POSITION OF THE RIVAL COMPANIES IN INDIA 99
imperial authorities than the factories in Bengal, which
were up the estuary of a river with forts below them
toward the sea, and in a land where the province was
still under effective government. On the west side of
India, the Marathas, who held most of the districts
along the seashore, were by this time strong enough to
keep foreign traders within bounds.
But on the southeast or Coromandel coast, Madras
and Pondicherri, the headquarters of the French and
English Companies, were fortified and fairly armed
places upon open roadsteads, lying within the governor-
ship of the Karnatic, which was the name for a large
province attached to the viceroyalty of the Deccan, that
is, of South India. This viceroyalty had been conferred
by the emperor upon Asaf Jah, with the title of Nizam-
al-mulk, who soon made himself so powerful as to excite
alarm and jealousy at the Imperial Court. When, how-
ever, an attempt was made to remove him, the Nizam,
who had been summoned to Delhi, marched back into
the Deccan with an army, defeated the officer sent to
replace him, established his authority in the south, and
became the most powerful feudatory of the empire. A
few years later, he took advantage of the disorganiza-
tion caused by Nadir Shah's irruption into North India
to consolidate his great possessions south of the Nar-
bada, including the Karnatic, into a hereditary ruler-
ship, owning a nominal allegiance to Delhi, but in fact
entirely independent.
In the Karnatic, which had been a governorship
under the Deccan viceroyalty, a kind of subordinate
