1921 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 135 English rivals in Bengal. This entente was something more than the eastern reflexion of the peaceful policy in Europe of Fleury and Walpole. It was partly also due to the statesmanlike conviction of Dupleix that the European nations in Bengal would gain if, in their relations with the Mohammedan government, they could develop a certain international solidarity. All his influence therefore at this time was in favour of a cordial understanding between the English, Dutch, and French. He summoned conferences of the representatives of all three nations to his country house at Chandernagore, he interchanged visits with Braddyl, president of Fort William, and he took the servants of the English Company into partnership in his private trading ventures. In these years he formed a sincere friendship with Godehen, who was destined to succeed him at Pondicherry and earn his undying hate. As governor- general he deliberately decided to sink the commercial and foster the military and political aspect of the Company's administration, but in Bengal he flung himself eagerly into the task of converting his settlement into ' the veritable commercial metropolis of the French possessions in India '. ' Chandernagore ', he wrote, 'is my child. I have formed it and made it all that it has become.' Yet it was circumstances that altered and not his character. There are many premonitions of the better known Dupleix of history. His enmity with La Bourdonnais dates at least from 1735, before they had come into real personal contact. ' La vivacite et la petulance du sujet ', he wrote, ' me le font craindre.' He proved a turbulent and quarrelsome subordinate to both Lenoir and Dumas, his predecessors in office at Pondicherry. As the French authorities at home afterwards complained that they were left to hear the news of French disasters from Dutch news sheets and English dispatches, so we find the council of Pondicherry declaring that they had to seek from Madras tidings of important events at Chandernagore. Even when his interests were almost entirely com- mercial and largely self-centred, there flared up in Dupleix on occasion a sudden spark of ardent patriotism, as when he suggested to his superior that in their relations with Indian powers they should not confine them- selves, as they had so often done, to speaking of the Company without even pronouncing the name of France. The real Dupleix was first portrayed and his work first critically estimated in Prosper Cultru's brilliant sketch published in 1901. The general truth of Cultru's estimate is corroborated by almost every page of M. Martineau's more detailed and exhaustive work. How far, when he comes to deal with the period after 1741, his researches will lead him to accept or challenge that estimate, the subsequent volumes will show. So far, at any rate, the presentations of the two writers are in general agree- ment. In his concluding pages M. Martineau analyses the character of his subject with rare subtlety, insight, and detachment. He does not attempt to minimize its repellent features, the restless egotism, the eager craving for praise and recognition, the undignified clamour for trivial distinctions which made India and France to resound with the protestations of his injured vanity. ' Born at the dawn of the eighteenth century,' writes M. Martineau, ' which gave lustre to our history but compromised our
