Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/23

 FROM THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE xv eighteenth, and a Secretary of State for India at the present day. But if resemblances between our work in India and that of our predecessors are apparent, these chap- ters disclose differences more profound. The achieve- ment of Portugal was the command of the ocean- routes, secured by settlements at strategic points along the shore. The Dutch dominion lay chiefly in the Eastern Archipelago. England's conquest was India itself. The native powers whom the early Por- tuguese encountered were petty coast rajas; the native powers whom the Dutch subdued were island chiefs. The English in India, schooled for a hundred years under the rod of the mighty Moghuls, brought a deeper experience and wider conceptions to a harder task. Their empire was to be not a few shore settlements like those of Portugal, nor an island dominion like that of the Dutch, but the Indian Conti- nent, The question of territorial extension as against trade profits and sea-control arose with the first Por- tuguese viceroy in the East. It divided parties alike in the Dutch and in the English Companies; as, in its modern form of the Forward Policy, it still divides British opinion. One fact stands clearly out. No European nation has won the supremacy of the East which did not make it a national concern; and no nation has main- tained its power in the East which was not ready to defend it with its utmost resources. The pTize fell successively to states small in area, but of a