Empire, for which bis three sons were fighting, sea fight off Swally (Suvali) in 1612. Pne could not be held together. Internal disorder first factory, at Surat, was for many years and Maratha encroachments continued during the most important English foothold in the the reigns of his successors, and in 1739 a fresh East. Its establishment was followed by danger appeared in the person of Naair Shah, others, including Fort St. George, Madras, the Persian conqueror, who carried all before (1640) and Hughli (1651). In the history him. On his withdrawal, leaving Mahomed of these early years of British enterprise in Shah on the throne, the old intrigues recom- India the cession of Bombay (1661) as part of menced and the Marathas began to make the the dower of Catherine of Braganza stands out most of the opportunity offered to them by as a land-mark: it also illustrates the weakpuppet rulers at Delhi and by almost uni-ness of the Portuguese at that date, since in versal discord throughout what had been the return the King of England undertook to prostrong position in Southern India, which had at Murshidabad, and the price of this honour become independent of Delhi and was divided was put at 22,340,000 in addition to the grant Into three large States-Hyderabad, Tanjore, to the Company of the land round Calcutta and Mysore and a number of petty states now known as the District of the twenty-four under local chieftains. In the affairs of these Parganas. In the year after Plassey, Clive States Dupleix, when Governor of Pondicher- was appointed Governor of Bengal and in ry, had intervened with success, and when that capacity sent troops against the French Madras was captured by a French squadron, in Madras and in person led a force against under La Bourdonnais (1746) Dupleix wished the Oudh army that was threatening Mir to hand it over to the Nawab of Arcot-a Jafar, in each case with success. From 1760 deputy of the Nizam's who ruled in the Car-to 1765 Clive was in England. During his Mughal Empire. There is little to add to the history of Mahomedan India. Emperors continued to reign in name at Delhi up to the middle of the 19th century, but their territory and power had long since disappeared, being swallowed up either by the Marathas or by the British. European Settlements. The voyage of Vasco da Gama to India in 1498 was what turned the thoughts of the Portuguese to the formation of a great Empire in the East. That idea was soon realized, for from 1500 onwards, constant expeditions were sent to India and the first two Viceroys in India-Almeida and Albuquerque-laid the foundations of a great Empire and of a great trade monopoly. Goa, taken in 1510, became the capital of Portuguese India and remains to this day in the hands of its captors, and the countless ruins of churches and forts on the shores of Western India, as also farther East at Malacca, testify to the zeal with which the Portuguese endeavoured to propagate their religion and to the care they took to defend their settlements. There were great soldiers and great missionaries among them-Albuquerque, da Cunha, da Castro in the former class, St. Francis Xavier in the latter. But the glory of Empire loses something of its lustre when it has to be paid for, and the constant drain of men and money from Portugal, necessitated by the attacks made on their possessions in India and Malaya, was found almost intolerable. The junction of Portugal with Spain, which lasted from 1580 to 1640, also tended to the downfall of the Eastern Empire and when Portugal became independent again, it was unequal to the task of competing in the East with the Dutch and English. The Dutch had little difficulty in wresting the greater part of their territory from the Portuguese, but the seventeenth century naval wars with England forced them to relax their hold upon the coast of India, and during the French wars between 1795 and 1811 England took all Holland's Eastern possessions, and the Dutch have left in India but few traces of their civilisation and of the once powerful East India Company of the Netherlands. The first English attempts to reach India date from 1496 when Cabot tried to find the North-West passage, and these attempts were repeated all through the sixteenth century. The first Englishman to land in India is said to have been one Thomas Stephens (1579) who was followed by a number of merchant adventurers, but trade between the two countries really dates from 1600 when Elizabeth incorporated the East India Company which had been formed in London. Factories in India were founded only after Portuguese and Dutch position had been overcome, notably in the Not tect the Portuguese in India against their foes-the Marathas and the Dutch. Cromwell. by his treaty of 1654, had already obtained from the Portuguese an acknowledgment of England's right to trade in the East and that right was now threatened, not by the Portuguese, but by Sivaji and by the general disorder prevalent in India. Accordingly, in 1686, the Company turned its attention to acquiring territorial power, and announced its intention to establish such a policy of civil and military power, and create and secure such a large revenue......as may be the foun dation of a large, well-grounded, sure English dominion in India for all time to come. much came of this announcement for some time, and no stand could be made in Bengal against the depredations of Aurangzeb. The foundations of Calcutta (1690) could not be laid by Job Charnock until after a humiliating peace had been concluded with that Emperor, and, owing to the difficulties in which the Company found itself in England, there was little chance of any immediate change for the better. The union of the old East India Company with the new one which had been formed in rivalry to it took place in 1708, and for some years peaceful development fo'lowed; though Bombay was always exposed by sea to attacks from the pirates, who had many strongholds within easy reach of that port, and on land to attacks from the Marathas, The latter danger was felt also in Calcutta. Internal dangers were numerous and still more to be feared. More than one mutiny took place among the troops sent out from England, and rebellions like that led by Keigwin in Bombay threatened to stifle the infant settlements. The public health was bad and the rate of mortality was at times appalling. To cope with such conditions strong men were needed, and the Company was in this respect peculiarly fortunate; the long list of its servants, from Oxenden and Aungier to Hastings and Raffles, contains many names of men who proved themselves good rulers and far-sighted statesmen, the finest Empire-builders the world has known. Attempts to compete with the English were made of course. But the schemes of the Emperor Charles VI to secure a share of the Indian trade were not much more successful than those made by Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia. By the French, who founded Pondicherry and Chandernagore towards the end of the 17th century, much more was achieved, as will be seen from the following outline of the development of British rule. The French Wars. When war broke out between England and France in 1744, the French had acquired a natic. The French, however, kept Madras, repelling an attack by the disappointed Nawab as well as the British attempts to recapture it. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle restored Madras to the English. The fighting had shown the Indian powers the value of European troops, and this was again shown in the next French war (1750-54) when Clive achieved enduring fame by his capture and subsequent defence of Arcot. This war arose from Dupleix supporting candidates for the disputed succes sions at Arcot and Hyderabad while the English at Madras put forward their own nominees. One of Dupleix's officers, the Marquis de Bussy, persuaded the Nizam to take into his pay the army which had established his power, and in return the Northern Circars, between Orissa and Madras, was granted to the absence the Council at Calcutta deposed Mir Jafar and, for a price, put Mir Kasim in his place. This ruler moved his capital to Monghyr, organized an army, and began to intrigue with the Nawab Wazir of Oudh. He soon found, in a dispute over customs dues, an opportunity of quarrelling with the English and the first shots fired by his followers were the signal for a general rising in Bengal. About 200 Englishmen and a number of sepoy were massacred, but his trained regiments were defeated at Gheria and Oodeynullah, and Mir Kasim sought protection from the Nawab of Oudh. But in 1764, after quelling a sepoy mutiny in his own camp by blowing 24 ring. leaders from the guns, Major (Sir Hector) Munro defeated the joint forces of Shah Alam, the Mughal Emperor, and the Nawab of Oudh French. This territory, however, was cap- in the battle of Buxar. In 1765 Clive (now tured by the English in the seven years' war Baron Clive of Plassey) returned as Governor, (1756-63). Dupleix had by then been re- "Two landmarks stand out in his policy. First, called to France. Lally, who had been sent he sought the substance, although not the to drive the English out of India, captured name, of territorial power. under the fiction Fort St. David and invested Madras. But the victory which Colonel (Sir Eyre) Coote won at Wandiwash (1760) and the surrender of Pondicherry and Gingee put an end to the French ambitions of Empire in Southern India. Pondicherry passed more than once from the one nation to the other before settling down to its present existence as a French colony in miniature. Battle of Plassey. While the English were fighting the third French war in the South they became involved in grave difficulties in Bengal, where Siraj-udDaula had acceded to power. The headquarters of the English at Calcutta were threatened by that ruler who demanded they should surrender a refugee and should cease building fortifications. They refused and he marched against them with a large army. Some of the English took to their ships and made oft down the river, the rest surrendered and were cast into the jail known as the "Black Hole." From this small and stilling room 23 persons, out of 146, came out alive the next day. Clive who was at Madras, immediately sailed for Calcutta with Admiral Watson's squadron, recaptured the town (1757), and, as war with the French had been proclaimed, proceeded to take Chandernagore. The Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula then took the side of the French, and Clive, putting forward Mir Jafar as candidate for the Nawab's throne, marched out with an army consisting of 900 Europeans. 2,000 sepoys and 8 pieces of artillery against the Nawab's host of over 50,000. The result was the historic battle of Plassey (June 23) in which Clive, after besitating on the course to be pursued, routed the Nawab Mir Jafar was put on the throne Bu of a grant from the Mughal Emperor. Se- Warren Hastings. The dual system of government that Clive had set up proved a failure and Warren Hastings was appointed Governor, in 1772, to carry out the reforms setuled by the Court of Directors which were to give them the entire care and administration of the revenues. Thus Hastings had to undertake the administrative organization of India, and, in spite of the factious attitude of Philip Francis, with whom he fought a duel and of other members of his Council, he reorganized the civil service, reformed the system of revenue collection, greatly improved the financial position of the Company, and created courts of justice and some semlance of a police force. From 1772 to 1774 he was Governor of Bengal, and from 1774 to 1778 L : he was the first Governor-General, nominated large tracts of territory in lieu of payment under an Act of Parliament passed in the overdue as subsidies for British troops, he ther previous year. His financial reforms, and the won over the Nizam to the British side, and forced contributions he enacted from the after exposing the intrigues of Tipu Sultan with the French, embarked on the fourth Mysore war which ended (1799) in the fall of Seringapatam and the gallant death of Tipu. Part of Mysore, the Carnatic, and Tanjor roughly constituting the Madras Presidency of to-day then passed to British rule. The five Maratha powers the Peshwa of Poona, the Gaekwar of Baroda, Sindhia of Gwalior, Holkar of Indore and the Raja of Nagpurhad still to be brought into the British net. The Peshwa, after being defeated by Holkar, fled to British territory and signed the Treaty of Bassein which led to the third Maratha war (1802-04) as it was regarded by Sindhia and the Raja of Nagpur at a betrayal of Maratha independence. In this the most successful of British campaigns in India, Sir Arthur Wellesley (the Duke of Wellington) and General (Lord) Lake carries all before them, the one by his victories of Assaye and Argaum and the other at Aligad, and Laswari. Later operations, such as Colonel Monson's retreat through Central India were less fortunate. The great acquisitions of territory made under Lord Wellesley proved so expensive that the Court of Directors, becoming impatient, sent out Lord Cornwallis a second time to make peace at any price. Не, however, died soon after his arrival in India; and Sir George Barlow carried on the govern. ment (1805-7) until the arrival of a stronger ruler, Lord Minto. He managed to keep the peace in India for six years, and to add to British dominions by the conquest of Java and Mauritius. His foreign policy was marked by another new departure, inasmuch as he opened relations with the Punjab, Persia, and Afghanistan, and concluded a treaty with Ranjit Singh, at Lahore, which made that Sikh ruler the loyal ally of the British for life. The successor of Lord Minto was Lord Moira, who found himself obliged almost at once to declare war on the Gurkhas of Nepal, who had been encroaching on British territory. After initial reverses, the English, under General Ochterlony, were successful and the Treaty of Sagauli (1816) was drawn up which defines British relations with Nepal to the present day. subsequently extended to Madras and Bombay. For this success Lord Moira was made Marquis Lord Cornwallis is better known for his intro- of Hastings. In the same year he made prepaduction, on orders from England, of the Per-rations for the last Maratha war (1817-18) manent Settlement in Bengal. (See article which was made necessary by the lawless conon Land Revenue). A third Mysore war was duct of the Pindaris, gangs of Pathan or Rohilla waged during his tenure of office which ended origin, whose chief patrons were the rulers of in the submission of Tipu Sultan. Sir John Lord Wellesley's Policy. Native States. The large number of 120,000 that he collected for this purpose destroyed the Pindaris, annexed the dominions of the rebellious Peshwa of Poona, protected the Rajput States, made Sindhia enter upon a new treaty, and compelled Holkar to give up part of his territory. Thus Lord Hastings established the British power more firmly than ever, and when he resigned, in 1823, all the Native States outside the Punjab had become parts of the political system and British interests were permanently secured from the Persian Gulf to Singapore. Lord Amherst followed Lord Hastings, and his five years' rule (1823-28) are memorable for the first Burmese war and the capture of Bharatpur. The former opera i ! tion was undertaken owing to the insolent de mands and raids of the Burmese, and resulted in the Burmese ceding Assam, Aracan, and the coast of Martaban and their claims to the lower provinces. The capture of Bharatpur by Lord Combermere (1826) wiped out the repulse which General Lake had received there twenty years earlier. A disputed succession on this occasion led to the British intervention. Social Reform. A former Governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, was the next Governor-General. His epitaph by Macaulay, says: "He abolished cruel rites; he effaced humiliating : distinctions; he gave liberty to the expression of public opinion; his constant study was to elevate the intellectual and moral character of the nations committed to his charge." Some of his financial reforms, forced on him from England, and his widening of the gates by which educated Indians could enter the service of the Company, were most unpopular at the time, but were eclipsed by the acts he took for the abolition of Sati, or widow-burning, and the suppression-with the help of Captain Sleeman of the professional hereditary assassins known as Thays. In 1832 he annexed Cachar, and, two years later, Coorg. The incompetence of the ruler of Mysore forced him to take that State also under British administration-where it remained until 1881. His rule was marked in other ways by the despatch of the first steamship that made the passage from Bombay to Suez, and by his settlement of the long educational controversy in favour of the advocates of instruction in English and the vernaculars. Lord William Bentinck left India (1835) with his programme of reforms unfinished. The new Charter Act of 1833 had brought to a close the commercial business of the Company and emphasized their position as rulers of an Indian Empire in trust for the Crown. By it the whole administration, as well as the legislation of the country, was placed in the hands of the Governor-General in Council, and authority was given to create a Presidency of Agra. Before his retirement Bentinck assumed the statutory title of Governor General of India (1834), thus marking the progress of consolidation since Warren Hastings in 1774 became the first Governor-General of Fort William. Sir Charles Metcalfe, being senior member of Council, succeeded Lord William Bentinck, and during his short tenure of office earried into execution his predecessor's measures for giving entire liberty to the press. Afghan Wars. in Central Asia and partly to place on the throne at Kabul the dethroned ruler Shah Shuja in place of Dost Mahomed. The latter object was easily attained (1839) and for two years Afghanistan remained in the military occupation of the British. In 1841 Sir Alexander Burnes was assassinated in Kabul and Sir William Macnaghten suffered the same fate in an interview with the son of Dost Mahomed. The British Commander in Kabul, Gen. Elphinstone, was old and feeble, and after two months' delay he led his army of 4,500 and 12,000 camp followers back towards India in the depth of winter. Between Kabul and Jallalabad the whole force perished, either at the hands of the Afghans or from cold, and Dr. Brydon was the only survivor who reached the latter city. Lord Ellenborough succeeded Lord Auckland and was persuaded to send an army of retribution to relieve Jallalabad. One force under Gen. Pollock relieved Jallalabad and marched on Kabul, while Gen. Nott, advancing from Kandahar, captured Ghazni and joined Pollock at Kabul (1842). The bazaar at Kabul was blown up, the prisoners rescued, and the army returned to India leaving Dost Mahomed to take undisputed possession of his throne. The drama ended with a bombastic proclamation from Lord Ellenborough and the parade through the Punjab of the (spurious) gates of Somnath taken from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni. Sikh Wars. Lord Ellenborough's other wars-the conquest of Sind by Sir Charles Napier and the suppression of an outbreak in Gwalior-were followed by his recall, and the appointment of Sir Henry (1st Lord) Hardinge to be Governor-General. A soldier Governor-General was not unacceptable, for it was felt that a trial of strength was imminent between the British and the remaining Hindu power in India, the Sikhs. Ranjit Singh, the founder of the Sikh Kingdom, had died in 1839, loyal to the end to the treaty he had made with Metcalfe thirty years earlier. He left no son capable of ruling, and the khalsa, or central council of the Sikh army, was burning to measure its strength with the British sepoys. The intrigues of two men, Lal Singh and Fej Singh, to obtain the supreme power led to their crossing the Sutlej and invading British territory. Sir Hugh Gough, the Commander-in-Chief, and the Governor-General hurried to the frontier, and within three weeks four pitched battles were fought-at Mudki, Ferozeshah, Aliwal and Sobraon. The Sikhs were driven across the Sutlej and Lahore surrendered to the British, but the province was not annexed. By the terms of peace the infant Dhuleep Singh was recognized as Rajah; Major Henry Lawrence was appointed Resident, to assist the Sikh Council of Regency, at Lahore the Jullundur Doab was added to British territory; the Sikh army was limited; and a British force was sent to garrison the Punjab on behalf of the child Rajah. Lord Hardinge returned to England (1848) and was succeeded by Lord Dalhousie, the greatest of Indian proconsuls. With the appointment of Lord Auckland as Governor-General (1836-42) there began a new era of war and conquest. Before leaving London he announced that he looked with exultation to the prospect of "promoting education and knowledge, and of extending the blessings of good Government and happiness to millions in India; " but his administration was almost exclusively comprised in a fatal expedition to Afghanistan, which dragged in its train the annexation of Sind, the Sikh wars, and the inclusion of Baluchistan in the protectorate of India. The first Afghan war was under- In the attack on the Sikh position at Chillantaken partly to counter the Russian advancewala the British lost 2,400 officers and men, Dalhousie had only been in India a few months when the second Sikh war broke out. From that centre the mutiny spread through the besides four guns and the colours of three regi- the sepoys at Meerut rose in mutiny, cut down ments: but before reinforcements could arrive a few Europeans, and, unchecked by the large from England, bringing Sir Chartes Napier as European garrison, went off to Delhi where Commander-in-Chief, Lord Gough had re- next morning the Mahomedans rose. stored his reputation by the victory of Gujrat which absolutely destroyed the Sikh army. As a consequence the Punjab was annexed and became a British province (1849), its pacification being so well carried out, under the two Lawrences that on the outbreak of the Mutiny eight years later it remained not only quiet but North-Western Provinces and Oudh into Lower Bengal. Risings in the Punjab were put down by Sir John Lawrence and his subordinates. who armed the Sikhs, and with their help reduced the sepoys, and Lawrence was subsequently able to send a strong body of Sikhs to loyal. In 1852 Lord Dalhousie had again to emaid in the siege of Delhi. The native armies bark on war, this time in Burma, owing to the ill-treatment of British merchants in Rangoon. The lower valley of the Irawaddy was occupied from Rangoon to Prome and annexed, under the name of Pegu, to those provinces that had been acquired in the first Burmese war. British territories were enlarged in many other directions during Lord Dalhousie's tenure of office. His "doctrine of lapse" by which British rule was substituted for Indian in States where continued misrule on the failure of a dynasty made this change possible, came into practice in the cases of Satara, Jhansi, and Nagpur (which last-named State became the Central Provinces) where the rulers died with out leaving male heirs. Oudh was annexed on account of its misrule. Dalhousie left many other marks on India. He reformed the administration from top to bottom, found ed the Public Works Department, initiated the railways, telegraphs and postal system, and completed the great Ganges canal. He also detached the Government of Bengal from the charge of the Governor-General, and summoned representatives of the local Governments to the deliberations of the Government of India. Finally, in education he laid down the lines of a department of public instruction and initiated more practical measures than those devised by his predecessors. It was his misfortune that the mutiny, which SO swiftly followed his resignation, was by many critics in England attributed to his passion for change. The Sepoy Mutiny. as of Madras and Bombay remained for the most part true to their colours. In Central India, the contingents of some of the great chiets joined the rebels, but Hyderabad was kept loyal by the influence of its minister, Sir Salar Jung. The interest of the war centres round Delhi, Cawnpore and Lucknow, though in other places massacres and fighting occurred. The siege of Delhi began on June 8 when Sir Henry Barnard occupied the Ridge outside the town. Barnard died of cholera carly in July, and Thomas Reed, who took his place, was obliged through illness to hand over the command to Archdale Wilson. In August Nicholson arrived with a reinforcement from the Punjab. In the meantime the rebel force in Delhi was constantly added to by the arrival of new bodies of mutineers attacks were frequent and the losses heavy: cholera and sunstroke carried off many victims. on the Ridge and when the final assault was made in September the Delhi army could only parade 4,720 infantry, of whom 1,960 were Europeans. The arrival of siege guns made it possible to advance the batteries on September 8, and by the 13th a breach was made. On the following day three columns were led to the assault, a fourth being held in reserve. Over the ruins of the Kashmir Gate, blown in by Horne and Salkeld, Col. Compbell led his men and Nicholson formed up his troops within the walls. By nightfall the British, with a loss of nearly 1,206 killed and wounded, had onty secured a foothold in the city. Six days' street fighting followed and Delhi was won; but the gallant Nicholson was killed at the head of a storming party. Bahadur Shah was taken prisoner, and his two sons were shot by Captain Hudson. Massacre at Cawnpore. ' a Dalhousie was succeeded by Lord Canning in 1856, and in the following year the sepoys of the Bengal army mutinied and all the valley of the Ganges from Delni to Patna rose in rebellion. The causes of this convulsion are difficult to estimate, but are probably to be found in the unrest which followed the progress of English civilisation; in the spreading of false rumours that the whole of India was to be subdued in the confidence the sepoy troops had acquired in themselves under British leadership; and in the ambition of the educated classes to take a greater share in the government of the country. Added to this, there was in the deposed King of Delhi, Bahadur Shah, centre of growing disaffection. Finally there was the story-not devoid of truth-that the cartridges for the new Enfield rifle were greased with fat that rendered them unclean for both Hindus and Mahomedans, And when the mutiny did break out it found the Army without many of its best officers who were employed in civil work, and the British troops reduced, in spite of Lord Dalhousie's warnings, below the number he Considered essential for safety. On May 10 ram, was itself invested, and the garrison was a At Cawnpore the sepoys mutinied on June 27 and found in Nana Sahib, the heir of the last Peshwa, a willing leader in spite of his former professions of loyalty. There European force of 240 with six guns had to protect 870 non-combatants, and held out for 22 days, surrendering only on the guarantee of the Nans that they should have a safe conduct as far as Allahabad. They were embarking on the boats on the Ganges when fire was opened on them, the men being shot or hacked to pieces before the eyes of their wives and children and the women being mutilated and murdered in Cawnpore to which place they were taken back. Their bodies were thrown down a well just before Havelock, having defeated the Nana's forces, arrived to the relief. In Lucknow a small garrison held out in the Residency from July 2 to September 25 against tremendous odds and enduring the most fearful hardships The relieving force, under Havelock and Out |