Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/125

Rh much enfeebled by the disastrous European wars that ended in 1713, their resources and their enterprising spirit revived during the tranquil interval of the next thirty years.

Under the pacific ministries of Fleury and Walpole trade and navigation now began to gather strength on both sides of the Channel; although the speculative mania that supervened in France at the beginning of this long peace had involved her East India Company in some dangerous vicissitudes. They had first been absorbed in 1719 into a gigantic Company of the Indies with exclusive right of trade on the African coast as well as on the shores of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. The next step was to place this Company, already laden with privileges and monopolies, in charge of the famous Land Bank, with Law as Inspector-General over all their business, commercial and financial. The inevitable result was an enormous inflation of the shares and operations, followed by a sharp and ruinous collapse; nor did the Company right themselves until a royal decree had autocratically cut away all their liabilities, after which they again confined themselves to the East India trade.

Their situation in the Indian waters now began rapidly to improve. In 1715, they had occupied the important island of Mauritius (abandoned by the Dutch), and were steadily taking up their ground side by side with the English on the southeastern or Coromandel coast of India, where Pondicherri, the seat of the governor-general of all the French settlements, was devel-