The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre: Security, Trade and Society in 16th- and 17th

The history of the European presence in Southeast Asia in the late 16th and early 17th century is generally characterized by the decline of the Portuguese overseas empire in the Orient, the Estado da Índia, the first Dutch voyage to the Maluku Islands, also known as the Spice Islands (1595-1597), and the events that subsequently unfolded in the struggle for supremacy in the European-Asiatic spice trade, i.e. the defense of the exclusive Portuguese right declared in the treaties of Tordesillas (1494) and Zaragoza (1529), or the defense of free trade from the Dutch point of view.