In another direction, however, that trade supremacy was being threatened. In India a French and an English East India Company each had trading factories or settlements, the English posts being Bombay, Madras and Cal cutta. They were not subject to the English government, but were under the company, and England had no governmental responsibility whatever in the matter.
In India there prevailed, about the middle of the 18th century, a wild anarchy due to the break-up of the Mogul Empire in 1707, and military adventurers were beginning to make themselves supreme in various parts. The French governor of Pondicherry, Dupleix, a man of great military genius, began to perceive that it was quite possible for Euro peans to gain predominance in the general scramble; and by supporting various native rulers and organizing native troops on the European model he soon made himself one of the chief powers in India. If the English were not to be ousted altogether they too had to organize. Clive copied the French policy so successfully that English influence became pre dominant, and the future of India fell into the hands of the English. The French settlements were restored, but they were no longer military establishments, and France was reduced to tive unimportance. In 1784 the English gov ernment became responsible for the adminis tration of India, while the East India company continued to have a monopoly of the trade.
The dominance of England on the Spanish Main and in India was followed by the ousting of the French in North America. The French had established themselves at the mouth of the Mississippi, and claimed all the country lying between the Saint Lawrence and the Mississippi west of the Allegheny mountains. The Seven Years' War in Euorpe gave England a chance to fight the matter out, and at the Peace of Paris in 1763 England pined Canada, all the land west of the Mississippi, four West Indian islands, and a promise not to fortify the French settlements in India; and from Spain she ob tained Florida.
Thus by 1763 England was mistress of the whole American continent, and the dominant European power in India, while the trade and commerce of the East and West were in her supreme control.
England then felt that as she had done so much to protect the young colonies from being swallowed up by the French they ought to pay part of the cost of their own defence in future.
She accordingly proceeded to increase the tax on colonial imports, and to prevent evasion in stituted a stricter enforcement of the Naviga tion Acts. She also imposed a stamp tax. The colonists, who were no longer afraid of the French, wished to be free to work out their own destiny in their own way. Hence the re volt of the Americans in 1776, ending in the recognition of their independence in 1783. France and Spain had joined in against Eng land, and, although the result was the loss of the American colonies, England was given a welcome opportunity of sweeping French com merce off the seas, and of finally destroying the Dutch shipping. England emerged in 1783 more decidedly than ever the great trading power of the world.
The loss of the 13 American colonies raised the question of the disposal of convicts, since they could no longer be sent to the United States. Hence the Government turned its at tention to Australia which had been explored by Captain Cook between 1768 and 1770. The island had been the resort of a few traders, but much preliminary work needed doing before it could become attractive to settlers, and the result was that convicts were despatched in 1788 to Botany Bay to do the preliminary work of road-making. Then, as the wool famine in England became more and more acute, the destiny of the colony shaped itself along the line of sheep-farming.
After the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars England made a further addition to her possessions, gaining the Cape, from which she has been able to build up a South African empire. Ceylon, British Guiana, Trinidad, Heligoland and Mauritius, were minor acqui sitions made in 1815; and the foundations of her Far Eastern Empire were laid in the ces sion of Penang in 1786, which gave England a footing in the Straits Settlements.
The United Kingdom emerged from the Napoleonic wars with a huge national debt, but with an enormously increased trade; with 50 years start of Europe in manufacturing, and with the unrivalled possession of the sea-power which had been her definite goal from the time of Elizabeth onwards.