A British fleet had captured a large…

A British fleet had captured a large Portuguese carrack, the Madre de Deus, off the Azores in 1592, during the war with Spain.

Loaded with nine hundred tons of merchandise from India and China, estimated at half a million pounds (nearly half the size of English Treasury at the time), this foretaste of the riches of the East had galvanized interest in the region.

That same year, Cornelis de Houtman had been sent by Dutch merchants to Lisbon, to gather as much information as he could about the Spice Islands.

Merchant and explorer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, having traveled widely in the Indian Ocean at the service of the Portuguese, had in 1595 published a travel report in Amsterdam, the Reys-gheschrift vande navigatien der Portugaloysers in Orienten ("Report of a journey through the navigations of the Portuguese in the East").

This included vast directions on how to navigate between Portugal and the East Indies and to Japan.

Dutch and British interest fed on new information had led to a movement of commercial expansion.

In 1598, an increasing number of new fleets had been sent out by competing merchant groups from around the Netherlands.

Some fleets had been lost, but most were successful, with some voyages producing high profits.

In March 1599, a fleet of eight ships under Jacob van Neck had been the first Dutch fleet to reach the ‘Spice Islands’ of Maluku.

The ships returned to Europe in 1599 and 1600; the expedition has made a 400 percent profit.

The foundation of the English East India Company, in 1600, allows the entry of chartered companies into the markets of the so-called East Indies.