CURRENT LITERATURE
THE ENGLISH FACTORIES IN INDIA, 1665-1667. By Sir William Foster, C.I.E. (Clarendon Press. 18s. net.) THE new volume of Sir William Foster's elaborate calendar of the East India Company's correspondence with its agents in India, and of other Anglo-Indian documents, is as readable and instructive as ever. It is concerned in part with the Dutch war of 1665-7, which seriously affected our Eastern trade. But the main episode is the transfer of Bombay to an English governor, Humphrey Cooke, on February 8th, 1665. The Portuguese Viceroy of Goa was very reluctant to fulfilthe marriage treaty of 1662 by which Charles II. received Bombay as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry. He could not refuse to cede Bombay, but he made Cooke agree to numerous condi- tions outside the treaty and he also limited the cession to the island of Bombay without its appurtenances. Cooke accepted the terms, meaning, as he told Arlington, to " observe noe more his articles then what is convenient." The King soon tired of his new and costly possession and transferred it to the Company in 1668. Bombay then had about 20,000 inhabitants, but its commercial possibilities were well recognized.
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