and sacri-ficed to thePragmaticSanction,1727.

Ostend

Settle-

ment

destroyed,

1733 ;

and dis-appearedfrom themap.

Ostend

Company

bankrupt,

1784;

and extin-guished,

1 793 -

Prussian

Com-

panies.

AsiaticTradingCom-pany ofEmbden,1750 -

438 EARLY EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS.

treaties of Westphalia and Utrecht . After long and loud alter-cations, the Emperor sacrificed the Ostend Company in 1727to gain the acceptance of a project nearer his heart—the Prag-matic Sanction for the devolution of his hereditary dominions.To save his honour, the sacrifice at first took the form of asuspension of the Company ’s Charter for seven years. Butthe Company was doomed by the Maritime Powers. Itsshareholders did not, however, despair. They made attemptsto transfer their European centre of trade to Hamburg,Trieste , Tuscany , and even Sweden .

Meanwhile the other European Companies in Bengal hadtaken the law into their own hands. They stirred up theMuhammadan Government against the new-comers. In 1733,the Muhammadan military governor of Hugh picked a quarrel,in the name of the Delhi Emperor, with the little German Settlement at Bankipur, which lay about eight miles below Hughtown on the opposite side of the river. The Muhammadantroops besieged Bankipur; and the garrison, reduced to four-teen persons, after a despairing resistance against overwhelmingnumbers, abandoned the place, and set sail for Europe . TheOstend agent lost his right arm by a cannon ball during theattack; and the Ostend Company, together with the German interests which it represented, became thenceforward merelya name in Bengal. Its chief Settlement, Bankipur or ‘ Banky-bazaar,’ has long disappeared from the maps; and I couldonly trace its existence from a chart of the last century, aidedby the records of that period, and by repeated personal inquiryon the spot. 1 The Ostend Company, however, still prolongedits existence in Europe . After a miserable struggle, it becamebankrupt in 1784; and was finally extinguished by thearrangements made at the renewal of the English East India Company ’s Charter in 1793.

What the Emperor of Austria had failed to effect, Frederick the Great, King of Prussia , resolved to accomplish. Havinggot possession of East Friesland in 1744, he tried to convertits capital, Embden, into a great northern port. Among othermeasures, he gave his royal patronage to the Asiastic TradingCompany, started 1st September 1750, and founded the

1 There is an interesting series of MSS. labelled The Ostenders in theIndia Office. See also the Abbe Raynal ’s History of the Settlements andTrade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies, Book v. (pp.176-182, vol. ii. of the 1776 edition); and the article Bankipur on theHugh in my Imperial Gazetteer of India.