is the subject of our care, as much as our trade; ’tis that mustmaintain our force when twenty accidents may interrupt ourtrade; ’tis that must make us a nation in India . Without thatwe are but a great number of interlopers, united by HisMajesty’s Royal Charter, fit only to trade where nobody of powerthinks it their interest to prevent us. And upon this accountit is that the wise Dutch , in all their general advices thatwe have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their govern-ment, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the increaseof their revenue, for one paragraph they write concerningtrade.’ The subsequent history of the English East India Company and its Settlements will be narrated in the nextchapter.
The Portuguese at no time attempted to found a Company , Otherbut kept their Eastern trade as a royal enterprise and monopoly,
The first incorporated Company was the English , established Com-in 1600, which was quickly followed by the Dutch in 1602. P anies: ’The Dutch conquests, however, were made in the name of the Dutch ;State, and ranked as national colonies, not as semi-commercialpossessions. Next came the French , whose first East India French .Company was founded in 1604; the second, in 1611; thethird, in 1615; the fourth (Richelieu’s), in 1642; the fifth(Colbert’s), in 1664. The early French Companies consistedof trading adventurers, who left no establishments in India ;and when, after the troublous period of the Fronde, Louis xiv .became firmly seated on the throne of France , it was to theMauritius and Madagascar that the king’s ministers lookedfor a field for commercial expansion. The Mauritius wasoccupied in 1652, and an attempt was made to form Settle-ments in Madagascar . Colbert, however, hoped to win ashare in the profitable Indian trade, and the fifth French East India Company was founded by him in 1664, with the intentionof rivalling the success of the English and the Dutch in India itself. Pondicherri was acquired in 1674, and Chandarnagarin 1688; but want of support from France brought the Com-pany’s affairs in India to a very low ebb, and the Companyfelt obliged to cede its right of monopoly to some enterprisingmerchants of Saint-Malo . The brilliant schemes of Lawdrew fresh attention to the Indian trade, and the powers,possessions, and assets of Colbert’s Company were taken overby his great Company of the West, which is chiefly remem-bered by its project of developing the colony of Louisiana inAmerica . On the downfall of Law, a sixth East India Com-