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tated from pursuing Colbert's wise and far-reaching schemes of commercial and colonial expansion. Her naval development was checked and her maritime enterprise took no fresh flight until after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. In short, the French and Dutch had mutually disabled each other, to the great advantage, for operations beyond sea, of the English, who thenceforward begin to draw slowly but continuously to the foremost place in Asiatic conquest and commerce.

From this period of great Continental wars in Europe we may date the beginning of substantial prosperity for our East Indian trade; for it was then that the English made good their footing on the Indian coasts. We learn from Macaulay's History that during the twenty years succeeding the Restoration, the value of the annual imports from Bengal alone rose from £8000 to £300,000, and that the gains of the Company from their monopoly of the import of East Indian produce were almost incredible. In 1685 the headquarters of their business on the Western side was transferred from Surat to Bombay; in 1687 the chief Bengal agency was removed from Hugli to Calcutta; and Madras had become their central post on the eastern shores of the Indian peninsula.

The Company were liberally encouraged by the government of the last two Stuarts, who granted ample charters, and even despatched armed reinforcements to their settlements. After the establishment of these three principal stations-which became afterwards, as Presidency towns, the cardinal points where the British

dominion was first fixed and whence it issued out into spacious radiation-the East India Company resolved, in 1687, to assume independent jurisdiction within their own settlements, to fortify them, to coin money, to collect customs, and to act, in short, as a self-governing body within their own limits. They now began to enlist a native militia for the purpose of using their chartered right of protecting themselves by reprisals against oppression or direct attack, and of fighting for their own hand in quarrels with the local governors or petty chiefs. The new system thus introduced contained the germ out of which these scattered trading settlements eventually expanded into wide territorial dominion; and the incipient weakness of the Moghul Empire furnished both the motives and the opportunity for the change.

So long as the imperial administration prevailed up to the limits of its farthest Indian provinces and was effectively felt on either seaboard, the English merchants were quite satisfied with licenses allowing them to compound for the export duties, with grants of land for building their factories, and with other privileges for which they paid readily while they got their money's worth. But the outlying possessions of the empire were now no longer peacefully subordinate. The Maratha chief Sivaji was ranging about the Deccan, invading the Karnatic, and dominating the whole upper line of the west coast, not excluding the seaports and settlements held by Europeans. In 1664 he had pillaged Surat, where the English factory was bravely

RISE OF THE MARATHAS

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and successfully defended by Sir George Oxenden; and in 1671 he had levied heavy contributions on Surat and the Portuguese colony. Nor could the Moghul governors give any trustworthy protection, for Aurangzib's attention was distracted by a revolt in Afghanistan, which he was totally unable to put down, despite a

long and arduous campaign. When he returned to the Deccan, he found his enemies stronger than before in

the field.

After Sivaji's death in 1680, his son Sambaji continued the revolt; the imperial armies were gradually worn out by incessant warfare, by futile pursuits of an enemy that always avoided a decisive blow, and by the disorganization of the central government caused by the emperor's long absence from his capital upon

distant campaigns. Aurangzib had destroyed the Mohammedan kingdoms of Golkonda and Bijapur in Southern India, which might at any rate have served as breakwaters against the spread of the Maratha insurrection; and the war was now becoming epidemic. The dislocation of the native administration led to the consolidation of the foreign settlements, since the Companies were compelled for their self-preservation to act upon this opportunity of taking up a more independent position in the country. The relaxation of the supreme legitimate authority loosened its hold on the more distant governorships, and with local irresponsibility came local oppression. The merchants became exposed to irregular extortion and capricious ransoming by subordinate officials who could give them no valid guarantees or regular safeguard; while their immunities and privileges, even when obtained at the capital from the emperor's ministers, were often disregarded with impunity at the seaports.

Under these circumstances, the English Company convinced themselves, after much anxious discussion, that the success and comparative security of the Dutch, as formerly of the Portuguese, had been founded on their practice of seizing and openly fortifying posts strong enough to render the holders independent of the imperial pleasure, and to resist the arbitrary exactions of neighbouring officials or potentates. Their assumed jurisdiction was still to be confined entirely to the seacoast, and its object went no further than the security of their trade. But the English soon dis