86 THE FRENCH AND ENGLISH COMPANIES

mainly by the misguided solicitude of their own gov- ernment. For the commerce of France, however, better times were coming. The period of greatest colonial expan- sion, as it is styled by French writers, was inaugurated when Colbert, the famous minister of Louis XIV, launched his two Companies of the East and West Indies in 1664. It has already been explained that in those days the term " Indies ' ; bore an exceedingly wide geographical significance in both hemispheres. Under the general denomination of the East Indies were included all the coasts of Southern Asia, from the Per- sian Gulf to China, Malacca, Borneo, Java, and all the rich Spice Islands of the China Sea. By the West Indies were meant not only the islands now known under that name, but the whole eastern littoral, and even the interior of Northern and Central America as far as it had been explored. No ship could double the Cape of Good Hope without coming within the trading sphere of the East India Companies; while to cross the Atlantic was to trespass on some West Indian monop- oly. In 1600, the charter of the Dutch Company con- ferred upon them the exclusive privilege of navigation in all Eastern waters, with power to seize and confiscate any vessel that intruded on their domain. The charter of Colbert's East India Company granted a similar monopoly of trade for fifty years in all lands and seas beyond the Cape of Good Hope. It is not too much to say that the great Companies of the seventeenth century were the champions and