignificance, until the removal of the Dutch, when free trade once