Page 309 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

CHAPTER XXI
The Adventurers and their Times

The passing of the era of adventure—The early English communi­
ties in the East—How they lived—Their religious observances—
The first Indian convert—The pomp observed by the chief
officials—Their dress—Few Englishmen in India—Drinking
habits of the men—Literary tastes—What expatriation to the
East meant in the seventeenth century—The debt Britain
owes to the early adventurers
w HEN the three great centres of British influence in
1 India had been definitely fixed a new era was
entered upon in which life ran in more regular channels.
Adventures there were for the adventurous as there always
will be in India while “ the East is East and the West is
West ” ; but the struggle of the race towards their settled
I
destiny assumed a distinctly new phase which carried it
away from the arena in which it had hitherto irregularly
been prosecuted. Men now played their part on a mightier
stage with more or less definitely assigned parts. They
:
were the leaders of armies and the makers and unmakers of
kingdoms; they organized the rule of provinces and they
settled the fate of dynasties; they were builders rather
than prospectors or pioneers. It may, perhaps, even be
questioned whether the greatest of them—Clive, Hastings,
and the rest of their brilliant contemporaries—were
adventurers in the fullest sense of the term. Like their
congeners of a later generation they were the chosen in-
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II