Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/342

 33o THE BOURBON AGE On the strength of this and of her explorations she claimed the whole basin of the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers, as well as the St. Lawrence; a claim which, if conceded, would have entirely precluded the expansion of the British westwards. On the other hand British expansion would have precluded any French expan- sion south of the St. Lawrence, and there was no compromising the difficulty. In India neither French nor English were territorial powers, but they had nearly the whole of the trade between them, and each wanted to eject the other. The French were the first to perceive that with the Mogul Empire tumbling to pieces it would not be difficult for a European power which had no rival to acquire an ascendency. When the war of the Austrian succession broke out the French opened an attack on the British. The European war was stopped by the peace, but it was effectively continued in India by the two parties taking sides in dynastic struggles among the native princes. In the years which immediately follow the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the success which had formerly lain rather with the French passed to the British, mainly owing to the genius of Robert Clive. The struggle was in fact confined to the southern part of India, the home governments of Great Britain and France taking no part. It is absolutely clear that whenever the home governments should take an active part, the victory would go to British the one wmcn > holding command of the sea, should Dominion be able to supply reinforcements. As soon as the in India. tw0 na tj ons were a t W ar again it became abundantly clear that the British had that power and were absolutely certain to win. Again it lay with Robert Clive to demonstrate that if the French were once out of the way the British could make themselves the paramount power in India. This was proved by a punitive expedition undertaken by Clive in 1757 against the Nawab of Bengal, on account of a horrible outrage com- mitted upon the small British community at Calcutta. Clive with some three thousand men routed an army nearly twenty times as large. Bengal acknowledged him as its master, the British East India Company at once became a great territorial