Maurice, thoroughly disturbed by all of this,…

Willem Janszoon decides at Cape Keerweer (“Turnabout”), south of Albatross Bay, to return, finding the land swampy and the people inhospitable: ten of his men have been killed on various shore expeditions.

The Duyfken is actually in the Torres Strait in March 1606, a few weeks before Luís Vaz de Torres sails through it.

The VOC fleet, passing Malacca on April 1606, had arrived at Johor on May 1, where de Jonge had proceeded to negotiate for a term of alliance with Johor.

The pact is formally concluded on May 17, 1606, in which Johor agrees to a combined effort with the Dutch to attempt to dislodge the Portuguese from Malacca.

Unlike the Portuguese, the Dutch and Johor agree to respect each others' religion; the Dutch will get to keep Malacca and the right to trade in Johor.

The Dutch also will not attempt to interfere or wage war against Johor: in effect, the agreement limits Dutch influence in the Malay Peninsula in contrast to the other part of the archipelago which is to become the Dutch East Indies.

The Battle of Cape Rachado, off the present day Malaccan exclave of Tanjung Tuan in 1606, is the the opening act for the series of conflicts between the coalition of Dutch-Johore and Portuguese Malacca; it will ultimately end with the Portuguese surrender of the city and fort of Malacca to the VOC in 1641.

It is the biggest naval battle in the Malay Archipelago between two naval superpowers of the time, with thirty-one ships (eleven of the Dutch VOC and twenty of the Portuguese).

Although the battle ends with a Portuguese victory, the ferocity of the battle itself and the losses sustained by the victor persuade the Sultanate of Johor to provide supplies, support and later on much needed ground forces to the Dutch, forcing a Portuguese capitulation.

The Dutch request shelter from Johor and arrive at Johor River on August 19, 1606.

Overall the Dutch have lost Nassau and Middelburg.

One hundred and fifty Dutch sailors have been lost and more wounded; their Johor allies losses amount to several hundred.

The Portuguese have lost São Salvador and Dom Duarte de Guerra's smaller galleon while suffering five hundred deaths (Portuguese and allies).

The battle also proves the tenacity of the Dutch in their war against the Portuguese, which causes the Sultan of Johor to fully commit on providing the much needed armies and additional ships and resources.

The Portuguese victory comes to naught when the Dutch, having repaired their ships, return to Malacca two months later to find the Portuguese fleet have departed, leaving behind only ten ships, all of which the Dutch subsequently sink.

Grotius, in The Free Sea (Mare Liberum), formulates the new principle that the sea is international territory, against the Portuguese Mare clausum policy, and all nations are free to use it for seafaring trade.

The 'free seas' provide suitable ideological justification for the Dutch Republic breaking up trade monopolies through its formidable naval power.

England, competing fiercely with the Dutch for domination of world trade, opposes this idea.

The VOC establishes the post of Governor General in 1610 to enable firmer control of their affairs in Asia.

To advise and control the risk of despotic Governors General, a Council of the Indies (Raad van Indië) is created.

The Governor General effectively becomes the main administrator of the VOC's activities in Asia, although the Heeren XVII (the Lords Seventeen, the Amsterdam-based regents of the VOC) will continue to officially have overall control.

VOC headquarters will be in Ambon from 1610 to 1619 for the tenures of the first three Governors General.

The VOC establishes another permanent Dutch trading post at Jayakarta (later 'Batavia' and then 'Jakarta') in 1611.

English traders frequently engage in hostilities with their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean.

The company achieves a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally in 1612, at Suvali in Surat.

The company decides to explore the feasibility of gaining a territorial foothold in mainland India, with official sanction from both Britain and the Mughal Empire, and requests that the Crown launch a diplomatic mission.

In 1612, James I instructs Sir Thomas Roe to visit the Mughal Emperor Nuruddin Salim Jahangir (r. 1605–1627) to arrange for a commercial treaty that will give the company exclusive rights to reside and establish factories in Surat and other areas.

In return, the company offers to provide the Emperor with goods and rarities from the European market.

This mission is highly successful, and Jahangir sends a letter of approval to James through Sir Thomas Roe.

Eventually, the East India Company seizes control of Bengal and slowly the whole Indian subcontinent with its private armies, composed primarily of Indian sepoys.

Run, one of the smallest of the Banda Islands that are today a part of Indonesia, is only about three kilometers long and less than one kilometer wide but of considerable economic importance due to the value of the spices nutmeg and mace which are obtained from the nutmeg tree (Myristica fragans), at this time only growing on the Banda Islands.

Nutmeg is more valuable than gold at this time.

Sailors of the East India Company of the second expedition of James Lancaster, John Davis and John Middleton who stayed in Bantam on Java had first reached the Island in 1603 and developed good contacts with the inhabitants.

Nathaniel Courthope, hired in 1609 by the East India Company to go to the Spice Islands, had left England with great fanfare and by 1616 is a factor at Sukadana in Borneo.

Courthope lands his ships, Swan and Defence, on Run, on December 25, 1616, in a quest to break the Dutch hold on the nutmeg supply.

He persuades the islanders to enter an alliance with the British for nutmeg.