[1] Marshal Luxemburg, who was left in command of the army in Holland
during the winter of 1672-73, had indeed made a bold attempt to
capture Leiden and the Hague by marching a corps from Utrecht across
the frozen inundations. But a sudden thaw imperilled his force and he
had to make a painful retreat along the dykes to Utrecht. Holland was
again inundated in 1673.
DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY, THE (_De Westindische Compagnie_), a company
founded by letters-patent from the Netherlands states-general dated the
3rd of June 1621. The purpose for which the company was formed was to
regulate and protect the contraband trade already carried on by the
Dutch in the American and African possessions of Spain and Portugal, and
to establish colonies on both continents and their islands. By the terms
of the charter the company was to be composed of five boards or
branches, established in Amsterdam, Zealand, the Meuse (Rotterdam), the
North Department (Friesland and Hoorn), and Groningen. Each was to be
represented on the general governing board according to the importance
of the capital contributed by it. Thus Amsterdam, which contributed
four-ninths of the capital, had eight directors on the board. Zealand,
which subscribed two-ninths, had four. Rotterdam was represented by two
directors, though it only contributed one-ninth. The northern district
and Groningen, which each contributed one-ninth, appointed one director
each. Another director was appointed by the states-general. In 1629 a
ninth representative was given to Amsterdam, and the strength of the
whole board was fixed at nineteen.
The company was granted the monopoly of the trade with America and
Africa and between them, from the Arctic regions to the Straits of
Magellan, and from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope. The
policy the company proposed to follow was to use its monopoly on the
coast of Africa in order to secure the cheap and regular supply of negro
slaves for the possessions it hoped to acquire in America. The trade was
thrown open by the voluntary action of the company in 1638. The general
board was endowed with ample power to negotiate treaties, and make war
and peace with native princes; to appoint its officials, generals and
governors; and to legislate in its possessions subject to the laws of
the Netherlands. The states-general undertook to secure the trading
rights of the company, and to support it by a subvention of one million
guilders (about L100,000). In case of war the states-general undertook
to contribute sixteen vessels of 300 tons and upwards for the defence of
the company, which, however, was to bear the expense of maintaining
them. In return for these aids the states-general claimed a share in the
profits, stipulated that the company must maintain sixteen large vessels
(300 tons and upwards) and fourteen "yachts" (small craft of 50 to 100
tons or so); required that all the company's officials should take an
oath of allegiance to themselves as well as to the board of directors;
and that all despatches should be sent in duplicate to themselves and to
the board.
The history of the Dutch West India Company is one of less prosperity
than that of the Dutch East India Company. In early days the trade was
not sufficient to meet the heavy expense of the armaments raised against
Spain and Portugal. A compensation was found in the plunder of Spanish
and Portuguese galleons and carracks. In 1628 the company's admiral Piet
Heijn captured a vast booty in the Spanish treasure-ships. But this
source of profit was dried up by the success of the company's cruisers,
which destroyed their enemy's trade. Profit had to be sought in the
development of the colonies established on the continent of America. In
this field the successes of the company were counterbalanced by not a
few failures. The company was never able to secure the control of the
supply of slaves from Africa. Its settlement of New Netherland was lost
to England. In the West Indies it gained a valuable footing among the
islands. It occupied St Eustatius in 1634, Curacao with Bonaire and
Aruba in 1634 and 1635, Saba in 1640 and St Martin in 1648. But its
greatest conquests and its greatest losses were alike met on the
continent of South America. After a first unsuccessful occupation in
1623 of Bahia, which was immediately retaken by a combined Spanish and
Portuguese armament, the company obtained a firm footing in Pernambuco.
The story of the wars which arose out of this invasion belongs to the
history of Brazil. The company had been largely guided in its policy of
assailing the Portuguese possessions by the advice of the Jews, who were
numerous in Brazil, and who found means to communicate with their
fellows in religion, the refugees in Amsterdam. The most prosperous
period of the company was during the tolerant and liberal administration
of Count John Maurice of Nassau-Siegen (1636-1644).
The monopolist tendency of all Dutch colonization, the religious
hostility of the Roman Catholic Portuguese, and the support given by
France and England to Portugal after her revolt from Spain, combined at
last to make the position of the company in Brazil untenable. It
resigned all claim on the country by the treaty of 1661. But though
deprived of its establishment in Brazil, the company found a
compensation in Surinam and Essequibo (Dutch Guiana), where there was no
Spanish or Portuguese population to resist it, and where the resources
of the country offered great profits. The advantages of the settlement
in Guiana were not, however, reaped by the company founded in 1621. In
1674 it had become so embarrassed that it was dissolved, and
reconstructed in 1675. The newly formed company continued to exploit the
Dutch possessions in America till 1794, when they were all swept into
the general reorganization consequent on the French invasion of Holland.
The West India Company founded after the Napoleonic epoch in 1828 was
only meant to develop trade, and was not successful.
AUTHORITIES.--P.M. Nitscher, _Les Hollandais au Bresil_ (the Hague,
1853), the work of a Dutch author writing in French. See also Southey,
_History of Brazil_ (London, 1810), and E.B. O'Callaghan, _History of
New Netherland_ (New York, 1846-1848).
DUTENS, LOUIS (1730-1812), French writer, was born at Tours, of
Protestant parents, on the 15th of January 1730. He went to London,
where his uncle was a jeweller, and there obtained a situation as tutor
in a private family. In this position he learnt Greek and mathematics,
and studied oriental languages, also Italian and Spanish. He took
orders, and was appointed chaplain and secretary to the English minister
at the court of Turin in October 1758. In 1760-1762 he was charge
d'affaires at Turin. Lord Bute, before retiring from office in 1763,
procured him a pension. He again went to Turin as charge d'affaires; and
during this second mission he collected and published a complete edition
of the works of Leibnitz (Geneva, 6 vols., 1768) and wrote his
_Recherches sur l'origine des decouvertes attribuees aux modernes_
(1766). On his return to England the duke of Northumberland procured him
the living of Elsdon, in Northumberland, and made him tutor to his son.
In 1775 he became a member of the French Academy of Inscriptions and a
fellow of the Royal Society. Dutens was for a third time charge
d'affaires at Turin. He was in Paris in 1783, and returned to London the
following year. He died in London on the 23rd of May 1812.
The principal works of Dutens were his _Recherches sur l'origine des
decouvertes attribuees aux modernes_ (1766, 2 vols.); _Appel au bon
sens_ (London, 1777, 8vo), directed in defence of Christianity against
the French philosophers, and published anonymously; _Explication de
quelques medailles de peuples, de rois et de villes grecques et
pheniciennes_ (London, 1773); _Explication de quelques medailles du
cabinet de Duane_ (1774); _Troisieme dissertation sur quelques
medailles grecques et pheniciennes_ (1776); _Logique, ou l'art de
raisonner_ (1773); _Des pierres precieuses et des pierres fines, avec
les moyens de les connaitre et de les evaluer_ (Paris, 1776);
_Itineraire des routes les plus frequentees, ou journal d'un voyage
aux principales villes d'Europe_ (Paris, 1775), frequently
republished; _Considerations theologiques sur les moyens de reunir
toutes les eglises chretiennes_ (1798); _Oeuvres melees_, containing
his most important works published up to the date (London, 1797, 4
vols.); _L'Ami des etrangers qui voyagent en Angleterre_ (1789, 8vo);
_Histoire de ce qui s'est passe pour le retablissement d'une regence
en Angleterre_ (1789); _Recherches sur le tems le plus recule de
l'usage des voutes chez les anciens_ (1795); _Memoires d'un voyageur
qui se repose_ (Paris, 1786, 3 vols.). The first two volumes of the
last-named work contain the life of the author, written in a romantic
style; the third bears the title of _Dutensiana_, and is filled with
remarks, anecdotes and bons mots. (See memoir of Dutens in the
_Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1812.)
DUTROCHET, RENE JOACHIM HENRI (1776-1847), French physiologist, was born
at Chateau de Neon (Indre) on the 14th of November 1776, and died at
Paris on the 4th of February 1847. In 1799 he entered the military
marine at Rochefort, but soon left it to join the Vendean army. In 1802
he began the study of medicine at Paris; and he was subsequently
appointed chief physician to the hospital at Burgos. After an attack of
typhus he returned in 1809 to France, where he devoted himself to the
study of the natural sciences. His scientific publications were
numerous, and covered a wide field, but his most noteworthy work was
embryological. His "Recherches sur l'accroissement et la reproduction
des vegetaux," published in the _Memoires du museum d'histoire
naturelle_ for 1821, procured him in that year the French Academy's
prize for experimental physiology. In 1837 appeared his _Memoires pour
servir a l'histoire anatomique et physiologique des vegetaux et des
animaux_, a collection of all his more important biological papers.
DUTT, MICHAEL MADHU SUDAN (1824-1873), the greatest native poet of India
in the 19th century, was born at Sagandari, in the district of Jessore
in Bengal, on the 25th of January 1824. His father was a pleader in
Calcutta, and young Madhu Sudan received his education in the Hindu
college of Calcutta, and was the foremost among the distinguished young
students of his day, many of whom lived to make their mark in the
literature and social progress of their country. Madhu Sudan left the
college in 1842, and in the following year ran away to avoid a marriage
into which his father wished to force him, and embraced the Christian
religion. Continuing his studies now in the Bishop's college, Madhu
Sudan learnt Greek and Latin and some modern European languages, and in
1848 went to Madras. There he wrote English verses, and married the
daughter of a European indigo-planter, but was soon separated from her.
He then united himself with an English lady, the daughter of an
educational officer; and she remained true to him through life amidst
all his misfortunes, and was the mother of the children he left. With
her Madhu Sudan returned to Calcutta in 1856, and soon discovered that
the true way for winning literary distinction was by writing in his own
language, not by composing verses in English. His three classical
dramas--_Sarmishtha_, _Padmavati_, and _Krishna Kumari_--appeared
between 1858 and 1861, and were recognized as works of merit. But his
great ambition was to introduce blank verse into Bengali. His knowledge
of Sanskrit poetry, his appreciation of the Greek and Latin epics, and
his admiration of Dante and of Milton, impelled him to break through the
fetters of the Bengali rhyme, and to attempt a spirited and elevated
style in blank verse. His first poem in blank verse, the _Tilottama_,
was only a partial success; but his great epic which followed in 1861,
the _Meghanad-Badha_, took the Indian world by surprise, and at once
established his reputation as the greatest poet of his age and country.
He took his story from the old Sanskrit epic, the _Ramayana_, but the
beauty of the poem is all his own, and he imparted to it the pathos and
sweetness of Eastern ideas combined with the vigour and loftiness of
Western thought. In 1862 Madhu Sudan left for Europe. He lived in
England for some years, and was called to the bar; and in 1867 returned
to his country to practise as a barrister in Calcutta. But the poet was
unfitted for a lawyer's vocation; his liabilities increased, his health
failed, his powers declined. He still wrote much, but nothing of
enduring merit. His brilliant but erratic life ended in a Calcutta
hospital on the 29th of June 1873.
DUTY (from "due," that which is owing, O. Fr. _deu_, _du_, past
participle of _devoir_; Lat. _debere_, _debitum_; cf. "debt"), a term
loosely applied to any action or course of action which is regarded as
morally incumbent, apart from personal likes and dislikes or any
external compulsion. Such action must be viewed in relation to a
principle, which may be abstract in the highest sense (e.g. obedience to
the dictates of conscience) or based on local and personal relations.
That a father and his children have mutual duties implies that there are
moral laws regulating their relationship; that it is the duty of a
servant to obey his master within certain limits is part of a definite
contract, whereby he becomes a servant engaging to do certain things for
a specified wage. Thus it is held that it is not the duty of a servant
to infringe a moral law even though his master should command it. For
the nature of duty in the abstract, and the various criteria on which it
has been based, see ETHICS.
From the root idea of obligation to serve or give something in return,
involved in the conception of duty, have sprung various derivative uses
of the word; thus it is used of the services performed by a minister of
a church, by a soldier, or by any employee or servant. A special
application is to a tax, a payment due to the revenue of a state, levied
by force of law. Properly a "duty" differs from a "tax" in being levied
on specific commodities, transactions, estates, &c., and not on
individuals; thus it is right to talk of import-duties, excise-duties,
death-or succession-duties, &c., but of income-tax as being levied on a
person in proportion to his income.
DU VAIR, GUILLAUME (1556-1621), French author and lawyer, was born in
Paris on the 7th of March 1556. Du Vair was in orders, and, though
during the greater part of his life he exercised only legal functions,
he was from 1617 till his death bishop of Lisieux. His reputation,
however, is that of a lawyer, a statesman and a man of letters. He
became in 1584 counsellor of the parlement of Paris, and as deputy for
Paris to the Estates of the League he pronounced his most famous
politico-legal discourse, an argument nominally for the Salic law, but
in reality directed against the alienation of the crown of France to the
Spanish infanta, which was advocated by the extreme Leaguers. Henry IV.
acknowledged his services by entrusting him with a special commission
as magistrate at Marseilles, and made him master of requests. In 1595
appeared his treatise _De l'eloquence francaise et des raisons pour quoi
elle est demeuree si basse_, in which he criticizes the orators of his
day, adding by way of example some translations of the speeches of
ancient orators, which reproduce the spirit rather than the actual words
of the originals. He was sent to England in 1596 with the marshal de
Bouillon to negotiate a league against Spain; in 1599 he became first
president of the parlement of Province (Aix); and in 1603 was appointed
to the see of Marseilles, which he soon resigned in order to resume the
presidency. In 1616 he received the highest promotion open to a French
lawyer and became keeper of the seals. He died at Tonneins
(Lot-et-Garonne) on the 3rd of August 1621. Both as speaker and writer
he holds a very high rank, and his character was equal to his abilities.
Like other political lawyers of the time, Du Vair busied himself not a
little in the study of philosophy. The most celebrated of his treatises
are _La Philosophie morale des Stoiques_, translated into English (1664)
by Charles Cotton; _De la constance et consolation es calamites
publiques_,[1] which was composed during the siege of Paris in 1589, and
applied the Stoic doctrine to present misfortunes; and _La Sainte
Philosophie_, in which religion and philosophy are intimately connected.
Pierre Charron drew freely on these and other works of Du Vair. F. de
Brunetiere points out the analogy of Du Vair's position with that
afterwards developed by Pascal, and sees in him the ancestor of the
Jansenists. Du Vair had a great indirect influence on the development of
style in French, for in the south of France he made the acquaintance of
Malherbe, who conceived a great admiration for Du Vair's writings. The
reformer of French poetry learned much from the treatise _De l'eloquence
francaise_, to which the counsels of his friend were no doubt added.
Du Vair's works were published in folio at Paris in 1641. See Niceron,
_Memoires_, vol. 43; and monographs by C.A. Sapey (1847 and 1858).