ABSTRACT
Europeans traded on the fringes of India, having little impact on internal development. Beginning in 1600 British trade was monopolized by the East India Company. However, around 1750, Mogul authority began to break down; there were numerous local civil wars, power became more decentralized, and a new phase of the relationship began with Clive A. Edwards’s military defeat of the Bengali forces at Plassey in 1757. The Portuguese were the first to arrive at the Spice Islands, seizing Malacca in 1511, the key to trade between the Far East and Europe. They introduced what Allen M. Sievers calls “the European plague”: Christian arrogance, treachery, ruthless rapacity, mass murder, and cruel exploitation. The Portuguese struggled to control the spice trade, but they were too small and weak a nation to sustain their position. Traditional liberal theories hold that nations develop in a progression from primitive societies to industrialization.
