462 THE INDIAN EMPIRE [CHAP..
and Sir Nicholas Waite; at Calcutta between John Beard and
Sir Edward Littleton; and at Madras between Thomas Pitt,
the ex-interloper, now the zealous servant of the Old Company,
Embassy and his cousin John Pitt. The embassy of Sir William Norris
of Sir to the court of Aurangzeb, on which the New Company had
Norris, built many hopes, proved a failure. In England the settle-
1699- ment of the East India trade became a burning political
question; but finally in I702, on pressure from the Crown
and Parliament, the two Companies were forced into a pre-
liminary union. The Old Company was called upon to buy
£673,000 additional stock in the General Society to make
their share equal to that of their rivals. The dead stock, i.e.
houses, factories, and forts of the Old Company, were valued
at £330,000 and of the New at £70,000; and the latter had
to pay £I30,000 to make up for the discrepancy. There
followed six years of negotiation and compromise at home,
The Union and of 'rotation governments' and squabbling abroad. In
of the 1708 the union was made absolute by Parliament, all points
panies, in dispute being settled by the arbitration of the Earl of
1708. Godolphin; a further loan of I,20oo,ooo was made to the
state, and the amalgamation of the 'London' and the 'English'
Companies was finally carried out under the style of the
'United Company of Merchants of England trading to the
East Indies.'
The settlement of 1708 gave the Company an assured
position at home, and henceforward the centre of interest
shifts mainly to the Eastern arena. The years that followed
were comparatively uneventful, for the Company gladly returned
Surman's to their traditional policy of a peaceful commerce. Surman's
embassy, embassy to Delhi in I7I5-7 procured certain territorial con-
x7IS-7' cessions as well as trade rights from the Mughal emperor, and
indirectly enabled the Company's servants to see with their
own eyes the internal rottenness of the empire. The three
Presidencies quietly grew in population and importance amidst
momentous political changes, the disintegration of Mughal
power, the growth of the AMaratha confederacy, and the estab-
lishment of practically independent kingdoms. The evil results
of the political anarchy were felt mainly in Bombay, which
The in the period 1708-50 passed through a severe trial. On the
MIarathds. sea-board it was harassed by the famous corsair chief AngriA
(died 1730) and his sons, while on land it was constantly
threatened by the steady advance of the Maratha armies. In
Bengal the semi-independent Nawabs lived at peace with their
European neighbours; while in Madras the English could feel
|
![[Digital South Asia Library]](/graphics/thirdlevel.gif)
