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MODERN HISTORY LIBRARY |
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CHAPTER XXII. THE
COLONIES AND INDIA.
CHAPTER XXII. THE
COLONIES AND INDIA.
(1) THE
COLONIES.
Before the middle of the seventeenth century a new stage
had been reached in the spread of European activity into the continents and
islands of the West. The younger maritime Powers had made good their claim to
share in the opportunities which this vast colonial field disclosed. Breaking
in upon the prized monopoly which Spain and Portugal had won by their earlier
enterprise and happy fortune, Dutch, English, and French had opened the door to
a new series of experiments in colony-planting and colony-government. As they
secured their footholds in the New World and began to mark out the spheres of
their ambition, they created new arenas of contest and developed new rivalries;
so that their common hostility to Spain gradually lost its former importance,
and ceased to provide the central thread of interest in their doings. The years
that elapsed between the Treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht were years of the
greatest activity, in colonisation; but they were years of transition, when old
issues and conditions were giving place to new, and when the field was being
prepared for the long struggle between England and France which the eighteenth
century was to witness. None the less they form a period of a very definite
character, and with a conspicuous place in the history of the New World. For
they saw the foundation and growth of colonies possessing a vitality and
strength of their own—offshoots for the most part of the northern nations of
Europe, springing up in the vacant spaces of the continent, and on the islands
abandoned or lost by Spain. Over the centuries the race was to be to the
settler rather than to the soldier or even to the trader. The competition of
colonising genius was to continue the transference of colonial power which the
competition of maritime strength had begun. Hence, not the least momentous
question to which the events of these years gave an answer was whether the
methods of English, French, and Dutch—in founding dependent communities, in
fostering commerce, in the exploitation of forest, mine, and field, in the
treatment of aboriginal peoples, and in strengthening the mother country with
the resources of new lands—would be more
or less successful than those of their predecessors had been, or under the
stimulus of competition might yet be. In the East, supremacy was destined to
pass to the Power that most surely increased its prestige amongst the races of
Hindustan, and at the same time secured for itself the mastery of the sea; but in
the West, to the peoples who knew best how to turn the resources of a young
country to the service of civilised man, and so to build new societies
possessing unity, and the powers of self-help and growth.
It was for
this reason that the Portuguese, in spite of the decline of their maritime
strength, maintained a high rank as a colonising nation. In the growing wealth
and commercial activity of their settlements in Brazil they found some
compensation for the disasters which had befallen them in the Eastern Seas.
From unpromising beginnings Brazil was mounting to a position of considerable
importance. The cultivation of the sugar-cane, introduced by Jewish immigrants,
had been attended with great success, and had become the staple industry of the
country. The dense vegetation and the difficulties in the navigation of nearly
all the streams prevented the colonist from penetrating far inland; but along
the Atlantic shore, within a belt of land some twenty or thirty leagues wide, a
number of settlements had been established, a few towns had been founded, and
the mansions of the planters had steadily multiplied. The mother country could
not supply the emigrants needed to people even this coast-belt, apart from the
vast interior of the continent which she claimed; and, what was more, sugar-planting,
though it offered a fairly extensive field for the employment of capital, made
but a small demand for European labour. Nevertheless, the progress of the
colony had been continuous; and, at a time when the colonial empire of the
Portuguese seemed likely to succumb beneath the weight of a defective
administration and before the relentless rivalry of the Dutch, it became
evident that in South America the race had planted firm roots. Tha story of
Brazil shows how a young society, if allowed sufficient free play, may maintain
itself in spite of the enfeeblement of the mother country, and even replenish
the veins of her energy with its own life.
Nothing could
have been more gratifying to King John IV than the part which his Brazilian
subjects played in freeing themselves from the dominion of the Dutch West India
Company. Their uprising had followed closely upon the return of the Dutch
Governor, Count Maurice of Nassau, to Holland in 1644, and soon assumed a
formidable character. Though some of the insurgents were mere desperadoes, they
were led by men of undoubted ability and patriotism, and enjoyed the sympathy
of every section of the community— so strong was the hatred which the Dutch, as conquerors and as Protestants, had
inspired. With the mulatto, Fernandes Vieira, who was the soul of the movement,
were associated the Indian Camarao, Vidal de Negreiros, a white, and the
courageous negro Henrique Dias. Had it been possible for King John
The Dutch had
failed, primarily, because they had not mastered the difficult art of conquest.
Factories and forts, and small islands with their few inhabitants, might easily
be passed from nation to nation; but the problem of subjecting a European
community to a foreign rule was of another character. It needed the imagination,
tact, and statesmanship of Count Maurice of Nassau for its solution. So long as
he remained Governor of the conquered provinces, all seems to have gone well.
His liberal dealing with the Portuguese planters enabled them to turn their
attention to the cultivation of their estates, instead of plotting rebellion.
From this
time for thirty years the growth of the colony proceeded quietly enough. Such
difficulties as the colonists encountered were chiefly of internal origin. The
prosperity of the northern provinces had been seriously affected by the long
and devastating struggle with the Dutch, and Bahia began to take tlje lead in
agriculture and commerce. Sugar remained the staple product. Both climate and
soil favoured its cultivation. The many small streams that intersected the
coast rendered important service to the planters, driving their mills and
making it easy to convey the produce to the sea. Negro labour was obtainable
through the Guinea trade and was in great demand. At each sugar-producing
engenho, or mill, from fifty to a hundred slaves were required. At first
Indians had been employed, but they were unwilling workers, and before the
middle of the seventeenth century their numbers in thp older captaincies had
been exhausted. Slave-driving expeditions into the interior were frequently
made, especially by the inhabitants of San Paulo, to stock the slave-markets of
the coast; but the planters were obliged to rely more and more upon negroes
brought from Africa. In defence of the Indians against their conquerors the
Jesuits fought a hard battle. They desired to see the various tribes settled in
orderly communities under ecclesiastical and not civil control, and to free them
from slavery and from indefinite exactions of work, tantamount to slavery, on
the Portuguese plantations. In this design they had the sympathy of the Crown;
but they were contending against the relentless nature of the Portuguese
planter and the hard facts of the economic situation. It is difficult to say
how far the position of the Indian was improved by the continual legislation on
his behalf. The
Concentration
on sugar production naturally affected other industries and other branches of
agriculture. Tobacco-growing proved less profitable. The interesting
experiments in the culture of spice-plants brought from the East Indies yielded
little result, though for this the distraction from agricultural pursuits that
followed the later gold discoveries was perhaps largely responsible. The
wonderful facilities for horse- and cattle- rearing which parts of the country
possessed were not much developed, though Nieuhoff spoke of this resource,
together with “the great plenty of fish”, as “the two main pillars of the
State of Brazil.” Large quatities of provisions had always to be imported
from Portugal, the Azores, and the Canary Islands, and the cost of living was
in consequence very high. But under the liberal commercial policy of the mother
country the trade of the colony continued to flourish. No privileged Company at
this time monopolised and limited it. Vessels sailed from Portugal in regular
squadrons as from Spain; but they came in larger numbers, and called not at one
or two but at several ports. Wines, some foodstuffs, and most kinds of apparel
and utensils—for in Brazil there was little industry save shipbuilding at
Bahia—were imported from Europe, and exchanged against the produce of the
plantations, forests, fisheries, and mines of Brazil. A smaller class of ship
traded with Guinea, “making very good returns.” The mercantile spirit affected
the whole population. Neither the clergy nor officials could be restrained from
trading; and the latter, owing partly to their insufficient salaries, connived
freely at the contraband with foreign vessels calling at the ports.
Though most
of the noble houses of Portugal were represented in Brazil, there was no
division into classes or castes such as existed in the Spanish colonies. Custom
established firmly the idea of social equality. “Every barber, shoemaker and
tailor, struts, with his sword and dagger, and looks upon himself as equal to
any officer in the colony because his face is of the same complexion.” So
writes a French traveller in 1717. Printing was not permitted, and education
was under the control of the Jesuits, whose college at Bahia was said to be
“the largest, fairest and
It was partly
in consequence of these political conditions that the peace of the provinces
was occasionally broken. The Portuguese system of colonial government lent
itself to oppression and corruption; and the colonists, possessing no
representative institutions, expressed their sense of grievances in an uprising
against the colonial authorities. It was seldom that they exhibited any
disloyalty to the mother country. In 1684 a most serious outbreak—not the
first—occurred in Maranhao, a young border settlement which lived a troubled
life. The insurgents complained of a commercial monopoly in Maranhao and Para
which had been granted to some Lisbon merchants, and of the influence of the
Jesuits, who were endeavouring to protect the Indian population. In this case
the difficulties of the home Government were complicated by the possibilities
of French interference from Cayenne. In Gomes Freyre, however, whom they despatched
to the province, they found an officer of tact and strength equal to the
occasion. He restored the authority of the Crown, but recommended the abolition
of the monopoly and the introduction of negroes to meet the scarcity of labour
from which the plantations were suffering. More injurious to Brazil was the
civil war which distracted Pernambuco in 1710-1, originating in a long-standing
rivalry between Olinda and Reciff. The latter, after several unsuccessful
applications, had at last been promoted to the dignity of a town. Many of the
Pemambucans resented the aggrandisement of Reciff, with its population of
commercial immigrants, and ruined themselves in an unsuccessful struggle
against the will of the mother country.
Discovery of gold. [1684-1720 In the last
years of the seventeenth century the long-hoped-for gold discoveries were made
in San Paulo. It had been perhaps no disadvantage to Brazil that for two
centuries the inhabitants had remained undisturbed by mining enterprises, and
had concentrated their attention on the resources offered by its fertile soil,
thus laying sure the foundaions of an agricultural colony. A large influx of
population into San Paulo resulted. Settlers, allured by the gold, pushed their
way up to the source of the San Francisco. Mining camps became villages, and
before 1715 several towns were created. In 1710 San Paulo was organised as a
province; and, in 1720, Minas Geraes, the mining region, was detached from San
Paulo and declared a captaincy. As was to be expected, a period of great disorder
at the mines followed the discoveries. The mining population was divided into
two parties. On the one side, the Paulistas, or natives of the province, a
strenuous independent race, sprung
The gold
discoveries, though they did not prove of very great importance, affected the
whole life of the colony. Planters found it difficult to procure labour for
their plantations, and more profitable to employ their slaves at the mines. The
cultivation of sugar, tobacco, and other agricultural crops suffered in
consequence, and the exports of agricultural produce soon showed a serious
falling off. This was of course much to the advantage of the West India Sugar
Islands, whose great age began now to dawn. To the concern of the Portuguese,
the gold which was conveyed to Europe passed on from Lisbon through the
ordinary channels of commerce to the English and Dutch, who provided the larger
part of the commodities which the colony imported. Moreover, when treasure
fleets began to sail from Rio de Janeiro, pirates began to infest the coasts
continuously. The Portuguese suffered especially during the War of the Spanish
Succession. In 1710 a French expedition under Du Clerc made an attempt upon
Rio. It failed disastrously, but in the following year a second expedition
under the command of Du Guay Trouin, fitted out as a speculation by a syndicate
of private persons, proved more successful. In the presence of a considerable
Portuguese force the town was pillaged and held to ransom for 600,000 cruzados.
This discreditable incident advertised the weakness of the colony, and it is
not surprising that in 1714 the French prepared to repeat their venture. But Du
Cassard, who commanded the third fleet, was content to molest some of the
smaller sugar islands.
If the whole
period be considered, Brazil was fortunate in its comparative immunity from
attack, and in the expansion and definition of its boundaries. In the north,
settlement was extended in Maranhao and Para, and the conquest of Piauhi was
undertaken. The apprehensions awakened by the French in this neighbourhood
were removed; for. by the Peace of Utrecht they resigned all claim to the
country between the Amazon and the Wiapoc, and acknowledged the sovereignty of
Portugal over both banks of the great river. Exploring expeditions in search of
trade or slaves penetrated far into the interior, and disturbed and repelled
the Jesuit missions to the Indians, which were advancing inland from Quito,
and civilising the tribes on the Maranon, the Huallaga, and the Ucayali. The
design which the Spaniards had entertained in 1640 of occupying the valley of
the Amazon, and using this great stream as
That the
colonial power of Spain continued throughout the seventeenth century to
decline relatively to that of every other great colonising nation, there can
be little doubt—whether the comparison be made on the basis of the prosperity
and strength of the colonial communities which were being built up; or whether
Spain be judged by her own ends, and the advantages which the colonies yielded
to the mother country in tribute and trading profits, and as a field of
employment for a needy aristocracy, be chiefly considered. The former standard
Spain always and deliberately set aside. To plant active and self-dependent
societies in the lands which she had conquered was an ambition alien to her
genius and her history. In some respects her conception of colonisation was
narrower than that of any other people of her time. All sought to utilise the
resources of the new lands for the upbuilding of their own strength; but Spain
continued to concentrate her attention on, and measure her success by, the
volume of treasure transported to her from the New World. Learning little and
forgetting little, though the art of colonisation was being rapidly
transformed, she pursued throughout these years her historic course, adding new
territory by the sword, exploiting principally its mineral resources, and
seeking to administer it in such a manner that it would yield an ample revenue
to the Crown. Her maritime power suffered a woeful decline, but she still
retained her grip upon her vast dominions. The buccaneers raided exposed ports
and greyed upon the routes of commerce; English, French, and Dutch seized
outlying islands in the West Indies, and sometimes spread panic along the
coasts; but no nation ever gained upon the mainland such a foothold as the
Dutch acquired in northern Brazil. Cromwell conceived a joint attack by England
and Holland on the colonies of Spain and Portugal; but his great scheme was
never realised, and bore no fruit beyond the capture of Jamaica in 1655.
Fertile fields for the energies of the younger maritime Powers were opening
elsewhere. Colonisation and not conquest occupied their attention. Hence they
ceased to covet the possession of Spain’s immense territory, and, though they
still disputed with her for a share in its commerce, desiring especially the
precious metals of which it enjoyed so bountiful a store, they left her
mistress of the great continental empire she had founded and of the large
islands which lay unpeopled and undeveloped in the Caribbean Sea.
1650-1715] Character of Spanish colonisation. The domestic
history of the Spanish colonies in the Viceregal period
In exploiting
their transatlantic possessions the Spanish instinctively diverted much of
their energy to the search for the precious metals. There Were silver mines in
Peru, at Potosi, Oruro, Corocoro, and Castro Vireyna, and quicksilver mines at
Guancavelica. The mineral deposits of Mexico were richer still and more easily
worked. The large mining population offered a considerable demand for
foodstuffs, chiefly wine, flour, and maize, which were often transported over a
great distance, as well as for utensils and clothing, which were manufactured,
to some extent by the Indians, at Lima and other towns. But from various causes
the general resources of the colonies were ill developed. The huge estates
granted out to the nobility and the Church were an obstacle to the free
disposition of land; and this, together with the abseiice of agricultural
immigrants, the distaste for agriculture exhibited by the Creole, and the
possibility of compelling the Indians and the numerous slaves to undertake all
necessary cultivation, forbade the extension and prosperity of agricultural
settlement. Moreover difficulties of transport and an unwise commercial policy
limited the market for produce both at home and abroad. From the generations
bom in a country more is usually to be expected than from the immigrant. But
the Spanish Creole was allowed no sufficient scope for his ability. Civil,
military, and high ecclesiastical offices, the best professional positions, the
leading branches of trade and manufactures, the high posts at the mines, the
large plantations, were all monopolised by the home-born Spaniard. Partly
because of this the Creole became apathetic. He scorned agriculture and aspired
to belong to the lettered professions, the Law and the Church, to live idly,
and to obtain some title commanding social rank. Hence it came about that so large
a part of a small Spanish population was located in the towns, and consisted of
clergy, officials, soldiers, lawyers, and merchants.
The
government of the Indians offered a most difficult problem, to which a summary
in a later volume will recur. Their labour was of great importance in the
economic life of America. Indians were drafted into its mines, its industries,
and its pearl-fisheries. They were the principal cultivators of the soil,
carried out works of necessity such as road-making and bridge-building, and
paid a tribute to the Crown which formed a considerable item in its income.
Ever since the writings and appeals of Las Casas had thrown a lurid light on
the fate of these unfortunate people, the Spanish Government had been
The profits
which Spain drew from her colonies suffered considerable diminution during
these years. Wars with the Araucanians in Chili, and with the Indian peoples on
the northern boundaries of Mexico, led to new additions of territory; but,
together with the losses from the raids of the buccaneers and outlays for
improving the defences of the ports and equipping cruiscrs to protect commerce
and prevent smuggling, they often swallowed up much of the surplus revenue.
Even under normal conditions, some parts of the empire scarcely repaid the cost
of their government. In 1718 a third vice-royalty, New Granada, was carved out
of northern Peru, in the hope that better administration would extract a larger
income from this part of the continent. But what was really more unfortunate
for Spain was the dwindling away of her colonial trade. In its broadest
features her commercial policy had not been illiberal towards her colonies. No
systematic effort had been made to shackle their industrial and agricultural
progress in favour of producers at home. Skilled artisans were permitted to
migrate to America, and the province of Quito numbered an industrial element in
its population. If the Spanish colonies were economically backward, it was
their social organisation and the character of their people that placed the greatest
restraints on their productive powers. None the less, the manner in which the
mother country conducted her commerce with her dependencies was most injurious
both to herself and to them. The Casa de Contratacion, which administered the
economic affairs of
For the sake
of security all goods were carried across the Atlantic by annual fleets sailing
in two great divisions—the flota, to Vera Cruz, to supply the wants of New
Spain; the galleons, to Cartagena and Portobello, where was transacted the
business of Peru. No large commerce could be developed under these conditions.
The tonnage of the two fleets, never exceeding 27,500, steadily decreased, and
their voyages became more and more irregular. At the same time, an inviting
opportunity was extended to traders of other nations, which, as Spain lost her
power upon the sea, and Dutch, English, and French strengthened their positions
in the West Indies, was eagerly grasped. Curaçoa, Jamaica, and St Domingo
became centres of a contraband trade which gradually assumed large proportions
and a regular organisation. Hence it came about that, under the pressure of
circumstances, Spain was compelled to surrender parts of her cherished
monopoly. During the War of the Succession she opened her American ports to the
French, and by the Treaty of Utrecht she granted important privileges to the
English—securing to them on the one hand, the Asiento, or monopoly for thirty
years of the slave-trade between her colonies and Africa, which, since l696,
had been held first by a Portuguese and then by a French Company; and, on the
other, the right to send one small vessel to the annual fair at Cartagena. In the
struggle to retain her commerce against the superior activity of the younger
maritime Powers she had failed more decisively than in the struggle to retain
her territory.
French colonisation in North America. [1603-1720 But nothing
contributed so much during these years to transform the aspect of the colonial
world, as the great work of colonisation which the English and French had begun
in the northern continent and the West Indian Islands. On the St Lawrence, the
French after a hard struggle had overcome the initial difficulties of
agricultural settlement. Their progress had at first been halting and slow,
and, in 1660, the colony founded by Champlain at Quebec in 1608 still ran risks
of starvation or of extinction at the hands of the Indians. But Louis XIV and
Colbert, by systematic and unremitting attention, rescued the settlers from
their precarious conditions, and to a few fur-trading posts and Jesuit mission
stations added a small community of seigneurs and peasantry. Strange contrasts
presented themselves in the life of the New France which they created.
Constructed on the model of Old France, ruled absolutely and in petty details
by a paternal government, under the control of a not less
Along the
Atlantic shore, where groups of English settlements were clustered, the record
of progress had been of a different character. The activity in colonisation
which marked the reign of Charles II had resulted in the foundation of the
Carolinas arid of Pennsylvania, and in the conquest, in 1664, of the Dutch
colony on the Hudson River. This last acquisition was of no small importance,
as it secured to the English an uninterrupted control of the coast which they
had chosen as the principal field of their enterprise. The barrier of the
Alleghanies prevented the colonists from penetrating far inland, and narrowed
the space upon which they worked out the origins of their history. Hence,
perhaps, their lack of the imperial imagination of the French leaders at
Quebec, and the concentration of their energies upon internal development,
social, political, and economic. Located on the margin of‘the sea, they were
becoming a maritime and commercial people, quick-witted and practical. Close
settlement, the growth of towns and townships, fostered intercommunication and
a progressive civilisation, besides encouraging an independent political
spirit. Many circumstances contributed to their prosperity. They enjoyed a
climate congenial and familiar, with a reliable rainfall; they possessed
abundance of fertile land with satisfactory land laws; the resources of their
country were very great and wanted only the strenuous labourer; dense forests
provided the materials of a lumbering industry; there were rich fisheries in
the adjoining seas; there were wide opportunities for commerce with each other,
the mother country, and her West Indian dependencies. In addition, the
religious troubles of Charles II’s reign, conducing to a flow of emigration
from England, furnished them with many excellent colonists. Hence, though they
suffered, as almost every colony at an early stage of development suffers, from
an inadequate supply of labour and capital, their progress was sure and
continuous, and proceeded from a secure basis.
The ideas of
colony-building which animated the Governments of
On the whole,
then, the colonial methods of England were in advance of those of other
nations. She sought treasure by mercantilist rather than bullionist methods.
The strong side of her policy showed itself in the liberty of action which her
colonists enjoyed; and, if we except those regulations which closed up for them
the avenues of commerce, and which they could not evade, it was a policy well
calculated to ensure their progress. Its weak side—as seen in.the light of
later events—was the negled; of the problem of attaching the colony to the
mother cbuirtry. A feeling of self-dependence was fostered in the daughter
communities, while their relations to the mother country in some important
respects were left without being exactly determined. At the same time, under
the directing influence of a “national scheme of commercial and industrial
policy,” a commercial pact, arranged by the mother country and frequently
producing much irritation in her dependencies, was gradually elaborated, to
form the chief bond between the component parts of the empire. No doubt, the
strength of England in her struggle with France was by this means increased. No
doubt, also, that the
The West Indies. If, on the
mainland, the French, in spite of their wider ambitions, secured less solid
results than the English, they shared the honours more equally in the West
Indies. Here, too, the Dutch, in the capacity of traders rather than of
colonists, played a conspicuous part; and both Danes and Swedes, attracted by
the profits of commerce and piracy, obtained a foothold. Since most of the
small islands had been abandoned by Spain, and were seldom found to be occupied
by hostile tribes of Indians, while the success of sugar and tobacco
cultivation had demonstrated their great commercial value, the competition for
their possession between the incoming nations, particularly between the French
and English, was very keen, and the story of its progress is of great
importance. In 1650 the Spaniards still held the inner and greater islands,
Cuba, Hispaniola, Porto Rico, and Jamaica; though in Hispaniola French
buccaneers were laying the foundations of the prosperous French colony of St
Domingo. English, French, and Dutch divided amongst themselves the group of
islands afterwards known as the Leeward Islands. The French occupied Guadaloupe
and Santa Cruz, claimed Dominica, and shared St Kitts with the English and St
Martin with the Dutch. The Dutch owned Saba and Eustatia. Antigua, Nevis,
Montserrat, Anguilla had all been colonised by the English from St Kitts. To
the Windward Islands the French had already paid considerable attention. They
possessed Martinique, claimed St Vincent, and had attempted to settle Grenada
and St Lucia. Near by was Barbados, the most flourishing of the English colonies,
but not, like St Kitts, the mother of many new settlements. Further to the
south Trinidad was still occupied by a few hundred Spanish, and Tobago,
abandoned by the English, was in the hands of the Dutch. Such was the case also
with Curacjoa, Oruba, and Buen Ayre, which lay some distance to the west, close
to the Spanish Main.
The great
European Wars waged during the next seventy years were one and all attended by
conflicts in the West Indies; and yet on the whole they did not very seriously
change the positions of the different Powers in these regions. In 1655 the
English captured Jamaica, and entered the inner ring of the Spanish
possessions, whence they were soon after enabled to secure a foothold on the
Belize River and Campeachy Bay, two districts on either side of the peninsula
of Yucatan famous for log-cutting and contraband trading. The Dutch War of
1664-7 was full of incident in the West Indies, as in many parts of the
A noble
record of progress in colonisation and of commercial development supplements
this story of military vicissitudes. Neither the Spanish nor the Dutch
concerned themselves much with the settlement of the islands under their
control. The attention of the Spanish was too deeply engrossed by the mineral
resources of Mexico and Peru. As for the Dutch, they seem never to have
intended to colonise the West Indies—their aim was to establish factories; they
therefore occupied only small islands conveniently situated for purposes of
trade, whence they plied an active business with Caracas and Cumana, with the
great Spanish islands, with English and French in the Lesser Antilles, in short
wherever sure profits were to be made. Similarly the Danes, who had taken St
Thomas in 1671, sought for the most part only a share in the carrying-trade to
and from the plantations. It was the English and French who planted colonies.
In some respects the French were the more successful, partly because they were
more dexterous
However real
these grievances were, perhaps the worst evils from which the islands suffered
may be attributed to the general insecurity of their life. From a military
point of view many of them were almost defenceless. In the West Indies, whoever
commanded the sea might soon command the land also; for in few places could
large enough garrisons be maintained to resist a strong invading force. In
addition, there was a natural insecurity in the liability to devastating
hurricanes and earthquakes, which might sweep away in a few hours the results
of years of toil. Economic conditions also were in some ways precarious and
unsound. The supply of negroes, on which the prosperity of the plantations
came to depend, might be interrupted by war or limited by the action of a
privileged company; and as the black population everywhere largely outnumbered
the white, few of the colonies lived quite at peace while haunted by the
hideous fear of a slave rebellion. A life full of the chances of gain or loss,
made men restless and in a hurry to get rich; but so fertile was the soil of
the islands, so genial their climate, so profitable the opportunities of the
sugar-trade, that its uncertainties did not seriously affect the progress of
settlement. In the early years of Charles II’s reign the spirit of enterprise
amongst the English was still strong, and they made rapid headway. Amongst
their possessions Barbados, “that rare pearl in the King’s Crown,” stood out
conspicuously; and already Jamaica was described as “one of the most hopeful of
all the Plantations in the West Indies.” The prosperity of Barbados soon
suffered decline; but. Jamaica more than fulfilled expectations. Enriched at
first by piracy and contraband trade, it prospered not less when the
For purposes
of administration, Jamaica formed a separate Government; and in 1671 the other
islands were divided into two groups, the Leeward and the Windward Islands,
each with a Governor of its own. In the officers whom the mother country sent
out during these years was exhibited one of the best features of her control.
The second Lord Willoughby in Barbados, Colonel Stapleton, and after him
Christopher Codrington, in the Leeward Islands, are perhaps best remembered
amongst those who, against great odds and with little support from home,
laboured for the defence and upbuilding of a Greater Britain in these distant
seas. The relations of the Governors with the colonial administrators at home
were not always of the best. The man on the spot wanted his own way and took it
ill if his advice were disregarded Governor Atkins of Barbados made himself the
voice of so many grievances in the system of colonial government that he was at
last recalled in 1680. The story of his supersession is “only that of the
first of many contests between the local legislature and the English merchants
for supremacy in the administration, wherein the victory, in consequence of the
defection of a part of the Assembly, lay with the merchants.” As a matter of
fact, the management of colonial business in England was at times far from
efficient. Before the reign of Charles II information concerning colonial
matters had been collected by special commissions appointed for the purpose.
Charles II established a permanent Council of Trade and Plantations. It was not
a success and was dissolved by Order in Council of 1675, its place being taken
by a Committee of the Privy Council. For a few years the Committee displayed
considerable activity, but towards the end of the reign its administration was
marked by great procrastination and negligence. That this was due in part to
the indolence of the King may be concluded from the renewed energy exhibited
when James II, who understood colonial affairs, came to the throne. But there
were other and more important causes in the inadequacy of the organisation for
its work and the serious difficulties which had to be confronted. Of these the
problem of imperial defence was perhaps the most acute. As the number of
dependent whites in the West Indies declined, it became impossible to rely on
the militia which they had formed for the defence of the islands; and hence the
whole burden was gradually being transferred to the mother country.
The pirates of the Caribbean Sea.—West Africa. Mention has
already been made of the pirates whose exploits in the Caribbean Sea fill a
large space in the early annals of West Indian triscoiy. They contributed in no
small degree to break the maritime power of Spain and to open the doors of the
New World to other nations. But they were the enemies of ordered government and
exercised an injurious influence on the progress of settlement and commerce,
for they seduced rich and poor alike from steady and honest enterprises to
their hazardous and profitable adventures. Between 1660 and 1675 they were
exceedingly active. Jamaica, La Tortue, and the Bahamas were their
headquarters; and English and French Governors gave them letters of marque
against the Spaniard. Though some of their great leaders were Frenchmen—such as
Grammont, who took Maracaibo in 1679, Hamelin who cruised in the Trompeuse
between 1681 and 1685, and Ducasse who sacked Cartagena in 1697—they were
really an international confederacy and numbered many English, Dutch, and
Danes in their ranks. (Morgan, who led them to the attack on Panama in 1671,
was a Welshman). In time, general interests, demanded their extirpation and the
civilised nations combined against them. The age of the Buccaneers came to an
end with the Peace of Ryswyk.
Closely
connected with the West Indies through the slave-trade was the
west coast of
Africa. Here the French had occupied the mouth of the Senegal,
the English the
mouth of the Gambia, and both English and Dutch had planted
themselves on the
Guinea Coast. As the American plantations developed, the
volume of the
slave-trade increased, and to it on the Gambia and the Slave
Coast everything
else was subordinated. Other nations also, Swedes, Danes, and
Germans, visited these parts. Before 1670 the Danes had
established two
stations, Christiansborg and Frederiksborg, on the Slave
Coast; and late in the
reign of the Great Elector, the Brandenburgers erected a fort,
Grossfriedrichshurg, at Cape Three Points on the Gold Coast; but,
though they
experimented elsewhere and built other forts (one, it is said,
as far north as
Cape Blanco) neither they nor the Danes played a very great
part in West
African commercial history. Here as elsewhere the Dutch,
English, and French
were the chief disputants. The Dutch, who had ousted the
Portuguese, claimed
the whole trade “as their propriety” by right of conquest.
They were strong,
because their forces were concentrated in a single Company,
the Dutch West
India Company, and in this respect the English were compelled
to follow their
example. In 1662 the Company of Royal Adventurers trading to
Africa, the third
Guinea Company, was incorporated. Its life was short and
painful. After bearing
the brunt of the struggle with the Dutch which prevented the
Guinea trade from
falling wholly into their hands, it collapsed, and
Like the
Dutch, the French appreciated the connexion between the West Indies and West
Africa. In 1664, Colbert handed over the African trade to the reconstituted
West India Company; but, when, ten years later, this body was dissolved,
various small companies Engaged in the trade, while the islands passed under
the control of the Crown. West Africa was one of the few spheres of their
colonisation where the French developed no vast schemes, but persisted steadily
in what they had undertaken. Leaving the Guinea Coast to the English and Dutch,
they consolidated their influence on the Senegal. In 1678 Goree, which had been
captured in the previous year, was ceded to them by the Dutch. During the long
wars with which this period closes they made several attempts to dislodge the
English who had been making themselves masters of the Gambia; but, though Fort
James was several times taken, the Peace of Utrecht left the two nations still
side by side.
There is not
much in the history of the early relations of the European peoples with the
weaker races whom they found in new lands which commends itself to the
conscience of the modem world. The years immediately under consideration witnessed
the missionary efforts of the Jesuits and other religious bodies in America and
Africa, the measures of the Spanish Government to protect the indigenous
population of its colonies, and the inspiring example of William Penn. Against
these must be set in all their darkness the annals of Indian slavery in Peru
and Mexico, and the traffic in African negroes. This latter was introduced into
Europe and the New World by the Portuguese; but it was the English and Dutch
who were responsible for its great development. The Dutch, who excelled as
carriers upon the seas, quickly
An
interesting contrast to the stations on the Guinea Coast, where the nature of
the country and the nature of the trade prevented colonisation, was provided in
the settlement which the Dutch East India Company was planting at the Cape of
Good Hope. Here a mere watering-place for ships, a fort with its cabbage-garden,
was silently growing into a colony. The years which saw the expulsion of the
Dutch from Brazil and the conquest of the New Netherlands, also witnessed the
beginnings of their occupation of South Africa, where alone they have left a
lasting monument of their national genius for colonisation. In 1652 the Company
decided to establish a port of call at the Cape of Good Hope for vessels
engaged in the Eastern trade. Level-headed as ever, they nursed no extravagant
schemes. But, after a time, some of the settlers were permitted to raise
cattle and to penetrate a little way inland, in order to find sheltered spots
where grains and vines could be cultivated. In 1682 the colony numbered 682
Europeans, chiefly “strong, gallant and industrious bachelors.” In 1688-9 its
strength was recruited by some French Huguenot families who sought refiige in
South Africa. A healthy climate, fertile soil, good leadership, and freedom
from distracting wars and rivalries—all favoured its growth; and at the
beginning of the eighteenth century the farmers, who chafed under the
autocratic rule of the Company, had begun to cross the neighbouring mountains,
and lipes of scattered settlements branched out into the interior.
England's maritime and commercial ascendancy. [1650-1715 Such in its
brief outline is the story of colonial progress in the West during these years.
New colonies had been planted; new parts of North and South America explored;
new territory had been added by conquest to the dominions of almost every great
Power. The course of events in Europe, where the fortunes and ambitions of
nations rose and fell, had reacted upon their position in other continents.
Most important of all had been the internal development of some of the young
transatlantic
(2) INDIA.
A chapter in
a former volume dealt with the history of the Portuguese, Dutch, and English in
India during the earlier half of the seventeenth century. From the point then
reached the narrative is now resumed. After the severe defeats inflicted upon
them by the Dutch in Ceylon and on the coast of Malabar, in 1650-63, the
Portuguese could no longer be looked upon as serious claimants for the Indian
trade. The first western nation to appear in Hindustan, their incursion
represents the final phase of the medieval struggle between Christendom and
Islam rather than the new age of commerce and discovery. The stately national
epic of the Lusiad has cast a somewhat misleading glamour over the crude facts
of their eastern history. As the crusading spirit died down, corruption and
incompetency everywhere made their appearance; and from 1650 their annals form
a dreary record of degeneration. The conquerors were absorbed and degraded by
the conquered, for the Portuguese more than other European nations intermarried
with native races. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, petty disputes
between the Viceroy at Goa and the English Governor of Bombay are almost the
only visible records of the empire founded by Almeida and Albuquerque.
The rivals of
the Portuguese, the Dutch, during the same period not only consolidated their
position in the Spice Archipelago, but for a time, at any rate, obtained the
preponderance on the mainland. Dutch fleets cruising in the Indian Ocean at
this early stage were far larger in point of numbers than those despatched by
England and France during the War of the Austrian Succession. Ryklof van Goens
in his operations against Portugal in 1661-3 commanded a squadron of
twenty-four vessels, besides a formidable land force. The Portuguese stations
in Ceylon were finally conquered in 1658. The occupation of the Cape of Good
Hope must have seemed likely to turn the line of Dutch expansion still more
sharply inward towards the nearer east. Colonised under Jan van Riebeck in
1652, it was garrisoned thirteen years later; and by 1672 the Dutch had come to
look upon it as the “frontier fortress of India.” In 1664 the roll of their
factories on the mainland included nineteen names. They had established posts
in Bengal, Gujerat, Malabar, and on the coast of Coromandel. To contemporary
observers it appeared probable
In 1672
Leibniz, in his curious treatise, the Consilium Aegyptiacum, anticipating a
scheme of Napoleon, urged Louis XIV to win an eastern empire by occupying
Egypt. He assumes as an incontrovertible fact that no European nation can hope
to oust the Dutch by ordinary means; and the burden of the whole pamphlet is, Hollandia in Aegypto debellabitur. But within the next twenty years
the power of the Dutch had begun sensibly to decline. To this effect many
causes contributed, which have been traced in an earlier chapter. International
complications weakened them at a critical time in their colonial history, and India
has always in a certain sense been lost and won on European battlefields. They
were fighting England in 1652-4, 1665-7, and 1672-4. After that date they were
precluded from following their old aggressive policy on the Indian seas by the
curious fate which made them for reasons of state policy allies in Europe of
their most formidable rivals in the East. The Dutch were at war with France
except for short intervals from 1672 till 1713, and, though they were allied
with England during part of that time, the bulk of the fighting in India fell
to their share. They drove the French admiral, de La Haye, from Trincomali in
1673, and captured St Thome by storm two years la,ter. In 1693 they captured
Pondicherry after a twelve days’ siege. But the drain on their resources from
the long wars in Europe was tremendous, and signs of exhaustion made their
appearance. It has been proved from records at the Cape that for many years
after 1672 the number of ships sent t° the Indies fell off considerably,
hardly any sailing with their full complement of men. Much blood and treasure
had been expended in seizing positions which, as the future proved, were not
strategically of the first importance. It had cost them dearly to wrest Malabar
from the Portuguese. As the spice merchants of the world the Dutch reckoned the
pepper-trade of that district the greatest prize of Indian commerce. But the
country was ruined by the break-up of the Moghul empire and by Maratha misrule;
and before the middle of the eighteenth century almost every European
settlement on the south-eastern coast had fallen into decay. The policy which
was perhaps inevitable for the Dutch as an insular Power militated against
their prospects of success on the broader arena of the mainland. In the Spice
Archipelago they were engaged in constant wars and expeditions. The exigencies
of their position obliged them to crush all opposition with a heavy hand. Too,
often they succeeded to Portuguese methods as well as to Portuguese territory.
Such terrible reprisals as were practised after the Chinese rising at Formosa
in 1652, the revolt in the Moluccas in 1672, and Governor Vuyst’s attempt to
make himself absolute in Ceylon in 1729, cast a malignant light on Dutch
colonial policy. Of the four western nations that successively appeared in
India,
The petty
militarism of the Dutch settlements was a weapon of doubtful efficacy in the
hands of a trading body. The English Company in 1686 averred that the Dutch
possessed 170 fortified places in the East, and could drive the English out of
all India in one year; but they added that most of the forts were poorly manned
and that, if it came to a predatory war, “they are a broader mark to hit than
we are.” The tradition of Dutch supremacy lingered long into the eighteenth
century. In 1718 the English Company declared that the strength of the Dutch
was greatly superior to their own and that of all other European nations joined
together, “and nothing but the Powers in Europe make them afraid to prove it
against any or all of their competitors in the trade of India.” But this was to
misread strangely the signs of the times. By stress of circumstances the two
nations had been compelled to respect each other’s sphere of influence. The
hold of the Dutch upon the coast of India was gradually weakened; and they drew
away more and more to the south-east where, after the fall of the English factory
at Bantam in 1683, their supremacy was unchallenged. On the Coromandel coast
the desolating war waged between Aurangzeb and the King of Golconda, in 1687,
proved ruinous to their settlements, whereas the English were comparatively
immune behind the walls of Fort St George. From Surat they were temporarily
driven in the early years of the eighteenth century. In Bengal they suffered
fat more than their rivals from the welter of anarchy that ensued on the
interregnum at Delhi in 1712-3. Though the death-blow to their hopes in India
was not given till the capitulation of Chinsura to Clive in 1759, the very fact
of their taking no part in the dynastic struggles which after 1748 threw
southern India open to Europeans was a proof, if any had been needed, that the
time of their great opportunity had gone by for ever.
We must now
return to the position of the English Company in 1650. Involved at home in the
cataclysm of the Civil War and harassed in India by interloping associations,
they had almost given up the struggle in despair. But with the return to
settled government there came an improvement in their prospects. They shared in
the benefits of Cromwell’s foreign policy and obtained from him a new charter,
which a few years later they were eager to shuffle out of sight. The Protector
extorted from Portugal , formal acknowledgment of England’s right to trade in
the East, and obliged Holland to pay a belated indemnity for the “massacre of
Amboina.” But the real prosperity of the Company dates from the 8 estoration.
They became the willing creditors of the King and enjoyed his high favour, for
Charles found in the Indian interest the only whole-hearted support for his
championship of the French cause against the Dutch. His charter of
At this
crisis in the Company’s history a masterful personality dominated their
counsels. Sir Josia Child was for many years almost supreme in Leadenhall
Street; and his brother Sir John, Governor of Bombay from 1682 to 1690, ably
represented him in India. The policy of the Court of Committees had hitherto
been founded on the dictum of Sir Thomas Roe, “it is an error to affect
garrisons and land wars in India.” Their instinct was to confine their energies
to commerce, avoiding so far as possible political entanglements and territorial
responsibilities. Inevitably they sometimes failed to see where a policy,
prudent in itself, required modification. All the capitals of British India
were founded in opposition to their will. The name of Francis Day was entered
in the Company’s Black Book for building Fort St George. Bombay was reluctantly
taken over from the King’s control; and expenditure on its fortifications
formed the subject of bitter
But the
discreditable Peace was too good a handle against the Company to escape the
notice of their numerous enemies at home. The period of prosperity after 1660
had raised up bitter rivals to their pretensions. Interlopers had for some time
been active in India; and the drastic policy pursued by the Childs against all
who invaded their employers’ privileges aroused a fierce resentment. The most
famous of the unauthorised traders was Thomas Pitt, the grandfather of Chatham,
who having amassed an immense fortune by openly defying the Company, purchased
on his return to England a great landed estate together with the pocket-borough
of Old Sarum. A strong popular feeling was growing up that more Englishmen
should be admitted to a share in the profits of the Indian trade—a feeling
which took the form of an attack on the joint-stock principle and a demand for
a company on a “regulated” basis in which subscribers would have the right to
trade on their own capital. In deference to the prevailing sentiment, an
attempt had even
The New East India Company. The Dowgate
association won their first victory owing to the needs of Charles Montagu,
Chancellor of the Exchequer. On providing him with a loan of £2,000,000, they were
in 1698, constituted by Act of Parliament a General Society with exclusive
rights tti the trade with India, saving the privileges of the Old Company,
which were to expire after the three years’ notice stipulated for in their
charter. Lip-service having been done to the .Regulated theory by the
constitution of the “General’’ Society, the great majority of the subscribers
at once formed themselves into a jointrstock: under the title of the “English”
as distinct from the Old or “London” Company. By the clever diplomatic move of
subscribing largely in the name of their Treasurer to the funds of the General
Society its members acquired the right to trade even after the three years to
the amount of their subscription. Then ensued a desperate struggle between the
two associations, which extended from the floor of the House of Commons, the
polling-booth and the hustings, to the distant arena of the Indian littoral. In
the Presidencies of Bengal, Bombay and Madras a threefold duel was fought out
with bitter animosity, to the scandal of the English name. The victory, which
was at best a Pyrrhic one, lay on the whole with the party already in
possession; for, though at Bombay Sir Nicholas Waite ruined Sir John Gayer, the
Old Company’s Governor, by embroiling him with the native Powers, he did little
thereby to further his own cause; and in the other Presidencies the issue went
against the new-comers. Sir Edward Littleton in Bengal was worsted by John
Beard, while Thomas Pitt, the converted Interloper, who had made his peace with
the Old Company and was now their representative at Fort St George, made short
work of his rival and relative John Pitt. To the vigorous initiative of the
masterful President of Madras and his shrewd conduct of affairs the failure of
tho New Company was largely due. Their representatives were decked with
baronetcies and
The
comparative success of the Old Company in India was however neutralised in
England, where the issue had for the most part gone against them. Warned by
significant hints from the King, they concluded a temporary Union in 1702,
which was made absolute by Parliament in 1708, with the proviso that all
matters still in dispute should be settled by the arbitration of the Earl of
Godolphin. The privileges of the reconstituted Company were prolonged to March
25, 1726, after which date they could be terminated at three years’ notice. The
Company provided the Exchequer with a further sum of £1,200,000, the total of
their loan to the State now amounting to £3,200,000. In the settlement both
associations were called upon to make concessions; for, if the Old had to
submit to a widening of the basis of the monopoly, the New saw the last
vestiges of the General or Regulated Society swept away in the charter of the
United Company.
After 1708
the English in India entered upon a period of steady and quiet prosperity. The
great chartered Company—that unique instrument by which national resources and
national energy were focused upon a continent thousands of miles over sea—had,
after many experiments, found its appropriate niche in the fabric of British
polity. An attempt had been made by the New Company, as we have seen, to
emphasise the political aspect of their position in the East; but the Directors
of the United Company wisely returned to the older tradition. They sent out
plain men of business to preside over their settlements, and they made the
increase of their trade their first concern, though, as the words of their
opening despatch testify, they were not without premonitions of a higher
destiny. “It is a duty incumbent upon us,” they wrote, “to England and our
posterity to propagate the future interest of our nation in India.” Indeed the
factory period was now finally closed. The Firman which was secured by the
embassy to Delhi led by Surman in 1715-7 conferred upon the Company not only
trade rights
The, French in India Of the
European nations that were serious competitors for supremacy in India, France
was the last to enter the arena of conflict. Henry IV, about the time when the
English and Dutch were making their first voyages, tried to foster companies
for eastern exploration; but France was too exhausted by the long agony of the
Wars of Religion to respond with any effect to his appeals. The records of
diplomacy preserve the tradition of one curious attempt on his part to attain
his end by political means. In 1607 negotiations for a peace were pending
between Spain and the United Netherlands. Henry, though traditionally the ally
of Holland, instructed his envoy Jeannin not only to support the Spanish demand
that the Dutch should renounce the Indian trade, but even to carry on a secret
intrigue with Isaac Le Maire, a merchant of Amsterdam. He hoped to transplant
the great Dutch East India Company to his own kingdom “sous le notn et accueil
de la banniere de France”. But his disingenuous attempt to fish in troubled waters
was defeated by the diplomatic skill of Oldenbameveldt. Cardinal Richelieu did
much to encourage schemes of colonial exploration; but the necessity of
consolidating his position against internal enemies left him time before his
death only to found the company which, under the leadership of Pronis and
Flacourt, colonised Madagascar. The first French Company that traded with India
proper was not founded till 1664. The circumstances of its inception contrast
curiously with those that attended the birth of the English Company. While in
England the merchants wrested their privileges step by step from the Crown, in
France the monarch spurred on an unwilling people. The Company was started under
the direct superintendence of Colbert, and received all that was possible in
the way of royal patronage and state support. The King, the Court and the
noblesse provided by far the greater part of the capital of 15,000,000 livres.
Louis commended the interests of the Company to the mayors and provosts of
provincial towns by 119 lettres de cachet. The elaborate organisation of the
Directorate of the Company, which involved a sort of commercial federation of
the provincial towns with Paris at their head, shows the determination of the
King to make the trade a great national undertaking, and testifies to a certain
breadth of conception which, in spite of his limitations, was characteristic of
all the actions of the Roi Soleil. But official patronage of this kind, however
enlightened, is a serious incubus on a trading corporation. The trail of
The first
expeditions of the Company were frittered away in the attempt to revive the
colonising projects of Richelieu in Madagascar—an island that has always
possessed a peculiar fascination for the French. In 1668 Caron, a renegade
Dutchman, founded a factory in Surat; and another was established at
Masulipatam in 1669. But in 1672 Louis allied himself with England against
Holland, and thus gave the French in India a formidable enemy and only a very
lukewarm ally. The defeats inflicted upon them by the Dutch in 1672 have been
already chronicled. Though the French Company thus received a severe check at
the outset of its career, Francis Martin laid the foundations of Pondicherry in
1674; and two years later a factory was established at Chandemagore in
Bengal, Captured by the Dutch in 1693, Pondicherry was restored to France with
greatly strengthened fortifications in 1697 by the Peace of Ryswyk, and under
the fostering care of its founder who lived till 1706 rapidly grew into a
flourishing town. Martin however appears to have received little support from
home; all the resources of France were being exhausted in the War of the
Spanish Succession; and India was forgotten at Versailles. The royal patronage
having been withdrawn, the Company languished, for there was no vigorous commercial
interest in reserve to take up the burden that slipped from the wearied
shoulders of the King.
Before
summing up the position of European nations in India in the early years of the
eighteenth century, it may be well for the sake of completeness to refer to the
episode of the Ostend Company, though it
Save for
this interlude, it was by 1720 already predetermined that the future struggle
for preeminence in India lay between tbe English and the French. France, in
Charles Davenant’s striking words, had long stood by, “subtle, insinuating and
liberal, ready either to court or to force a favour”; but as yet she was no
match for her great rival, whose history in the East had been altogether longer
and more continuous. With all its vicissitudes the English Company had never
since 1657 sunk to the position of the French in 17,00-20. It had at least paid
its way and been self-righting even in the disastrous days of internecine
strife; it had enjoyed long epochs of undoubted prosperity. On the other hand
the French Company had to make many fresh starts; its cycles of disaster were
dismally long, its periods of good fortune, spasmodic, fitful and brief. Over and
over again in its annals, we find the curt announcement that for such and such
a year no vessels returned from India. In truth the Company since its
foundation had never stood on a sound financial basis. Subscriptions to the
original capital were not fully paid up, in spite of royal proclamations and
upbraidings. In the reign of Charles II, when the English were enjoying
unprecedented success and driving roots into the soil that were destined to
endure, the French had not emerged from the day of small things. Again, after
1708, when their rivals were striding forward under the impetus of the new
unity at home, the
The
importance of the longer English tradition in the East has often been unduly
underrated. Historians are perhaps too prone to concentrate attention on the
acquisition of territory in Hindustan, too apt to look upon the Indian Empire
as the work of highly gifted men, hampered and shackled by a carping body of
unimaginative traders. That conception embodies a phase of the truth; but it
can easily be overstated. The real base of operations was in England.
Especially is this true of the time prior to our acquisition of the Gangetic
province of Bengal. The strength or weakness of the Company is not solely to be
measured by the roll of the garrisons in the Indian settlements or the
thickness of the curtains and bastions that encircled their forts. It depends
rather on the latent resources and political influence of the great corporation
of Leadenhall Street, the volume of its steadily increasing trade, and the
unbroken means of communication between East and West formed by the fleets that
annually sailed from British ports. The causes that determined the issue of the
conflict between England and France will be dealt with in a later volume. But
an adequate appreciation of the difference between the resources of the two
Companies during the seventeenth century, while it sets in high relief the
brilliance of the French attack upon the British position after 1744, will also
go some way to explain why that effort was not more prolonged and more successful.
Burke declared that the constitution of the Company began in commerce and ended
in Empire; and the aphorism rightly understood involves a prppter as well as a
post hoc. The more closely the history of the English East India Company is
investigated, the more certain becomes the conviction that only because it was
built up upon a broad basis of mercantile integrity, did it attain even higher
powers, grow till it compelled the State to take it into partnership, and, in
spite of many shortcomings and some deep stains, fulfil a unique and splendid
function in British history.
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