FOREIGNERS could enter India mainly through two routes–the well known land route across the northwest frontier and the sea-route. The Muslims from Ghazni and Ghur, Samarqand and Kabul invaded this country through the land-route. The Mughul Empire took cue to maintain a large standing army to buttress its Authority; but it failed to realise the importance of guarding the sea-coast by building a strong navy, which, among the Indian powers of modern times, the Marathas alone tried to do. Evidently the Mughuls did not aspire to rule the sea, across which came to India the European trading nations, who ultimately gave a new turn to the history of this land.
India had commercial relations with the countries of the West from time immemorial. But from the seventh century A.D. her sea-borne trade passed into the hands of the Arabs, who began to dominate the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. It was from them that the enterprising merchants of Venice and Genoa purchased Indian goods. The geographical discoveries of the last quarter of the fifteenth century deeply affected the commercial relations of the different countries of the world and produced far reaching consequences in their history. Bartholomew Diaz doubled the Cape of Good Hope, or the Stormy Cape, as he called it, in 1487; and Vasco da Gama found out a new route to India and reached the famous port of Calicut on the 17th May, 1498. ” Perhaps no event during the Middle Ages had such far-reaching repercussions on the civilized world as the opening of the sea-route to India.”
The Portuguese
The discoveries of Vasco da Gama, who received friendly treatment from the Hindu ruler of Calicut bearing the hereditary title of Zamorin, brought the merchants of Portugal, who had always coveted the advantages of eastern trade, into direct maritime touch with India and opened the way for their commercial relations with her. On the 9th March, 1500, Pedro Alvarez Cabral sailed out from Lisbon to India in command of a fleet of thirteen vessels. But the Portuguese, instead of confining themselves within the limits of legitimate trade, became unduly ambitious to establish their supremacy in the eastern seas by forcibly depriving the merchants of other nations of the benefits of their commerce, and molesting them. This inevitably brought them into hostilities with the ruler of Calicut, whose prosperity was largely dependent on Arab merchants. The Portuguese on their side began to take part in the political intrigues among the States of Peninsular Indian and entered into alliances with the enemies of the ruler of Calicut, the chief of whom was the ruler of Cochin.
It was Alfonso de Albuquerque who laid the real foundation of Portuguese power in India. He first came to India in 1503 as the commander of a squadron, and the record of his naval activities being satisfactory, was appointed Governor of Portuguese affairs in India in 1509. In November, 1510, he captured the rich port of Goa, then belonging to the Bijapur Sultanate, and during his rule did his best to strengthen the fortifications of the city and increase its commercial importance. With a view to securing a permanent Portuguese population, he encouraged his fellow-countrymen to marry Indian wives; but one serious drawback to his policy was his bitter persecution of the Muslims. The interests of the Portuguese were, however, faithfully served by him, and when he died in 1515 they were left as the strongest naval-power in India with domination over the west coast.
A number of important Portuguese settlements were gradually established near the sea by the successors of Albuquerque. These were Diu, Daman, Salsette, Bassein, Chaul and Bombay, San Thome near Madras and Hugli in Bengal. Their Authority also extended over the major part of Ceylon. But in course of time they lost most of these places with the exception of Diu, Daman and Goa, which they retained until 1961. We have already noted how Qasim Khan captured Hugli during the reign of Shah Jahan, and the Marathas captured Salsette and Bassein in A.D. 1739.Though the earliest “intruder into the East”, the Portuguese lost their influence in the sphere of Indian trade by the eighteenth century. Many of them took to robbery and piracy, though a few adopted more honorable careers. Several causes led to their decline. Firstly, their religious intolerance provoked the hostility of the Indian powers, which became too strong for them to overcome. Secondly, their clandestine practices in trade ultimately went against them. Thirdly, the discovery of Brazil drew the colonizing activities of Portugal to the West. Lastly, they failed to compete successfully with the other European Companies, who had come in their wake. These were jealous of the prosperity of Portugal due to her eastern trade and would not accept her policy of exclusion and extravagant claims, though these were based on priority of occupation and a Papal Bull.
In A.D. 1600 the English East India Company secured a royal charter granting them “the monopoly of commerce in eastern waters”. The United East India Company of the Netherlands was incorporated for trading in the East by a charter granted by the Dutch States General on the 20th March, 1602, which also empowered the said Company to make war, conclude treaties, acquire territories and build fortresses. It was thus “made a great instrument of war and conquest”. The Danes came in A.D. 1616. The French East India Company, sponsored by the famous French statesman Colbert and formed under State patronage in A.D. 1664, was destined to have an important career in the East. The Ostend Company, organized by the merchants of Flanders and formally chartered in A.D. 1722, had but a brief career in India. A Swedish East India Company was formed in A.D. 1731, but its trade was confined almost exclusively to China. A bitter contest among these trading companies was inevitable, as the object of their ambition was the same. Their designs of territorial expansion increased the bitterness of their commercial rivalry. There was a triangular contest during the first half of the seventeenth century–between the Portuguese and the Dutch, between the Portuguese and the English, and between the Dutch and the English. The Dutch opposition to the growth of English influence in India finally collapsed owing to the former’s defeat at the battle of Bedara (Biderra) in A.D. 1759, but the Anglo-French hostility that had begun in the meanwhile continued throughout the eighteenth century.
The Dutch
With a view to getting direct access to the spice markets in South East Asia, the Dutch undertook several voyages from 1596 and eventually formed the Dutch East India Company in 1602.
In 1605 the Dutch captured Amboyna from the Portuguese and gradually established their influence at the cost of the latter in the Spice Islands. They conquered Jacatra and established Batavia on its ruins in 1619, blockaded Goa in 1639, captured Malacca in 1641 and got possession of the last Portuguese settlement in Ceylon in 1658. The Dutch came to the islands of Sumatra, Java and the Moluccas, attracted by the lucrative trade in pepper and spices, with which those Islands abounded, so that “the Archipelago was not only the strategic and administrative centre of their system, it was also their economic centre.”
