Towards the end of May 1498 Vasco da Gama hove to off Calicut having successfully confirmed in the most practical way possible that a sea route existed between Europe and the Indian sub-continent. The immediate objective was King Manuel I of Portugal (1495–1521) hoping to gain direct entry into the profitable spice trade that had previously been monopolised by Venetian merchants using the land route that connected the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. However Manuel I had a further object and one that extended beyond simple trade. He wished, with the support of the papacy, to eliminate the extensive influence of Muslims in the Indian Ocean, especially the trade networks established by Arab merchants with the port towns of India’s Malabar Coast. One of the most fervent of all Catholic countries, the rulers of Portugal were determined to bring about a total subjugation of Islam and to this end were already embroiled in a vicious war against Moorish forces in Morocco. Indeed, the decision to search out a sea route to India was nothing less than an extension of the earlier medieval crusades, allowing Portugal to strike a blow at both the Ottoman Empire and the Mamluk state of Egypt. Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the onward transshipment into Europe of spices traded on the Malabar Coast had to pass through these Muslim territories, bringing to both great financial benefit and helping ensure that they could maintain a continuing high level of expenditure on their military forces. That the Ottoman Turks were even, at that time, threatening to take the Holy City of Rome merely added to the urgency of the situation, pushing the Portuguese into the Indian Ocean to search out others who might embrace Christendom and join with them in this Holy Crusade.

Tipu Sultan, as a result of his decision to develop a blue-water navy underpinned by an expanding mercantile economy, had become the single greatest potential threat to the presence of the British in Asia prior to the Indian mutiny of 1857. Reinforcing this threat were various moves on the part of Tipu to form alliances not just with a number of Muslim states that included Persia and the Ottoman Empire but also with France under Louis XVI and later the Directory. If such alliances had evolved and prospered, the possibility of the EIC or the British government clinging on to India would have proved remote to the extreme.

The French, who were the most accommodating in their willingness to work with Tipu, were the late comers to the sub-continent, not establishing permanent trading links with India until the late seventeenth century. As with their British and Dutch rivals, the French also formed a trading company with monopoly rights and the authority to directly govern territories acquired. Often referred to in English as the French East India Company, the Compagnie française pour le commerce des Indes orientales established a number of factories, the first of these at Surat in 1668, followed by more extensive areas that it governed as colonies. Among the latter was Pondichéry (Puducherry), acquired from the Sultan of Bijapur in 1673, which became the administrative capital of the Compagnie française in India and its largest possession. All were vulnerable to British attack and each eventually fell to the EIC during periods of hostility, although subsequent treaties often saw French possessions returned. Pondichéry, for instance, was captured and razed to the ground by the British in 1761 but was returned to the French four years later as a result of a peace treaty brokered in Europe. It again fell to the British in 1778 and 1793 before a final return to the French at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

For the Mughals, Surat was the port where they developed a navy of not inconsiderable importance, with vessels built here that would eventually come to adopt many European technical developments. On a few occasions only were these to be directly employed against either the Portuguese or any other European naval force. Instead, they were used to defend the empire against internal indigenous opposition. As for both the Dutch and English, the two European nations that the Mughals identified as potential allies in their attempt to undermine the Portuguese, Surat was to provide them with important shore-based facilities that included not just trade factories but a defended port that permitted them to maintain and repair ships. In addition, and usefully allowing the Mughals to gain an insight into methods of European ship construction, there were facilities at Surat used for the building of ships for the European trading nations.

Surat first emerged as a major port city during the late fifteenth century when it began to contribute significantly to the wealth of the Sultanate of Gujarat. It lies on the Tapi River some fourteen miles before it drains into the Gulf of Cambay. In 1572 Surat was brought into the rapidly expanding Mughal Empire, captured by Jalāl ud-Dīn Muḥammad Akbar, otherwise known as Akbar the Great, who, as the third Mughal Emperor, ruled from