Upon arrival, they found the Dutch far from eager to share their profits. The British therefore turned back to India's west coast, dropping anchor near Surat in 1608, and Sir William Hawkins proceeded to the imperial Mogul court in Agra to seek permission to set up a trading post. But the Portuguese, who had staked some claims on the subcontinent when Vasco da Gama landed in 1498, proved quite as reluctant as the Dutch were to part with their monopoly.
Trading requests, backed up by force.
As the Mogul emperor dithered about giving permissions and the Portuguese connived, the British took to backing up their local requests with threats of force. By 1639, English traders were established on the east coast, too, leasing for 600 a year a harborless beach just five miles long and one mile wide, which they christened Fort St. George (later Madras). In 1661 they picked up another site when, for a paltry annual rent of 10, King Charles II handed over a barren island called Bombay, which had been part of his dowry from Catherine of Braganza. A generation later, after some skirmishes, the company gained permission to set up shop in a stinking mudflat in Bengal; it quickly developed into Fort William (Calcutta, now a city of ten million, grew up around it).
The India that these British traders came to do business in was a thoroughly bewildering place, a vast expanse of land filled with millions of peasants ruled by a small number of princes--mostly Muslim--with power derived from a court whose opulence could put any in Europe to shame. The Moguls, a band of intruders of Mongolian, Turkish and Persian origin, had formally established their empire in India in 1526; by the time the British arrived, they ruled most of northern India save for a few fiefdoms still controlled by tribute-paying Hindu rajas. Though ruthless, the Moguls had cultivated tastes, especially for Persianstyle gardens, poems and miniatures.
