Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/99

Rh Italian cities to supplant the Greeks in the Levant, to acquire and fortify the islands and other points of vantage along the coasts, and thus to seize trade and territory in the Mediterranean very much as the Dutch and English established themselves in the Indian seas. Chios belonged entirely to a Genoese Company, whose rule for two hundred and twenty years over several islands of the Greek archipelago bears a curious likeness, in miniature, to the territorial domination of the English East India Company. The ruins of strongholds and other signs of extinct Italian dominion are to be seen all along the shores of Greece and Asia Minor, like the relics of the Dutch and Portuguese settlements on the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf.

But neither Greeks nor Italians could resist the torrent of Asiatic conquest that came pouring across Asia from the East. The Italian republics had not the population, capital, or territorial resources sufficient for holding their scattered possessions against the fleets and armies of the Ottoman empire; their territory on the Italian mainland was constantly threatened by powerful neighbours; and the diversion of the Asiatic trade was drying up the springs of their prosperity. Nevertheless, when we consider how much was accomplished by these small trading states so long as the field lay open to them, and even while they were confronted by the Turkish power in its full strength on the mainland, we may moderate our astonishment at the fact that the foundations of a great empire in India could be laid by an English trading Company, at a time when