The Edinburgh Parliament proves no less radical.…

The Dutch East India Company had begun the campaign to destroy Portuguese power in the East in the early seventeenth century, by which time the Portuguese had transformed Malacca into an impregnable fortress (the Fortaleza de Malaca, controlling access to the sea lanes of the Straits of Malacca and the spice trade here.)

The Dutch had begun by launching small incursions and skirmishes against the Portuguese.

The first serious attempt had been the siege of Malacca in 1606 by the third VOC fleet from Holland with eleven ships, led by Admiral Cornelis Matelief de Jonge that led to the naval battle of Cape Rachado.

Although the Dutch had been routed, the Portuguese fleet of Don Martin d'Alphonso de Castro, the Viceroy of Goa, had suffered heavier casualties and the battle had rallied the forces of the Sultanate of Johor in an alliance with the Dutch and later on with the Achehnese.

The Dutch with their local allies assault Malacca and wrest it from the Portuguese in January 1641.

This combined Dutch-Johor-Acheh efforts effectively destroys the last bastion of Portuguese power, removing their influence in the Malay archipelago.

As per the agreement with Johor in 1606, the Dutch take control of Malacca and agree not to seek territories or wage war with the Malay kingdoms.

The Council of Batavia in 1642 dispatches Abel Tasman and Franchoijs Visscher on a voyage of which one of the objects is to obtain knowledge of "all the totally unknown provinces of Beach".

Beach appears on maps of the time, notably that of Abraham Ortelius of 1570 and that of Jan Huygen van Linschoten of 1596, as the northernmost part of the southern continent, the Terra Australis, along with Locach.

According to Marco Polo, Locach was a kingdom where gold was “so plentiful that no none who did not see it could believe it”.

Beach was in fact a mistranscription of Locach, Marco Polo’s name for the southern Thai kingdom of Lavo, or Lop Buri, the “city of Lavo”, (after Lavo, the son of Rama in Hindu mythology).

In Chinese (Cantonese), Lavo was pronounced “Lo-huk”, from which Marco Polo took his rendition of the name.

In the German cursive script, “Locach” and “Beach” look similar, and in the 1532 edition of Marco Polo’s Travels published by Simon Grynaeus and Johann Huttich, his Locach had been changed to Boëach, later shortened to Beach.

Linschoten’s very popular 1596 map of the East Indies showed BEACH projecting from the map’s southern edge, leading (or mis-leading) Visscher and Tasman, in their voyage of 1642, to seek Beach with its plentiful gold in a location to the south of the Solomon Islands somewhere between Staten Land near Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.

Confirmation that land exists where the maps show Beach to be had come from Dirk Hartog’s landing in October 1616 on its west coast, which he called Eendrachtsland after the name of his ship.

In accordance with Visscher's directions, Tasman sails first to Mauritius.

The reason for this is that his ships are sailing ships and the best route from one place to another is not always the direct route; of more importance is the direction of the wind.

Tasman has some knowledge of the prevailing winds and so he chooses Mauritius as a turning point and from there a course is set towards what is presumed to be the mainland of Beach, or Terra Australis. (At least part of the western shore of the continent is already known to the Dutch, but the shape of the southern coast is unknown).

Tasman sights the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour, on November 24, 1642.

He names his discovery Van Diemen's Land after Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.

Proceeding south, Tasman skirts the southern end of Tasmania and turns northeast, now trying to work his two ships into Adventure Bay on the east coast of South Bruny Island where he is blown out to sea by a storm; this area he names Storm Bay.

Tasman anchors two days later to the North of Cape Frederick Hendrick just north of the Forestier Peninsula.

Tasman next lands in Blackman Bay—in the larger Marion Bay.

n attempt is made the next day to land in North Bay; however, because the sea is too rough the carpenter swims through the surf and plants the Dutch flag in North Bay.

Tasman claims formal possession of the land on December 3, 1642.

Abel Tasman mistakes Cook Strait for a bight (naming it Zeehaen's Bight).

A considerable number of Marrano merchants have settled in London toward the middle of the seventeenth century and formed here a secret congregation, at the head of which is Antonio Fernandez Carvajal.

They conduct a large business with the Levant, East and West Indies, Canary Islands, and Brazil, and above all with the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal.

They form an important link in the network of trade spread especially throughout the Spanish and Portuguese world by the Marranos or secret Jews.

Outwardly they pass as Spaniards and Catholics; but they hold prayer-meetings at Cree Church Lane, and have become known to the government as Jews by faith.

Several hundred Jews are by 1648 already living in London under the protection of Charles I.

The VOC ship Waeckende Boey (Watch Buoy) is repaired and sails north, where it is wrecked again on the coast of Java; the four survivors walk overland to Jepara.

The Dutch are aggressive competitors of the English and have meanwhile expanded their monopoly of the spice trade in the Straits of Malacca by ousting the Portuguese in 1640–41.

With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC enter a period of intense competition, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1657, Oliver Cromwell had renewed the charter of 1609, and brought about minor changes in the holding of the company.

The restoration of monarchy in England further enhances the EIC's status.

In an act aimed at strengthening the power of the EIC, King Charles II grants the EIC (in a series of five acts around 1670) the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas.

Relations between the Dutch and the Ayutthaya kingdom, or Siam (modern Thailand), had worsened under the reign of the brutal usurper Prasat Thong, following whose demise Narai, a younger son, had in 1656 deposed his elder brother Chai to assume the throne.

The Dutch, shortly after Narai’s ascension, had exacerbated matters by the capture of a ship carrying goods belonging to the Thai King’s royal monopoly.

Domestic policies in King Narai's reign are to be greatly affected by the interference of foreign powers, most notably the Chinese to the north, the Dutch to the south, and the English who are making their first forays into India to the west.

Thai policies revolve around either directly countering the influence, or creating a delicate balance of power between the different parties.