In a previous lecture we looked at Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch overseas activities. By the eighteenth century, all of these countries were of quite secondary importance. Spain's control of the New World had been severely weakened by the War of the Spanish Succession. The Spanish crown had its hands full just holding on to its existing empire.
Portugal, a very small country, had lost much of what it had owned earlier, and owed the continued existence of its remaining empire to the British desire to keep it afloat as a counterweight to others.
The Dutch were in decline -- relative if not absolute decline. Once they had nearly monopolized the European shipping trade, and the wealth and the ships of that trade had been a firm foundation for an active role overseas. Now protectionism (called mercantilism then) and the growth of the British and other shipping fleets had undermined that foundation. The Dutch were still in a commanding position in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, but their fleet was small and they had sunk into the position of being practically a British client state.
This left the field to two major powers, who had the resources to float more ships than anyone else. France and Britain. The likelihood of a deadly competition between them was high.
Competition did not begin immediately. In 1715, both countries were exhausted after 25 years of war between them. Neither side wanted trouble from the other, and so for a few years Europe witnessed the spectacle of these long-time rival countries united to preserve the European peace, a unity that everyone thought was a little unnatural. And perhaps it was. Soon they were at loggerheads again.
A variety of conflicting interests were behind this conflict. I will concentrate on the colonial rivalry, but other factors should be mentioned. Britain feared France, which at that date was much larger, both in population and taxable revenue, than itself. From the other side, British alliance with Hanover and the British merchant marine were threats to France's vital interests.
There had often been such European conflicts between the two monarchies. In the 18th century, however, the control of colonies and imperial trade became extremely important bones of contention.
Let's review for a moment the situation in North America, which is probably pretty familiar to you. North America had a variety of resources worth fighting for. The French were attempting to dominate these resources with a minimum of manpower, through voyageurs, couriers des bois, and Indian and half-Indian allies. They feared the expansion of the relatively populous English agricultural colonies on the coast, which would destroy the wild environment.
The English colonies similarly resented the restrictions on growth that French and Indians imposed on them.
Both metropolitan governments felt it necessary to support their colonists and fishermen.
The Indian situation is less familiar to most of us. Each country had an interest in cornering as much of the lucrative trade with India as possible. Part of this trade was in spices, or indigo or opium, but much of it was in Indian manufactures, especially cotton and silk. There was a big market in Europe and an even bigger one in Asia for such things, and so European traders flocked to Bengal, Bombay and Madras to buy with silver goods that were readily accepted around the world.
Competition for this trade was heating up. In the past, Mughal emperors based in Delhi had kept Europeans on good behavior and out of local politics. But after 1707, the Mughal power went into a steep decline. The decentralization of India created a danger for the foreign merchants, as regular trade was threatened by war; it also, however, created an opportunity to meddle. The main foreign actors in India were the British and French East India Companies. The two governments were not directly involved yet.
The most intense British-French rivalry was in the West Indies. The islands were a key part of the world balance of power. They had long been the point of entry for those who wanted to trade with Spanish America -- which was the source of silver that made trade with Asia possible. Thus it was the area where rivals for American trade fought each other.
By 1700, the islands were established centers of production, too. Tobacco had been the first crop grown there on a large scale, but overproduction soon depressed prices. Then the island farmers switched to sugar, for which there was a much larger and very elastic demand. This profitable industry inspired European governments to take an active and direct interest in the area. Governmental fleets suppressed piracy, which was bad for business, and confronted each other to protect the interests of the rich sugar plantation owners of their home countries.
But it was not just a matter of sugar alone. The West Indies pulled together all the overseas markets, and eventually made colonial warfare a single conflict.
The first overseas threats to Anglo-French understanding grew out of the West Indies arena, as the two countries began to compete for the Spanish trade.
Because Spain was now ruled by the French Philip V, who surrounded himself with his own countrymen, French businesses would gain from a revival of the legal Spanish trade.
England had a narrower legal door into the empire. Official Spanish interests were not enthusiastic about the French, but they very much resented the concessions to Britain, because they were an threatening breach in a consecrated monopoly. During the 1720s and 30s, the Spanish garda costa constantly harassed the large number of British boats that frequented the Caribbean for both legitimate and crooked reasons.
Eventually this led to the trade war known as the War of Jenkins' Ear, indirectly caused by the garda costa cutting the ear off Robert Jenkins, its reasonably honest British sea-captain. In 1738, this incident was used as an excuse for Britain to go to war with Spain.
Only the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession distracted France and prevented France from coming in on Spain's side in the colonial war. The British to their surprise found that Spain was no pushover. The War of Jenkins's Ear, like the Austrian war, ground to an inconclusive halt in 1748.
The main result in the colonial sphere was the certainty, in everyone's mind, that war between Britain and France would resume soon.
The consequences for North America are pretty well known in Canada.
The British victory in India was equally decisive.
Background: By the 1750s, the once-powerful Mughal empire had decentralized; its provincial governors were effectively independent. Governors were trying to build dynasties, and the rivalries between them posed a big danger to trade and the foreign merchants in particular. They were an obvious source of loot.
Yet at the same time, this situation increased the importance of the East India companies. As major customers for the crops and the manufactures of India, they brought silver into the country: a key factor in any ruler's prosperity. Danger, opportunity and need involved the British and French East India Companies in Indian politics.
Before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, the two companies were already raising and using large armies to protect their factories (trading centers), and to support their chosen Indian allies.
The European-led armies were also a source of profit, not to the companies themselves, but to the merchant-generals who led them. They were mercenary-princes in embryo like those of late medieval Italy.
In this chaotic situation, vast profits might be made. What if the other side got them? Thus by the 1750s, the Frenchman Dupleix and the Briton Clive were directly fighting each other, in what seemed to be one more prelude to the big war to come.
The French lost this battle mainly because no one at home realized how much was at stake. The directors of the French East India Company were not anxious to pay for Dupleix's wars.
Dupleix spent his own fortune, and that of several of his friends, but eventually lost to the somewhat better financed Clive. When Dupleix was recalled, Clive was left with an army that seemed superfluous.
But Clive soon found something else to do with it: protecting the British East India Company's position in Bengal from the threats of a new ruler, Siraj-ud-Dawlah, who needed money fast. (1756). Siraj-ud-Dawlah attacked Calcutta (a small British factory then) and killed the garrison (Black Hole of Calcutta).
The Black Hole gave the British provocation )and an eternal propaganda stick to beat Indians with), and Clive sailed to Bengal from South India to retake Calcutta. Clive's army was thus able to beat Siraj at Plassey in 1757, just two years before the Plains of Abraham. As the Plains of Abraham usually marks the conquest of French Canada, Plassey is taken to mark the beginning of British Empire in India.
At the time, however, no one saw it that way. The Company and its Indian allies (esp. merchants) were looking for a return to the status quo, or maybe a slight improvement on it: in other words, a reliable Bengali government that made trade possible, perhaps under conditions slightly more favorable to the Company. But it soon became evident that the Bengali government was so unstable that the Company, with Clive's army at its disposal, was the predominant political factor.
Both personal greed, for the profits that could be made from successful warfare and political dominion, and the need to protect the Company's trade and bases, pulled the Company deeper and deeper into politics. By 1765, the Company had become the ruler of Bengal, a country three times more populous than Britain itself, and one that produced much wealth, even if most of its population was poor.
British position transformed:
Before, British merchants had seen themselves only as traders, using money made elsewhere to buy Indian goods which could be sold elsewhere for a healthy profit. Now, almost before anyone realized it, they had become masters. The early rule of Bengal is famous for the fantastic fortunes that British "nabobs" made out of the combination of taxation, trading on favorable terms, and sheer loot. It was also a period when a third of the population of Bengal, 10 million people, died in a famine, which the British may or may not have contributed to -- such disasters were not unknown in India.
The key fact is that the Company, recognized as the legitimate governor of Bengal, basically paid for Indian goods out of taxes levied on Indians. Furthermore, the rule of the company in Bengal and in provinces acquired later, and the very conquest of those new provinces, was financed in precisely the same way -- by the Indians themselves.
In the 1760s and 1770s, a new era was beginning in mainland Asia. Throughout the early modern period, Asian rulers had been too strong for European interests in Asia. Now the era of direct and indirect rule of Asia by Europe was dawning.
It would be Britain that would gain the lion's share of these profits to be had from both ruling and trading goods produced by the new techniques of the Industrial Revolution.
A new era of world politics was opening out, and for a century or more Britain would retain the advantages it had gained in the middle years of the eighteenth century.
M.S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713-1783
P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Beachhead: Eastern India 1740-1828
E.L. Jones, The European Miracle
Early Modern History Course Home Page.
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