The expansion of England : two courses of lectures
fc<^ Once more, let us remark the speed with which our intercourse with India increases. Mr Cunningham in his volume lately published, entitled 'British India and its VI.] PHASES m THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 261 Rulers' compares the increase of the foreign trade of India between 1820 and 1880 with that of the foreign trade of Great Britain itself in the same period. This last increase has often excited astonishment: English foreign trade rose from about 80 to about 650 millions sterling. But Mr Cunningham points out that the increase of Indian trade in the same period has been even greater, and, as of course the foreign trade of India is principally with England, it follows that the tendency to commercial union between the two countries is pro- digiously strong, so that fifty years hence, if no catastrophe takes place, the union will be infinitely closer than it is now. If we combine all the facts I have hitherto adduced in order to form a conception of our Indian Empire, the result is very singular. An Empire similar to that of Rome, in which we hold the position not merely of a ruling but of an educating and^civilisiug race (and thus, as in the marriage of Faust with Helen of Greece, one age is married to another, the modem European to the medieval Asiatic spirit) ; this Empire held at arm's length, paying no tribute to us, yet costing , nothing except through the burden it imposes on our foreign policy, and neither modifying nor perceptibly influencing our busy domestic politics ; this Empire nevertheless held firmly and with a grasp which does not slacken but visibly tightens; the union of England and India, ill-assorted and unnatural as it might seem to be, nevertheless growing closer and closer with great rapidity under the influence of the modern conditions of the world, which seem favourable to vast political unions ; all this makes up the strangest, most curious, and perhaps most instructive chapter of English history. It has been made the subject of much empty boast- 233 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leot. ii)g, while those who have looked deeper have often been disposed to regard the whole enterprise with despondency, as a kind of romantic adventure which can lead to nothing permanent. But as time passes it rather appears that we are in the hands of a Providence which is greater than all statesmanship, that this fabric so blindly piled up has a chance of becoming a part of the permanent edifice of civilisation, and that the Indian achievement of England as it is the strangest, may after all turn out to be the greatest, of all her achievements. At this point again we are led to turn our eyes from the present to the past and to inquire how it could happen to us to undertake such an enterprise. I devoted a lecture to the historical question by what force we were able to subdue the people of India to our government ; but this question is different. That was the question, how ? this is the question, why ? We see that without any supernatural force or genius it was possible to raise such an Empire, but what was the motive which impelled us to do it ? How many lives, some of them noble and heroic, many of them most laborious, have been spent in piling up this structure of empire ! Why did they do it ? Or if they themselves looked no further than their instruc- tions, what was the motive of the authority that gave them their instructions ? If this was the Company, why did the Company desire to conquer India, and what could they gain by doing so ? If it was the English Government, what Gould be its object, and how could it justify such an undertaking to Parliament ? We may have been at times too warlike, but the principal wars we have waged have borne the appearance at least of being defensive. Naked conquest for its own sake has never had attractions foi- us. What then did we propose to ourselves ? Ti.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDU. 263 The English Government assuredly has gained nothing through this acquisition, for if it has not hampered their budgets by the expense of conquest, on the other hand it has not lightened them by any tribute. If we hope to discover the guilty party by the old plan of asking Cui bono ? that is, Who profited by it? the answer must be, English Commerce has profited by it. We have here a great foreign trade, which may grow to be enormous, and this trade is secured to us so long as we are masters of the Government of India. Here no doubt is a substantial acquisition, which stands us in good stead now that we find by experience how tenacious of protection foreign Governments are. May it then be assumed that this trade has been our sole object aU along ? The hypothesis is plausible, and it is made more plausible still when we remark that our Empire began evidently in commerce. To defend oar factories and for no other purpose we took arms in the first instance. Our first wars in India, as they belong to the same time so belong evidently to the same class, as our colonial wars with France. They were produced by the same great cause on which I have insisted so much, the competition of the Western states for the wealth of the regions dis- covered in the fifteenth century. We had trade-settle- ments in India as we had trade-settlements in America. In both countries we encountered the same rivals, the French. In both countries English and French traders shook their fists at each other from rival commercial stations. In America our New England and Virginia stood opposed to their Acadie and Canada; and similarly our Madras, Calcutta and Bombay stood opposed in India to their Pondieherry, Ghandernagore and Mahee. The crisis came in America and India at once between 264 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leo*. 1740 and 1760, when in two wars divided by a very hollow and imperfect peace these two states struggled for supremacy, and in both quarters England was victorious. From victory over France in India we proceeded without a pause to empire over the Hindus. This fact, combined with the other fact equally striking of the great trade which now exists between England and India, leads very naturally to a theory that our Indian Empire has grown up from first to last out of the spirit of trade. We may imagine that after having established our settlements on the coast and defended these settlements both from the native Powers and from the envy of the Frenchy we then conceived the ambition of extending our commerce further inland ; that perhaps we met with new States, such as Mysore or the Mahratta Confederacy, which at first were unwilling to trade with us, but that in our eager avarice we had recourse to force, let loose our armies upon them, broke down their custom-houses and flooded their territories in turn ^ith our commodities, that in this way we gradually advanced our Indian trade, which at first was insignificant,, until it became considerable, and at last, when we had not only intimidated but actually overthrown every great native Government, when there was no longer any Great Mogul or any Sultan of Mysore or any Peishwa of the Mahrattas or any Nawab Vizir of Oude or any Maharajah and Khalsa of the Sikhs, then, all restraints having been removed, our trade became enormous. But it will be found on closer examination that the facts do not answer to this theory. True it is that our Empire began in trade, and that lately there has been an enormous development of trade. But the course of affairs in history is not necessarily a straight line, so that when any two points in it are determined its whole course is Ti.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 265 known. The truth is that if the spirit of English trade had been thus irrepressible and bent upon overcoming all the obstacles which lay in its path, it would not have raised wars in India, for the main obstacle was not there. The main obstacle to English trade was not the jealousy of native Princes, but the jealousy of the East India Company itself. Accordingly th^re ,has been no corre- spondence in time between the increase of trade and the advance of conquest. Our trade on the contrary continued to be insignificant in spite of all our conquests until about 1813, and it began to advance tvith great rapidity soon after 1830. These dates point to the true cause of progress in trade, and they show that it is wholly independent of progress in conquest, for they are the dates of the successive Acts of Parliament by which the Company was deprived of its monopoly. Thus it appears that, while it was by the East India Company that India was conquered, it was not by the East India Company, but rather by the destruction of the East India Company, that the great trade with India was brought into existence. Our conquests in India were made by an exclusive chartered Company, but our Indian trade did not greatly prosper until that Company ceased practically to exist. In order to make this clearer it will be convenient here to give such an outline of the history of the East India Company as may mark the principal stages of its progress and those alone. The East India Company then came into existence in the year 1600, that is, near the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign. In the view we are now taking of the expansion of England it deserves note that this occurrence took place just at that tirne and at no time either earlier or later. England, we have seen, assumed 2fi6 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [lec*. its modern, that is, its maritime and oceanic, character about the time of the Spanish Armada, since it was then that its first race of naval heroes appeared, and then too that it made its first attempts to colonise America. If this general statement be true, we ought to look in this period also for our first settlements in India. Just in this period we find them, for the creation of the East India Company took place twelve years after the defeat of the Armada. It was created for trade, and it remained devoted to trade for a hundred and forty-eight years. During this period several important occurrences in its history took place, but none so important as to deserve our attention here. It was in 1748 that the disturbances occurred in the Deccan which forced the Company to undertake on a considerable scale the functions of government and war. Then began its second and memorable period, which is nearly as long as the first; it embraces a hundred and ten years and ends with the abolition of the Company by Act of Parliament in 1858. It is this second period alone with which we are concerned at present. In order to understand the course of development we must endea- vour to subdivide it. It happens accidentally that there is a certain regularity in the course of events over a great part of this period, which rarely occurs in history and which is very helpful to the memory. The Company being dependent on Parlia- ment for a renewal of its Charter and its affairs having since 1748 taken such a strange turn, it was natural that Parliament should grant the renewal only for a definite term, and at the end of the term should reconsider the condition of the Company and make alterations in its organisation. In this way the Company became subject VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OP INDIA. £67 to a transformation which was strictly periodic and re- curred at absolutely equal intervals. These intervals were of the length of twenty years beginning with Lord North's Eegulating Act in 1773. If then we bear this date in mind, we acquire at the same time four other dates which of necessity are of primary importance in the history of the Company. These are 1793, 1813, 1833 and 1853. We shall find these five dates quite as important as we might expect, and they form a very convenient framework for the history of the Company. The first is one of the most important of all. If 1748 marks the beginning of the movement which led to the creation of British India, 1773 may be said to mark the creation itself of British India. In that year began the line of Governors-General, though for a long time they had not the title of Governor- General of India but only of Bengal; then too was founded the Supreme Court of Calcutta. The enormous danger which attended the new state of our Indian affairs was at the same time met, and the root of corruption cut through, by the abolition of the power in the Company's affairs of the share-holders or so-called Proprietors. The next renewal in 1793 is less important, though the debates which then took place are interesting now for the picture they present of the phase of Anglo-Indian life when it was brahminised, when the attempt was made to keep India as a kind of inviolate paradise, into which no European and especially no missionary should be suffered to penetrate. But the date 1793 is itself as important as any other, being the date not merely of a renewal of the Charter, but also of the famous Permanent Settlement of Bengal, one of the most memorable acts of legislation in the history of the world. It was at the next renewal in 1813 that the aged 268 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [leoi. Warren Hastings, then in his eightieth year, came from his retirement to give evidence before the House of Commons. This date marks the moment when the mo- nopoly begins to crumble away, when the brahminical period comes to an end and England prepares to pour the civilisation, Christianity and science of the West into India. In 1833 the monopoly disappears and the Company may perhaps be said practically to have ceased to exist. Henceforward it is little more than a convenient organisa- tion, convenient because of the tradition it represents ^ and the experience which it guards, by means of which India is governed from England. At this time too the systematic legislative labours of our Indian Government begin. Finally 1853 is the date of the introduction of the system of appointment by competition. That old question which had convulsed England in 1783 and which states- men had been afraid to touch since, the question who should have the patronage of India or how it should be dispensed without shaking the constitution of England, was in this way solved. But here we are reminded that history cannot for a very long time proceed in this regular manner so con- venient to our memories. The convulsion of 1857 put a final end to this periodicity, and 1873, the centenary of the Regulating Act, is no great Indian date. It appears from this outline that 1813 is the date when the monopoly was first seriously curtailed and 1833 the date when it was destroyed. Now Macculloch when he speaks of the utter insignificance of our old trade with India has before him the statistics up to the year 1811, and the statistics which show so vast an increase in the Ti.] PHASES m THE CONQUEST OP INDIA. 269 modem trade refer to the years after 1813, and especially to those after 1833. In other words, so long as India was in the hands of those whose object was trade, the trade remained insignificant; the trade became great and at last enormous, when India began to be governed for itself and trade-considerations to be disregarded. This might seem a paradox, did we not remember that in dismissing trade- considerations we also destroyed a monopoly. But there is nothing wonderful in the fact that an exclusive Company, even when its first object is trade, carries on trade languidly, nothing wonderful in a vast trade springs ing up as soon as the shackles of monopoly were removed. On the other hand we do not find that the increase of trade corresponds at all to the augmentation of our terri- torial possessions in India. There have been four great rulers in India to whom the German title of Mehrer des Reichs or Increaser of the Empire might be given. These are Lord Clive, the founder, Lord Wellesley, Lord Hastings and Lord Dalhousie. Roughly it may be said that the first established us along the Eastern Coast from Calcutta to Madras; the second and third overthrew the Mahratta power and estabhshed us as lords of the middle of the country and of the Western side of the peninsula, and the fourth, besides consolidating these -conquests, gave us the northwest and carried our frontier to the Indus. There were considerable intervals between these conquests, and accordingly they fall into separate groups. Thus there was a period of conquest between 1748 and 1765, which we may label with the name of Clive, a second period beginning in 1798, which may be said to have lasted, though with a long pause, till about 1820 ; this period may bear the names of Wellesley and Lord Hastings; and a third period of war between 270 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [iect. 1839 and 1850, but of this the first part was unfortunate, and only the second part led to conquests, of which it fell to Lord Dalhousie to reap the harvest. Now there was no correspondence whatever in time between these territorial advances and the advance of trade. Thus we remarked how insignificant the trade of India still was in 1811, and yet this was shortly after the vast annexations of Lord Wellesley. On the other hand trade took a great leap about 1830, and this is one of the peaceful intervals of the history. About the time of the mutiny annexation almost ceased, and yet the quarter of a century in which no conquests have been made has been a period of the most rapid growth in trade. And thus the assertion which is often made and which seems to be suggested by a rapid survey of the history, the assertion namely that the Empire is the mere result of a reckless pursuit of trade, proves to be as untrue as the other assertion sometimes made, that it is the result of a reckless spirit of military aggression* Our first step to empire was very plainly taken with a view simply of defending our factories. The Madras Presidency grew out of an effort, which in the first instance was quite necessary, to protect Fort St George and Fort St David from the French. The Bengal Presidency grew in a similar way out of the evident necessity of protecting Fort William and punishing the Mussulman Nawab of Bengal, Surajah Dowlah, for his atrocity of the Black Hole. So far then the causation is clear. In the period which immediately followed, the revolutionary and corrupt period of British India, it is undeniable that we were hurried on by mere rapacity. The violent proceedings of Warren Hastings at Benares, in Oude, and Rohilcund VI.] PHASES IN THE CONQUEST OF INDIA. 271 were of the nature of money-speculations. If the later history of British India had been of the same kind, our Empire might fairly he said to be similar to the Empire of the Spanish in Hispaniola and Peru, and to have sprung entirely out of the reckless pursuit of gain. But a change took place with the advent of Lord Cornwallis in 1785. Partly by the example of his high character, partly by a judicious reform, which consisted in making the salaries of the servants of the Company considerable enough to remove the excuse for corruption, he purged the service of its immorality. From that time it has been morally respectable. Now among the conse- quences of this change we might expect, if gain were the principal inducement to conquest, to see the aggressions of the Company cease. For not only had its agents from this time a character to lose, but it was also impossible for it to engage in purely wicked enterprises of conquest, since under the double government introduced by Pitt in 1784 it would have had to make the English Ministry its accomplice. Now the English Ministry may be supposed capable of crimes of ambition, but hardly of corrupt connivance at the sordid crimes of a trading-company. The truth is that from the time of Pitt's India Bill the supreme management of Indian affairs passed out of the hands of the Company. Thenceforward therefore an enter- prise begun for purposes of trade fell under the manage- ment of men who had no concern with trade. Thence- forward two English statesmen divided between themselves the decision of the leading Indian questions, the President of- the Board of Control and the Governor-General, and as long as the Company lasted the leading position belonged rather to the Governor-General than to the President of the Board. . Now it was under this system that the 272 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. Ileoi. vi. conquest of India for the most part was made, and it is certain that in this period the spirit of trade did not preside over our Indian affairs. With the appearance of Lord Wellesley as Governor- General in 1798 a new era begins in Indian policy. He first laid down the theory of intervention and annexation. His theory was afterwards adopted by Lord Hastings, who, by the way, before he became Governor-Generalhad opposed it. Later again it was adopted with a kind of fanaticism by the last of the Governors-General who ruled in the time of the Company, Lord Dalhousie. Now this is the theory which led to the conquest of India, I have not left myself space in this lecture to examine it. I can only say that it does not aim at increase of trade, and that accordingly, instead of being favoured, it was usually opposed by the Company. The Company resisted Lord Wellesley and censured Lord Hastings; if they were strangely compliant in dealing with Lord Dalhousie, it is to be remarked that in his time the directors had practically ceased to represent a trading Company. The theory was often applied in a most high- handed manner. Lord Dalhousie in particular stands out in history as a ruler of the type of Frederick the Great, and did deeds which are almost as difficult to -justify as the seizure of Silesia or the Partition of Poland. But these acts, if crimes, are crimes of the same order as those of Frederick, crimes of ambition and of an ambition not by any means purely selfish. Neither he nor any of the great Governors-General since Warren Hastings can be suspected for a moment of sordid rapacity, and thus we see that our Indian Empire, though it began in trade and has a great trade for one of its results, yet was not really planned by tradesmen or for purposes of trade. LECTURE VII. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DANGERS. Foe estimating the stability of an Empire there are certain plain tests which the political student ought td have at his fingers" ends. Of these some are applied to its internal organisation, and some to its external condi- tions, just as an insurance company in estimating the value of a life will take the opinion of the medical officer, who will feel the candidate's pulse and listen to his heart, but they will also inquire how and where the candidate lives, and whether his pursuits or habits expose him to any peculiar risks from without. Now I have partly applied the internal test. The internal test of the vitality of a state consists in ascertaining whether or no the Government rests upon a solid basis. For in every state besides the two things which are obvious to aU, viz., the Government and the governed, there is a third thing, which is overlooked by most of us and yet is usually not difficult to distinguish, I mean the power outside the Government which holds the Government up. This power may be slight or it may be substantial, and according to its solidity, or rather according to the ratio of its strength S.L. 18 274 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [leoi. to that of the powers which tend to overthrow the Govern- ment, is that Government's chance of duration. KTow I made some inquiry into the strength of the supports upon which the Government in India rests, but rather with a view of explaining how it stands now than whether it is likely to last a long time. Let us reconsider then with this other object the conclusions at which we arrived. We found that the Government did not rest, as in England, upon the consent of the people or of some division of the people which has created the Government by a con- stitutional process. The Government is in every respect, race, religion, habits, foreign to' the people. There is only one body of persons of which we can positively aflEirm that without its support the Government could not stand; this is the army. Of this army one part is English, and might be trusted to stand by the Government in all circumstances, but it is less than a third part of the whole. The other two-thirds are bound to us by nothing but their pay and the feeling of honour which impels a good soldier to be true to his flag. This is our visible support. Is there beyond it any moral support which, though in- visible, may be reckoned upon as substantial ? Here is a question which affords room for much difference of opinion. We are naturally inclined to suppose that the benefits we have done the country by terminating the chronic anarchy which a century ago was tearing it in pieces, and by introducing so many evident improvements, must have convinced all classes that onr Government ought to be supported. But such a presumption is very rash. The notion of a publito good, of a common weal, to which all private interests ought to be subordinate, is one' which we have no right to assume to be current in such a popula- VII.] , INTERNAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 275 tion as that of India. It seems indeed to presuppose precisely what we have found to he wanting, that is, a moral unity or nationality in India. This being absent, we ought to presume that instead of considering what benefits our rule may confer upon, the country in general, each class or interest inquires how it separately is affected by our ascendancy, the Mussulman how his religion, the Brahmin how his ancient social supremacy, the native prince how his dignity, is affected by it. The great benefit which we have conferred upon the country at large in putting down general plunder and the omnipotence of a mercenary soldiery is enjoyed perhaps mainly'a. clas"s fey, which, though the most numerous, yet has Httle influence and a short memory, that class so characteristic of India, the small cultivators whose thoughts are absolutely wrapt up in the difficult problem of existing, whose utmost am- bition extends only to keeping body and soul together^ Those who used to be plundered, tortured, massacred in the chronic wars, ought no doubt to bless us; but the plunderers, the murderers are not likely to do so; and these, it may be, form the more influential class. It is certain in fact that all those who under the old rule of the Moguls used to be influential in India, those who used to monopolise official posts, those who belong to the race which used to rule and represent the religion which used to dominate, all those therefore whose opinion of us might be expected to be politically important, have suffered by our ascendancy; and that all our philanthropic attempts to raise the native races have had the effect of depressing them, and that to such an extent that vast numbers of them have been reduced to the greatest distress. rash to assume that any gratitude which may have been aroused here and there by our administration can be more than sufficient to counterbalance the discontent which we have excited among those whom we have ousted from authority and influence. It remains then that our power rests on an army, and on an army of which two-thirds are in relation to us mere mercenaries. This may seem a slight support, especially for so vast an authority, but we are to consider on the other hand what is the force of opposition which has to be overcome. And we find a population which by habit and long tradition is absolutely passive, which has been dragonnaded by foreign military Governments, until the very conception of resistance has been lost. We find also a population which has no sort of unity, in which nationalities lie in layers, one under another, and lan- guages wholly unlike each other are brought together by composite dialects caused by fusion. In other words it is a population which for the present is wholly incapable of any common action. As I said, if it had a spark of that corporate life which distinguishes a nation, it could not be held in such a grasp as we lay upon it. But there is no immediate prospect of such a corporate life springing up in it. In the meanwhile our Government seems in ordinary times sufficiently supported. It is considerably stronger in many respects than it was at the. time of the mutiny. The proportion of English to native troops in the army is larger, and many precautions suggested by the mutiny itself have been taken. A mutiny might happen again, but so long as it is a mere mutiny there seems no reason why it should be fatal to our power. The native troops want native leadership, and so long as they find no effective support in the people, so long as thdir own VII.] : INTEENAl AND EXTEENAL DAKGEES. 277 objects continue to be, as they were in the last mutiny, wholly unpatriotic and selfish, so long as they can be disbanded and replaced by another native army, the position looked at purely from within seems tolerably secure. But this statement at the same time brings to light certain dangers. In the first place what is said of the passive habits of the native population applies only to the Hindus. The Mussulmans have in great part different habits and different traditions. They do not look back upon centuries of submission, but upon a period not so long past when they were a ruling race. Secondly we are to remember that, much as unity may be wanting, one kind of unity, that of religion, is not wanting. There is the powerful and active unity of Islam ; there is the less active but still real unity of Brahminism. In Dr Hunter's book on the Indian Mussulmans there is a chapter entitled 'the chronic conspiracy within our territory', in which is described the religious agitation which under the influence of Wahabite preachers con- stantly rouses against our Government (according to Dr Hunter, but others deny this) just that part of the population which has the proudest memories and there- fore the keenest sense of indignation against the race that has superseded them. Brahminism, though a tenacious, is a much less inspiring religion. Still we all remember the greased cartridges. The mutiny of 1857, though mainly military, yet had a religious beginning. It shows us what we might expect if the vast Hindu population came to believe that their religion was attacked. And we are to bear in mind that the Hindu religion is not, like the Mohammedan, outside the region which science claims as its own. We have always declared that we held sacred the principle of religious toleration, and on 278 EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. ti-Eor. that understanding we are obeyed ; but what if the Hindu should come to regard the teaching of European science &s being of itself an attack on his religion ? Great religious movements then seem less improbable than a nationality-movement. On the other hand the religious forces, if they are livelier, neutralise each other more directly. Islam and Hinduism confront each other, the one stronger in faith, the other in numbers, and create a sort of equilibrium. Is it conceivable that we may some day find our Christianity a reconciling element between ourselves and these contending religions ? We are to remember that, as Islam is the crudest expression of Semitic religion, Brahminisih on the other hand is an expression of Aryan thought. Now among the religioBS of the world Christianity stands out as a product of the fusion of Semitic with Aryan ideas. It may be said that India and Europe in respect of reKgion have both the same elements, but that in India the elements have not blended, while in Europe they have united in Christianity. Judaism and classical Paganism were in Europe at the beginrdng of our era what Mohammedanism and Brahminism are now in India; but in India the elements have remained separate, and have only made occasional efforts to unite, as in the Sikh religion and in the religion of Akber. In Europe a great fusion took place by means of the Christian Church, which fusion has throughout modern history been growing more and more complete. Such then is the appearance which our Empire wears when it is looked at by itself and with reference only to the internal forces which play upon it in India. But in order to form any estimate of its chance of stability it is equally important to consider what influences afiect it from without. Til.] INTEBNAI AND EXTEENAL DANGEES. 279 Few countries known to history have been so isolated as India. Between NearchuSj the Admiral of Alexander, and Vasco da Gama no European conamander navigated the Indian Ocean, but the Arabs appear to have made naval descents on Sind as early as the time of the Caliph Omar. With this exception the only traceable foreign relation of India except towards the North has been with Java, and here the influence Went forth from India, for we find in the Kawi language of Java the strongest traces both linguistic and literary of Hindu influence. What the sea is to the peninsula that to the plain of the Ganges is the enormous barrier of the Himalaya. It has the effect of making India practically rather an island than a peninsula. On this side too Indian influence has gone forth into Central Asia, for it is to the north and the east that Buddhism went forth to make its extensive conquests. But on this side too there have been no political relations, no wars or invasions of which we have any authentic knowledge, except at a single point. We can easily imagine therefore that the isolation of India was tor thousands of years complete, and indeed the natives told Alexander, the Great, when he appeared among them, that they had never been invaded before. But this isolation came to an end at last, because after all India is not an island. It has one vulnerable point. There is one point at which the mountain barrier can be penetrated. It can be invaded from Persia or from Central Asia through Afghanistan. Accordingly the whole history of the foreign relations of India up to the time of Vasco da Gama centres in Afghanistan. We may reckon perhaps eight great invasions by this route. The first is the most memorable of all, but no history of it remains.. The Aryan race must have entered by this 280 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. [wcr. route, or perhaps we must say that the Aryan race must have come into existence here. The Afghans themselves are Aryan by language, and the correspondence in certain matters between the Zendavesta of Persia and the Vedas of India leads us to place the original Aryan home of the Sanscrit-speaking race somewhere on the frontier of India and Persia. - The next invasion was that of Alexander the Great, famous enough in historyj for it first threw open the door of India to the Western world. But it had no permanent consequences, since the Graeco-Bactrian kingdom, which for a time maintained a footing in India, came to an end in the second century before Christ. The third wants a history almost as much as the first. It is the so-called Scythian invasion, or series of invasions of the first centuries after Christ^ All-important as it is to students of Sanscrit literature, it need not detain us here. Then comes the invasion of Mahmoud of Ghazni (a. d. 1001). This is one of the most important, because it is at once the end both of the isolation and of the independence of India and also what may be called the practical discovery of India for the rest of the world. Mahmoud is to India, as it were, Columbus and Cortez in one. Since his time foreign domination has never been interrupted, and the way to India through the Khyber Pass has been a beaten road trodden by many adventurers. In several respects too Mahmoud is a precursor of the Great Moguls. He is by birth a Turk, he has a petty throne in Afghanistan, and he is irresistibly impelled to the conquest of India by his Mussulman faith and by the near neighbourhood of the shrines of idolatry. In all these points he resembles Baber. The fifth great invasion was that of Tamerlane in 1398. tn.] IHTEENAli AND EXTBENAL DANGERS. 281 It was purely destructive, but tas an importance of its own, which however we shall understand better when we are in a condition to compare it with the seventh and eighth invasions. Then Comes the invasion of Baber in 1524 and the establishment of the Mogul Empire. What Mahmoud had begun he and his successors carried out with more con- tinuousness. Their empire was similar to the Mussulman Empires which had preceded it, but firmer and more con- solidated. The seventh and eighth are desolating incursions like that of Tamerlane. The one was undertaken by Nadir Shah, the tyrant who seized the throne of Persia on the fall of the Soft dynasty ; it took place in 1739, when the Mogul Empire was already in full decline. The other took place in 1760 ; the author of it was Ahmed Shah Abdalij head of an Empire of Duranis, whose headquarters were in Afghanistan ^ Such are the principal invasions which India has suffered. A review of them shows that, though India has but this one point at which she is vulnerable by-l^id,-yet at this point she is very vulnerable indeed. For a long time indeed it seems that the way to invade her was not discovered, but at least from the time of Mahmoud of Ghuzni she has become peculiarly liable to invasion and her history has been completely determined by it. For she has shown extremely little power of resistance. The history of India up to and outside of the English conquest may be thus briefly summed up. It consists in the first place of two great Mussulman conquests and of a great Hindu reaction against the Mussulman power, which took shape in the Mahratta confederacy ; the two conquests were both made from Afghanistan; in the 282 EXPANSION OF ENGLAND. lusat. second place, of the destruction of the two great Moham- medan Powers in succession and the decisive humilia- tion of the Mahratta Power; this was acomplishedhy three other invasions from Afghanistan. That you may understand how this is so I will ask you first to examine the fall of the Mogul Empire, that is, the second of the great Mussulman Powers., The ultimate cause of its fell, was perhaps the unwise attempt of Aurungzebe to extend it over the Deccan ; accordingly its decline began visibly at Aurungzebe's death. But the decisive blow which was mortal to it, which converted it from a sick man to a dying man, was the devastating invasion of Nadir Shah, who came down through Afghanistan in 1739. He sacked Delhi, and so completely plundered the treasury that the Mogul Government was never able to raise its head again. In precisely the same way the Mahratta Power, just at the moment when it seemed on the point of uniting aU India^ was broken by the descent of Ahmed Shah Abdali from Afghanistan and by the fatal battle of Paniput (in which 200,000 men are said to have fallen) in the year 1761, that is, when the English were already making themselves masters of Bengal. And it appears to me that, as these two invasions were fatal to the Moguls and the Mahrattas, so the earlier invasion of Tamerlane at the end of the fourteenth century crushed the earlier Mussulman Power, which just before under Mohammed Toghlak had reached its greatest extension. But now, as Mahmoud of Ghazni threw open India to invasion from the north, Vasco da Gama opened it to maritime invasion from Europe. This was, though it did not seem so at the time, the greater achievement of the two. For Mahmoud only established a connexion between India and the Mussulman world of Western and vn.] INTEENAL AND EXTEENAL DANGEES, 283 Central Asia, but Vasco da Gama for the first time since Alexander the Great connected it with Europe, and this time it was Europe christianised and civilised. This could not be remarked a,t the time because, while Mahmoud came as a mighty conqueror, Vasco da Gama was but a humble navigator. His discovery for a very long time led tO' no political results. There followed a century which I called the Spanish-Portuguese age of colonial history. Almost throughout the sixteenth century the whole newly-discovered oceanic world was in the hands of two nations, and the Asiatic half of it almost exclusively in the hands of the Portuguese. But in the last years of that century the Dutch succeeded in taking their place. As to the English, when the seventeenth century opened, they were still but timid interlopers encroaching a little in India upon the monopoly of the Dutch. I explained above how at the end of the seven- teenth century England and France had begun to take in the colonial world the position which had belonged in the sixteenth century to Spain and Portugal, and how the whole eighteenth century is filled with the struggle of these two nations for supremacy in it. In 1748 this struggle breaks out violently in India, and it has already become clear to Dupleix that the struggle is political not merely commercial, and that the prize is nothing less than an Indian Empire. Here then is a momentous turning point in the history of Indian foreign relations; Hitherto she had been connected with the outer world only through Afghanistan; henceforth she is to be con- nected with it also by the sea. This new connexion, once established, for a time eclipses the old, especially in the eyes of the English conquerors themselves.. As I have said before, the enemy 284 , EXPANSION OP ENGLAND. [mwu' whom the English for a long time continued to dread most in India was their earliest enemy, France. Invasions from Afghanistan had not indeed ceased. Nadir Shah's invasion took place only nine years before that year 1748, from -which we date the rise of the British Empire. The invasion of Ahmed Shah Abdali took place thirteen years later. But these occurrences did not much attract the attention of the English. For we are to bear in mind that, though they had begun to conquer, they did not yet dream how far their conquests would carry them. 