The Dutch Expeditions to the Indies.--In 1595 their first expedition, led by one Cornelius Houtman, who had sailed in Portuguese galleons, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian domain. The objective point was Java, where an alliance was formed with the native princes and a cargo of pepper secured. Two things were shown by the safe return of this fleet,--the great wealth and profit of the Indian trade, and the inability of Spain and Portugal to maintain their monopoly. In 1598 the merchants of Amsterdam defeated a combined Spanish and Portuguese fleet in the East, and trading settlements were secured in Java and Johore. In 1605 they carried their factories to Amboina and Tidor. Effect of the Success of the Dutch.--The exclusive monopoly over the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, which Portugal and Spain had maintained for a century, was broken. With the concurrence of the Roman See, they had tried to divide the New World and the Orient between them. That effort was now passed. They had claimed the right to exclude from the vast oceans they had discovered the vessels of every other nation but their own. This doctrine in the History of International Law is known as that of mare clausum, or "closed sea." The death-blow to this domination was given by the entrance of the Dutch into the Indies, and it is not a mere coincidence that we find the doctrine of closed sea itself scientifically assailed, a few years later, by the great Dutch jurist, Grotius, the founder of the system of international law in his work, De Libero Mare. The Trading Methods of the Dutch.--The Dutch made no attempts in the Indies to found great colonies for political domination and religious conversion. Commerce was their sole object. Their policy was to form alliances with native rulers, promising to assist them against the rule of the Portuguese or Spaniard in return for exclusive privileges of trade. In this they were more than successful. In 1602 they obtained permission to establish a factory at Bantam, on the island of Java. This was even then a considerable trading-point. "Chinese, Arabs, Persians, Moors, Turks, Malabars, Peguans, and merchants from all nations were established there," the principal object of trade being pepper. [64] The character of the treaty made by the Dutch with the king of Bantam is stated by Raffles. "The Dutch stipulated to assist him against foreign invaders, particularly Spaniards and Portuguese; and the king, on his side, agreed to make over to the Dutch a good and strong fort, a free trade, and security for "their persons and property without payment of any duties or taxes, and to allow no other European nation to trade or reside in his territories."