Modern Indian History (Paperback)

CHAPTER-1

Establishment of British Rule in India

THE CARNATIC WARS
"he first French company that succeeded in establishing permanent trade with was compagnie des Indes by king and planned by Colbert, the minister, in 1664. Its first factory was founded at Surat (1668) by Coron, a Dutchman in the French Service and another was established at Masulipattinam in 1669. Francois Mortin founded Pondicherry, which became capital of French in India, in 1674. In Bengal, its first factory was set up at Chandranagar in 1690-92 on the bank of river Hughli. In 1725, they acquired Mahe (Malabar) and in 1739 Karikal (Coromandel).
The king gave the company a loan of 3,000,000 livres, free of interest. The French East India Company was given a monopoly for twenty-five years to trade from the Cape of Good Hope to India and the South Seas. The French got a firman from Aurangzeb, which granted them permission to do trade in the coast of Gujarat.
The Carnatic wars were fought between English East India Company and French East India Company from 1746 to 1763. The English and French were old rivals in Europe and wherever they saw each other, they tried to outdo each other in every field. The war between the two on Indian soil was unique as the two outsiders were fighting to establish their monopoly in trade and the Indian rulers--the Mughals, the subedar of Deccan and the Nawab of Carnatic- were mere spectators to this rivalry between them.

The First Carnatic War (1746-48)
The first Carnatic war was directly linked to the events in Europe. The English and French were fighting on the issue of Austria's succession (1740-48).