The rise of British rule in India is a problem in history. A single association of British traders established factories which grew into fortresses, and governed native towns which became the capitals of a British empire. The march of events is without a parallel in the annals of the world. In 1600 the East India Company obtained from Queen Elizabeth a charter of exclusive rights to trade in the Eastern seas. In 1612 it established its first factory at Surat. In 1639 it began to build a fortified factory at Madras, whilst a Hindu population of weavers and other manufacturers grew up by its side. Before the beginning of the eighteenth century, before Queen Anne ascended the throne of Great Britain, the British settlements at Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta had each a fortress and a town. How Hindu and Mohammedan populations were ruled by British traders will be told in the present chapter. How the British traders acquired provinces and established an empire belongs to the after chapters. [Sidenote: NORTHERN INDIA: the Great Mogul.] §1. In 1600 the whole of Northern India was under the dominion of a Mohammedan sovereign, known as the Great Mogul. His revenues and armies were the marvel of Europe. His empire extended from the mountains of Cashmere to the Bay of Bengal, from the slopes of the Himalayas to the tableland of the Deccan. It covered large Hindu populations and many Hindu principalities, for throughout this vast area the Great Mogul was sovereign lord of all, the emperor, the Padishah. [Sidenote: SOUTHERN INDIA: Mohammedan Sultans and Hindu Rajas.] South of the Mogul empire was the Deccan or "south." The country was a _terra incognita_ to Europeans. The interior had been conquered by Mohammedan invaders from the north, and distributed into kingdoms under Sultans, who formed a barrier against the Moguls. East and west were hills and jungles stretching to the sea, mostly held by Hindu Rajas who were hostile alike to the Sultans and the Great Mogul. Mohammedan rule, however, had never as yet extended further south than the river Kistna. The whole region from the Kistna to Cape Comorin--sometimes known as the "Peninsula"--was under the dominion of Hindu Rajas. [Sidenote: Portuguese fortresses.]