ABSTRACT
The early eighteenth century was characterized by Holden Furber as an ‘age of partnership’ between Indian and European, before the English had attained the political mastery which altered commercial relations on the subcontinent. Charles Boxer, on the other hand, pointed out that Europeans in Asia, even the Portuguese with their policy of intermarriage with local populations, were nevertheless permeated with racial prejudice. 1 This paradox is evident in the attitudes of the French, which combined a certain awe of Mughal authority with anger and frustration at local bureaucracy and eagerness to attract Indian commercial partners. The Company forbade the employment of Indians, even Christians, within its upper levels and even Frenchmen born in India were touched by the same prejudice. 2 Dupleix’s letters expressed his view that all Indians, whether high officials of the empire, merchants or employees of the Company, were untrustworthy and venal. Yet Frenchmen in India were dependent on Indian rulers, financiers and merchants. They were operating in a world in which they had no especial authority derived from political control or industrial superiority: partnership was a necessity. The French, perhaps even more than the Dutch and English, were dependent on the Indian merchants who supplied and serviced their needs, while at the same time, they found it harder than other Europeans to establish the essential working relationship with Indians on which English and Dutch success was founded.
