Lord Clive Ed by Hc Bowen Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1877 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: INTRODUCTION. THE RISE OF EUROPEAN POWER IN INDIA. The rise of European power in India, or at any rate the events which led to the rise of such power, may be dated from the early expeditions of the Portuguese to the East towards the close of' the fifteenth century. Not content with the discovery of Madeira in 1420 and of the Cape de Verde Islands in 1460, but rather stimulated by these successes, the navigators of this adventurous nation had set their minds on completing the circuit of the continent of Africa. It was in 1486 that Bartholomew Diaz, admiral of the For- Banhoio- tuguese fleet, sailed by command of King mew Dlaz- ' John II., and after perilous but determined endeavours rounded the southernmost point, and called it the Cape of Storms -- a name which the king, elated with his success and taking a somewhat bolder view of the future, quickly changed to the Cape of Good Hope. It was not long before this view received a complete justification. In 1497 the king's cousin and successor, Emmanuel I., the patron of sea adventure, and the real pioneer of the way to India, fired by the successes of Columbus in the West, equipped and dis- Vasco da patched an expedition under Vasco da Gama Gima. to push on stiji furtner to the East. This able and fortunate man, sent forth with the cheers of all the people of Lisbon, in four months, without storm or danger, reached the Cape, and rounding it put in at Melinda, on the eastern coast, for a pilot to guide his ships across the Indian Ocean. On May 1r, in 1498, he cast anchor off Calicut on the coast of Malabar. Little could the natives then have thought wh...« less