Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/214

212 Besides sugar and rum, considerable quantities of cotton, indigo, ginger, pimento, and cocoa were exported from Jamaica and some of the other islands; and the cultivation of coffee which had been grown in the Dutch continental settlements of Surinam since 1718, was introduced a few years after into the French and Spanish, and also into our own West India plantations. From Jamaica, as is well known, we now derive a large portion of our supply of this article.

During the latter portion of this period the affairs, and it may be said the essential character, of the East India Company underwent a complete revolution, under the influence of circumstances and events of which it is not here necessary to enter into any detail. The destruction of the authority of the Mogul emperor by the invasion of Thamas Kouli Khan Khan in 1739, and the consequent assumption of a practical independence, though still veiled under the old forms of vassalage, by the nabobs and other provincial Mahometan governors, had, in the course of the war which terminated in 1748, involved the agents of the French and English companies, as partisans of opposing competitors for various of the petty thrones which had thus arisen, in as fierce hostilities as were carried on by their respective countries in Europe or in any other part of the globe; nor did the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, which gave some years of repose to the swords of the combatants in the West, allay for more than a moment these oriental feuds, which had again burst into flame, and embroiled the two companies as furiously as ever, long before arms were again taken up by the two nations. It does not belong to our present subject to follow the course of the memorable contest that now arose, in which the brilliant successes of Clive at the same time levelled with the ground the already formidable fabric of political power which France was erecting in India, and elevated his own employers from a tracing company to be the rulers of an empire. What we are here concerned with are merely the results of these great changes upon the position and circumstances of the Company. The factory at Calcutta, which had been