NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 129 of 146

Correct — B, Surat. The Compagnie des Indes Orientales was set up in 1664 under Colbert, the finance minister of Louis XIV, and its first Indian factory was planted at Surat in 1668, the mission being led by François Caron, who secured a farman from the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. Surat was the obvious first choice for any newcomer: it was the busiest port of the Mughal empire, the pilgrim gateway to Mecca, and the English and the Dutch had both already established themselves there. A word on vocabulary — a factory in this period is a trading station where a factor, or agent, stored and sold goods, not a place of manufacture.

• (a)Calicut — Calicut belongs to the Portuguese story, not the French one. It is where Vasco da Gama landed in 1498 and where the Zamorin received the first European sea-borne trading mission to India, more than a century and a half before the French company existed.
• (c)Pondicherry — The most tempting option, because Pondicherry did become the headquarters of French India and stayed French until 1954. But it was acquired only in 1673, from the local governor under the Sultan of Bijapur — later than Surat and later than Masulipatnam. Being the most important settlement is not the same as being the first.
• (d)Masulipatnam — Masulipatnam on the Coromandel coast was the second French factory, opened in 1669, the year after Surat. It is also where the English had opened their first factory in the south, in 1611, which is why the name attaches itself to firsts in memory.

The French arrived last among the major European trading companies in India — the Portuguese from 1498, the Dutch and the English in the first years of the seventeenth century, the Danes in 1616, and the French only in 1664. Arriving late shaped their strategy: with the best coastal sites already taken, the French under Dupleix in the 1740s turned to intervening in the succession quarrels of Indian rulers and raising sepoy armies, a method the English then copied and used to beat them in the three Carnatic Wars.

The item rewards separating first from most important. Pondicherry is the name everyone associates with the French in India, and it is the name the question is set up to attract; the correct answer is the unglamorous earlier post at Surat. A useful cross-check is that Surat is the common first stop for almost every company that arrived by sea into Mughal territory — the English factory there dates from 1613, the Dutch had a presence, and the French followed the same route in 1668, because that is where a Mughal farman could actually be turned into trade.

• The French East India Company was founded in 1664 under Colbert during the reign of Louis XIV.
• Its first Indian factory was established at Surat in 1668, the mission led by François Caron with a farman from Aurangzeb.
• Masulipatnam followed in 1669 and Pondicherry was acquired in 1673, later becoming the French headquarters in India.
• In this period a factory means a trading station run by a factor or agent, not a manufacturing plant.

• Answering Pondicherry because it was the French capital in India; it was acquired five years after Surat.
• Reading factory in its modern sense; here it means a fortified trading warehouse.
• Mixing up which company opened where first — Masulipatnam was the English company's first southern factory, in 1611.

Asked as a plain first-settlement item where the best-known name is deliberately not the earliest one.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The French East India Company was founded in 1664 during the reign of

  • (a)Louis XIV
  • (b)Louis XVI
  • (c)Napoleon Bonaparte
  • (d)Henry IV

  Answer(a) Louis XIV — the company was organised under his finance minister Colbert as a state-backed venture.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was the headquarters of the French possessions in India?

  • (a)Surat
  • (b)Chandernagore
  • (c)Pondicherry
  • (d)Mahe

  Answer(c) Pondicherry — acquired in 1673 and the seat of French India until the transfer to India in the 1950s.