2020, Vol. 2, Issue 2, Part A

Author(s): Sanikommu Venkateswarlu and S Murali Mohan

Abstract: India had excited European interest from time immemorial. In 1600s, the Portuguese, British and French established toe holds in India. A long struggle between the British and French for domination of the Indian subcontinent eventually was won by the British. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the area known as ‘French India’ was largely a mosaic of geographically separated territories. Trade and commerce conducted by the European Trading Companies in India had great impact on the urban growth, monetization of economy and commercialization of Agriculture. The pre-colonial trade both external and internal had brought about a number of changes in the socioeconomic set up of the Indian sub-continent. The conduct of cloth trade by Europeans since 17^th century brought about occupational change among the inhabitants of especially in the higher strata of society. The French administration brought in some changes and improvement measures in the agricultural sector. The native’s economic diversity arose in the colonial period. Most of the converted Christians were servants and coolies. The Trade of India in India gave Pondicherry the political status of the Peninsula. The development of commercial relations between France and India developed rapidly, as the taste for Indian goods spread among the French. As the French claimed the monopoly of all commercial relations with the colony, commerce was concentrated largely in the hands of French merchants and little in the hands of native merchants. As such, the French invited the local merchant community from Madras, Porto Novo and other places, to migrate and settle in their territories. For most of the eighteenth and some of the nineteenth centuries the foreign trade of French India was legally monopolized by French men, but their Indian agents were often shrewd and skillful in exploiting their opportunities within the colonial commerce.

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