central starting-point, making one foothold sure before another was taken, firmly placing one arch of the viaduct before another was thrown out, allowing no interruption of territorial coherence from the centre to the circumference. This was not so in the case of the Indian empire. During the time when the English were establishing their predominance in India, and long afterwards, England was separated from India by thousands of miles of sea; the Atlantic and Indian oceans lay between. The government of the English in India may thus be said to present an unique instance of the dominion over an immense alien people in a distant country having been acquired entirely by gradual expansion from a base on the sea.

Of the political changes introduced during the last 150 years by the overflow of Europe into Asia, the acquisition of all India and Burmah by the English has hitherto been incomparably the greatest; although the steady advance of Russia, pushing forward her steel wedges into the central regions, is fraught with no less momentous import to the destinies of the Continent. But while Russia has been laboriously following the well-known and well-worn routes of conquest by land through the central steppes of Asia, the English have reached South Asia swiftly and securely by the open water-ways. And thus it has come to pass that, whereas all previous conquests of India have been made from the mountains southward to the sea, the English have acquired their dominion by an expansion from the sea northward to the mountains. It need hardly be observed that this very remarkable exploit could only have been performed by virtue of great naval strength and superiority.

In the following pages some attempt is made to sketch the preliminary events and predisposing conditions that attracted the maritime nations of Europe into the field of competition for predominance in India, and to explain the combination of direct effort and favourable circumstances to which England in the eighteenth century owed her success.

CHAPTER I

EARLY COMPETITION FOR INDIAN COMMERCE

SECTION I. Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

FROM time immemorial the trade of Europe with the rich and productive countries of South-Eastern Asia, particularly with India and the islands of the Malay archipelago, has been the most lucrative branch of the world's commerce. It has been the object of fierce and persistent competition by sea and land among the more enterprising and civilized European States, of a contest that increased with the spirit of adventure and the desire for wealth; and it has made the fortune of every city or nation that has successively obtained the largest share of it. For nearly eighteen centuries 1, from the days of the Ptolemies almost until the Portuguese rounded the African Cape, Alexandria was an emporium and halfway station of the sea-borne trade. The Roman emperors, who were deeply interested in developing the prosperity of Egypt, spared no pains to monopolize the commercial navigation of the Red Sea. They sent more than one naval expedition against the south-west coast of Arabia with the object of seizing Aden (then,

1

1 Robertson, Disquisition concerning Ancient India.

as now, a most important station) and of wresting the Indian trade out of the hands of the Arabs. In fact they attempted, though unsuccessfully, to acquire very much the same position in those waters as that which the English have at last succeeded in establishing after an interval of sixteen centuries. Although the Roman navy was not strong enough to dislodge the Arabs, yet the direct European maritime traffic with the East in the time of the Flavian emperors took almost exactly the route into which, after some wide aberrations, it seems at length to have again settled down-the route, that is, by Egypt, Suez, and Aden across the Indian Ocean to the ports on the Western coast of India. The jealousy that was excited in Rome by the rich and enterprising merchants of Palmyra, who were diverting the stream of Eastern traffic into an overland route from the Persian Gulf up the Euphrates to Syria, is said to have been one reason for the destruction of that flourishing city. In this manner the Roman empire, while at its zenith, obtained a wider command over the main channels of Asiatic trade than has ever been since held by any European power except England; and England has also the great advantage that she not only commands the channels but, by her dominion in India, possesses the largest source of this mighty commercial

stream.

The outpouring of the Arab tribes under Mahomed's successors upset the civilized government to which the routes by the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf owed their security. When the conquests of Islam had overflowed Egypt and Syria, Constantinople became for a time the chief storehouse of the Levant, and the main current of trade with India and China took the line across Central Asia to the Black Sea, avoiding the countries recently

'The commerce of

overrun by the Mahomedans. Europe centred at Constantinople in the eighth and ninth centuries more completely than it has ever done since in any one city1;' the Greek navy was the largest then in existence. But misrule, fiscal oppression, and foreign invasions, ruined the Byzantine empire. As Constantinople declined, Venice and Genoa, the cities of the inland sea which lay beyond the desolating range of Asiatic conquest, rose into splendid prominence. It was the spirit of very short-sighted commercial jealousy that actuated the Venetians when, having contracted to convey the armies of the Fourth Crusade across the Mediterranean to Egypt, they insisted on an expedition against Constantinople, which was taken by the Latins in 1204. The blow fatally weakened the Greek power in the East, which henceforward opposed less and less resistance to the invading Turkish hordes. In the meantime the Italian cities had become the principal agents for the importation into Europe of the precious commodities of Asia; insomuch that in the fifteenth century the Venetians appeared literally to 'hold the gorgeous East in fee,' for they were not far from possessing the whole of this enormously profitable business.

At the end of that century two capital events in the annals of the world's commerce occurred suddenly and almost simultaneously-the discovery of America and the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope. Their effect was to give vast extension to the sea-borne trade with Asia, to turn its main volume into new channels by opening out direct communication by ships between South Asia and the countries bordering on the Atlantic ; and to augment very greatly the supply of gold and

1 Finlay, Byzantine Empire, 248.