Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/133

POSITION OF THE RIVAL COMPANIES IN INDIA 99 imperial authorities than the factories in Bengal, which were up the estuary of a river with forts below them toward the sea, and in a land where the province was still under effective government. On the west side of India, the Marathas, who held most of the districts along the seashore, were by this time strong enough to keep foreign traders within bounds. But on the southeast or Coromandel coast, Madras and Pondicherri, the headquarters of the French and English Companies, were fortified and fairly armed places upon open roadsteads, lying within the governor- ship of the Karnatic, which was the name for a large province attached to the viceroyalty of the Deccan, that is, of South India. This viceroyalty had been conferred by the emperor upon Asaf Jah, with the title of Nizam- al-mulk, who soon made himself so powerful as to excite alarm and jealousy at the Imperial Court. When, how- ever, an attempt was made to remove him, the Nizam, who had been summoned to Delhi, marched back into the Deccan with an army, defeated the officer sent to replace him, established his authority in the south, and became the most powerful feudatory of the empire. A few years later, he took advantage of the disorganiza- tion caused by Nadir Shah's irruption into North India to consolidate his great possessions south of the Nar- bada, including the Karnatic, into a hereditary ruler- ship, owning a nominal allegiance to Delhi, but in fact entirely independent. In the Karnatic, which had been a governorship under the Deccan viceroyalty, a kind of subordinate