Europeans in India Part 9 The French Arrive in India Section I: Pondicherry is Established

Canberra 2 April 2023 France was the fourth European nation to enter the race to establish commercial relations with India and for cornering the spice trade, if the minor incursions of the Danes are discounted as being almost insignificant. The French had noticed that the Portuguese, Dutch and the English had profited considerably from their […]

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Europeans in India Part 8 The English East India Company Section III: Early Decades – The Steady March

Canberra, 17 March 2023 The East India Company’s beginnings in India were not very promising, mainly because of the concerted Portuguese opposition and the inability of the English to obtain permission from the Mughal Viceroy of Gujarat to erect a factory in Surat. The Portuguese were opposed to any new arrivals in India and made […]

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Europeans in India Part 8 The English East India Company Section II: Coalescing as an Entity

Canberra, 5 March 2023 From its very inception, the East India Company was driven by three focused guiding principles: one, the preservation of its monopoly rights and privileges within England, regarding the trade with the East; two, the continuous planning and execution of actions to oust rival mercantile interests from the Indian Ocean region; and […]

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Europeans in India Part 8 The English East India Company Section I: Origins

Canberra, 5 March 2023 Before the 15th century, England was a backward agricultural country with no standing among the other kingdoms and States of the world. By the end of the 18th century, within a span of a mere three centuries, the same impoverished country had become the foremost political and economic power in Europe, […]

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Europeans in India – The Portuguese Part 3 A Viceroy and Three Governors Section III: Lopo Soares & Diego Lopes

Canberra, 3 December 2022 [Detailed accounts of the tenures of the first Viceroy and three Governors who succeeded him have been given for the reader to get a flavour of the activities that these individuals undertook to perpetuate Portuguese presence in the Indian sub-continent and to create a monopoly on the lucrative spice trade, which […]

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Europeans in India – The Portuguese Part 3 A Viceroy and Three Governors Section II: Afonso D’Albuquerque

Canberra, 03 December 2022 When he assumed the office of Governor of Estado da India on 5th November 1509, Afonso D’Albuquerque, was 56 years of age, an old man for that period. His first action was to assist Marshal Coutinho to attack Calicut, which he was reluctant to do, but had to agree considering the […]

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Europeans in India The Portuguese Part 3 A Viceroy and Three Governors Section I Francisco D’Almeida (1505-1509)

Canberra, 03 December 2022 ‘The Portuguese of the 16th and 17th centuries had nothing to teach the people of India except improved methods of killing people in war and the narrow feeling of bigotry in religion. Surely these were not matters of such importance as to make it necessary for Indians to feel grateful towards […]

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Europeans in India – The Portuguese Part 1 Background: Ancient and Medieval

Canberra, 09 November 2022 The Indian sub-continent was known to the people of Europe in antiquity, with the ancient Greeks recording their knowledge of India in some of the texts of the time. Cyrus the Great (r. 558–530 BC) of the famous Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia, built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to […]

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RUSSIA IN THE MIDDLE-EAST: ALTERING THE GEO-STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT

Canberra, 22 October 2015 In the second half of September, Russia moved military forces predominated by air assets, into Bassel al-Assad international airport in the Latakia province of Syria. This deployment made it impossible for the anti-Assad forces to capture the province and also provided a logistics lifeline to the military forces of the Syrian […]

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