Towards the end of the eighteenth century they (the Dutch) had practically a monopoly of the spice trade, and were extremely jealous of any other nations obtaining a footing in spice islands, where their monopoly might be jeopardised. They obstinately refused all access to New Guinea; but the Dutch barrier was broken down by emissaries of the British East India Company in search of spice islands, and in 1793 New Guinea was annexed by two commanders in the service of the company, and the territory was thereafter regarded as an adjunct of Queensland, although no steps were taken for an administrative occupation. In 1828 the Dutch erected a fortress to protect the rights they claimed in New Guinea, but this they abandoned in 1835. While Samoa and numerous other groups of islands were not incorporated in the dominions of the countries whose explorers "discovered" them, and their savage inhabitants were allowed to continue their own administration, a brisk British trade sprang up between Australasia and the islanders. The necessity for bringing either New Guinea or the Samoan group under direct rule was not an expediency that presented itself as an urgent one to either the Imperial British or Australian Governments as long as fair trading conditions prevailed on harmonious lines and the lives and private property of British traders were safeguarded, until in about 1880 the tips of the tentacles of the German octopus delicately spread out to seek the spots whereon to plant the suckers of trading stations, behind them the unlidded eyes of Imperial Protection watching to gauge the value of the prize and the parrot-beaked maw ready to grasp for the satisfaction of Prussian greed. A flourishing inter-coastal and island trade had long been established by the United States of America, but until 1898, when they annexed Hawaii and occupied Samoa, the United States adhered to their doctrine of not attempting territorial acquisition outside their own continental borders. By 1883 the Germans had firmly established themselves commercially, and their influence began to be most markedly denoted in disaffection amongst the natives and in inter-tribal wars--notably in Samoa. In this year the British New Guinea Colonising Society proposed an expedition to Lord Carnarvon, who was then Colonial Secretary, but the minister declined to lend his support to an enterprise which he considered entailed too much risk. The enterprise was imagined in collaboration with supporters of Imperial extension in Australasia, and, acting on their own initiative, the Government of Queensland, with the approval of the whole of Australia, annexed a portion of New Guinea to her dominions; but this act was disavowed by the British Government and declared to be "null in point of law and not to be admitted in point of policy."