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CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY OF BRITISH RULE (1757 TO 1885 A.D.).
The political history of the British in India begins in the 18th Our firstcentury with the French wars in the Karnatik . Fort St. George, p^^sjonthe nucleus of Madras , founded by Francis Day in 1639, was Madras ,our earliest possession. The French Settlement of Pondicherri, i6 39 -about 100 miles lower down the Coromandel coast, was estab-lished in 1674; and for many years the English and French traded side by side without rivalry or territorial ambition.
The English paid a rent of 1200 pagodas (,£500) to thedeputies of the Mughal Empire when Aurangzeb annexed theSouth, and on two occasions bought off a besieging army by aheavy bribe.
After the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the whole of SouthernSouthern India became practically independent of Delhi . In afterthe Deccan Proper, the Nizam-ul-Miilk founded a hereditarydynasty, with Haidarabad for its capital, which exercised anominal authority over the entire South. The Karnatik , or thelowland tract between the central plateau and the eastern sea,was ruled by a deputy of the Nizam, known as the Nawabof Arcot. Farther south, Trichinopoli was the capital of a LocalHindu Raja ; Tanjore formed another Hindu kingdom under rulers -a degenerate descendant of Sivaji. Inland, Mysore wasgradually growing into a third Hindu State ; while everywherelocal chieftains, called pdkgdrs or nayaks, were in semi-inde-pendent possession of citadels or hill-forts. These representedthe fief-holders of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar ;and many of them had maintained a practical independencesince its fall in 1565.
The first European nation to intervene in the politics of TheSouthern India was the French . Until after the death of m
Aurangzeb , all the Europeans confined themselves strictly totheir commerce, and as traders were ready to obey the rulingchief in their neighbourhood, of whatever race or religion hemight be. Benoit Dumas, who became Governor of Pondi-cherri in 1735, a P°st which conferred supremacy over all the