Bengal: saltpetre
In the gunpowder age, in India, China and elsewhere, the European arrivals found political entities able to match them for power and influence. The Mughal Empire was still strong, reaching perhaps the high point of its territorial extent under Aurangzeb (r. 1658 - 1707), and there were other powers of note around the coasts of the Indian Ocean from east Africa to Indonesia. The strategy adopted here, after the failure of Portugal's early forceful strategy, was to find terms of trade. The Dutch, English, French and other companies were able to collude with local rulers, often by taking sides against other rulers deemed hostile, to establish themselves at trading posts.
All three of these western nations had a presence in Bengal, reputed as the richest region of India. It was plundered steadily by its Mughal overlords. The income they were able to take out of the region was legendary, in the …