700 The New East India Company [1681-98 been made by Thomas Papillon in 1681 to widen the scope of the Company from within; but his efforts came to nothing through the strenuous opposition of Sir Josia Child. The result was the formation of an antagonistic body, meeting at Skinners' Hall in Dowgate Street, which allied itself closely with the growing Whig party of William's reign, and looked to Parliament rather than the Crown for support. In 1693, by corruption organised on a gigantic scale, Sir Josia Child procured a new royal charter; but he failed to restrain the Commons from accepting the doctrine of the Company's enemies and carrying a resolution that only by Act of Parliament could any English subject be debarred from the trade with India. This was not only a rebuff to Child, but by implication an attack on the royal prerogative from which the Company derived all its privileges parliamentary enquiry in 1695 into the recent bribery and corruption further discredited their cause; though the chief agent in the transacti had been far too astute to commit himself personally and evaded all penalties. 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 to 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 joint-stock 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; 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 presentative 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 the New Company was largely due. Their representatives were decked with baronetcies and for. 1702-17] Union of New and Old Companies 701 knighthoods and entrusted with powers grandiloquently described, by one of those who possessed them, as "Consular and Ministerial dignity and authority, constituted by His Majesty upon a Parliamentary and National establishment." Pretentious titles of this kind were but meaningless sounds in the ears of Moghul officials and aroused a contemptuous resentment amongst the Old Company's servants. The attempt to maintain a resident ambassador at the Imperial Court proved a dismal failure. Sir William Norris, a former member of Parliament, was sent out from England, and after many difficulties and hindrances succeeded in reaching the camp of Aurangzeb. His mission was ruined by the precipitate action of Sir Nicholas Waite, who had without authority pledged the Company to undertake the defence of the whole Moghul empire by sea-a task that was utterly beyond their power. Embittered by failure, the unfortunat ambassador returned to carry on an undignified squabble with Waite and to die on the voyage home. 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 dispatch 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 702 The French in India [1607-64 but certain definite territorial concessions. It was the most complete and formal recognition yet made by the supreme Power in India of the status of a western invader. As Burke said, the East India Company then became an integral part of the Moghul empire. Unfortunately, the recognition came just before that empire subsided into impotence; and experience was to prove that grants of this nature often meant no more than permission for the Company to wrest the ceded territory, if they could, from the hands of the Emperor's enemies. 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 nom et accueil de la bannière de France." But his disingenuous attempt to fish in troubled waters was defeated by the diplomatic skill of Oldenbarneveldt. 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 the 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 1665-1706] French settlements in India 703 royal interference is over all the Company's early history. It is typified in their pledge of faith and homage to the King, their engagement to present a crown and sceptre at the beginning of each new reign, and the royal command that the Company should strive, not only for the advancement of commerce, but also for the grandeur of the French name and the propagation of the Christian faith. The fatal flaw, inherent from the first, was that the Company was suspect in the eyes of the mercantile community. In spite of royal pressure, their contributions were but a fraction of those provided by the bureaucracy and the noblesse. Merchants were not forthcoming to serve on the boards of direction; and in a very few years the Crown found it necessary to nominate the Directors; and the Company became almost a subordinate department of State. While the English factories only gradually and against the will of the Company grew into settlements, the French consciously aimed at colonisation. All the first fleets that left the ports of France carried out emigrants. The English pioneers as a rule were rough seacaptains and traders. The French sent out men of gentle birth. Souchu de Rennefort, de Beausse and de Montauban, who sailed for Madagascar in 1665, were men of rank. Mondevergue, who went out in 1666, was a Marquis; de La Haye who commanded the fleet of 1670 had been a distinguished officer in the French army. The first expeditions of the Company were frittered away in the attempt to revive the colonising projects of Richelieu in Madagascaran 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, François Martin laid the foundations of Pondicherry in 1674; and two years later a factory was established at Chandernagore 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 704 The Ostend Company [1714-31 partly falls outside our present period. This association had a strongly marked cosmopolitan aspect. It was the resultant of three forces. There was first the earnest desire of the Austrian Netherlands, now recovering from the War of the Spanish Succession, to regain their old participation in the Indian trade, which dated back to a time prior to the discovery of the Cape route. To this must be added the Emperor Charles VI's dream of an Imperial sea-power, based not only on the ports of the Low Countries but on those of the Adriatic, to counterbalance the maritime supremacy of the Protestant nations. In the third place the Association, being worked mainly by the aid of renegade Eng lish and Dutch factors, represented to some extent the old opposition to the sole-market theory of the Indian trade, which, having been defeated at home both in England and Holland, transferred itself over the frontier to organise one more assault on the great monopolist companies. The association was not formally chartered till 1722, though commissions for single voyages were granted so early as 1714. The letters of the Eng lish Company for many years breathe stern denunciations against all who should enter into relations with the "Interlopers." The existence of the Ostend Company gave rise to the thorniest of diplomatic questions; and England and Holland united in strong representations against its continuance. In the end the Emperor sacrificed the Company to his desire to see the Pragmatic Sanction ratified. It was suspended in 1727 and suppressed in 1731, after which date its two factories in Bengal and Madras fell into decay. Save for this interlude, it was by 1720 already predetermined that the future struggle for pre-eminence in India lay between the 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 1700-20. 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 |