Henry Herbert Dodwell - Dupleix and Clive: The Beginning of Empire

T HE following pages are based principally upon the East India Companys records preserved under my own care at Madras, the Bengal Records preserved at the India Office, and the Orme MSS., also preserved at the India Office. I have further consulted the Admiralty and War Office papers at the Public Record Office, various MS. collections at the British Museum, with the Miscellaneous Letters Received and the Home-Miscellaneous series at the India Office, and papers lodged in the archives of the French Ministry of the Colonies and at Pondichry. I must acknowledge with great gratitude the unvarying courtesy and ready help I received from the various custodians of these papers. Perhaps M. Martineau, late Governor of the French Establishments in India, and Mr. W. Foster, C.I.E., of the India Office, will allow me thus publicly to announce my special debt to their wide knowledge and experience. I am also under great obligations to Mr. S. C. Hill, not only for numerous suggestions, indications, and references in the course of my research, but also as the editor of Bengal 175657, a collection of documents which I have found it impossible to supplement. Above all, I am obliged to Mr. Mark Hunter, of the Indian Educational Service, who was to have been the author of the present work. When he found his other engagements too pressing, he not only suggested my undertaking it, but also gave me with the greatest generosity his MS. collections, of which I have made extensive use. My indebtedness to printed works is too extensive to be here particularised, but is, I hope, fully indicated in my footnotes and the appended Bibliography.