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Home Foreign Affairs and the Empire, 1714-1763 Empire, 1714-1763; Part 6 |
Empire, 1714-1763; Part 6But in the east as well as in the west, in India as well as in America, French and British ambitions clashed. Though on the west coast Bombay belonging to the English East India company and Mahe belonging to the French East India com pany lay far apart, their factories on the east coast were in the same districts. In the north the English Calcutta lay close to the French Chandernagore, whilst in the south the French Pondicherry lay between, though at some distance from, Madras and Fort St. David. Both companies had reached a point when for their future commercial development some interference with the politics of the interior was probable. It was, however, the condition of India itself which made that interference inevitable.India, it must be remembered, is not a country like France or Germany, but a large continent. Its area is almost equal to and its population is greater than, that of all Europe if Russia is excluded. The inhabitants of this vast continent speak some fifty languages, and they vary in colour from the light brown of the Northern Pathan to the black of the Southern Tamil; and they are divided into races which, in the words of a recent viceroy, differ from one another "as much as the Esquimaux from the Spaniard or the Irishman from the Turk ". It may be urged that the Hindoo religion gives a certain unifying influence; but it must be borne in mind that the Mohammedans-to say nothing of other religious sects such as the Parsees and Sikhs-constitute a very strong minority (According to the last census, the Hindoos numher at the present time about 70 per cent of the total population). Moreover the Hindoos are themselves divided into some 3000 castes, the members of which have little social intercourse with one another; and their religion, it has been said, exhibits the worship of innumerable gods and an endless diversity of ritual. The religion of the well-educated Brahmin-the highest caste- may be called a form of Deism; the religion of the ordinary Hindoo peasant embraces the worship of. many local deities, and almost every village has its own particular objects of veneration. The great Mohammedan dynasty, generally known as the Mogul dynasty, had, for a time, brought nearly the whole of India under its control. Established in the sixteenth century, it had gradually extended its power, especially under Akbar-the contemporary of Elizabeth-and Aurangzeb. But with the death of the last-named in 1707 the empire had begun to break asunder and India fell into a condition of anarchy. From the north the King of Persia came in 1739 and sacked Delhi, the Mogul capital. The Afghans after six successive invasions established themselves in the Punjab, until finally they gave way, towards the end of the century, to the Sikhs In the north-east the rulers of Bengal and Oudh were practically independent In Central India, the Mahrattas-Hindoo tribes-made expeditions north and east from their two great centres at Poona and at Nagpur. In the south the Nizam of Hyderabad was the greatest potentate, and the Nabob of the Carnatic in the south-east was his vassal. In the south-west the ruler of Mysore was shortly to possess formidable power. |
Chronology |
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