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74 under Aurangzib, who would have tolerated no serious territorial encroachment.

Up to this time, therefore, the policy of the French and English had remained strictly commercial in so far that all their plans and proceedings for settling upon the Indian coasts were designed in the interests of trade. We are now approaching the period when the growing strength of their position, the weakness of the Indian governments, the increasing keenness and impulse of competition, and, above all, the violent quarrels between France and England in Europe, combined to transform the commercial rivalry into an armed contest for political ascendency. For some twenty years South India became a battle-field of two distant European nations; the war of succession in Austria was made a pretext for taking sides in a dispute over the heritage of the Nizam of Haidarabad; and Indian affairs were entangled in the prolonged struggle between France and England for colonial and naval superiority. When England was eventually left mistress of the situation at the close of that struggle, she found thrown wide open before her the gates leading to immense territorial possessions, and to the consolidation of an Asiatic dominion which is perhaps the most eminent and valuable legacy bequeathed to us by our forefathers in the eighteenth century.