The Cambridge History of India, Vol. IV: The Mughul Period v4.c21.107

v4.c21.107

The sudden irruption of Nādir Shāh into Hindūstān, in 1739, caused a panic at Poona, and for a moment Bājī Rāo thought that he might continue his march southward into the Deccan. "Our domestic quarrels", he wrote, "are now insignificant: there is now but one enemy in Hindūstān. Hindu and Mussalman, the whole power of the Deccan, must assemble, and I shall spread our Marāthās from the Narbadā to the Chambal." Fortunately, the menaced invasion of the Deccan failed to materialise, and the Peshwā was able to continue his operations uninterrupted. Mālwā and Gujarāt had been virtually added to the Marāthā empire, but the Konkan, the fertile strip of country between the Ghāts and the sea, still remained unsubdued. Here were three rival powers, the Angrias of Kolāba, the Abyssinians of Janjira, and the Portuguese. The Angrias, in spite of Kānhojī's agreement with Shāhū, defied the control of the Peshwās, and levied, on their own authority, the "*chauth* of the sea" on passing vessels. Equally powerful were their rivals the Sīdīs, the hereditary Mughul admirals. The Marāthā campaigns in the Konkan were, however, a failure,¹ and their chief result was to bring the Marāthās into contact with the Portuguese. The Portuguese had been old enemies of the Marāthās, on religious as well as political grounds, but during the Peshwā's preoccupations in the north, they had been left in peace. Their possessions on the Bombay coast were grouped together under the title of the "province of the north"; its governor, "the general of the north", had his capital at Bassein. The island of Salsette, which was in Portuguese hands, is separated from the mainland by a long, narrow creek or arm of the sea, Bassein at the northern and Thānā at the southern extremities of which guarded the two entrances. Along the coast were a number of fortified posts. But the Portuguese power was fast declining. They were a proud, indolent race, with little aptitude for commerce. The English and Dutch had driven their fleets off the sea, and in 1661, the Lisbon government, despite frantic protests from Goa, had suicidally ceded the island of Bombay, at the southern extremity of Salsette, with its excellent harbour, to the English.²