=226. Decline of the Company after 1700.=—After 1700 the Dutch East India Company fell behind rapidly. It enjoyed such a high reputation, and kept its condition secret so successfully, that its credit was unimpaired, and it continued to pay dividends by borrowing money. For nearly two hundred years it declared dividends at rates ranging from 12-1/2 per cent to 20, 40, or even 50 per cent; the average dividend from 1602 to 1796 was over 18 per cent. The crash was bound to come finally; the company paid its last dividend in 1782, and was dissolved in 1798, leaving debts of over fifty million dollars, which were assumed by the Dutch government. QUESTIONS AND TOPICS 1. Commerce and industry of the Netherlands in the fifteenth century. [Blok, vol. 2, chap. 12.] 2. Commercial considerations involved in the revolt of the Netherlands. [Rogers, Holland, Cambridge Mod. Hist., or one of the older books like Motley.] 3. Beginnings of Dutch commerce with the Indies. [Blok, vol. 3, chap. 9.] 4. From what Dutch source were the names Tasmania, Van Diemens Land, New Zealand, derived; when and how were they attached to countries later bearing them? [Encyclopedia.] 5. The Dutch in North America; was their commerce with New Netherlands important, and did the loss of their possession affect seriously their carrying trade? [See manuals of U. S. history and the references given in them; note the effect of the English Navigation Acts.] 6. The Dutch in South America. [See Edmundson, Dutch trade on the Amazon, English Historical Review, 1903, 18: 642-663, and later.] 7. The policy of the East India Company: trade and territorial expansion, monopoly, regulation of production. [Day, Dutch in Java, chap. 2.] 8. The Dutch in the East Indies. [Rogers, Holland, chaps. 20, 22.] 9. Write a report on Dutch commerce at the height of its prosperity: countries traded with, wares, shipping, fisheries. [Blok, History, vol. 4, book 6, part 3, chap. 1, part 4, chap. 4; vol. 5, book 7, chap. 4.] 10. The Bank of Amsterdam; its peculiarities and historical importance. [Rogers, Holland, chap. 24; Adam Smith, Wealth of nations, Book 4, chap. 3; C. F. Dunbar, Theory and history of banking, N. Y., 2d. ed., 1903, chap. 8.] 11. Forerunners of modern trusts in the Netherlands. [A. Sayous, Early trusts in Holland, Political Science Quarterly, N. Y., 1902, 17: 369-380.] 12. The naval war of the English and Dutch in the time of Cromwell and Charles II. [Manuals of English history.] 13. Dutch commerce in the period of its decline. [Blok, History, vol. 5, book 8, chap. 5; vol. 6, book 9, chap. 3, book 10, chap. 4.] 14. Internal troubles of the Dutch. [Rogers, Holland, chap. 34.] 15. The “contingent system” of the Dutch East India Company. [Day, Dutch in Java, p. 61 ff.] 16. Organization of the Dutch East India Company, and its faults [Dutch in Java, chap. 3.] BIBLIOGRAPHY