ADVENT OF THE EUROPEANS

For about eighteen years after Farrukhsiyar’s firman, the trade of the English Company on the western coast suffered from the quarrels between the Marathas and the Portuguese, and the ravages of the Maratha sea-captains, notably Kanhoji Angria, who dominated the coast between Bombay and Goa from two strongholds, Gheria (or Vijayadrug,) and Suvarndrug.  

During the government of Charles Boone from 1715 to 1722, a wall was built round Bombay and armed ships of the Company were increased in order to defend its factory and trade against hostile fleets. After these eighteen years, the Company’s trade in Bombay began to increase, its military strength was developed and Bombay had a population of about 70,000 in A.D. 1744, though the Maratha sea-captains were not finally crushed before 1757. The English concluded a treaty with the Marathas in 1739, and in alliance with the Peshwa, lALLnched attacks against the Angrias. Suvarndrug was captured by Commodore James in 1755 and in 1757 Clive and Watson captured their capital, Gheria. At Madras also the English carried on a “peaceful commerce”, being on “excellent terms” both with the Nawab of the Carnatic and his overlord, the Subahdar of the Deccan. In 1717 they took possession of five towns near Madras which Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras from 1698 to 1709, had originally obtained from the Nawab of the Carnatic in 1708, and in 1734 they also got Vepery and four other hamlets.

The French East India Company and French Settlements

Though “the desire for eastern traffic displayed itself at a very early period among the French”, they were the last of the European powers to compete for commercial gains in the East with the other European Companies. Nevertheless leading Frenchmen like Henry IV, Richelieu and Colbert realised the importance of Eastern commerce. At the instance of Colbert, the “Compagnie des Indes Orientales” was formed in A.D. 1664. Though created and financed by the State, the French Company’s first movements were “neither well considered nor fortunate”, because its energies were then frittered away in fruitless attempts to colonise Madagascar, which had already been visited by Frenchmen. But In 1667 another expedition started from France under the command of Francois Caron, who was accompanied by Marcara, a native of Ispahau. The first French factory in India was established by Francois Caron at Surat in A.D. 1668, and Marcara succeeded in establishing another French factory at Masulipatam in 1669 by obtaining a patent from the Sultan of Golkunda. In 1672 the French seized San Thome, close to Madras but in the next year their admiral, De la Haye, was defeated by a combined force of the Sultan of Golkunda and the Dutch and was forced to capitulate and surrender San Thome to the Dutch. Meanwhile, in 1673 Francois Martin and Bellanger de Lespinay, one of the volunteers who had accompanied Admiral De la Haye, obtained a little village from the Muslim governor of Valikondapuram. Thus the foundation of Pondicherry was laid in a modest manner. Francois Martin, who took charge of this settlement from A.D. 1674, developed it into an important place, through personal courage, perseverance and tact, “amid the clash of arms and the clamour of falling kingdoms”. In Bengal, Nawab Shaista Khan granted a site to the French in 1674, on which they built the famous French factory of Chandernagore in 1690-1692.

The European rivalries between the Dutch (supported by the English) and the French adversely influenced the position of the French in India. Pondicherry was captured by the Dutch in 1693 but was handed back to the French by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Martin, again placed in charge of that settlement, restored its prosperity so that it came to have a population of about 40,000 at the time of his death in 1706 as compared with the 22,000 of Calcutta in the same year. But the French lost their influence in other places, and their factories at Bantam, Surat and Masulipatam were abandoned by the beginning of the eighteenth century. The resources of the French Company were practically exhausted by this time, and till 1720 it passed through very bad days, even selling its licenses to others. Of the five governors of Pondicherry who held office from 1707 to 1720 none followed the strong and wise policy of Martin. But with the reconstitution of the Company, in June, 1720, as the “Perpetual Company of the Indies”, prosperity returned to it under the wise administration of Lenoir and Dumas between 1720 and 1742. The French occupied Mauritius in 1721, Mahe on the Malabar coast in 1725, and Karikal in 1739. The objects of the French, during this period, were, however, purely commercial. There “was nothing in the conduct of Lenoir or Dumas that allows us to credit the company with political views and still less ideas of conquest; its factories were more or less fortified, but for motives of simple security against the Dutch and the English; and although it enlisted troops, it used them only for purposes of defence”. After 1742 political motives began to overshadow the desire for commercial gain and Dupleix began to cherish the ambition of a French Empire in India, which being challenged by the English opened a new chapter in Indian history.