Nevertheless, the fact of each of the
great powers having a share in this focus of commerce drew thither
both large fleets and small squadrons, a tendency aided by the
unfavorable seasons for military operations on the continent; and in
the West Indies took place the greater number of the fleet-actions
that illustrated this long series of wars.

[Illustration: PENINSULA OF INDIA AND CEYLON.]

In yet another remote region was the strife between England and France
to be waged, and there, as in North America, finally decided by these
wars. In India, the rival nations were represented by their East India
companies, who directly administered both government and commerce.
Back of them, of course, were the mother-countries; but in immediate
contact with the native rulers were the presidents and officers
appointed by the companies. At this time the principal settlements of
the English were,--on the west coast, Bombay; on the east, Calcutta
upon the Ganges, at some distance from the sea, and Madras; while a
little south of Madras another town and station, known generally to
the English as Fort St. David, though sometimes called Cuddalore, had
been established later. The three presidencies of Bombay, Calcutta,
and Madras were at this time mutually independent, and responsible
only to the Court of Directors in England.

France was established at Chandernagore, on the Ganges, above
Calcutta; at Pondicherry, on the east coast, eighty miles south of
Madras; and on the west coast, far to the south of Bombay, she had a
third station of inferior importance, called Mahe. The French,
however, had a great advantage in the possession of the intermediate
station already pointed out in the Indian Ocean, the neighboring
islands of France and Bourbon. They were yet more fortunate in the
personal character of the two men who were at this time at the head
of their affairs in the Indian peninsula and the islands, Dupleix and
La Bourdonnais,--men to whom no rivals in ability or force of
character had as yet appeared among the English Indian officials. Yet
in these two men, whose cordial fellow-working might have ruined the
English settlement in India, there appeared again that singular
conflict of ideas, that hesitation between the land and the sea as the
stay of power, a prophecy of which seems to be contained in the
geographical position of France itself. The mind of Dupleix, though
not inattentive to commercial interests, was fixed on bui