each of the three chief stations had a governor and a small army. The French, however, had also an East India Company, whose chief station was Pondicherry, south of Madras; and the two companies were by no means on friendly terms. When their respective nations were at war in 1746-48, they, too, had some sharp fighting, but it was only when Dupleix,2 the French Governor of Pondicherry, had gained such remarkable influence in Southern India about 1748, that matters became serious. Dupleix was one of the first Europeans who deliberately involved himself in native politics in order to further his country's interests, and he conceived the idea of the conquest of India. The English traders feared with justice the loss both of their lives and commerce, and open war broke out. The magnificent exertions of Clive and Lawrence, however, defeated the French; Dupleix was recalled in 1754, and quiet was for a time restored. But two years afterwards the Seven Years' War broke out, and India was disturbed again. Suraj-ud-Daula, the ally of the French, took Calcutta and committed the Black Hole atrocity (1757), and he and his allies did their best to drive the English out of Bengal. This province, however, was saved by Clive at the battle of Plassey; 5 Coote defeated the French at Wondiwash or Vandivasu (1760); and Pondicherry was captured by the English in 1761.6 Finally, in 1765, the East India Company became the collector of the revenues for Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, and thus the English power was acknowledged and consolidated." Our future struggles in India were not with the French, but with native princes. So completely did the French power decline that Napoleon, when he was a young and unknown person, so far from dreaming of the conquest of India (as he did later), actually thought of entering the English East India Company's service in order 1 It was organised by Colbert in 1664, but was very unsuccessful at first; Malleson, French in India, pp. 27, 57. 2 Cf. Lecky, History, ii. 455; cf. Seeley, Expansion, p. 30. 3 Lecky, History, ii. 455, 456. 5 Lecky, History, ii. 498. Lecky, ii. 456, 497. • Ib., ii. 503. 7 Ib., iii. 478. See Lecky's useful summary of the conduct of the Company in India. Never to acquire the wealth of an Anglo-Indian nabob.1 theless, for a long time the English were actuated in all their Indian conduct and politics by fear of the French. "Behind every movement of the native powers we saw French intrigue, French gold, French ambition; and never, until we were masters of the whole country, got rid of that feeling that the French were driving us out of it, which had descended from the days of Dupleix and Labourdonnais." 2 East and west the duel with France went on, and the underlying cause of the duel was the evergrowing industrial life of England that burst forth into new colonial ventures beyond the seas. § 179. The Conquest of Canada. It There was, however, a great struggle for commercial supremacy to be waged against the French in America. began in 1754. The English had now thirteen flourishing colonies between the Alleghany Mountains and the sea.3 Behind them, above them, and below them, all was claimed 1 Jung, Lucien Bonaparte et ses Mémoires, i. 74 (Seeley). 2 Seeley, Expansion, p. 30. 3 The following list may be useful; and cf. Lecky, History, ii. 18 sqq. by France as French territory. It was inevitable that the growth of our colonies should lead to war, and such was actually the case. The French began by driving out English settlers from land west of the Alleghany Mountains; the English retorted by driving French settlers out of Nova Scotia, and tried to make a colony in the Ohio valley. In this latter object they were foiled by Duquesne, the French Governor of Canada, who built Fort Duquesne there in 1754. Shortly afterwards, the next Governor, Montcalm, conceived the idea of linking together Forts Duquesne, Niagara, and Ticonderoga by lesser forts, so as to keep the English in their narrow strip of eastern coast-line. Then the English Government at home took up the matter, and sent out General Braddock with 2000 men to help the colonists. Braddock was defeated and killed (1755), but when the Seven Years' War broke out in the next year, Pitt sent ammunition, men, and money to help the colonists to attack Quebec and Montreal. The war was renewed in Canada with fresh vigour; Fort Duquesne was captured in 1758, Quebec in 1759, and Montreal in 1760; and when peace was made at Paris in 1763, England had gained all the French possessions in America, and her colonists were enabled to extend as far as they desired. We unfortunately lost them by a mistaken policy a few years afterwards. § 180. Survey of Commercial Progress during We may now make a brief survey of our commercial progress in the seventeenth century. The reign of James I. was noticeable for the rapid growth of the foreign trade which had developed from the somewhat piratical excursions of the Elizabethan sailors. Trading companies were formed in considerable numbers, and among them the Levant Company may be noticed, as making great profits in its Eastern trade. The mercantile class was now growing 1 Lecky, ii. 443. ▲ Ib., ii. 494. 2 Ib., ii. 444. 5 Ib., ii. 495. 3 Ib., ii. 446. 7 Craik, British Commerce, ii. 19; cf. also Mun, Discourse of Trade from England to East India. 3 both numerous and powerful, and a proof of their advance in social position and influence is furnished by the new title of nobility, that of baronet, conferred by James I. upon such merchant princes as were able and willing to pay the needy king a good round sum for the honour.1 It is interesting, by the way, to notice the figures of trade in his reign. In 1613 the exports and imports both together were about £4,628,586 in value, and a sign of a quickly developing Eastern trade is also seen in the fact that James made attempts to check the increasing export of silver from the kingdom. At this time English merchants traded not only in the East, but with most of the Mediterranean ports, with Portugal, Spain, France, Hamburg, and the Baltic coasts. Ships from the north and west of Europe used in return to visit the Newcastle collieries, which were rapidly growing in value. The English ships were also very active in the new cod fisheries of Newfoundland and the Greenland whale fisheries. The development of English trade is signalised in this century by the appearance of numerous books and essays on commercial questions, of which the works of Mun, Malynes, Misselden, Roberts, Sir Josiah Child, Sir William Petty, Worth, and Davenant may be mentioned as among the most important." The increase in the wealth of the country is shown by the rapid rebuilding of London after the Great Fire, when the loss was estimated at £12,000,000; and Sir Josiah Child, writing in 1665, speaks of the great development of the commerce and trade of England in the previous twenty years." The East India Company was so flourishing that in 1676 their stock was quoted at 245 per cent.10 Trade with America was equally 1 Gardiner, History, ii. 112. The sum was £1080. 2 Craik, British Commerce, ii. 33. 3 Heavy fines were imposed on foreign merchants for doing this in 1619; Gardiner, History, iii. 323. See Lewes Roberts, The Merchants' Map of Commerce: London, 1638; passim and especially Pt. ii. p. 257. 5 Rogers, Hist. Agric., 4. 140. • Craik, British Commerce, ii. 29. ? See Palgrave's new Dictionary of Pol. Economy for these. Craik, British Commerce (quoting Child), ii. 83. 'Child, New Discourse on Trade, written in 1665, and published in 1668. 10 Craik, British Commerce, ii. 101. prosperous. New Amsterdam, now New York, was taken from the Dutch 1 in 1664, and in 1670 the Hudson's Bay Company received their charter. But the main commercial fact of the latter half of the seventeenth century, and of the eighteenth, was the development of the Eastern trade, and, as a consequence, of the home production of articles to be exchanged for Eastern goods.2 English ships went as far as India, to Arabia and to Africa, and traded with the Spanish colonies in the New World. The cloth trade especially was greatly increased, and imports of cloth from abroad were almost superseded. This improvement in English manufactures led to increased trade with our colonial possessions, especially in the West Indies. It was partly, perhaps, this great development of English trade with both the Western and the Eastern markets that stimulated the genius of the great inventors to supply our manufacturers with machinery that would enable them to meet the huge demands upon their powers of production, for, by 1760, the export trade had grown to many times its value in the days of James I. Then, as we saw, it was only some £2,000,000 per annum; in 1703, nearly a hundred years later, it was, according to an MS. of Davenant's,5 £6,552,019; by 1760 it reached £14,500,000. The markets, too, had undergone a change. We no longer exported so largely to Holland, Portugal, and France, as in the seventeenth century, but instead, one-third of our exports went to our colonies.8 In 1770, for example, America took three-fourths of the manufactures of Man1 Anderson, Chron. Deduct. Commerce, ii. 479, and for the Hudson's Bay Co., cf. Anderson, ii. 514. 2 Rogers, Econ. Interpretation of History, p. 288. 3 In 1699 the woollen cloth manufacture formed between a half and a third of the total exports (£2,932,292 out of £6,788,166). Davenant, Second Report to Commissioners of Public Accounts; Works, v. 460. 4 Craik, British Commerce, ii. 137. * Quoted in Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 56, note. Craik, British Commerce, ii. 155, gives £6,644,103, also from Davenant. But the figures are nearly the same. 6 The exact figure (Craik, British Commerce, iii. 10) was £15,781,175, but of this £1,086,205 came from Scotland. 7 Craik, British Commerce, ii. 155. 8 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, 57. |