British India E-Book

R. W. Frazer

• Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 497

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The Pergamum Collection publishes books history has long forgotten. We transcribe books by hand that are now hard to find and out of print.

Das E-Book British India wird angeboten von Charles River Editors und wurde mit folgenden Begriffen kategorisiert:
mughal; east india company; lecturable; cambridge; free; pakistan

Leseprobe

BRITISH INDIA

THE STORY OF THE NATIONS.

PREFACE.

I HAVE considered it best not to include in foot-notes or in the body of this short” Story of Indian History references to the many authorities I have consulted. To have done so would have broken the narrative and been of no service to the reader for whom the Story is intended. As far as possible original sources of information have been relied on, while all recent works of any importance on Indian History have been read or consulted. To the numerous works of Sir W. Wilson Hunter—including the “ Rulers of India” Series he has edited—I would especially acknowledge indebtedness, and this with particular gratitude as it was his writings which first, over twenty-five years ago, inspired me with a love for India and its people.

Sir George Birdwood’s exhaustive and learned “ Report on the Old Records of the India Office,” Captain Mahan’s “ Influence of Sea-Power upon History,” Professor G. W. Forrest’s “ Selections from the -State Papers of the Foreign Department of India,” and “ The History of the Portuguese in India,” by Mr. F. C. Danvers, have all been most valuable and suggestive.

Throughout the Story attention has been centred more on the main factors which led to the foundation and expansion of British Empire in India than to mere details of military operations or of administration.

The early history of commerce between the East and the West, the gradual passing of the course of that commerce from the Mediterranean to the route round the Cape of Good Hope, the long struggle between the Dutch, French, and English for predominance which ultimately left England at the close of the seventeenth century in complete possession of the seas and absolute command over the Eastern trade, are traced for the purpose of enabling the reader to gain a clear insight into the primary factors underlying British Dominion in India. The gradual decay of the Mughal Empire and’ loosening of all controlling authority over outlying principalities are shown to have been the secondary elements which left India as a field for the statesman craft of Hastings, who extended the British influence from its secure basis in the delta of the Ganges—where it had been established by Clive—across India to Bombay in the west and down to Madras in the south.

After a careful consideration of the State Papers, edited by Professor Forrest, Sir John Strachey’s “ Hastings and the Rohilla War,” Sir James Stephen’s “ Nuncomar and Impey,” Sir Alfred Lyall’s “ Warren Hastings,” Mr. Beveridge’s “ The Trial of Maharaja Nanda Kumar,” and contemporary papers, I have  endeavoured to give an unbiassed account of the career and policy of Warren Hastings.

The further conquests and acquisitions by a long series of Governors-General, from those of the Marquess Wellesley down to the annexation of Upper Burma, in the present day, by Lord Dufferin, have been but the inevitable results of the policy inaugurated by Clive and Hastings.

The important  article, by Sir W. Wilson Hunter in the May number of the Fortnightly Review for 1896, detailing the discovery by him of evidence that as early as 1681 a movement was started by Fell, Bishop of Oxford, for the purpose of the “Conversion of the Natives” to Christianity, was unfortunately received too late for reference in the account of Education and early efforts made for the spread of Christianity in India.

The spelling of Indian words is that adopted by the Government of India in Sir W. Wilson Hunter’s Gazetteer of India :—a as in woman ; ά as in father ; i as in police; í as in intrigue; o as in cold ; u as in bull ; ύ as in sure ; e as in grey. The popular mode of spelling is used in the case of well-known places, and in extracts the mode of spelling used therein is retained.

R. W. FRAZER.

London Institution.

THE STORY OF BRITISH INDIA.

I.EARLY HISTORY OF INDIAN COMMERCE.

THE strange story of the rise and fall of once mighty nations is one to which we dare not close our eyes, firm though our belief may be in the abiding strength of the material resources of our own civilisation. The story tells how other civilisations crumbled to pieces amid all the pride and glory of their manhood; it tells how nation after nation, city after city, rose to opulence and power as each in turn became the centre of commerce between the East and the West, only to sink into insignificance and decay as if they had been struck by magic, when the course of that commerce drifted elsewhere.

On the banks of the Nile an ancient civilisation was evolved and nurtured, the secrets of which now lie half-buried amid its tombs and monuments beneath the desert sand that sweeps ceaselessly over the land. Yet in the days of Joseph “ all countries came into Egypt … for to buy corn.” Fifteen hundred years before the advent of Christ its merchants  brought indigo and muslins from India, and porcelain wares from far-off China, and the fame of its mariners was great, the memory of their going to and fro living long in fable. The great King Sesostris (Ramses II.), as narrated by the historian Diodorus the Sicilian, sent forth, even before the days of Moses, “ a navy of four hundred sail into the Red Sea . . . conquered all Asia . . . passed over the river Ganges, and likewise pierced through all India to the maim Ocean.”

Again in the rich alluvial tracts  lying between the Tigris and Euphrates the Babylonians and Assyrians once held sway, surrounded by all the pomp and splendour of wealth and luxury. Their ships- went forth to bring from India the teak wood wherewith the people of the city of Ur builded their palaces ; the gold of the East, with which they gilded their temples ; the Indian muslins, silks, pearls, and spices, of more value than fine gold. Diodorus tells us how, two thousand years before Christ, the famed Queen Semiramis carried overland a fleet of two thousand boats to the Indus, which she crossed at the head of three million foot-soldiers and two hundred thousand horsemen, and then fought the Emperor Stabrobates only to fall back defeated, wounded herself in many places.

Now the palaces and temples of Babylon and Assyria lie prone, and in our museums the fine work of her cunning men is an empty show to the passing crowd.

Tyre, the city of the Phoenicians, grew in the days of Hiram to be the mistress of the seas and the “ merchant of the people for many isles.” Westward  to Carthage, to Tarshish in Spain, round Libya, till, as we are told by Herodotus, the sun was on their right, the Phoenician ships sailed, some going East down the Red Sea to Arabia and Ophir.

When Solomon received a mandate from his father David to build the Temple to Jehovah, it was from Tyre that he summoned wise men to bring back spices and frankincense from the land of the Queen of Sheba, gold and silver, sandal-wood, ivory, apes, and peacocks from the land of Ophir, so that the Temple might be adorned and Solomon exceed “ all the kings of the earth for riches and for wisdom.” He founded “ Tadmor in the Wilderness “ as a resting-place for the caravans travelling across the desert towards Babylon, the “ city of merchants,” where were gathered together embroidered vestments and woven carpets, shawls, of many colours, gems and pearls and brazen vessels brought from the Indies, from Malabar, Ceylon, and the further East by the Arabian mariners.

Tyre resisted all the continued efforts of the Assyrians to destroy her commercial prosperity : she remained the mistress of the seas only to fall before the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, in 585 B.C., as of her it had been foretold by the Prophet Ezekiel, “they shall make spoil of thy riches and make a prey of thy merchandise, and they shall break down thy walls and destroy thy pleasant houses, and they shall lay thy stones and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water.”

When in 558 B.C. the Babylonian Empire fell to Cyrus, the wealth from the East no longer passed to  Phoenicia and Syria through Tadmor, but stayed with the Persians. Under Darius Hystaspes the Persian Empire advanced its conquests as far as the Punjáb, whence it drew a yearly tribute of three hundred talents of gold, employing in its armies the Indian soldiers, who, clothed in white cotton and armed with bows and arrows, marched with Xerxes towards Greece and fought under Mardonius at Plataea.

It was not until the time of Alexander the Great that the trade from India once more resumed its ancient route down the Persian Gulf, along the Tigris through Palmyra, the Tadmor of old, to enrich the cities of the Mediterranean.

Alexander  the Great, born in 356 B.C., succeeded his father, Philip of Macedón, at the age of twenty. Having first curbed the northern barbarians who, under Attalos, came swarming down on his kingdom from the Danube, he razed Tyre to the ground, reduced Syria and Egypt to submission, and founded the city of Alexandria. He then passed on towards the East, where he broke in pieces the empire of Cyrus, swept up the wealth of Babylon and Susa and slew Darius, thus avenging the insults that Xerxes and Mardonius had offered to the altars and temples of Greece, leaving nought to tell of the wealth and power of the Persian nation save the burned ruins of Persepolis and the rifled tomb of Cyrus. Marching into Bactria, he founded another Alexandria, now known to us as Herát, there pausing for three years before he set out, in 327 B.C., for his invasion of India.

Crossing the river Indus, near Attock, on a bridge of boats, he defeated Porus, the Indian ruler of the   Punjáb, in a pitched battle near the well-known modern battlefield of Chilianwála, where, in memory of his victory, he established a city which he called Bucephala, after his charger Bucephalus, slain during the conflict.

Many are the stories told of the marvels seen by Alexander and his soldiers in their marches through the sacred land of the Five Rivers. With awe-stricken wonder they had seen elephants seize armed soldiers in battle and hand them to their drivers for slaughter; they had seen in the dense forests serpents, glittering like gold, whose sting was death, and pythons of huge girth capable of swallowing a deer; they had heard of ants, the colour of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves, that dug up the gold hid in the sands of the deserts of Afghánistán, and mangled the Indians who came on camels to carry off the precious metal; they had seen fierce dogs seize lions and allow their limbs to be cut off one by one before they relinquished their hold ; they had razed the cities of the Kathians, of whom it was told that their custom was to burn widows along with their deceased husbands ; they had listened when Alexander was rebuked by the Indian sages, who told him that of all his conquests nothing would remain to him but just as much earth as would suffice to make a grave to cover his bones, and they had seen with astonishment the ascetic sage Kalános, wearied of life, give his begging bowl and rug to the Conqueror of the World and ascend the funeral pyre without emotion, moving not as the flames slowly carried his soul to rest.  Ere they left India one more wonder, stranger   to their eyes than all others, awaited them. As they sailed down the Indus for the ocean, the tide, a phenomenon as yet unknown to them, came rolling up the river, tossing on its mighty bore their frail ships, while, in the words of the historian Arrian, “ to add to their terror, monstrous creatures of frightful aspect, which the sea had left, were seen wandering about.” The rising tide rescuing them from their position, Alexander’s invading army gladly turned its back on India, leaving behind more or less permanent colonies of Macedonians and allies in Bactria, Taxila, the Punjáb, and Sind.

From the writings of the scientific men and historians who accompanied the Macedonians on their raid into India, the Western world obtained the first reliable accounts respecting the social and religious life of the people of India at this early period.

After the death of Alexander, India (as far as conquered) and Bactria fell to Seleukos Nikator, who made an alliance with the renowned Indian monarch Chandragupta, to whom he gave his daughter in marriage, sending Megasthenes to reside as ambassador at the capital Palibothra, said to have been a mighty city, ten miles long by two miles broad, strongly defended, entered by sixty gates, its entire army numbering 400,000 men with 20,000 cavalry.

For many centuries the interchange of ideas between the East and West continued, the wide-spreading influence of which is even at present but little realised and but seldom acknowledged.

Asoka, the Constantine of Buddhism, grandson of  Chandragupta, ascended the throne about 260 B.C., and from the inscriptions which he caused to be graven on rocks we learn that the intercommunication between the East and the West was close enough at this period to enable him to send forth missionaries to Antiochus of Syria, to Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt, to Antigonus of Macedón, to Megas of Cyrene, and to Alexander of Epirus, to proclaim in their lands the gospel of self-control and respect for all life as taught by Buddha.

Pliny, who died 79 A.D., lamented the drain of gold from Rome to India, which in his days amounted to the sum of  2,000,000 sterling, sent annually in exchange for silks, pearls, sapphires, gems, cinnamon, spices, and other Eastern luxuries, for which fabulous sums were paid, and Roman coins of all the emperors, from Augustus to Hadrian, are still dug up in numbers all over South India.

It is now almost certain that from the West, probably through Palmyra, India first learned to construct architectural buildings and to carve in stone, having, previous to the invasion of Alexander the Great, worked out her own artistic ideals, as far as we know, in wood.

There still remains unexplained the strange resemblance in form between the Indian and Classical drama, and the close connection between early Indian and Greek philosophy.

The Indian astronomer Garga, who wrote in the first century B.C., said that the Greeks were very barbarians, yet he hesitated not to confess that their astronomy was worthy of study.  Later astronomers,  such as Aryabhatta and Varáha Mitra, not only adopted the Greek zodiac and its divisions, but made use of the Greek names slightly  orientalised.

There were many routes by which this intercommunication of ideas, religious, artistic, and social, could have taken place. There was the well-known route by the Persian Gulf through Palmyra, a city which became so renowned that Aurelian, jealous of its wealth and power, razed it to the ground in 273 A.D., and carried off its Queen Zenobia. Arab mariners also sailed from India and the further East, keeping close to the coast till they reached Berenice in the Red Sea, whence the goods were transported to Coptos, thence down the Nile to Alexandria. Under such emperors as the cruel and dissipated Commodus, the plundering barbarian Caracalla, and the infamous Eleogabalus, the wealth that came from the East through Alexandria to the imperial city of Rome passed away to Constantinople, founded in 320 A.D., and to the rising cities along the Mediterranean.

So the trade between the East and the West grew and flourished till suddenly a new power arose, claiming for itself the temporal and spiritual supremacy over the whole known world.

From the deserts of Arabia came forth the haughty message to Christendom, that Muhammad had proclaimed himself as the only Prophet of the One True God. To all idolaters he gave the choice between accepting his mission and teachings, and of being put to the sword ; while all Christians and Jews were to be subdued and made to pay tribute  to his followers, who now came swarming from their tents, drunk with a new religious fanaticism, eager to seek fresh homes in the stately palaces of the lands they were soon to overrun.

To the successors of Augustus and Artaxerxes summonses were sent, calling on them to bow down and acknowledge the Divine mission of the new Prophet.  The Roman Empire—with its capital at   Constantinople—then extended over all the lands on the borders of the Mediterranean Sea, its commands being obeyed from the Atlantic to the Euphrates, while in Persia the ancient dynasty of Cyrus and Darius had been reinstated when Artaxerxes, in the third century, was proclaimed king, and the religion of Zoroaster, the belief in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the contending powers of light and darkness, once more restored.

In answer to the summons of the Prophet, the Roman emperor, Heraclius, fearing danger from Arabia, sent back presents ; the proud Persian monarch tore the letters he received in pieces and scattered it to the winds, hearing which Muhammad swore that so he would scatter the Persian power.

Within the space of eight years Bostra, Damascus, Heliopolis, Jerusalem, Aleppo and Antioch fell before the Crescent, and Syria passed for the next three hundred years under the sway of the followers of Muhammad, Persia falling in 636 A.D., after the battle of Kadesia. In 640 Amru marched into Egypt and took possession of Alexandria, leaving the Arabian conquerors in command of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the two great trade routes from the East.

One route alone remained by which Eastern produce could reach the cities of the Mediterranean free from the prohibitory dues exacted by the Muhammadan conquerors : that by the Indus along the ancient route by the banks of the Oxus, across to the Caspian, thence to the Black Sea, Constantinople, and the Mediterranean. To gain possession of this   route, and to avoid the duties enforced at Alexandria, amounting to one-third the value of all produce exported, Venice, founded in 452 A.D., on the islets of the Adriatic by fugitives from North Italy, strove incessantly, knowing well that alone by a command of the Eastern trade could she rise to be mistress of the seas. To the pilgrims of the Fourth Crusade she agreed to give shipping if they would but for a time forget their holy mission and aid in reducing her rival Constantinople. The compact was made. In 1204 Constantinople fell, the rich homes of its peaceful citizens being given over to rapine and flames, its art treasures, the finest and most prized that the world has ever known, being broken in pieces and trampled underfoot by the marauding crusaders and hired mercenaries of the merchants of Venice. Count Baldwin of Flanders was enthroned Emperor of the East, the Venetians holding the forts to gain command over the Eastern trade. Of these advantages on the Black Sea Venice was, however, soon deprived by Genoa, Pisa, and Florence—cities now eager to enter into the competition for the monopoly of the gems, spices, and silks of India sent to the further West in exchange for Easterling or sterling silver. Pisa gave up the struggle after her defeat at Meloria in 1284, and in 1406 fell subject to Florence, which, under the Medici, had become the city of bankers for all nations. Genoa fought on down to the fifteenth century when Venice again became supreme, selling the valued products of India to the Flemish merchants who sailed with them to Sluys, then the seaport town  of Bruges, to  Bergen   in Norway,  Novgorod in Russia, to the many associated towns of the Hanseatic League, and also to their steelyard or warehouse on the Thames.

In these Western cities it was known that the costly goods they so prized came from the East, but the way there was unknown. In Portugal Prince Henry the Navigator spent his life in endeavouring to discover how his ships might reach the Indies by sailing round Africa. In i486 Bartholomew Diaz went south with three ships, and discovered what he called “The Cape of Tempests,” renamed in joy “ The Cape of Good Hope “ by King John II.

In 1492 Columbus, a Genoese, after offering his services in vain to Genoa, Portugal, and England, sailed away to the West, hoping thus to reach India, and discovered America.

When Emmanuel succeeded John II. as King of Portugal, he resolved to send a gentleman of his household, Vasco da Gama, to find out if land lay beyond the wild southern seas.

On the 8th of July, 1497, Vasco da Gama sailed from the Tagus with three small ships, the Sam Gabriel the Sam Rafael, and the Sam Miguel each of some 100 to 120 tons burden, having crews amounting in all to 170 men.

By the time Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope the pilots and sailors were so wearied from the incessant labour of working the pumps to keep the frail ships afloat, and so terrified by the heavy seas, that they mutinied and demanded that their leader should turn back and no further seek to brave the unknown perils of a trackless ocean.

Vasco da Gama at once placed the pilots in irons, threw all the charts and instruments of navigation overboard, declaring that God would guide him, and other aid he required not; if that aid failed, neither he nor any of the crews would ever again see Portugal. So the ships had to toil on, many of the sailors dying of scurvy, a disease now heard of for the first time in history. Their labours were at length rewarded. Eleven months after they had left home they sighted the west coast of India, and cast anchor near the city of the Zamorin, or Ruler of the Seas, whence many people came crowding to the beach, wondering greatly at the Portuguese ships.

The Zamorin and his Indian subjects were willing to open up a friendly intercourse with Vasco da Gama and his sailors, but the Arab mariners, or Moors, as they were called, who for many centuries had held in their own hands the trade between the west coast of India and the Persian Gulf, or Red Sea, were unwilling to see any rivals in their lucrative business. Having succeeded in inducing Vasco da Gama to come on shore,  they  carried him off on various pretexts through the malarious lagoons bordering the coast, hoping that he might resent their treatment and so give them some excuse to slay him and drive away his ships. By quiet patience he eluded all the plots laid against him, until his ships were laden with such scanty stores of pepper, cinnamon, and spices as his captains were able to purchase. Vasco da Gama at length obtained his release, and departed from Calicut, vowing to come  back and wage a war of extermination against the Moors—a vow which he and his successors ever afterwards barbarously and ruthlessly endeavoured to fulfill. From Calicut he sailed back towards Cannanore, where we hear, as recorded by Gaspar Correa  in his account of Vasco da Gama’s voyages, of one of the many strange prophecies told in the East. It is there recorded, “ In this country of India they are much addicted to soothsayers and diviners. . . . According to what was known later, there had been in this country of Cannanore a diviner so diabolical in whom they believed so much that they wrote down all that he said, and preserved it like prophecies that would come to pass. They held a legend from him in which it was said that the whole of India would be taken and ruled over by a very distant king, who had white people, who would do great harm to those who were not their friends ; and this was to happen a long time later, and he left signs of when it would be. In consequence of the great disturbance caused by the sight of these ships, the King was very desirous of knowing what they were ; and he spoke to his diviners, asking them to tell him what ships were those and whence they came. The diviners conversed with their devils, and told him that the ships belonged to a great king, and came from very far, and according to what they found written, these were the people who were to seize India by war and peace, as they had already told him many times,  because the period which had been written down was concluded.”

The king and his counsellors were so assured of the truth of this prophecy, that they received the Portuguese with great honour and friendship, pressing on them more presents and goods than could be stored away in the ships, which were soon able to sail away with ample cargoes of pepper, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, and nutmegs.

Such was the commencement of the modern history of commerce between the East and the West. Vasco da Gama reached Portugal in 1499 to the great delight of the  king, who immediately assumed the title of “ Lord of the Conquest, Navigation, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and. China,” a title confirmed in 1502 by a Bull from Pope Alexander VI.

The profits of the voyage being found to be sixty times the expenses incurred, King Emmanuel determined to send to the East “ another large fleet of great and strong ships which could stow much cargo, and which, if they returned in safety, would bring him untold riches.”

Vasco da Gama never forgave the Moors for their ‘ treatment of him on his first arrival at Calicut. When he visited the coast again, in 1502, he captured two ships and sixteen small vessels, and having cut off the hands and ears and noses of eight hundred unfortunate Moors, who formed the crews, he broke their teeth with staves, placed them all in a small ship which he set on fire and allowed to drift ashore, so that the Zamorin might judge of the fierce wrath  of the Portuguese sailors. No wonder the Portuguese historian writes, as recorded in the Introduction to the Hakluyt Society’s account by Correa, “ The conquest of India is repugnant to us, and strikes us with horror, on account of the injustice and barbarity of the conquerors, their frauds, extortions and sanguinary hatreds ; whole cities ravaged and given to the flames ; amid the glare of conflagrations and the horrid lightning of artillery, soldiers converted into executioners after victory.”

The native princes were determined not to surrender without one final struggle. Against Cochin, where Duarte Pacheco, a Portuguese captain, had been left in command of a little over one hundred Portuguese soldiers and three hundred Malabar native troops, the Zamorin of Calicut advanced at the head of an immense army of fifty thousand troops and numerous cannon, aided by a sea-force of some three hundred ships.

For five months he strove to drive the handful of Portuguese from India. Time after time his troops were defeated, ten thousand of them being slain, and all his ships sunk save four. He at length retreated, finding that his undisciplined native troops could not avail against European soldiers, and Duarte Pacheco was left victorious, the first to show to the West the possibility of founding an empire in India, and the first of the long line of heroes whose services to their country were repaid by neglect or insult, poverty or death.

Before the trade from the East finally passed to the Atlantic the Portuguese had to fight one more fight. The Sultan of Egypt, seeing that the course of commerce, through his dominions to the Mediterranean ports, was passing to the new route round the Cape of Good Hope, resolved to gather together a great fleet and send it to India to destroy the Portuguese ships now trading at Cochin, Cannanore, and Quilon. Dom Lourenço de Almeida, aged eighteen, son of Dom Francisco de Almeida, the first great Portuguese Viceroy of India, met the Egyptian and an allied native fleet off Chaul, where, after two days’ fighting, the Portuguese were defeated and forced to retreat.

Dom Lourenço ‘s ship was surrounded, and he himself wounded. Disdaining to yield, he fell fighting amid a brave band of heroes, as told in Mickle’s well-known translation of Camoens :—

‘Bound to the mast the god-like hero stands,

Waves his proud sword and cheers his woeful bands ;

Though winds and seas their wonted aid deny,

To yield he knows not, but he knows to die.”

With fierce wrath the Viceroy hastened to avenge the death of his son. He ravaged and burned the hostile city of Dábhol, scattered the Egyptian and allied native fleet of two hundred ships, plundering and burning them all with the exception of four, and slaying three thousand of the Moors, thus establishing the supremacy of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas. The same sad fate, allotted to so many who strove to knit together the East and the West, followed the footsteps of the first great Viceroy of India. Deprived, by orders from home, of his command, he  departed from India in proud anger to meet with an ignominious death in a petty fray with some Kaffir savages at Saldanha Bay in Africa—perhaps a happy release from the slow, cankering life of neglect and contumely meted out to Pacheco, La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, Lally, Clive, Hastings, and many others who lived to be judged by their fellow-countrymen, whose fight they had fought and won.

For a century the Portuguese held the “ Gorgeous East in fee,” trading unmolested from the Cape of Good Hope to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, to the Spice Islands and China, their possessions along the Atlantic, in Africa and Brazil, filling up the full measure of a mighty empire destined to fall to pieces and sink to decay when the trade from the East passed from its hands.

Francisco de Almeida, the first Viceroy, saw clearly that Portugal could never establish a great colonising empire in India, that territorial possessions would prove too heavy a drain on her population and resources. His constant admonition to King Emmanuel was that the trade with India would ultimately fall to the nation whose forces ruled the seas.

His successors, brave and wise men as many of them were, saw but the immediate present; they possessed not the divine gift, granted but to few of India’s early administrators, such as Almeida, Dupleix, Clive, and Hastings, of viewing all events that passed before them as mere phases in the world’s history, directed and moulded by the irresistible principles which govern the destiny of nations, and  not as springing from the irresponsible actions of men or chance decision of battles.

Alfonso de Albuquerque, the next Viceroy, deemed that by the prowess and valour of his European soldiers he could establish a lasting empire for his people in the East. In 1510 he captured Goa, which soon grew to be the wealthiest and most powerful city in the East; he reduced Ormuz, thus closing the Persian Gulf to the Arab traders ; he built a fortress at Socotra to command the Red Sea, and left the coast from the Cape of Good Hope to China in the hands of his successors.

Portugal held the commerce of the East, sending its goods north to Bruges, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, until she became united with Spain in 1580, when the Dutch, who, under William of Orange, had in 1572 shaken off the Spanish yoke, could no longer trade with Lisbon. It was then that the Dutch, determining not to be deprived of their share in the Eastern trade, sent their navigators to the north-east, hoping to discover some new route to India and learn something of its commerce.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 left the seas free for the Dutch and English to sail south round the Cape of Good Hope and take part in the commerce of the Eastern world, independent of Portugal.

In 1595 one Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a West Friesland burgher, who had travelled to India with the Archbishop of Goa, returned home after thirteen years’ residence in the East and published a celebrated book, in which he gave a full account of the route to India as well as of the commerce carried on there by the Portuguese. In 1595 the Dutch despatched four ships under Cornelius Houtman to sail round the Cape of Good Hope; in 1602 trading factories were set up in Ceylon and along the west coast of India, and in the farther East from Batavia in Java to Japan and China.

By this time news had also reached England of the wealth of India. Thomas Stevens, the first Englishman who ever visited India, had sailed from Lisbon to Goa in 1579 and had become Rector of the Jesuit College at Salsette. From there, in a series of letters written to his father, he aroused the interest of the English people in the East by the vivid account he gave of the trade of the Portuguese and the fertility of the land.

In 1583 three English merchants, Ralph Fitch, James Newberry, and William Leedes, started overland for India. They were made prisoners by the Portuguese at Ormuz, to the despair of Newberry, who wrote : “ It may be that they will cut our throtes or keepe us long in prison, God’s will be done.” They were, however, spared, and sent on to Goa where they saw Thomas Stevens and the celebrated Jan van Linschoten. Escaping, after many adventures, from Goa, they travelled, through a great part of India, giving in letters home an interesting account of the country and the customs of the people, all strange and wonderful to these first English travellers. From Bijapur, Fitch writes that there “they bee great idolaters, and they have their idols standing in the woods which they call Pagodes. Some bee like a Cowe, some like a Monkie, some like Buffles, some like peacockes, and some like the devill.” Golconda is described as “a very faire towne, pleasant, with faire houses of bricke and timber.” Fitch then made his way to Masulipatam, on the east coast, “ whether come many shippes out of India, Pegu and Sumatra very richly laden with pepper, spices and other commodities.” Agra is described as “ a very great citie and populous, built with stone, having faire and large streetes.” “ Fatepore Sikri and Agra are two very great cities, either of them much greater than London and very Populous. Between Agra and Fatepore are twelve miles and all the way is a market of victualls and other things as full as though a man were still in a towne.” “ Hither,” we are further told, “ is a great resort of merchants from Persia and out of India, and very much merchandise of silke and clothe and of precious stones, both Rubies, Diamants and Pearles.”

John Newberry departed from Agra for home, journeying through Persia; William Leedes took service as jeweller with the Emperor Akbar, and Ralph Fitch continued his travels, proceeding towards Bengal, noting the power and influence of the Brahman priests, who, he says, are “a kind of craftie people worse than the Jewes.” The myriad temples, the bathing ghats, and sacred wells of Benares call forth his wonder, but one custom struck him with more surprise than all other things he had heard of or seen in the course of his travels—the custom of widow-burning.” Wives here,” he writes, “doe burne with  their husbands when they die, if they will not, their heads be shaven, and never any account is made of them afterward.” Travelling from Benares towards Patna he found that the road was infested with bands of robbers ; nevertheless he managed to reach Bhután in safety, returning to “ Hugeli, which is the place where the Portugals keepe in the country of Bengala,” and thence sailing for home he arrived at Ceylon, where the king was very powerful, “his guard are a thousand men, and often he commeth to Columbo, which is the place where the Portugals have their fort, with an hundred thousand men and many elephants.” But they be naked people all of them, yet many of them be good with their pieces which be muskets.”

Fitch reached home in 1591, after an absence of eight years from his native country, where, in the meantime, more certain and accurate knowledge of the route to India and the Portuguese commerce had been gained.

In the year 1587 a large Portuguese ship named the San Filippe had been captured by Sir Francis Drake off the Azores on its way from Goa to Lisbon, and amid great rejoicing towed into Plymouth, where its papers were examined and its cargo of Eastern produce found to be of ;£ 108,049 value.

A few years later another great ship, the largest in the Portuguese navy, the Madre di Dios, was also captured off the Azores on its way home from India, brought into Dartmouth, and her cargo of jewels, spices, nutmegs, silks, and cottons sold for £150,000; the papers found in her giving a full account of the  trade and settlements of the Portuguese in the Eastern seas.

In 1591 three ships, the Penelope, the Merchant Royal, and the Edward Bonadventure, sailed under command of George Raymond and James Lancaster, on the first voyage to India from England. By the time they reached the Cape of Good Hope scurvy had so weakened the sailors, and the tempestuous seas and storms so damaged the ships, that the Merchant Royal had to be sent home with fifty of the crews. Six days after, on “ the 14th of September, we were encountered,” witnesses James Lancaster in his account as recorded by Hakluyt, “ with a mighty storme and extreeme gusts of winde, wherein we lost our general’s companie, and could never heare of him nor his ship anymore.” So Lancaster had to sail on, the Bonadventure alone being left out of the three ships to encounter more sore perils and trials, for “ foure dayes after this uncomfortable separation in the morning toward ten of the clocke we had a terrible clap of thunder, which slew foure of our men outright, their necks being wrung in sonder without speaking any word, and of 94 men there was not one untouched, whereof some were stricken blind, others were bruised in the legs and armes and others in their brests, others were drawen out at length as though they had been racked. But (God be thanked) they all recovered saving only the foure which were slaine out right.”

Lancaster reached India, cruised about for some time in the Eastern seas, pillaging such Portuguese vessels as he captured, and then sailed for home, passed  the Cape, reached the West Indies and the Bermudas, where he and nearly all his remaining sailors landed on a desert island, “but in the night time, about twelve of the clocke, our ship did drive away with five men and a boy onely in it; our carpenter secretly cut their own cable, leaving nineteen of us on land without boate or anything, to our great discomfort.”

From this position Lancaster and the few survivors of the ill-fated expedition were rescued by a French ship, and arrived at Dieppe on the 24th of May, 1594, having “spent in this voyage three yeeres, five weekes and two dayes, which the Portugals performe in halfe the time.”

In 1596 a second effort was made to reach India, Captain Benjamin Wood sailing in charge of the Bear, the Bears Whelp, and Benjamin, but neither he nor his ships were ever heard of again.

Renewed and more vigorous efforts were now necessary, for the Dutch, were gradually monopolising the trade with the East. In 1599, they raised the price of pepper in the English market from 3s. to 8s. per pound, and the Lord Mayor of London immediately called together a meeting of the principal City merchants to consider what course should be pursued. On the 22nd of September, Sir Stephen Soame, the Lord Mayor, sundry aldermen, and others of less dignity, such as grocers, drapers, vintners, leather-sellers, skinners, and haberdashers, met together at Founders’ Hall, Lothbury, and there agreed—"with their owne handes to venter in the pretended voiage to the Easte Indies, the which it may please the Lord to prosper.”

II.RISE OF THE HONOURABLE EAST INDIA COMPANY

One year after the merchants of London had first assembled together they received the announcement that it was Her Majesty’s pleasure “ that they should   proceed in their purpose,” the Lords of the Council  shortly after admonishing them “that you should therein use all expedíción and possible speede to advance the same, knowing that otherwyse you may much prejudice yourselves by your staggeringe and delates.”

Four ships, the Malice Scourge, of 600 tons, the Hector, of 300 tons, the Ascension, of 260, the Susan, of 240, and a small pinnace were accordingly purchased and made ready for sailing when a difficulty arose. The Lord Treasurer strove to place Sir Edward Michelborne, a Court favourite, in charge of the expedition—a proposal which the City merchants objected to, giving as their reason that “ they purpose not to employ anie gent in any place of charge or comaundent in the said voiage,” their intention being “to sort their business with men of their own quality.” The Malice Scourge, rechristened the Red Dragon, was placed in charge of James Lancaster, with a crew of 202 men, Captain John Davis, the famous North-West navigator, being pilot ; John Middleton was made commander of the Hector, with 108 men ; William Brand commander of the Ascension, with 82 men ; and John Heywood commander of the Susan, with 88 men ; the Guest, a small vessel of 130 tons, being purchased to accompany the fleet as a victualler.

On the 31st of December, 1600, the merchants received “ The Charter of Incorporation of the East India Company by the name of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies,” with power to export  £30,000 in bullion out of the country, the same to be returned at the  end of the voyage, the Charter being granted for a term of fifteen years.

On the 2nd of April, 1601, the four ships started on their memorable voyage, having on board the sum of £28,742 in bullion, and £6,860 worth of British staples, such as cutlery, glass, and hides, wherewith they hoped to open up a trade in the Eastern seas. This laudable enterprise they commenced, after the fashion of the times, by capturing, on the 21st of June, a Portuguese ship bound from Lisbon to the East Indies, and taking from her 146 butts of wine, much oil and other goods, “ which was a great helpe to us in the whole voyage after.” By the time the ships reached Saldanha Bay, now known as Table Bay, the crews of three of the ships were so weakened by scurvy, from which disease 105  in all died, that they had not strength left even to let go their anchors, the crew of the Dragon alone escaping, as they abstained as much as possible from eating salt meat and drank freely of lemon juice. James Lancaster went ashore to “ seeke some refreshing for our sicke and weake men, where hee met with certaine of the Countrey people and gave them divers trifles, as knives and pieces of old iron and such like, and made signes to them to bring him downe Sheepe and Oxen. For he spake to them in the cattels Language, which was never changed at the Confusion of Babell, which was Moath for oxen and kine, and Baa for Sheepe, which language the people understood very well without any interpreter.”

Recovering their health and strength they sailed   and on the 5th of June anchored off Achin. Here a treaty of peace was drawn up between James Lancaster and the King, who took more interest in cock-fighting than in listening to the letters from Queen Elizabeth to “ her loving brother, the great and mightie King of Achem.” Seeing that he could obtain but small store of goods or pepper, on account of failure in the previous year’s harvests,” the generáli daily grew full of thought how to lade his shippes to save his owne credit, the merchants’ estimation that set him aworke, and the reputation of his countrey : considering what a foule blot it would be to them all in regard to the nations about us, seeing there were enough merchandise to be bought in the Indies, yet he should be likely to return home with empty ships.” Sailing away to the Straits of Malacca a Portuguese ship of 1,900 tons was sighted, on the 3rd of October, and, as told in the journals of the voyage, transcribed in “ Purchas his Pilgrimes,” published in 1625, “within five or six daies we had unladen her of 950 packes of Calicoes and Pintados, besides many packets of merchandise : she had in her much rice and other goods whereof we made small account.” In the simple narrative we are further told that “ the Generáli was very glad of this good hap, and very thankful to God for it, and as he told me he was much bound to God that had eased him of a very heavy care, and that he could not be thankful enough to Him for this blessing given him. For, saith he, He hath not onely supplied my necessities, to lade these ships I have; but hath given me as much as will lade as many more shippes as I have, if I had them to lade.’

Delighted at their good fortune they sailed on to Bantam, in Java, where “ wee traded here very peaceably, although the Javians be reckoned among the greatest Pickers and Thieves in the world.”

The ships returned to England in the summer of 1603, the Court Minutes of the Company stating that on the 16th of June of that year the Ascension appeared in the river with a cargo of 210,000 lbs. of pepper, 1,100 lbs. of cloves, 6,030 lbs. of cinnamon, and 4,080 lbs. of gum lacquer. The Lord High Admiral demanded one-tenth of the value of the prizes taken at sea, and a further sum of £917 had to be paid for Customs dues ; nevertheless, the voyage was successful enough to encourage the East India Company to subscribe together a sum of £60,450 for a second expedition which sailed in 1604 in charge of Henry Middleton.

Reaching Bantam, two of the four ships which formed the fleet were laden with pepper and the other two sailed on to Amboyna. The Portuguese and Dutch were here found to be engaged in a fierce war. Each was determined to gain the monopoly of the trade in the Moluccas, but both were equally determined to combine against a new competitor. Middleton, finding himself unable either to open up factories, or enter into friendly negotiations with the natives, was obliged to depart with his ships unladen. Although one of the ships was lost at sea, the Company, on casting up their accounts, found they had made a profit of 95 per cent, on the entire capital subscribed for their two first ventures.

This lucrative source of wealth soon brought forth  competitors eager to share in its profits. In 1604 James I., in direct contravention of the Company’s exclusive right of trading with the East, gave permission to Sir Edward Michelborne, whom the London merchants had refused to place in charge of their first expedition, to sail on a voyage of discovery to China, Japan, Corea, and Cathay. Starting with the Tiger, a ship of 240 tons, and a small pinnace, the Tiger’s Whelp, Sir Edward Michelborne sailed east, where he captured and pillaged some Chinese Vessels. The voyage is memorable for the fact that the simple-souled John Davis, the North-West navigator, who accompanied the expedition, was treacherously slain by some Japanese pirates whom he allowed to come on board his ship under the belief that they were peaceable traders bringing some useful information.

Notwithstanding the interference of these private traders or “interlopers” the Company continued to send their ships to the East. In 1606 three ships went to Bantam for pepper and to Amboyna for cloves; the latter sold in England for £36,287, the original cost being £2,947 15s.  The two ships sent out on the fourth voyage in 1607 were lost, nevertheless the Company made on its third and fifth voyages a net profit of 234 per cent.

By degrees trade was opened up at Surat and Cambay, where cloths and calicoes were purchased and carried to Bantam and the Moluccas to be exchanged for the more valued spices and pepper. The Charter, as renewed by James I. in 1609, granted the Company not only the exclusive right in perpetuity   of trading to the East Indies but also the right of holding and alienating land—concessions which inspired so much confidence that the subscriptions for the sixth voyage reached the sum of £82,000. The sixth voyage is memorable for the fact that the largest merchant ship then in England, the Trades Increase, of 1,100 tons, was sent out to the East.

The Portuguese made strenuous efforts to prevent the adventurers trading at Surat, whereon the English commander, Sir Henry Middleton, captured one of their ships laden with Indian goods, so that the profits of the voyage amounted to £121 13s. 4d. per cent. The Trades Increase, however, struck on a rock and subsequently capsized—a calamity which so affected Sir Henry Middleton that he died of grief.

The power and trade of the Portuguese had rapidly waned from 1580, when they were- united with Spain under Philip II.; but in the East they still strove to hold their once opulent settlements. In 1612 four Portuguese galleons and twenty-five frigates attacked the English fleet under Captain Best at Swally, off Surat, and were driven off with heavy loss. In 1615 they made one final effort to drive from the vicinity of Goa and Surat the English, whom they describe in a letter to the King as “thieves, disturbers of States, and a people not to be permitted in a commonwealth.” Eight galleons, three lesser ships,  and sixty frigates came up with the New Year’s Gift, the Hector, the Merchant’s Hope, and the Solomon, off Swally, the natives anxiously looking on to see the contest between the two great European powers. Three of the Portuguese ships drew alongside  the Merchant’s Hope, which was boarded, but after an obstinate fight they were driven off with a loss of some five hundred men, the three ships set on fire and allowed to drift ashore, the rest of the fleet retreating during the night after a severe cannonade.

For many reasons it was impossible that Portugal could ever have established a permanent empire in India. The union with Spain, the smallness of her population, the deterioration of her soldiers from habits of pampered luxury and intermarriage with native women, added to their heavy losses in war, are facts lying on the surface. Recent researches have brought to light graver reasons why the native powers themselves were nothing loth to be relieved from the contamination of a so-called civilisation introduced by foreigners who had lived amongst them and grown wealthy for a period of over one hundred years. The Portuguese historians tell how the tomb of the great Portuguese Viceroy, Don Francisco de Almeida, was, for many years after his death, visited both by Muhammadans and Hindus, who prayed that he might rise up and defend them from the barbarities, cruelties, and greed of his successors. From 1560 the tortures and the burnings at the stake of supposed witches, sorcerers, and Christians suspected of heresy, native and European alike, not only made every person within its jurisdiction fearful for his honour, life, and liberty, but also sent a shudder of horror through Europe when the full tale of its iniquities was made known. The whole history is summed up by the Portuguese editor of Correa’s history : “Perfidy presiding over almost all compacts and negotiations . . .   conversions to Christianity serving as a transparent veil to covetousness: these are the fearful pictures from which we would desire to turn away our eyes. . . . It was, therefore, to this moral leprosy, to these internal cankers, that Gaspar Correa chiefly alluded, and to which Diogo do Conto attributed the loss of India, saying that it had been won with much truth, fidelity, valour, and perseverance, and that it was lost through the absence of those virtues.”

From their settlements and fortresses in the Eastern seas the Portuguese were rapidly driven out by the English and Dutch. In 1622 Ormuz, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, was captured by the English fleet, assisted by a Persian army under Sháh Abbas, the Portuguese population of over two thousand souls being transported to Muscat. The prize-money due to the Company from this conquest was estimated at £100,000 and 240,000 rials of eight, of which James I. claimed £10,000, his share as King, and the Duke of Buckingham £10,000, his share as Lord High Admiral, the Company not being permitted to send any ships from England until they consented to pay these amounts.

A few years later, in 1629, the Emperor Sháh Jahán captured the Portuguese settlement at Húglí, carried off some four thousand men, women, and children, slew over one thousand of the garrison, and took three hundred ships of the fleet. From all sides disaster soon followed. Goa was blockaded by the Dutch, who gradually gained entire control over the   trade in ..the Spice Islands, Java, Ceylon, and on the mainland, leaving Portugal by the middle of the seventeenth century stripped of her wealth and deprived of her commerce.

As the trade in the East gradually fell from the hands of the effete and degenerate descendants of the early Portuguese adventurers the struggle commenced between the Dutch and English, each eager to seize this source of wealth, the true value of which was yearly becoming more apparent. In the nine voyages made by the Company up to 1612, the average profit on each share held by the London merchants had been 171 per cent. From 1613 to 1616 four voyages were made, the subscriptions being united as an investment for the joint benefit of all the proprietors. Owing to the opposition shown by the Dutch to the English trade in the Spice Islands the profits made on each of these four voyages fell to £89 10s. per share of £100. In spite of this the subscriptions increased to £1,600,000, subsequently expended in three voyages on a second joint stock account.

In 1621 the subject of the Eastern trade excited so much controversy in England that Thomas Nun issued his celebrated tract as a counterblast to the growing contention that “ it were a happier thing for Christendom (say many men) that the navigation of the East Indies, by way of the Cape of Good Hope, had never been found out.” He pleaded that, as a result of the discovery of the route to India by the Cape, “ the Kingdom is purged of desperate and unruly people who, kept in awe by the good discipline at sea, doe often change their former course of life  and so advance their fortunes.” He then asserts that the new trade with the East “is a means to bring more treasure into the Realme than all the other trades of the Kingdome (as they are now managed) being put together.”

Respecting the ships which had been employed in the Eastern seas he gave the following succinct information : “ Since the beginning of’ the trade until the month of July last, anno 1620, there have been sent thither 79 ships in several voyages, whereof 34 are alreadie come home in safetie richly laden, foure have been worne out by long service from port to port in the Indies, two were overwhelmed in the trimming thereof, six have been cast away by the perils of the Sea, twelve have been taken and surprized by the Dutch, whereof divers will be wasted and little worth before they be restored, and 21 good ships doe still remayne in the Indies.”

The profit made by the voyages is summed up as follows: “ First there hath been lost £31,079 in the six shippes which are cast away, and in the 34 shippes which are returned in safety there have been brought home £356,288 in divers sorts of wares which hath produced here in England towards the general stock thereof £1,914,000. … So there ought to remain in the Indies to be speedily returned hither £484,088.” Elsewhere he shows in detail how pepper, mace, nutmegs, indigo, and raw silk, which would have cost £1,465,000 if purchased at the old rates, could now be purchased in the East Indies for about £511,458.

The opposition of the Dutch to English enterprise  in the East yearly became more openly aggressive until finally, in 1623, the Massacre of Amboyna sowed the seeds of that bitter animosity which sprang up between the two nations, leading to a long series of conflicts for the supremacy of the seas.

At Amboyna, in the Moluccas, Captain Towerson and his English factors, eighteen in number, occupied a house in the town, the Dutch holding a strong fort garrisoned by two hundred of their soldiers. Suddenly Captain Towerson and his assistants were seized on a charge of conspiring to surprise the Dutch stronghold. It was in vain that the prisoners protested their innocence ; the torture of the rack, according to the barbarous custom of the day, was applied until they were forced, in their agony, to admit the truth of the accusation. Captain Towerson, nine English sailors, nine natives of Japan, and one Portuguese were beheaded, praying forgiveness from each other for having in their torment confessed to the false accusation. The indignation excited in England on receipt of news of this outrage was carefully heightened by the Directors of the East India Company who widely distributed a picture depicting, in all the exaggerated extravagance capable of being conjured up by the imagination of the time, the tortures inflicted on the English factors, coupled with the statement that the Dutch had sued the London Company for the expenses of a black pall wherewith the body of Captain Towerson had been covered.

The oppressions of the Dutch, however, continued, the English trade gradually decreasing until by 1628-9 the  Company had  incurred debts to the   amount of £300,000, shares of £100 falling down to £80, although previously shares of £60 had been sold “by the candle “ for as much as £130.