Page:A brief history of the Hughli district.djvu/11



is not an ancient historic district whose story runs back to time immemorial, as does that of many places in India. Its early history is practically comprised in a few references to Satgaon, which was for many centuries the capital, as far as any place can be called the capital of Bengal. Alike in the pre-historic times of Hindu dominion and in the palmy days of the dynasty of Timur, Hughli hardly appears in history, and yet it may be said to be historically one of the most interesting districts in the province of Bengal, indeed in the whole of India. But this interest is entirely a matter of the last four centuries, and is almost wholly European. Here, within the space of a few miles of river bank, Portuguese, English, Dutch, French, Danes, and Flemings all formed settlements, and struggled with each other, first for supremacy in trade, and then for empire; and it is only owing to the European settlements that the native Governments come into the history of Hughli at all. The energy of the European traders, which converted an out-of-the-way, swampy, little-known corner of the country, first into a great centre of trade, then into the capital, first of the province, afterwards of the whole country, forced upon the native rulers the importance, first of Hughli, afterwards of Calcutta. From the first settlement of the Portuguese the intruders from the West were as thorns in the side of the Musalman administration, which was kept busy in trying to maintain the peace between the different nations settled on the Hughli, and before long had to struggle, without success, for its very existence, with the strangers from over the sea. Portugal was a decaying power when the capture of the Portuguese fort at Hughli forever destroyed her influence in Bengal. But the Dutch, French and English, who stepped into the places of the Portuguese, were men of a very different character and different physical force. For long it remained doubtful whether the Empire of India would fall to the English or to the French. Owing partly to want of support from Europe, partly to the genius of Clive, and to the superiority of the subordinate English officers to those of France, the magnificent schemes of Dupleix, who was the first European to conceive the possibility of the empire of the East falling to a Western power, came to naught, and the sceptre of the Great Mogul fell into the