Book Review - The Struggle for Dominance on the Indian Subcontinent

History meets postal history

This article was first published as “Book Review″ in India Post 57 no. 2 whole no. 227 (April - June 2023). India Post is the journal of the India Study Circle for Philately.

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The Struggle for Dominance on the Indian Subcontinent: History and Postal History 1494-1819 / La Lutte des Pouvoirs Coloniaux en Inde: Histoire et Histoire Postale 1494-1819

by Eric Scherer

Published 2022 by le Musée des Timbres et des Monnaies de Monaco (=Club de Monte-Carlo); 11 Terrasses de Fontvieille, Monaco. Text in English and French. ISBN 978-9464513837; hardbound with dust jacket, A4 size, 266 pp. Price €80 on publication.

‘India’ was the one of the two topics on focus at the 2022 Monacophil organised by the Club de Monte Carlo. As is the tradition, this bilingual book was released to commemorate the occasion.

Rather than walk an already trodden path, Eric Scherer, a collector of French India, has made an inspired choice to write a treatise, which is in equal parts, history as well as postal history of the Europeans in the Indian subcontinent (including Ceylon) from the late 15^th century on. Admittedly, the subjects have been covered in the past by academicians and postal historians respectively. However, the latter haven’t delved into prephilately. And none have combined the two strands into one work.

‘A picture is worth a thousand words.’ Drawn from museums, archives, and collaborating with some of the best philatelic collectors from around the world, Scherer liberally illustrates the book with not just letters but also paintings, documents, maps, and other artefacts. Each image is well described and most letters are elucidated in great detail. The images and text together immerse the reader in the milieu of those times.

The book is divided into five chapters with an epilogue and an appendix containing the bibliography amongst others.

The first chapter shows that Indo-European relations date back to more than 2,000 years and was initially based on trade. The rise of the Ottomans in the 15^th century meant that an alternative route to the overland one to India had to be found. The discovery of ocean navigation by the Portuguese and Spanish about the same time unwittingly gave birth to the twins: western colonialism and imperialism.

A brief overview of the early posts of India, from the Vedic period to the Mughals, and the Dawk runner system is covered in the second chapter.

The third chapter, comprising more than half the length of the book, is its meat. Beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498, the author successively examines the activities of the Dutch, British, Danish (more accurately, Danish-Norwegian), French, and Belgians/Austrians (Austrian Netherlands, roughly comprising present-day Belgium and Luxembourg) and their chartered companies in India. As well as their decline. For various reasons, apart from the British, none of the other foreign powers could manage to take advantage of the crumbling Mughal empire to further their commercial and political interests.

Next, history is juxtaposed with postal history – the illustrations and descriptions of prephilatelic and post-carried letters are a joy to the eyes. Most early letters, both inland and those between India and Europe, were carried privately. Later, in the late 18^th century, the Portuguese and the Dutch set up the Correios Maritmos (maritime mail system) and Plan Posterijen (VOC packet service) respectively to foster communications between the mother country and the colonies. However, apart from the British, none of the others established a proper postal system in India; they just piggybacked on the former’s network.

The book has some surprises for even the most astute reader. For instance, the section on Danish India devotes a few pages to the largely obscure Danish-Halle Mission at Tranquebar (today’s Tharangambadi). Thousands of their letters are shown to exist and can be found in the Francke Foundations (Franckesche Stiftungen) in Halle, Germany. Another lesser-known fact is the presence of the Austrian Netherlands in Bengal albeit for just a few years i.e. 1722-31 and 1775-85.

The fourth chapter is on how 18^th century wars in Europe had ramifications in India. It briefly talks about the wars and battles fought by the British against the many Indian powers such as the Mughals, Marathas, and Mysore, amongst others. Starting from the 1750s, which saw the defeat of the French (and Joseph Dupleix’s ambitions) and the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey (which mutated the Britishers’ interests from trading to territorial conquests), to 1815 when the Napoleonic wars ended, the British edged out the other Europeans in their almost 200-years struggle for dominance over India.

The last chapter is a bird’s-eye view of the British Indian post office starting with its establishment in Bengal in 1774. The year chosen to conclude, 1819, wasn’t just the one which saw the British ‘India Packet Letter Act’ of 1815 (popularly known as ‘King’s Post’) being replaced by a more reasonable one. It was also the year in which the Third Anglo-Maratha war concluded and British hegemony truly began.

The epilogue, on colonialism and other matters, is written by Prabhu Guptara, an India-born but Switzerland-based board advisor, speaker, author, and publisher. An offbeat and interesting way to conclude.

I have a couple of gripes with the book though. One, it has more than a few typographical errors and could have done with better proofreading. Second, the lack of a subject and name index; there is an index to the contributors in the appendix, but that’s difficult to use since it references the book section and not the page number.

Notwithstanding these small imperfections, the book isn’t just instructive and informative but also very readable. The historical coverage will satisfy most though some may wish to inquire further; that shouldn’t be a problem since ample literature exists. And as far as early Indian postal history is concerned, the book will be a standard reference for the foreseeable future.