SIR'. W. W. • HUNTER'S " BRITISH:INDIA."
PERSONS interested in India, and that PhraSe includes an ever- growing multitude of the people of this country,: haii been long and impatiently waiting for the history Which Sir. William Hunter was known to be preparing. . No man'in these islands was 'nearly so well fitted for • the' task: ' He has had large and varied experience as an Administrator ; he possesses much of the insight, sagacity, and' power of -clear statement: which characterised 'his relative, .Mr. James Wilson. He has as much imagination as- a historian needd to ptevent his falling 'into that dullness which is but too characteristie of Indian narratives ; and the accidents of- his life, asis explabie.dinhis lucid . introduction; have 'obliged him to 'give many years to the careful accumulation 'of 'Indian facts, past as well as pre- sent; studied from beyond the•Khaibar, to'CapaComoriit. We may assert Without fear 'of contradiction that helirows more of these facts -than any one who has.- ever lived.' That 'state- ment will Burp. rise nobody *holies read the marvellOuSarticle • AJ:Bstorrof British India. By Sir. William Wils.ln hunter,. 'Vol. I., -To the Overthrow of the English in the Spica Aralyelago." London:
Longiound and Co. [1St] -' • V •
-entitled "India," which forms part Of- his great Gazetteer; and is published as a separate volume. "
-"We could have *risked that the book of which the first yeltiine is' now given to the world had been laid down on the Same linea, as its author's delightful grief History of the - Indian: People. This,-. however, Was not' to be. The collec- tions,' carefully hived up for three-and-twenty years, which were to be the foundation of the History of India as originally. planned; were lost at sea. Sir William Hunter was obliged, • in consequence, completely to alter his plan, and to write little more • than the history • of British :India, We consider this a real misfortune. Ever since British power became • firmly•established in India able and painstaking- servants of the* State have been gathering information about various parts'of that 'country, and great has beenthe company of its historians:.: They have all,. however; laboured under great • disadvantages. • Either. they were deficient in literary. skill, .or they had gone out to 'India. before- their general education was completely finished, or they aspired to nothing. more than • togivetrastworthy accounts of relatively small areas. Some :one was grievously wanted tosput in a form; acceptable to men Of.:cultivation bathe West, the pith of all they had to say; with much more.-that: they could not say: This we thought Sir do,lAtt -now, through no fault of his, the.- glOry Of "treating successfully the history of India through:a long .vista of centuries remain for another..
"'William's opening chapter is entitled "The Closing of the'Old Trade Paths." After explaining, in much detail, what - these wererhe- shOws.. that they were . closed.by the Turks ; the blew falling first. on Genoa :and Venice,. but sending a. shock through the whole syitem of ..turOpean corn- merce,—Augsburg, .Liibeck, and 'Bruges; the Isiorth-Weitern .r.te.p5t. of the "Hanseatictrade, which had at one time repre- sentatives . of -twenty foreign Courts dwelling along her canals, suffering: little, if at all°,1ess. than they did. , In the first years-of the sixteenth century the Indo-European trade of the Middle Ages had been all but annihilated: The Western nations were, however, by no Means. inclined to acqUiesce in their exclusion from a great reservoir of wealth. • All through the. dteenth. century they kept..looking for • some means of circumventing their enemies, and yearned, above all things; to finda'sea,route. Portugal, whose Royal Family had become closely connected with England-through the marriage of 'King Joluit,'with the daughter of John o' Gaunt, was first 'in the • field; The fifth • child which Philippe bore, to her husband WAS .the. illustrious Prince. Henry the Navigator, who, after distinguishing 'himself in the field, made what Sir William Hunter I thinking of Buddha, calls tits "Great Renunciation," and ret;red:to -the ,wind-swept'.proiliontory of Sagres at the southern -extremity of Portugal: It was • to :him that* his countrymen :were indebted for the. most splendid period of their history; which, -however, hardlybegan till aftor.his death: It.witstwenty:.sevenyears later;that Diaseloubled the Cape of GoOdliape,andten years after that date that Vasco de- Game sailed from the Tagus, reaching Calicut in 1498,-and returning to Lisboa inthe following year. . . .
The India of Vasco da • Gama was .the narrow strip of rich and. beautiful .coast which intervenes between the Western Ghats and the.sea, . In process of time the lands ruled from Lisbon extended much further to the northward, but the Portuguese never penetrated far into the country. They did not seize.and hold their limited territory without performing deeds oLgreat heroiam, nor without showing themselves to be very crueLand exceedingly unscrupulous. .Ere long they had to conteranot merely with their: original enemies, the jealous Arab traders of the coast, but with the Missulman Powers in Western Asia and Africa, who saw. that the flank of Islam had been turned • by the new sea .route, and. that the profits they had derived from the Indian trade were at stake. The greatest: ame at this,period of Portuguese annals was Affonso de Albuquerque, whose triple series of operations are set forth in chap..3.„ His. .first, plan was to cut off .the Mahomniedan commercefrom.its western base at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and the .:Red Sea ; .114 second, . by ; establishing the Portuguese.. at Goa, to control the marts on the Malabar coast ; his third the conquest of:Malacca, a most important scarce of. Mahommedan! commerce in the Far East. He died iri -1514. off Goa. For Mani. years after that the struggle ,continued. In 1515 the Turks attacked Diu... Siz years later they appeared 'before Malaeca. In 155], and again in 1581, they sacked Muscat.
If the Portuguese: had but a Unit land. Empire in the East, their sphere of .naval influence stretched across the vast basin of six thousand miles between the African 'coast and the Moluccas, While it ran northward for ' four thousand Miles froin the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf. That it should have held this-watery Empire for a century against the Mussulman world. shows that the little country had developed, thanks to the initiative of Henry the Navigators an immense amount of energy. Whether- that energy- was employed in a way to subserve its permanent advantage is quite another question. One of the. most interesting portions of the fourth chapter is the account of Goa as it was at the height• of its prosperity. That prosperity, however, soon. declined. Already in '1648 Tavernier relates that once Ntealthy families- were reduced to subsist upon alms. It is interesting to observe how clearly the tale of its falling -fortunes is told in a series of its coins, which grew . ever ruder and more barbarous. Now old Goa is one of the most melancholy places on the face of the earth... The officers employed 'by the Portuguese Govern- ment grew ever more and more corrupt. In 1530 the profits of a voyage on his majesty's account brought £78 to him and £2,450 to the captain, and that was a specimen of what was going, on elsewhere. Already in the middle of the sixteenth century the civic authorities of Goa thus addressed the King:— " In India there is no justice, either in your Viceroy 'or, in those who are to mete it out. The one object is the gathering together of money by every means. Senhor, we beg for mercy, mercy, mercy. . Help us, Senhor,. help us, Senhor, for we are sinking." - • .
Chap. 5 describes the efforts made by England to get a direct trade with India without infringing the Papal award of 1493 made between Portugal and Spain, and generally binding according to the ideas of international law which then prevailed. After the defeat of the'Armada, however, the scruples which were formerly entertained were thrown to the winds, and the voyage of Lancaster, vid the Cape, Zanzibar, and Cape Comorini to the Malay Peninsula tore up the `.‘ Charter of the Catholic Monopoly- in the Indian Seas." • The Dutch, for whom excommunication had, as for our countrymen, . ceased to have any , terrors, followed their example, rendered possible the formation of a great school of cartography at Antwerp and Bruges, the movement culmi- nating at the end of the. sixteenth century in.theloundation of their own and our East India Companies. The constitution of the first English Company is minutely described' in chap. 6. The broad facts connected with. it are sufficiently well known, but we apprehend that they have never been set forth with the same minute care "or the Babe constant recourse tc original documents. See, for example, p. 258 'and those which immediately, follow .it on the working of "Regulated Companies." It is a curious fact, and one with which we do not remember meeting with previously, that the first arms of the East -India Compan jr. displayed three ships in full sail with a punning motto, "Deus Indicat,"—" God points the way to India." That preceded by several generations the famous "Auspicio Regis et Senatus Anglhe." Nothing is more characteristically English than the thread of common- place which runs through the picturesque and splendid history of the East India Company. When it passed away in 1874 it was, pointed out, in a really brilliant article in the Railway News, that having begun in an advertisement calling the merchants of London together to that first famous meeting at which little More than £30,000 was raised for Eastern adventure, it had expired in another. The article alluded to quoted this last advertisement, and closed with the words, "And so Finis Polonix. Henceforth history only knows the East India Company."
Chap. 7, dealing with the separate voyages of the Com- pany, contains many curious and little known particulars,—see the account of the Candle Auctions, p. 292. This chapter closes with the defeat of the Portuguese near the mouth of the Tapti; known as the battle of Swally, from the anchorage of that name, a running fight which went on more or less for a month, happily under the eyes of the coast Governors of the Mughals, who took. note .of our superiority. An agreement with the-Governor of Surat was the immediate consequence, and- it was ratified. by an Imperial firman in -1619. It was
that firman which led to our legal settlement on the Indian continent.
Chap. 8 tells the stierrof -the long and successful struggle with the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, ending with our taking of Ormuz in 1622. Amongst the best pages in the volume are the two first of chap. 9, de- scribing the position which Holland had won by the beginning of the seventeenth century. Those which follow it detail the contest between the English and the Dutch traders for supremacy in the Eastern Archipelago, a struggle in which the former were worsted because small bodies of adventurers could not fight, on fair terms, against other adventurers, equally enterprising, with a powerful Government behind them. Long but fruitless negotiations with a view to peace in the East took place both at the Hague and in London. In 1617 a new danger threatened the English, for the King established a -Scotch Company, which might easily have coalesced with the Dutch. The remonstrances of his English subjects were, however, so loud that the new grant was re- called ; but the warfare between Amsterdam and London continued in the East in spite of a more or less abortive treaty to which the King lent all his authority.
The tenth chapter might, we think, have been shortened with much advantage. The fact that the shocking series of transactions known, by courtesy, as the Massacre of Amboyna, took place, had of course to be stated, for they drove us out of the Eastern Archipelago ; but why give us all the disgusting details of that horrid business ? Sir William Hunter, wishing, we suppose, above all things not to overstate the case in favour of his own country, is for once nothing short of tire- some in his quasi-apology for the Dutch authorities. They were ruffians sans phrase, and it is a thousand pities that Van Spenit with all his Council were not hanged, as the Prince of Orange wisely wished, "before they began to spell this tragedy."
If the author of this history were a new writer, we should have doubted the wisdom of publishing this initiatory volume by itself ; but those who are already acquainted with his great powers will see, at a glance, that it consists merely of substructions well contrived, substantial, inevitable sub- structions ; and who judges an eminent architect merely by substructions ? We make no doubt that, having got rid of this absolutely indispensable but rather ungrateful portion of his task, filled as it is with small facts, most of them necessary to be chronicled but not of paramount interest taken individually, he will tell the more attractive portion of the story with his usual combination of grace and vigour, no less than with abounding and first-hand knowledge.
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