Advent of the Europeans (Spectrum Digest, Ch 1)

Why they came

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans (1453) and Ottoman and Venetian control of the older land and sea routes pushed western Europeans to find a direct sea route to the spice and textile markets of the East. The Renaissance spirit, advances in shipbuilding and navigation (the compass, the astrolabe), and the lure of pepper and Indian cotton drove the voyages. Portugal and Spain led, backed by the papal division of the non-Christian world (Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494).

The Portuguese (first in, last out)

• Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on 1498-05-20, guided across the Arabian Sea, and was received by the Zamorin of Calicut. He returned with a cargo that earned a vast profit.
• Francisco de Almeida (first Portuguese governor) followed the Blue Water Policy (Cartaze system), keeping Portuguese power at sea.
• Afonso de Albuquerque captured Goa from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1510, making it the seat of Portuguese power in India. He also encouraged mixed marriages.
• The Portuguese held Goa, Daman and Diu, plus a network of coastal forts and the trade in horses and spices. They introduced the printing press, tobacco, the potato and chillies, and the Cartaze naval pass system. Their power declined as the Dutch and English rose.

The Dutch

The Dutch East India Company (VOC), 1602, focused on the spice islands of the East Indies (modern Indonesia). In India they had factories at Masulipatnam, Pulicat, Surat, Chinsura and others. English rivalry led to the Battle of Hooghly / Bedara (1759), after which Dutch influence in India faded; they concentrated on the spice trade further east.

The English

• The English East India Company was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I on 1600-12-31, granted a fifteen-year monopoly of eastern trade.
• Captain Hawkins (1609) and Sir Thomas Roe (envoy of James I, 1615 to 1619) secured trading concessions from Jahangir.
• Early factories: Surat (1613), Masulipatnam, then Madras (Fort St George, 1639), Bombay (acquired 1668 from the Crown, originally a Portuguese dowry to Charles II) and Calcutta (Fort William, 1690, founded by Job Charnock). These three Presidency towns became the bases of later empire.

The French

The French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales) was founded in 1664 under Colbert, backed by the state. Their main settlements were Pondicherry (headquarters) and Chandernagore. Under the energetic Joseph Francois Dupleix, the French challenged the English for supremacy in the south.

The Danes

The Danish East India Company (1616) held minor settlements at Tranquebar (Tamil Nadu) and Serampore (Bengal). They were never a serious power and sold their holdings to the British in 1845.

The Carnatic Wars: deciding European supremacy

Three wars (1746 to 1763) between the English and French, fought largely with Indian allies in the politics of the Carnatic and the Deccan:

The Carnatic Wars established English supremacy among the European powers in India and showed that small, disciplined European-trained forces could dominate Indian rulers, a lesson that shaped the conquest of Bengal.

Common traps

• Vasco da Gama landed at Calicut, not Calcutta; the host was the Zamorin.
• The Portuguese came first (1498) and left last (Goa was liberated only in 1961, see towards independence and partition and post-independence consolidation).
• Bombay came to the English as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry to Charles II, then leased to the Company.
• The Battle of Wandiwash (1760), not Plassey, decided the Anglo-French contest.

Authored practice

1. Which European power was the first to arrive and the last to leave India? (Answer: the Portuguese. Goa, Daman and Diu were freed in 1961.) Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.
2. The Third Carnatic War was decided by which battle? (a) Plassey (b) Buxar (c) Wandiwash (d) Wadgaon. Answer: (c) Wandiwash, 1760. Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.