of Englishmen, were acknowledged by Lord Canning, in open durbar, in terms of well-deserved praise and commendation, and the gratitude of the British Government was further evinced by a grant of territory which its owner had justly forfeited in open rebellion, by a recog nition of the right of succession, according to the custom of the principality and the Mahomedan law, and by the bestowal of one of those titles which the Sovereign of Great Britain, as the fountain of honour, has instituted to reward good services performed in India, either by natives of the country or by the British servants of the Crown."

The daughter, Begum Shah Jehan, at once succeeded. She, too, has one child, a daughter, Sultan Jehan, who was married on February 1, 1875, to Meer Ahmed Ali Khan Bahadur, a nobleman of Afghan descent. She has learned English. The Begum of Bhopal receives a salute of 19 guns.

CHAPTER XVII.

ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF BRITISH RULE IN INDIA

BOMBAY PRESIDENCY.

Rivalry of Portuguese, Dutch, French and English in the East-First English ship-First factory, Surat-The transfer of the Island of Bombay from Charles II., the dowry of his Queen to the East India Company in 1668-Gradual spread of English rule over the provinces which Sivajee and the Peishwas had wrested from the Moguls and minor sovereigns of the Deccan-Mahableshwar-Poona-Oomrawuttee-Goa.

HAVING traced the history of India, from the earliest times to the overthow of the Mahratta supremacy and the extinction of the Mogul dynasty, we have now to describe the modest origin and wonderful progress of British rule in India, resulting in a dominion more solid and assured in the contentment of the people, as well as more prosperous and brilliant, than that under Akbar the Great or Aurungzebe. Before describing the origin and progress of the British in India, a very brief recapitulation will render the subject clearer and more interesting.

It has been already seen that in the cold grasp of the aged and bigotted Emperor Aurungzebe the sceptre of the Great Mogul had imprinted upon it the germ of decay.

From Cabul to Cape Comorin authority was shaken. On the North West the Afghans and Seikhs were arming, and the Mahrattas in the South, having recently defeated the Emperor in the field, hung like a cloud on the Western Ghats ready to lay waste and pillage the plains of Hindostan. So soon as the master's hand was withdrawn the fairest provinces in India were to be the prizes to be contended for by rebellious vassals, adventurers, and plunderers.

Early in the sixteenth century the Portuguese by doubling the Cape of Good Hope and establishing a paramount influence in the eastern seas, and extensive commercial relations between Europe and the East, by this route, they supplanted the Venetians and Genoese who traded with India via Syria and Egypt.

Portugal having become little more than an appanage of the Crown of Spain, its colonial dominion received a blow from which it never recovered.

The Dutch with characteristic energy and perseverance towards the end of the sixteenth century followed the example of the Portuguese, and succeeded in commanding and retaining a large share in the eastern trade as well as considerable political influence.

The magnificent results obtained from the adventures of the Portuguese and Dutch were not lost upon the rest of Europe, and even Louis XIV., the Grand Monarque, declared that it was not beneath the dignity of a gentleman to trade with India. About the year 1660 companies or associations were formed for prosecuting the trade with India, and the representatives of the two great nations, that were destined in a com

paratively short period to contend for the empire of India, were merely merchants and supercargoes with bills of lading, and invoices of their wares for their credentials. The strangers in many instances by the perfidy of the native princes had to convert their stores and factories into fortifications, and their clerks into officers of the native troops they had embodied for their defence, and thus they became conquerors in selfdefence-masters instead of suppliants for protection and leave to trade.

The French and English were forced continually to make common cause with one or other of the contending princes, and in this way the superiority of the West over the East became demonstrated.

The predominance of the English and the French over the natives of the country, led to a jealousy and conflict of interests inevitable between the two great rivals of the West, who, instead of being merely allies in subordination to the native Princes, Soubadars, Nawabs, and Rajahs, had gradually become principals in the arena, whether of politics or war, and a great portion of the last century was occupied by their varying and stirring fortunes in their bold attempts to seize the falling sceptre of empire.

Subsequent chapters being devoted especially to the doings of other European nations in India, it is desirable to confine our attention in this exclusively to the progress of our own countrymen in India.

Surat &c.-"The first English ship which came to Surat, was the Hector, commanded by captain William Hawkins, who brought a letter from the company, and

another from the king, James I., to the great Mogul Jehangire, requesting the intercourse of trade.

"The Hector arrived at Surat in August, 1608."*

The first formation of an English factory took place at Surat, in 1612, under the protection of the Emperor Jehangire, which controlled all the factories from Cape Comorin to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, with additional privileges accorded by the Emperor Aurungzebe in consequence of his admiration of the successful resistance of the English factory to Sivajee when he plundered the city.

The town of Surat, 150 miles north of Bombay, lies on the Taptee not far from its mouth, contains 130,000 people, and is still the seat of a considerable trade, however fallen from the high estate it once enjoyed, before Bombay sprang up to supersede it. Here in the 17th century, for about seventy years the young East India Company drove the bulk of its modest trade by permission of the Mogul emperors. Passing northward by the still populous town of Baróch (or Broach), in these days a busy cotton-mart, and by Baroda, the capital of the Gaikwar's State, we come to Ahmedábád, formerly one of the noblest cities in India in the days of the Bahmani kings of the Deccan, and still remarkable for the beauty of its chief buildings and the remains of palaces, mosques, and aqueducts which bear witness to its olden glories. Yet grander are the remains of Muhammadan architecture to be found at Beejápore, the capital of an old and splendid Pathán dynasty overthrown by the arms of Aurungzebe. Within the

* Orme's Fragments.