Travels in India (Tavernier) 146.5

146.5

Towards the end of the year 1658 the General of Batavia and his Council sent one of the chiefs of the Dutch Company to the King of China. Having arrived at the Court with splendid presents, he sought to obtain access to the Mandarins, who are the great nobles of the kingdom, so that by their credit he might obtain permission to trade in China. But the Jesuits, who knew the language and were acquainted with the nobles of the Court, in consequence of the long sojourn they had made in the country, in order to prevent the Dutch Company from gaining a footing, to the prejudice of the Portuguese nation, represented many things to the King’s Council to the disadvantage of the Dutch. They told them that in Ceylon they had broken the promise they had given to the King of that island to make over to him the places which they jointly captured from the Portuguese ; that they were not people of good faith ; and that they had likewise fooled the King of Achin after the capture of Malacca, and many other Princes in the Molucca islands ; that after having taken, by terms of capitulation, the country of some of them together with their persons, promising to maintain them all their lives according to their dignity, they had not treated them with any further consideration once they got them into their power, but had transported them as slaves to the Island of Maurice to cut ebony wood.