Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/128

94 French government had been entertaining the plans of Labourdonnais for destroying the English factories in the East Indies. A few years later, Dupleix was actively encouraged in his grand project of expelling the British from the Coromandel coast. At the same time, the French were making substantial progress in North America, having already formed the design of pushing down the Ohio, in order to appropriate what would now be called the Hinterland in the rear of the English colonies on the seacoast.

Toward the middle of the century, therefore, the territorial position and prospects of France in America and Asia had decidedly improved; and the growing dissensions caused by discordant political interests in Europe were exasperated by quarrels over trade and colonies beyond the sea. The colonial quarrel was fought out, as we know, in North America; the field on which the two nations met to contend for what was at that time the most valuable sea-borne trade in the world was India. And from this time forward the really potent element in Asiatic politics, which has since transformed and may again dominate the whole situation, is the political rivalry and rapidly increasing ascendency of the European Powers.

The contest had begun in a spirit of keen but pacific commercial rivalry. Each nation was represented in India by a substantial and well-equipped Company, which kept to its business, established factories and agencies, and concerned itself very slightly about the internal affairs of the state or province within whose