For most of India's history, it was ruled by foreign peoples. Aryans, Persians, Kushans, White Huns, Mongols, Turks...... If foreign rule is the symbol of national destruction, then the vast majority of India's thousand-year-old history has been a slave. The "Indus Civilization", founded by the indigenous Indians, has long since died out completely.

India in this era was ruled by the historically famous Mughal Empire. The word "Mughal" means Mongol. The founder of the Mughal Empire, Babur, was patrially an emir. Descendants of Timur, while inheriting the bloodline of Genghis Khan from the maternal line. The dynasty he founded was known to Europeans as the "Great Mughal Empire".

During its more than 330 years of rule, the Mughal Empire was at its peak from the 16th century to the end of the 17th century, and at its broadest encompassed part of present-day Afghanistan, Kashmir, Pakistan, and much of India. The Mughal superstructure was Muslim, while the base was Hinduism, and Persian was the language of the court, public affairs, diplomacy, literature, and high society.

The emperor of the Mughal Empire in this era was Shah Jahan, which means "ruler of the world" in Persian. The world-famous Taj Mahal was built by him in memory of his second wife, Ajmanbano.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the Mughal rulers were enjoying the song and dance in Delhi and Agra, the Western colonizers came. The Portuguese occupied Goa, the Dutch occupied Ceylon, the French occupied Pondicherry, and the British occupied Madras, Mumbai, and Calcutta from the east, west, and north.

The Mughal rulers may not have taken these small cities occupied by the Western powers as they were located on the coast of southern India, far from the ruling center of the empire, and the Mughal Empire was still in its prime, and the Western powers did not dare to be too presumptuous.

In addition, India itself is a small country. Even at the height of the Mughal Empire, there were a number of divided monarchs in the south who were not annexed by the empire, which increased the room for maneuver among the Western powers. They used various means such as bribery, coercion and inducement, and colluded with various princely states in southern India to establish a large number of trading ports along the coast of India.

But greedy Western colonizers brazenly launched an invasion of Manila in an attempt to occupy Manila in Luzon. in order to gain control of trade in East Asia. However, they never imagined that tens of thousands of elite troops of the eight-nation coalition in Europe, more than 1,000 warships, armed merchant ships, and pirate ships would be defeated by the powerful Far East Army, and they would be driven out of the East as a result.

As one of the dividends of the war, a large number of trading ports in southern India, as well as the island of Ceylon, fell into the hands of the Far East.

In addition to receiving trade ports left behind by Western colonizers, the Far Eastern Company did not aggressively penetrate into the interior of India. Instead, a business delegation was sent. With a large number of precious gifts, he made a special trip to meet the Mughal Emperor Rajahan, hoping to establish good diplomatic relations with the Mughal Empire and conduct mutually beneficial business and trade exchanges.

At this time, the Mughal regime in the Indian subcontinent, according to ancient tradition, the land was considered the property of the sovereign, who had the right to own a part of all the products or their equivalents. The main source of state revenue is the land endowment, therefore. The Mughal regime did not rely on control of trade, and a land tax was sufficient to maintain its rule.

Trade is inevitably accompanied by the circulation of money. This circulation allowed India, which did not have many silver mines, to obtain large quantities of precious metals. The Mughal Empire was very interested in international trade, and as long as a large amount of precious metal energy flowed into the Mughal Empire, they would have no need to worry about the peoples and countries engaged in this trade.

India is like a sponge that absorbs precious metals, a country built on a subsistence economy, where each village community can produce every necessity of life in its own village, and the natural economy is the main part. The monetary economy is not as dynamic as in other developed regions.

In addition, the Mughal Empire had established a strong land regime, while European maritime power in the Indian Ocean would not have any influence on its land regime. The intervention of the maritime powers in the affairs of the Indian rulers was of little importance.

In the 17th century, India's rural and urban markets also formed a large-scale Baomai network, through the purchase of cotton and silk fabrics to sell to foreign merchants, the whole market ran in an orderly manner. Trade with the Far East had very limited impact on the Mughal Empire's economy.

Moreover, the Far East Company put forward very favorable conditions, that is, in the future, it will use a large amount of real money and silver to buy a large amount of grain and cotton cloth from the Mughal Empire for a long time, and can also bring Ming porcelain, tea, spices from the South Seas and various in-demand commodities in the Far East to the Mughal Empire, and the Mughal Empire does not need to use silver to buy, and can still use grain and cotton cloth and other materials to pay for the goods.

Faced with such favorable trade conditions, the Mughal Emperor Rajahan also had to be moved. He knew that such conditions were still very favorable to the empire's economy, and no matter what happened in the future, the empire would be invincible.

Therefore, the Mughal Emperor Rajahan also welcomed the arrival of the Far Eastern Company, and readily agreed to the Far Eastern Company's trade request in the Mughal Empire. An amnesty was issued, allowing Far Eastern companies to establish permanent trading posts in Goa, Dammam, Puducherry, Diu, Madras, Mumbai, Surat and other regions along the southern coast of India.

The Far East Ministry of Commerce also sent a trade team, not only to purchase grain and cotton cloth in various parts of India, but also to rely on the silk fabrics and porcelain of the Ming Dynasty, spices from the South Seas and various in-demand commodities from the Far East, and quickly opened up the situation in southern India.

The Far East Company adopted the same method as the Western colonizers, using various means to win over the leaders of the princely states in southern India, and to carry out extensive trade cooperation with them, and gradually gained a foothold on the southern coast of India. It was precisely because of this that the Far East received commercial ports for Westerners, which did not cause much fear to the southern princely states of the Mughal Empire, and the goods of the Far East did not arouse much resentment among the local natives when they entered this market.

Moreover, the princely states in southern India, through trade with the Far Eastern Company, not only obtained a large amount of real money and silver, but also used the agent Far Eastern goods to sell in the Mughal Empire, making a lot of money. Because of this, the leaders of the various princely states also developed a sense of dependence on the Far East, and the relationship between the two sides became increasingly close. (To be continued.) )

PS: Thank you Xiaohong 028 and Miaoshou for their monthly ticket support.