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 CHAPTER XII

English and Dutch Rivalry in the East

HERE are many strange features about the establishment of British power in Asia, but none quite so remarkable as the circumstances which fixed the centre of English authority in India in the earliest period. The East India Company, when it embarked on its enterprise, as has been narrated, concentrated its attention on the spice trade. If it thought of India at all it was only as a possible secondary field which might be developed in some future period. It was very much in this spirit of vague adventure that the Company's agents first went to Surat and they were established there far more by the fortuitous association of Sir Henry Middleton with the Indian traders in the Red Sea, than by any arrangements definitely made with that end. Roe's Embassy, no doubt, was in the nature of a carefully planned endeavour to obtain a permanent foothold on the Continent of India. But when we turn to look at the circumstances which attended and followed it we 177