His

• The Cantino world map shows us what the world looked like to the Europeans during the early sixteenth century
• Henry the Navigator (1394-1460)


  Set Portugal on the way of overseas exploration
• Henry the Navigator's actions

  1. In 1415, he set out to conquer the city of Ceuta, on the northern Moroccan coast near the strait of Gibraltar

  2. Under his direction, Portuguese ships passed the coasts of Southern Morocco, Guinea, Senegal, and finally reached Cape Verde

  3. The Portuguese continued to explore the West African coast during the lifetime of Prince Henry
• The Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 cut off the overland route from Europe to India and the Far East
• This pushed the Europeans to find a sea route to the Indies
• Vasco da Gama's journey

  1. In 1497, the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama began his historic journey around the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost point of Africa

  2. Da Gama sailed up the coast of East Africa and finally reached the Indian coast in May 1498
• Vasco da Gama's voyage created a sea route from Europe to Asia, and the Portuguese quickly began to set up trading bases on the Indian coast
• In the 1600s, the Dutch East India Company controlled the Indonesian spice trade
• The Dutch East India Company destroyed clove trees that didn't belong to them, with only 800-1000 mes of cloves allowed out each year, giving them a monopoly on clove prices
• A Frenchman stole some seeds from a remaining clove tree and took them to other countries, taking away the company's monopoly on the trade and severely hurting their profits and ambitions
• The Portuguese built forts around their trading bases and made profits of sixty times the cost of each voyage from the goods they bought in India
• When the Portuguese had seventy well-defended sea ports along the south-western coast of the subcontinent, they realised they could make much greater profits, with far less risk, by forcing every ship sailing along the coast to buy a pass from them
• The Dutch, the French, and the British began to build ships that could sail around the coast of Africa to India, but the Portuguese had greater power at sea because they had bigger and better cannons than their rivals
• Dutch East India Company


  Formed in 1602 by Dutch merchants
• By 1650, the Dutch East India Company had built eleven forts in Kerala, and by 1680 they had forced the Portuguese out of much of south western India
• From the 1680s onwards, a new power - the English East India Company (EIC) - began to challenge the Dutch
• It was cheaper for the locals to pay the taxes and avoid war, but surely that was not the case for other Europeans, who had to make the expensive sea journey to India
• The Portuguese made enemies of the English and the Dutch, and it was the Dutch who had the resources to challenge the Portuguese
• During the reign of Elizabeth I in the sixteenth century, the English lost much of their trade in Europe because of its conflicts with France and Spain, so they needed trading links in Asia
• The Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Chinese Robe controlled the major land trade, and these three empires accounted for about 80 per cent of the world's trade by 1600
• King James I of England granted the English East India Company permission to establish a trading post (factory) in India in 1613
• The English East India Company gradually gained control over more and more territory in India, eventually becoming the dominant power and establishing a large military force
• The Dutch, Portuguese, and British East India Companies traded in Asia.
• The Portuguese stopped exploring and just made as much money as they could from their ports on Indian land.
• The Portuguese's exploitative trading practices

  Angered many other traders and local rulers, including other Europeans
• It was cheaper for Indian merchants to buy Portuguese trading passes and pay their taxes than to go to war, which would have required paying for expensive ships and cannon.
• English East India Company

  Formed in 1600 to try to make great profits from buying valuable cloth and spices from Asian merchants
• King James I of England sent Sir Thomas Roe to visit the Mughal Emperor Jahangir in 1615, who gave permission for the English East India Company to build a trading post (factory) at Surat in Gujarat.
• By 1707, the English East India Company had established three trading centres: Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.
• Farman


  Royal edict issued by Aurangzeb in 1667, giving the British East India Company rights to trade duty-free in Bengal
• The nawabs of Bengal resented the farman


  As it divested them of a large chunk of revenue, leading to military conflicts in the eighteenth century that ended in British victory
• In the eighteenth century, other Europeans, particularly the French, began to compete with the East India Company for trade in India.
• The Mughal rulers of India had become much weaker by 1740, and the rulers of the several Indian states often fought one another for power, threatening the company's trading interests.
• The English East India Company began to build up armed forces of its own to use against both the French and some Indian rulers, and made alliances with local rulers.
• Robert Clive


  Came to India in 1744 as a small trader for the East India Company in Madras, and within a few years became an officer in the company's armed forces, defeating the French and their Indian allies
• By the mid-eighteenth century, the Mughal emperors ruled only in name over much of their old empire, and Maratha armies had taken over almost all of central India.
• The Mughals lost even more authority after many of their provinces became independent, including Bengal, Oudh, and Hyderabad.
• CLESION OF FEL SERCONTINENT

  1. The British fortified their base in Calcutta

  2. Bengal and hired more men to protect their trade against the Marathas, the French, and Sirajud Daula, the Nawab of Bengal

  3. The Nawab of Bengal occupied Calcutta with an army and expelled the British

  4. The British drove Siraj-ud-Daula's army out of Calcutta under command of robert clive
• The Battle of Plassey


  1757
• The Battle of Plassey

  1. Siraj-ud-Daula moved his army south to Plassey

  2. Robert Clive and his army marched to attack Siraj-ud-Daula's army and his French allies

  3. Clive had bribed Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief of a division of Siraj-ud-Daula's army

  4. When both the armies confronted each other, it started to rain heavily

  5. Mir Jafar advised Siraj-ud-Daula to retreat

  6. Siraj-ud-Daula was captured and executed under the orders of Mir Jafar, who was made the new nawab of Bengal