Portrait
of Foreigner :British in India -The Coming of the Europeans
The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores
in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese voyager, arrived in Calicut
(modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the west coast. In their search for
spices and Christian converts, the Portuguese challenged Arab supremacy
in the Indian Ocean, and, with their galleons fitted with powerful
cannons, set up a network of strategic trading posts along the Arabian
Sea and the Persian Gulf. In 1510 the Portuguese took over the enclave
of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and political
power in India and which they controlled for nearly four and a half
centuries.
British Invasion
Economic competition among the European nations led to the founding
of commercial companies in England (the East India Company, founded
in 1600) and in the Netherlands (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie--the
United East India Company, founded in 1602), whose primary aim was
to capture the spice trade by breaking the Portuguese monopoly in
Asia. Although the Dutch, with a large supply of capital and support
from their government, preempted and ultimately excluded the British
from the heartland of spices in the East Indies (modern-day Indonesia),
both companies managed to establish trading "factories"
(actually warehouses) along the Indian coast. The Dutch, for example,
used various ports on the Coromandel Coast in South India, especially
Pulicat (about twenty kilometers north of Madras), as major sources
for slaves for their plantations in the East Indies and for cotton
cloth as early as 1609. (The English, however, established their
first factory at what today is known as Madras only in 1639.) Indian
rulers enthusiastically accommodated the newcomers in hopes of pitting
them against the Portuguese. In 1619 Jahangir granted them permission
to trade in his territories at Surat (in Gujarat) on the west coast
and Hughli (in West Bengal) in the east. These and other locations
on the peninsula became centers of international trade in spices,
cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter, calico, and indigo.
English company agents became familiar with Indian customs and
languages, including Persian, the unifying official language under
the Mughals. In many ways, the English agents of that period lived
like Indians, intermarried willingly, and a large number of them
never returned to their home country. The knowledge of India thus
acquired and the mutual ties forged with Indian trading groups gave
the English a competitive edge over other Europeans. The French
commercial interest--Compagnie des Indes Orientales (East India
Company, founded in 1664)--came late, but the French also established
themselves in India, emulating the precedents set by their competitors
as they founded their enclave at Pondicherry (Puduchcheri) on the
Coramandel Coast.
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