Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/71

Rh from pursuing Colbert's wise and far-reaching schemes of commercial and colonial expansion. Her naval development was checked and her maritime enterprise took no fresh flight until after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. In short, the French and Dutch had mutually disabled each other, to the great advantage, for operations beyond sea, of the English, who thenceforward begin to draw slowly but continuously to the foremost place in Asiatic conquest and commerce.

From this period of great Continental wars in Europe we may date the beginning of substantial prosperity for our East Indian trade; for it was then that the English made good their footing on the Indian coasts. We learn from Macaulay's History that during the twenty years succeeding the Restoration, the value of the annual imports from Bengal alone rose from £8000 to £300,000, and that the gains of the Company from their monopoly of the import of East Indian produce were almost incredible. In 1685 the headquarters of their business on the Western side was transferred from Surat to Bombay; in 1687 the chief Bengal agency was removed from Hugli to Calcutta; and Madras had become their central post on the eastern shores of the Indian peninsula.

The Company were liberally encouraged by the government of the last two Stuarts, who granted ample charters, and even despatched armed reinforcements to their settlements. After the establishment of these three principal stations – which became afterwards, as Presidency towns, the cardinal points where the British