Early struggles. which, after the discoveries of Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese carried on with India, and their long struggles against them and the Dutch East India Company, who shared it with them for more than a century, thus maintaining a virtual monopoly of the commerce of the East. Nor were the English any more successful when the Pope's Bull ceasing to have effect induced the government of England to grant to the few merchants and shipowners we have named the charter of incorporation,[1] for the purpose of encouraging the systematic development of that valuable trade. Although the charter gave to the association an exclusive monopoly of the commercial intercourse between England and India, besides numerous special privileges, the directors had considerable difficulty in obtaining the requisite capital to equip their first expedition.[2] Indeed, their success, as a whole, for many years afterwards, though occasionally considerable, was not equivalent to the risk they encountered; and even when they had secured factories or depôts at Surat and settlements in Bengal, their prosperity was of so variable and unstable a character that their charter had to be frequently renewed with increasing privileges.
But it is unnecessary to further trace the varying fortunes of the East India Company[3] since the Revolution, or the origin of the clamour against their monopoly. Suffice it to state that the charges of delinquency
- ↑ The first Charter of Incorporation was dated 31st December, 1660.
- ↑ Macpherson's 'Commerce of India,' p. 81.
- ↑ Captain Meadows Taylor, in his 'Manual of the History of India,' Lond., 1871, has devoted his 5th book to a very clear, full, and condensed account of the East India Company and its doings from 1613 to 1784 (pp. 387-501).
