In 1599, eighty British merchants, exasperated by the rising cost of pepper, formed the British East India Company with a view to getting a piece of the market for themselves. This was the initiative that brought King James the treasured isles of Puloway and Puloroon, but in fact the British never had much success in the East Indies, and in 1667, in the Treaty of Breda, they ceded all claims to the region to the Dutch in return for a small piece of land of no great significance in North America. The piece of land was called Manhattan.
