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The administration of the East India Company
The administration of the East India Company Author:John William Kaye Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PROGRESS OF ADMINISTRATION. 57 CHAPTER III. Onr European Predecessors—The Portuguese in India—The Dutch—Discouragementt at the Outset—Progress of Empire—Ou... more »r First Administrative Efforts —The Conquest of Bengal—Efforts of Clive and Hastings—The Kegulating Act—Cornwall!t and the Regulations—Subsequent Administrative Advances. There is no need that, in pursuing the history of Indian Administration, I should treat in detail of the measures of our European predecessors on the great field of Eastern adventure. They were traders; they were conquerors; they were spoliators; they were prose- lytisers. But they were not administrators. I would only speak of them in so far as their doings influenced the rise and progress of our own power in the East. On the last day of the sixteenth century the London East India Company became a substantial fact. The Portuguese had preceded us on the great pathways of the Eastern seas, and had even claimed a sort of exclusive right to the traffic of the far Indies. They had led the way to the great discoveries, by which other countries were eager to profit, and looked upon our merchant-ships as piratical interlopers. They had navigated and traded; they had fought and conquered; they had intrigued and proselytised, before the traders of London had met at Alderman Goddard's house or Founders' Hall, and taken measures to equip certain vessels of their own " upon a pure mercantile bottom." The commercial enterprise of the substantial Flemings,too, had been roused into activity before our own, and they sent out their heavy vessels to the spice-islands before we had done more than talk about it. When, therefore, we fairly started as adventurers in the Eastern seas, we had rivals to cope with, whose antagonism cannot be estimated by those who would meas...« less