Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/51

Rh tion. On the western side of India the English had settled first at Surat, in 1612, under a farmān of the Moghul government, with special privileges procured by Sir Thomas Roe's embassy from James I to the Emperor Jahangir in 1615-1618. In 1630 the English and Portuguese fleets fought a respectable battle in that roadstead, without prejudice to international relations at home. And as the Dutch were now making virulent attacks upon the possessions of Portugal in India and Ceylon, her power had by this time fallen into a rapid decline. When, in 1640, she recovered her independence as a kingdom, she made some feeble attempts to hold her ground in Asia; but after the Treaty of Minister in 1648, which limited her Indian possessions, Portugal fell irremediably into the background.

In 1638 Surat became the English Company's chief establishment; and by 1643 it was established on the east coast at Masulipatam and Madras, with a factory up the Hugli River for the Bengal traffic. Their influence at the Moghul's court was substantially promoted by the deputation of Mr. Boughton, a surgeon in the East India Company's service, to Agra for the purpose of professionally treating the emperor, who afterwards appointed him physician to the household. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Company was trading all along the southern seaboard of Asia from the Persian Gulf eastward to the borders of China; and as the commercial operations of the Dutch took the same geographical range, the two nations were in