Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/98

68 vention in 1702, just before the great war of the Spanish succession began, and immediately after the accession of Queen Anne. The effect of this measure was to concentrate all the enterprise, capital, and maritime experience of one powerful corporation upon the consolidation of the English position in South Asia.

The East India Company, by whom our Indian affairs were administered for the next one hundred fiftyfive years, were now backed by the most opulent city and the largest seafaring population in the world, by the favour of the English government, to whom they made liberal advances, and by the increasing influence of the commercial classes upon the politics of the country. With these advantages, with a secure base and headquarters at home, with fortified settlements and armed shipping abroad, with a charter authorizing them to raise troops and to make war and peace in India, the Company were already capable of defending themselves, and even of pushing forward their outposts against any opposition that could be made by the viceroys of a distracted Oriental empire.

The history of Venice and Genoa had already shown what might be achieved by the power of armed commerce in the hands of small communities greatly superior in wealth and civilization to their neighbours. These towns had grown into independent States by successful monopoly of the Asiatic trade in the European waters; they were originally no stronger than a chartered English Company of the seventeenth century. The decadence of the Byzantine empire enabled the