From Indus to Independence: A Trek Through Indian History Volume X: India, the Spice Trade and the Europeans - 1498-1757

This is the tenth volume in the series on Indian history with the generic title, From Indus to Independence: A Trek through Indian History and provides a historic narrative of the consecutive arrival of four European powers on the west coast of the Indian Peninsula and their activities in the sub-continent for the next 250 years.

The Europeans came to India to profit from the spice trade but soon realised that the local political circumstances gave them an opportunity to step outside the normal orbit of trading merchants. Although some amount of power struggle took place, it was the English who came to dominate the trade within a century of their arriving on the Indian shores. They achieved this through an astute combination of the use of force, opportunistic deals, blatant betrayal of trust, and the shrewd exploitation of inherent flaws in the domestic political structure.

This volume elaborates on the English annexation of the prosperous province of Bengal through a series of unscrupulous manoeuvres. The book explains the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta' and establishes that the episode was blown out of proportion by biased, later-day English chroniclers to suit the narrative of the English East India Company justifying their 'annexation' of many kingdoms in the sub-continent. Their role in fracturing the existing, admittedly fragile, socio-political status quo is studied, and the duplicitous nature of their dealings underlined. The book provides the reader with an in-depth understanding of the initial changes that took place in the Indian sub-continent with the forceful entry of European powers into the sub-continent.