EARLY EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS A Portuguese expedition under Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon in the year 1497, and, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, cast anchor off the city of Calicut on the 2oth of May 1498, after a prolonged voyage of nearly eleven months.
Portuguese Expeditions.—After staying nearly six months on the Malabar coast, da Gama returned to Europe by the same route as he had come, bearing with him the following letter from the zamorin, or Hindu raja of Malabar, to the king of Portugal: "Vasco da Gama, a nobleman of your household, has visited my kingdom and has given me great pleasure. In my kingdom there is abundance of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, pepper, and precious stones. What I seek from thy country is gold, silver, coral and scarlet." The arrival of da Gama at Lisbon was celebrated with great rejoicings. A second expedition, consisting of thirteen ships and twelve hundred soldiers, under the command of Cabral, was despatched in 1500. Ultimately he reached Calicut, and estab lished factories both there and at Cochin, in the face of active hostility from the Indians. In 1502 the king of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting him "lord of the navigation, conquest, and trade of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India." In that year Vasco da Gama sailed again to the East, with a fleet numbering twenty vessels. He formed an alliance with the rajas of Cochin and Cannamore against the zamorin of Calicut, and bombarded the latter in his palace. In 1503 the great Alfonso d'Albuquerque is first heard of, as in command of one of three expeditions from Portugal. In 15o5 a large fleet of twenty sail and fifteen hundred men was sent under Francisco de Almeida, the first Portuguese viceroy of India. In 1509 Albuquerque suc ceeded as governor, and widely extended the area of Portuguese influence. Having failed in an attack upon Calicut. he seized Goa, which from 1530 became the capital of Portuguese India. Then, sailing round Ceylon, he captured Malacca, the key of the navigation of the Indian archipelago, and opened a trade with Siam and the Spice Islands (Moluccas). Lastly, he sailed back westwards, and, after penetrating into the Red Sea, and building a fortress at Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, returned to Goa only to die in 1515. In 1524 Vasco da Gama came out to the East for the third time, and he too died at Cochin.
Decline of the Portuguese.—For exactly a century, from 150o to 1600, the Portuguese enjoyed a monopoly of Oriental trade. Their three objects were conquest, commerce and con version, and for all three their position on the Malabar coast strip was remarkably well adapted. Their trade relations with Vijayanagar were very close, when that great empire was at the height of its power; but with its fall began the decline of Portu gal. During the whole of the i6th century the Portuguese dis puted with the Mohammedans the supremacy of the Indian seas. After the middle of the 17th century the Asiatic trade of Portugal practically disappeared, and now only Goa, Daman and Diu are left to her as relics of her former greatness.
Dutch Settlements.—The Dutch were the first European nation to break through the Portuguese monopoly. During the i6th century Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam became the great emporia whence Indian produce, imported by the Portuguese, was distributed to Germany and even to England. Private corn panies for trade with the East were formed in many parts of the United Provinces, but in 1602 they were all amalgamated by the states-general into "The United East India Company of the Neth erlands." Within a few years the Dutch had established factories on the continent of India, in Ceylon, in Sumatra, on the Persian Gulf and on the Red Sea, besides having obtained exclusive pos session of the Moluccas. In 1618 they laid the foundation of the city of Batavia in Java. In the far East the Dutch ruled without a rival, and gradually expelled the Portuguese from almost all. their territorial possessions.
Decline of the Dutch.—The knell of Dutch supremacy was sounded by Clive, when in 1758 he attacked the Dutch at Chinsura by land and water, and forced them to an ignominious capitula tion. In the great French war from 1781 to 1811 England wrested from Holland every one of her colonies, though Java was restored in 1816 and Sumatra in exchange for Malacca in 1824. At the present time the Dutch flag flies nowhere on the mainland of India.
British Expeditions.—The earliest English attempts to reach the East were the expeditions under John Cabot in 1497 and 1498. Their objective was not so much India as Japan (Cipangu), of which they only knew vaguely as a land of spices and silks, and which they hoped to reach by sailing westward. They failed, but discovered Newfoundland, and sailed along the coast of America from Labrador to Virginia. In 1553 the ill-fated Sir Hugh Wil loughby attempted to force a passage along the north of Europe and Asia; and many subsequent attempts were made at the North West Passage from 1576 to 1616.
East India Company.—The "Governor and Company of Mer chants of London trading into the East Indies" was founded by Queen Elizabeth on the last day of 1600, and the first expedition of four ships under James Lancaster left Torbay towards the end of April 16o1, and reached Achin in Sumatra on the 5th of June 1602, returning with a cargo of spices. Soon the English began to feel their way towards the mainland of India itself. In 1608 Captain Hawkins visited Jahangir at Agra, and obtained per mission to build a factory at Surat. Wherever the English went they were met by the hostility of the Portuguese ; and on the 29th of November 1612 the Portuguese admiral with four ships attempted to capture the English vessels under Captain Best at Swally, off the mouth of the Tapti river ; but the Portuguese were severely defeated, and the action formed the beginning of British maritime supremacy in Indian seas. The first fruits of the victory were the foundation of a factory at Surat and at other places round the Gulf of Cambay and in the interior. From the imperial firman of December 1612 dates the British settlement on the mainland of India.
Rivalry with Portugal.—The ten years that elapsed be tween the battle of Swally and the British capture of Ormuz in 1622 sufficed to decide the issue in the struggle for supremacy between the British and the Portuguese. The latter, unwillingly linked to the dying power of Spain, were already decadent, and on the 2oth of January 1615 a great Portuguese armada, consisting of six great galleons, three smaller ships, two galleys and sixty rowed barges, was defeated in another action in Swally roads by Captain Nicholas Downton, in command of four British vessels. In 1618 the English opened trade between Surat and Jask in the Persian Gulf, and in 1620 gained a victory over the Portuguese fleet there. Early in 1622 the English fleet gained a second decisive victory, and captured Ormuz, the pearl of the Portuguese possessions in Asia.
Rivalry with the Dutch.—The struggle with the young and growing power of Holland was destined to be a much more serious affair than that with the exhausted power of Portugal. They were already too strongly entrenched in the Indian archipelago for English competition to avail there, and the intense rivalry between the two nations led to the tragedy of Amboyna in 1623, when Governor Van Speult put to torture and death nine English men on a charge of conspiring to take the Dutch forts. This out rage was not avenged until the time of Cromwell (1654), and in the meantime the English abandoned the struggle for the Spice Islands, and turned their attention entirely to the mainland of India. In 1616 the Dutch began to compete with the English at Surat, and their piracies against native vessels led to the Moghul governor seizing English warehouses ; but soon the Indian author ities learnt to discriminate between the different European nations, and the methods of the Dutch brought them into disfavour.
Madras Settlements.—In 1611 Captain Hippon founded the first English settlement (Pettapoli) in the Bay of Bengal, which finally perished through pestilence in 1687. In 1639 Francis Day founded Madras, building Fort St. George (1640), and transfer ring thither the chief factory from Masulipatam. Here the Eng lish obtained their first grant of Indian soil, apart from the plots on which their factories were built. In 1653 Madras was raised to an independent presidency, and in 1658 all the settlements in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast were made subordinate to Fort St. George.
Its position half way down the Indian seaboard gave it both strategic and com mercial importance, while it lay beyond the authority of the Moghuls, and so could be fortified without offending them. In 1661 Charles II. received Bombay from Portugal as part of the Infanta Catherine's dowry, but effective possession was not taken until 1665, and in 1668 Charles handed the island over to the com pany. In the year 167o Gerald Aungier fortified the island, and so became the true founder of its prosperity. In 1674 a treaty was entered into with Sivaji. In 1682 Sir Josiah Child at home and Sir John Child in India formed a combination, which recognized that in the struggle between the Moghul and the Mahrattas the English must meet force with force; and in 1687 Bombay sup planted Surat as the chief seat of the English in India.