Most discussions of the political theories that accompanied the European imperial expansion have accordingly concentrated on ideas either of just war or of legitimate settlement on uncultivated territory, and this material has now become a familiar part of the standard history of imperialism. The principal stumbling block for European treaties with non-European people was very clear: the Old Testament contained a number of passages that seemed to preclude any substantial agreements between the faithful and infidels. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, Protestant Europe was united in denying legitimacy to any military alliance contracted with an infidel ruler, and this view was to be found at the very heart of the English government. In the negotiations between the English and the Dutch between 1613 and 1618 about collaboration in the East Indies, the English consistently opposed any involvement in the kinds of military alliances that the Dutch had constructed.