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In 1661, the Portuguese gave Bombay as a part of dowry
to their princess, Catherine of Braganza, on her marriage
with Charles II. The Company acquired Bombay from
Charles II on lease at an annual rent of ten pounds in
1668. The English secured Bombay at a very crucial moment
when Surat was being repeatedly attached by the
Marathas.
Gerald Aungier, who was the first governor of Bombay
(1669 to 1677), was the true founder of Bombay’s
greatness. He resolved to make Bombay completely safe
for shipping and trade, free from danger on the landside
from the Marathas and on the sea-side from the
Portuguese and the pirates of the coast.
Under Aungier, Bombay became a safe asylum for all
merchants and manufacturers. He established vigorous
and strict discipline over all the inhabitants of the city
and allowed every community to enjoy the free exercise
of its religion. During his governorship the old
Panchayat system was revived, so that justice was
actually brought to the door of the people in minor cases.
He saved English lives and properties during Shivaji’s
second sack of Surat in 1670
However under Aungier, successors began the general
decline of Bombay which continued till the close of the
first quarter of the eighteenth century. The peaceful and
orderly government of Aungier was in striking contrast
with the terror which prevailed under Sir John Child.
During this period interlopers (The individual English
merchants independent of the Company’s control)
created problems. At the close of the seventeenth
century, these interlopers took to open piracy. In 1686
two pirate ships captured several Mughal vessels in the
Red Sea, upon which the Mughal governor of Surat
violently reacted against the English, particularly at Sir
John Child, President of Surat and Governor of Bombay.
Though John Child punished the interlopers savagely
whenever they were caught, the evil grew more rampant.
These pirates and interlopers were the principal cause
of the disastrous war which the English subsequently
waged with the Mughal’s.
John Child got really frightened and hastened to assure
the Emperor Aurangzeb, who was then in the Deccan,
that he had really no hostile intention. But Aurangzeb
was not deceived by Child’s profession of friendship;
he issued orders that the English should be treated as
enemies. At last, John Child supplicated the emperor for
peace, whereupon the latter imposed the following
humiliating terms upon the English:
All sums due from the Company to the Mughal subjects
should be immediately paid;
Recompense should be given for such losses as the
Mughal’s had suffered; and
The hated Sir John Child should leave India within nine
months.
ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS AT
EASTERN COAST
The English were permitted to trade in Masulipatnam in
1611 and in 1630 secured the ‘golden farman’ from the
Sultan of Golcunda (1632) which ensured safety and
prosperity of their trade. Masulipatnam was the chief
sea port of the great inland kingdom of Golcunda and
largely traded in diamonds, rubies and textiles of that
region.
In 1639, Francis Day obtained the site of Madras from
the Raja of Chandragiri with permission to build a
fortified factory, which was named Fort St. George. It
was only with the foundation of Madras by the English
in 1639, their arrival at Hughli in 1650 and their
establishment of a factory at Balasore in north Orissa
that the position of the English on the eastern coast
became strong and permanent. Madras soon replaced
Masulipatam as the headquarters of the English on the
Coromandel Coast, and in 1641 all the English settlements
in eastern India (Bengal, Bihar and Orissa) and the
Coromandel were placed under the control of the
president and council of Fort St George.
ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS IN BENGAL
and Pipli. The English also succeeded to establish their
factory at Hugli in 1651, followed by those at Patna,
Dacca and Kasimbazar.
In 1667, Aurangzeb gave the English a Farman for trade
in Bengal, and five years later, in 1672, the Mughal
governor, Shaista Khan, issued an order confirming all
the privileges already acquired by the English.
In 1686, the hostilities broke out between the English
and the Mughal government in Bengal. In retaliation for
the sack of Hughli (October 1686) the English captured
the imperial forts on the east of the Midnapore district,
and at Balasore But the English were forced to leave
Hughli and to retire to an unhealthy place at the mouth
of the river.
After the conclusion of peace between the Company
and the Mughal government in February 1690, Job
Charnock returned to Bengal as agent, where he
established an English factory on February 10, 1691. On
the same day, an imperial order was issued permitting
the English “to contentedly continue their trade” in
Bengal on payment of Rs. 3,000 a year in lieu of all dues.
This marked the foundation of Calcutta, which was
destined to develop as one of the greatest Indian cities.
The rebellion of Sobha Singh a Zamindar in the district
of Burdwan, gave an opportunity to the English to fortify
their settlement at Sutanuti in 1696. They were permitted
by Azimush Shah Governor of Bengal, to purchase the
Zamindari of the three villages of Sutanuti, Kalikata and
Govindpur on payment of Rs. 1,200 to the old
proprietors.
In 1696, a serious rebellion occurred in Bengal under an
Afghan named Rahim Khan who plundered the whole
country along the Hughli. Alarmed by rebellion and the
inability of the Mughal viceroy to put it down, the
English at Calcutta as well as the Dutch at Chinsura
asked permission to fortify their factories and to raise
troops. The viceroy ordered them, in general terms, to
defend themselves; so the English began to build walls
and bastions round their factory 1697. This was the
origin of Fort William, named after King William III. Next
year they got the permission to rent, besides Calcutta,
the villages of Sutanuti and Govindpur. The security of
Calcutta, which began with the building of the fort, was
now completely assured.
In 1700, the directors constituted Bengal as a separate
presidency independent of Madras, and nominated Sir
Charles Eyre as its first president. In 1701, Aurangzeb,
who had often suspected the English of piratical acts
and was now confirmed in his suspicions by the two
rival English Companies accusing each other of piracy,
ordered the general arrest of all the Europeans in India.
Aurangzeb’s death in 1707 made the English at Calcutta
fear that their growing trade would be swept away by
the coming tide of civil war and anarchy. After protracted
negotiations, the English got confirmation of their
privileges from the new emperor Shah Alam and the de
facto ruler of Bengal Murshid Quli Khan. They looked
hopefully to peace and prosperous trade.
The period from 1708 up to the middle of the eighteen
century, saw the expansion of the Company’s trade and
influence in India. The most important event in the
history of the Company during these years was the
diplomatic mission led by John Surman in 1715 to the
court of the Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar, resulting in
the grant of three famous Farmans addressed to the
officials in Bengal, Hyderabad and Gujarat. The Farmans
gave the Company many valuable privileges.
In Bengal it exempted the Company’s imports and
exports from additional customs duties, excepting the
annual payment of Rs. 3,000 as settled earlier. The
Company was allowed to rent additional lands around
Calcutta. In Hyderabad, the company’s old privilege of
freedom from dues in trade was retained, and it had to
pay only the existing rent for Madras. At Surat, the
Company was exempted from the levy of all duties for
its exports and imports in lieu of an annual payment of
Rs. 10,000; and the coins of the Company minted at
Bombay were to have currency throughout the Mughal
Empire. In the subsequent years, the English East India
Company began to extend its territorial claims; and by
the end of the eighteenth century, it succeeded in
establishing its Paramountacy
4. THE DANES
Danish India is a term for the former colonies of Denmark
in India. The colonies included the town of Tranquebar
in present-day Tamil Nadu state, Serampore in presentday
West Bengal, and the Nicobar Islands, currently
part of India’s union territory of the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands. The Danish colonies in India were
founded by the Danish East India Company, which was
active from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The Danish
colony’s capital was Fort Dansborg at Tranquebar,
established in 1620, on the Coromandel Coast. In 1779 it
was turned over to the government by the chartered
company and became a Danish crown colony.
In 1789 the Andaman Islands became a British
possession. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British
attacked Danish shipping, and devastated the Danish
East India Company’s India trade. In May 1801 - August
1802 and 1808 - 20 September 1815 the British even
occupied Dansborg and Frederiksnagore. The Danish
colonies went into decline, and the British ultimately
took possession of them, making them part of British
India: Serampore was sold to the British in 1839, and
Tranquebar and most minor settlements in 1845 (11
October 1845 Frederiksnagore sold; 7 November 1845
other continental Danish India settlements sold); on 16
October 1869 all Danish rights to the Nicobar Islands,
which since 1848 had been gradually abandoned, were
sold to Britain.
5. THE FRENCH
“Compagnie des Indes Orientales” popularly known as
the French East India Company was formed by Colbert
(the famous minister of Louis XIV), under state
patronage in 1664. In 1667 an expedition was sent under
Francois Caron, who established the first French factory
India at Surat. In 1669 Marcara founded another French
factory at Masulipatam by securing patent from the
Sultan of Golcunda.
In July 1672, French squadron under De La Haye
occupied San Thome near Madras, which the Sultan of
Golcunda had conquered from the Portuguese ten years
earlier. This led to an alliance of the Dutch and the Sultan
of Golcunda against the French. Faced with a critical
situation, De la Haye had to capitulate (September 6,
1674) and surrender San Thome to the Dutch who
allowed the Sultan of Golcunda to reoccupy it.
Meanwhile, in 1673, Francois Martin, director of the
Masulipatam factory, obtained from Sher Khan Lodi,
governor of Valikondapuram, a site for a factory, which
latter developed into Pondicherry and its first governor
was Francois Martin. In Bengal, the French laid the
foundation of their famous settlement of Chandranagar
in 1690 on a site granted to them by Shayista Khan.
In 1701 Pondicherry was made the head-quarters of all
possessions of the French in the East, and Martin was
appointed director general of French affairs in India. It
has been held that Martin foresaw the decadence of the
Indian powers and planned the acquisition of Indian
predominance for the French “as the essential condition
of free commercial development”. He completed the
building of Fort Louis at Pondicherry, helped to
strengthen the Company’s position at Chandranagar in
Bengal and attempted to revive even the declining
French factory at Surat.
The death of Martin in December 1706 marked the
decline of French power in India, which persisted till
1719 and led to the reconstitution of the company in
1720. The reconstituted company named the United
Compagnie des Indes was formed by a royal edict and
entrusted with the whole of French colonial trade.
The French power in India was revived under Lenoir
and Dumas (governors) between 1720 and 1742. They
occupied Mahe in the Malabar, Yanam in Coromandel
(both in 1725) and Karikal in Tamil Nadu (1739). The
arrival of Dupleix as French governor in India in 1724
saw the beginning of Anglo-French conflict (Carnatic
wars) resulting in their final defeat in India, at the battle
of Wandiwash in 1760.
In England there was a growing demand for Bengal
goods, especially for silk and saltpeter; and the trade of
For Advertisemnet
the Bengal factories consequently increased. In 1633,
the Mughal governor of Orissa gave the English
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merchants permission to establish factories at
9810741828/991052863
Hariharapur (Near the mouth of Mahanadi), Balasore
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