The King Who Broke a Trading Empire

No Asian power had ever beaten a major European trading company in a full set-piece battle.

What the Dutch had built

By the early eighteenth century the VOC - the Dutch East India Company - had built its Indian fortunes on the black pepper of the Malabar coast.

It held that trade through a chain of fortified posts, and a navy that had spent over a century treating Asian resistance as a cost of doing business rather than a real threat.

Ships loaded with Malabar pepper had made Dutch merchants rich for generations.