He carried on this function for seventeen years. De Klerck had wanted to bring the use of Dutch into the educational system, but Alting revoked this in 1786, so that Malay and Portuguese were once again used. Alting's term of office was marked by a steep decline of the Dutch East India Company and its power in the Indies. Three months after he took up post, the Netherlands went to war with Great Britain (in the 1780–1784 Fourth Anglo-Dutch War) and a great part of the territory of Dutch East India Company was occupied by the British. The government in Batavia (Jakarta) did not, on the whole, offer much resistance. Following the 1784 Peace of Paris, Britain obtained the right to unhindered trade in the East Indies. The Dutch had to cede Negapatam in India to the British. The image of the Dutch in the eyes of the local rulers was thoroughly shattered. From the Netherlands, three Commissioners-General were sent to work with Alting to reorganise. On the way there, one of them died and Alting managed to get his son-in-law Johannes Siberg to take his place. The Alting-Siberg duo dominated the Commission and, from the reports of one of the other Commissioners, it seems they worked very hard in their own interests. The Commission cost a lot of money but brought no improvement. In 1795, it became known in Batavia that their homeland (in the meantime having become the Batavian Republic) was once again at war with Great Britain. On 17 February 1797, Willem Arnold Alting resigned as Governor-General and Commissioner-General and handed the post over to Pieter Gerardus van Overstraten. Alting remained as an ordinary citizen, without official position, living on his estate at Kampong Melajoe near Batavia. He died there on 7 June 1800. The Welcome Wagon  The Welcome Wagon is a Gospel/indie pop band from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. The group consists of Presbyterian minister Thomas Vito Aiuto and his wife, Monique. Their debut album, "Welcome to the Welcome Wagon" (2008) was produced by Sufjan Stevens. Vito Aiuto heads the Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, which he started in 2005, and is based at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. Both natives of Michigan, Vito studied literature at Western Michigan University before moving on to Princeton Theological Seminary, while Monique moved to New York to study art and works as a preschool teacher.