3 - The Struggle for Supremacy in the Carnatic during the Seven Years War, 1756–61

Summary

We are the Frontier that keeps you from Harm. You possess the means to support that Frontier.

Henry Vansittart, Madras councillor (later Governor of Calcutta), to Major John Carnac (Bengal army), 8 October 1759.

News of the formal outbreak of a new Anglo-French war should have marked a significant change of gear in the protracted struggle for domination of the Carnatic, which, since 1749, had been restricted to unofficial hostilities entangled in ‘country’ politics. But, despite the wider range of strategic options that had opened up, with Madras and Pondicherry no longer ‘off-limits’ to the opposing British and French forces and the possibility of fighting off-shore for command of coastal waters, Fort St George wrote to the Directors four months later that the character of the war had hardly changed; nor did it for another sixteen months. This was because neither was strong enough to mount offensives against the other: the Royal Navy squadron had gone up to Bengal with Clive and the French remained heavily engaged in the Deccan while their naval power had yet to arrive. Had the conflict in India been directly between the two national governments, it is likely that they would have identified the Coromandel Coast and the Carnatic, with its two major national fortresses, Madras and Pondicherry, easy accessibility from the sea and little likelihood of effective interference from a ‘country’ power as the critical strategic arena and focused their forces and efforts there.