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 CHAPTER III

The English in Madras

When Warren Hastings landed, in 1769, at Madras, his new chief, Du Pré, had already been installed as Governor of Fort St. George in the room of Laurence Palk. The Peace of Paris, in 1763, had restored Pondicherry to the French, who in their turn acknowledged our good friend Muhammad Alí as Nawáb of the Karnatic, while both nations accepted the fratricide Nizám Alí as de facto ruler of the Deccan. Thenceforth the Nawáb of the Karnatic reigned by sufferance of his English friends, who undertook the military defence of his kingdom, leaving him to mismanage its internal affairs. In 1765 an Imperial Farmán, obtained by Clive at Palk's request, invested the Company with sovereign rights over the Northern Circárs, and freed the ruler of the Karnatic from his old allegiance to the Nizám of Haidarábád. Thus, within five years from the fall of Pondicherry, the East India Company became in effect the dominant power along the eastern seaboard of Southern India, from Orissa to Cape Comorin.