Chapter 16

See Sir James Bourdillon,The Partition of Bengal(Society of Arts, 1905); official blue-books onThe Reconstitution of the Provinces of Bengal and Assam(Cd. 2658 and 2746), andResignation of Sir J. Bampfylde Fuller, lieutenant-governor, &c. (Cd. 3242). A long letter from Sir J.B. Fuller, headedJ’accuse, attacking the general policy of the Indian government in regard to the seditious propaganda, appeared inThe Timesof June 6, 1908.

1Quoted by Mr F.S.P. Lely inThe Timesof November 22, 1906.

EASTERN QUESTION, THE, the expression used in diplomacy from about the time of the congress of Verona (1822) to comprehend the international problems involved in the decay of the Turkish empire and its supposed impending dissolution. The essential questions that are involved are so old that historians commonly speak of the “Eastern Question” in reference to events that happened long before the actual phrase was coined. But, wherever used, it is always the Turkish Question, thegeneric term in which subsidiary issues,e.g.the Greek, Armenian or Macedonian questions, are embraced. That a phrase of so wide and loose a nature should have been stereotyped in so narrow a sense is simply the outcome of the conditions under which it was invented. To the European diplomatists of the first half of the 19th century the Ottoman empire was still the only East with which they were collectively brought into contact. The rivalry of Great Britain and Russia in Persia had not yet raised the question of the Middle East; still less any ambitions of Germany in the Euphrates valley. The immense and incalculable problems involved in the rise of Japan, the awakening of China, and their relations to the European powers and to America—known as the Far Eastern Question—are comparatively but affairs of yesterday.

The Eastern Question, though its roots are set far back in history—in the ancient contest between the political and intellectual ideals of Greece and Asia, and in the perennial rivalry of the powers for the control of the great trade routes to the East—dates in its modern sense from the treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774, which marked the definitive establishment of Russia as a Black Sea power and formed the basis of her special claims to interfere in the affairs of the Ottoman empire. The compact between Napoleon and the emperor Alexander I. at Tilsit (1807) marked a new phase, which culminated in 1812 in the treaty of Bucharest, in which Russia definitely appeared as the protector of the Christian nationalities subject to the Ottoman sultan.

The attitude of the various powers in the Eastern Question was now defined. Russia, apart from her desire to protect the Orthodox nationalities subject to the Ottoman power, aimed at owning or controlling the straits by which alone she could find an outlet to the Mediterranean and the ocean beyond. Austria, once the champion of Europe against the Turk, saw in the Russian advance on the Danube a greater peril than any to be feared from the moribund Ottoman power, and made the maintenance of the integrity of Turkey a prime object of her policy. She was thus brought into line with Great Britain, whose traditional friendship with Turkey was strengthened by the rise of a new power whose rapid advance threatened the stability of British rule in India. But though Austria, Great Britain and presently France, were all equally interested in maintaining the Ottoman empire, the failure of the congress of Vienna in 1815 to take action in the matter of a guarantee of Turkey, and the exclusion of the Sultan from the Holy Alliance, seemed to endorse the claim of Russia to regard the Eastern Question as “her domestic concern” in which “Europe” had no right to interfere. The revolt of the Greeks (1821) put this claim to the test; by the treaty of Adrianople (1829) Russia stipulated for their autonomy as part of the price of peace, but the powers assembled in conference at London refused to recognize this settlement, and the establishment of Greece as an independent kingdom (1832) was really aimed at the pretensions and the influence of Russia. These reached their high-water mark in the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8th, 1832). It was no longer a question of the partition of Turkey or of a Russian conquest of Constantinople, but of the deliberate degradation by Russia of the Ottoman empire into a weak state wholly dependent upon herself. The ten years’ crisis (1831-1841) evoked by the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, thus resolved itself into a diplomatic struggle between Russia and the other powers to maintain or to recover influence at Constantinople. The Russian experiment of maintaining the integrity of Turkey while practically treating her as a vassal state, ended with the compromise of 1841; and the emperor Nicholas I. reverted to the older idea of expelling the Turks from Europe. The Eastern Question, however, slumbered until, in 1851, the matter of the Holy Places was raised by Napoleon III., involving the whole question of the influence in Ottoman affairs of France under the capitulations of 1740 and of Russia under the treaty of 1774. The Crimean War followed and in 1856 the treaty of Paris, by which the powers hoped to stem the tide of Russian advance and establish the integrity of a reformed Ottoman state. Turkey was now for the first time solemnly admitted to the European concert. The next critical phase was opened in 1871, when Russia took advantage of the collapse of France to denounce the Black Sea clauses of the treaty of 1856. The renewal of an aggressive policy thus announced to the world soon produced a new crisis in the Eastern Question, which had meanwhile become complicated by the growth of Pan-Slav ideals in eastern Europe. In 1875 a rising in Herzegovina gave evidence of a state of feeling in the Balkan peninsula which called for the intervention of Europe, if a disastrous war were to be prevented. But this intervention, embodied in the “Andrassy Note” (December 1875) and the Berlin memorandum (May 1876), met with the stubborn opposition of Turkey, where the “young Turks” were beginning to oppose a Pan-Islamic to the Pan-Slav ideal. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 followed, concluded by the treaty of San Stefano, the terms of which were modified in Turkey’s favour by the congress of Berlin (1878), which marks the beginning of the later phase of the Eastern Question. Between Russia and Turkey it interposed, in effect, a barrier of independent (Rumania, Servia) and quasi-independent (Bulgaria) states, erected with the counsel and consent of collective Europe. It thus, while ostensibly weakening, actually tended to strengthen the Ottoman power of resistance.

The period following the treaty of Berlin is coincident with the reign of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid II. The international position of the Ottoman empire was strengthened by the able, if Machiavellian, statecraft of the sultan; while the danger of disruption from within was lessened by the more effective central control made possible by railways, telegraphs, and the other mechanical improvements borrowed from western civilization. With the spread of the Pan-Islamic movement, moreover, the undefined authority of the sultan as caliph of Islam received a fresh importance even in countries beyond the borders of the Ottoman empire, while in countries formerly, or nominally still, subject to it, it caused, and promised to cause, incalculable trouble.

The Eastern Question thus developed, in the latter years of the 19th century, from that of the problems raised by the impending break-up of a moribund empire, into the even more complex question of how to deal with an empire which showed vigorous evidence of life, but of a type of life which, though on all sides in close touch with modern European civilization, was incapable of being brought into harmony with it. The belief in the imminent collapse of the Ottoman dominion was weakened almost to extinction; so was the belief, which inspired the treaty of 1856, in the capacity of Turkey to reform and develop itself on European lines. But the Ottoman empire remained, the mistress of vast undeveloped wealth. The remaining phase of the Eastern Question, if we except the concerted efforts to impose good government on Macedonia in the interests of European peace, or the side issues in Egypt and Arabia, was the rivalry of the progressive nations for the right to exploit this wealth. In this rivalry Germany, whose interest in Turkey even so late as the congress of Berlin had been wholly subordinate, took a leading part, unhampered by the traditional policies or the humanitarian considerations by which the interests of the older powers were prejudiced. The motives of German intervention in the Eastern Question were ostensibly commercial; but the Bagdad railway concession, postulating for its ultimate success the control of the trade route by way of the Euphrates valley, involved political issues of the highest moment and opened up a new and perilous phase of the question of the Middle East.

This was the position when in 1908 an entirely new situation was created by the Turkish revolution. As the result of the patient and masterly organization of the “young Turks,” combined with the universal discontent with the rule of the sultan and the palacecamarilla, the impossible seemed to be achieved, and the heterogeneous elements composing the Ottoman empire to be united in the desire to establish a unified state on the constitutional model of the West. The result on the international situation was profound. Great Britain hastened to re-knit the bonds of her ancient friendship with Turkey; the powers, without exception, professed their sympathy with the new régime.The establishment of a united Turkey on a constitutional and nationalist basis was, however, not slow in producing a fresh complication in the Eastern Question. Sooner or later the issue was sure to be raised of the status of those countries, still nominally part of the Ottoman empire, but in effect independent, like Bulgaria, or subject to another state, like Bosnia and Herzegovina. The cutting of the Gordian knot by Austria’s annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and by the proclamation of the independence of Bulgaria, and of Prince Ferdinand’s assumption of the old title of tsar (king), threatened to raise the Eastern Question once more in its acutest form. The international concert defined in the treaty of Berlin had been rudely shaken, if not destroyed; the denunciation by Austria, without consulting her co-signatories, of the clauses of the treaty affecting herself seemed to invalidate all the rest; and in the absence of the restraining force of a united concert of the great powers, free play seemed likely once more to be given to the rival ambitions of the Balkan nationalities, the situation being complicated by the necessity for the dominant party in the renovated Turkish state to maintain its prestige. During the anxious months that followed the Austriancoup, the efforts of diplomacy were directed to calming the excitement of Servians, Montenegrins and the Young Turks, and to considering a European conference in which thefait accomplishould be regularized in accordance with the accepted canons of international law. The long delay in announcing the assembly of the conference proved the extreme difficulty of arriving at any satisfactory basis of settlement; and though the efforts of the powers succeeded in salving the wounded pride of the Turks, and restraining the impetuosity of the Serbs and Montenegrins, warlike preparations on the part of Austria continued during the winter of 1908-1909, being justified by the agitation in Servia, Montenegro and the annexed provinces. It was not till April 1909 (seeEurope:ad fin.) that the crisis was ended, through the effectual backing given by Germany to Austria; and Russia, followed by England and France, gave way and assented to what had been done.

SeeTurkey:History, where cross-references to the articles on the various phases of the Eastern Question will be found, together with a bibliography. See also E. Driault,La Question d’orient depuis son origine(Paris, 1898), a comprehensive sketch of the whole subject, including the Middle and Far East.

(W. A. P.)

EAST GRINSTEAD, a market town in the East Grinstead parliamentary division of Sussex, England, 30 m. S. by E. from London by the London, Brighton & South Coast railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 6094. St Swithin’s church contains, among numerous ancient memorials, one of the iron memorial slabs (1507) peculiar to certain churches of Sussex, and recalling the period when iron was extensively worked in the district. There may be noticed Sackville College (an almshouse founded in 1608), and St Margaret’s home and orphanage, founded by the Rev. John Mason Neale (1818-1866), warden of Sackville College. Brewing and brick and tile making are carried on. In the vicinity (near Forest Row station) is the golf course of the Royal Ashdown Forest Golf Club.

The hundred of East Grinstead (Grenestede, Estgrensted) was in the possession of the count of Mortain in 1086, but no mention of a vill or manor of East Grinstead is made in the Domesday Survey. In the reign of Henry III. the hundred was part of the honour of Aquila, then in the king’s hands. The honour was granted by him to Peter of Savoy, through whom it passed to his niece Queen Eleanor. In the next reign the king’s mother held the borough of East Grinstead as parcel of the honour of Aquila. East Grinstead was included in a grant by Edward III. to John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and it remained part of the duchy of Lancaster until James I. granted the borough to Sir George Rivers, through whom it was obtained by the Sackvilles, earls of Dorset. East Grinstead was a borough by prescription. In the 16th century it was governed by an alderman, bailiff and constable. It returned two members to parliament from 1307 until 1832, but was disenfranchised by the Reform Act. In 1285 the king ordered that his market at Grenestede should be held on Saturday instead of Sunday, and in 1516 the inhabitants of the town were granted a market each week on Saturday and a fair every year on the eve of St Andrew and two days following. Charles I. granted the earl of Dorset a market on Thursday instead of the Saturday market, and fairs on the 16th of April and the 26th of September every year. Thursday is still the market-day, and cattle-fairs are now held on the 21st of April and the 11th of December.

EAST HAM, a municipal borough in the southern parliamentary division of Essex, England, contiguous to West Ham, and thus forming geographically part of the eastward extension of London. Pop. (1901) 96,018. Its modern growth has been very rapid, the population being in the main of the artisan class. There are some chemical and other factories. The ancient parish church of St Mary Magdalen retains Norman work in the chancel, which terminates in an eastern apse. There is a monument for Edmund Neville who claimed the earldom of Westmorland in the 17th century, and William Stukeley, the antiquary, was buried in the churchyard. East Ham was incorporated in 1904, and among its municipal undertakings is a technical college (1905). The corporation consists of a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 3320½ acres.

EASTHAMPTON, a township of Hampshire county, Mass., U.S.A., in the Connecticut Valley. Pop. (1900) 5603, of whom 1731 were foreign-born; (1905) 6808; (1910) 8524. It is served by the Boston & Maine, and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways, and by interurban electric railways. The township is generally level, and is surrounded by high hills. In Easthampton are a free public library and Williston Seminary; the latter, one of the oldest and largest preparatory schools in New England, was founded in 1841 by the gifts of Samuel Williston (1795-1874) and Emily Graves Williston (1797-1885). Mr and Mrs Williston built up the industry of covering buttons with cloth, at first doing the work by hand, then (1827) experimenting with machinery, and in 1848 building a factory for making and covering buttons. As the soil was fertile and well watered, the township had been agricultural up to this time. It is now chiefly devoted to manufacturing. Among its products are cotton goods, especially mercerised goods, for the manufacture of which it has one of the largest plants in the country; rubber, thread, elastic fabrics, suspenders and buttons. Parts of Northampton and Southampton were incorporated as the “district” of Easthampton in 1785; it became a township in 1809, and in 1841 and 1850 annexed parts of Southampton.

EAST HAMPTON, a township of Suffolk county, New York, in the extreme S.E. part of Long Island, occupying the peninsula of Montauk, and bounded on the S. and E. by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the N. by Block Island Sound, Gardiner’s Bay and Peconic Bay. Pop. (1900) 3746; (1905) 4303; (1910) 4722. The township, 25 m. long and 8 m. at its greatest width from north to south, has an irregular north coast-line and a very regular south coast-line. The surface is rougher to the west where there are several large lakes, notably Great Pond, 2 m. long. The scenery is picturesque and the township is much frequented by artists. Montauk Lighthouse, on Turtle Hill, was first built in 1795. At Montauk, after the Spanish-American War, was Camp Wikoff, a large U.S. military camp. The township is served by the southern division of the Long Island railway, the terminus of which is Montauk. Other villages of the township, all summer resorts, are: Promised Land, Amagansett, East Hampton and Sag Harbor; the last named, only partly in the township, was incorporated in 1803 and had a population of 1969 in 1900, and 3084 in 1910. Silverware and watch cases are manufactured here. From Sag Harbor, which is a port of entry, a daily steamer runs to New York city. The village received many gifts in 1906-1908 from Mrs Russell Sage. Most of the present township was bought from the Indians (Montauks, Corchaugs and Shinnecocks) in 1648 for about £30, through the governors of Connecticut and New Haven, by nine Massachusetts freemen, mostly inhabitants of Lynn, Massachusetts. With twenty other families they settled here in 1649, calling the place Maidstone, from the old home of some of the settlers in Kent; but as early as 1650 the name East Hampton was used in reference to the earlier settlement of South Hampton. Until1664, when all Long Island passed to the duke of York, the government was by town meeting, autonomous and independent except for occasional appeals to Connecticut. In 1683 Gardiner’s Island, settled by Lion Gardiner in 1639 and so one of the first English settlements in what is now New York state, was made a part of Long Island and of East Hampton township. The English settlements in East Hampton were repeatedly threatened by pirates and privateers, and there are many stories of treasure buried by Captain Kidd on Gardiner’s Island and on Montauk Point. The Clinton Academy, opened in East Hampton village in 1785, was long a famous school. Of the church built here in 1653 (first Congregational and after 1747 Presbyterian in government), Lyman Beecher was pastor in 1799-1810; and in East Hampton were born his elder children. Whale fishing was begun in East Hampton in 1675, when four Indians were engaged by whites in off-shore whaling; but Sag Harbor, which was first settled in 1730 and was held by the British after the battle of Long Island as a strategic naval and shipping point, became the centre of the whaling business. The first successful whaling voyage was made from Sag Harbor in 1785, and although the Embargo ruined the fishing for a time, it revived during 1830-1850. Cod and menhaden fishing, the latter for the manufacture of fish-oil and guano, were important for a time, but in the second half of the 19th century Sag Harbor lost its commercial importance.

EAST INDIA COMPANY, an incorporated company for exploiting the trade with India and the Far East. In the 17th and 18th centuries East India companies were established by England, Holland, France, Denmark, Scotland, Spain, Austria and Sweden. By far the most important of these was the English East India Company, which became the dominant power in India, and only handed over its functions to the British Government in 1858 (see alsoDutch East India Company,Ostend Company).

The English East India Company was founded at the end of the 16th century in order to compete with the Dutch merchants, who had obtained a practical monopoly of the trade with the Spice Islands, and had raised the price ofEnglish East India Co.pepper from 3s. to 8s. per ℔. Queen Elizabeth incorporated it by royal charter, dated December 31, 1600, under the title of “The Governor and Company of Merchants of London, trading into the East Indies.” This charter conferred the sole right of trading with the East Indies,i.e.with all countries lying beyond the Cape of Good Hope or the Straits of Magellan, upon the company for a term of 15 years. Unauthorized interlopers were liable to forfeiture of ships and cargo. There were 125 shareholders in the original East India Company, with a capital of £72,000: the first governor was Sir Thomas Smythe. The early voyages of the company, from 1601 to 1612, are distinguished as the “separate voyages,” because the subscribers individually bore the cost of each voyage and reaped the whole profits, which seldom fell below 100%. After 1612 the voyages were conducted on the joint stock system for the benefit of the company as a whole. These early voyages, whose own narratives may be read in Purchas, pushed as far as Japan, and established friendly relations at the court of the Great Mogul. In 1610-1611 Captain Hippon planted the first English factories on the mainland of India, at Masulipatam and at Pettapoli in the Bay of Bengal. The profitable nature of the company’s trade had induced James I. to grant subsidiary licences to private traders; but in 1609 he renewed the company’s charter “for ever,” though with a proviso that it might be revoked on three years’ notice if the trade should not prove profitable to the realm.

Meanwhile friction was arising between the English and Dutch East India Companies. The Dutch traders considered that they had prior rights in the Far East, and their ascendancy in the Indian Archipelago was indeedEnglish and Dutch disputes.firmly established on the basis of territorial dominion and authority. In 1613 they made advances to the English company with a suggestion for co-operation, but the offer was declined, and the next few years were fertile in disputes between the armed traders of both nations. In 1619 was ratified a “treaty of defence” to prevent disputes between the English and Dutch companies. When it was proclaimed in the East, hostilities solemnly ceased for the space of an hour, while the Dutch and English fleets, dressed out in all their flags and with yards manned, saluted each other; but the treaty ended in the smoke of that stately salutation, and perpetual and fruitless contentions between the Dutch and English companies went on just as before. In 1623 these disputes culminated in the “massacre of Amboyna,” where the Dutch governor tortured and executed the English residents on a charge of conspiring to seize the fort. Great and lasting indignation was aroused in England, but it was not until the time of Cromwell that some pecuniary reparation was exacted for the heirs of the victims. The immediate result was that the English company tacitly admitted the Dutch claims to a monopoly of the trade in the Far East, and confined their operations to the mainland of India and the adjoining countries.

The necessity of good ships for the East Indian trade had led the company in 1609 to construct their dockyard at Deptford, from which, as Monson observes, dates “the increase of great ships in England.” Down to the middle of theThe East Indiamen.19th century, the famous “East Indiamen” held unquestioned pre-eminence among the merchant vessels of the world. Throughout the 17th century they had to be prepared at any moment to fight not merely Malay pirates, but the armed trading vessels of their Dutch, French and Portuguese rivals. Many such battles are recorded in the history of the East India Company, and usually with successful results.

It was not until it had been in existence for more than a century that the English East India Company obtained a practical monopoly of the Indian trade. In 1635, a year after the Great Mogul had granted it the liberty of tradingThe acquisition of territory.throughout Bengal, Charles I. issued a licence to Courten’s rival association, known as “the Assada Merchants,” on the ground that the company had neglected English interests. The piratical methods of their rivals disgraced the company with the Mogul officials, and amodus vivendiwas only reached in 1649. In 1657 Cromwell renewed the charter of 1609, providing that the Indian trade should be in the hands of a single joint stock company. The new company thus formed bought up the factories, forts and privileges of the old one. It was further consolidated by the fostering care of Charles II., who granted it five important charters. From a simple trading company, it grew under his reign into a great chartered company—to use the modern term—with the right to acquire territory, coin money, command fortresses and troops, form alliances, make war and peace, and exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction. It is accordingly in 1689, when the three presidencies of Bengal, Madras and Bombay had lately been established, that the ruling career of the East India Company begins, with the passing by its directors of the following resolution for the guidance of the local governments in India:—“The increase of our revenue is the subject of our care, as much as our trade; ’tis that must maintain our force when twenty accidents may interrupt our trade; ’tis that must make us a nation in India; without that we are but a great number of interlopers, united by His Majesty’s royal charter, fit only to trade where nobody of power thinks it their interest to prevent us; and upon this account it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general advices that we have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their government, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the increase of their revenue, for one paragraph they write concerning trade.” From this moment the history of the transactions of the East India Company becomes the history of British India (seeIndia:History). Here we shall only trace the later changes in the constitution and powers of the ruling body itself.

The great prosperity of the company under the Restoration, and the immense profits of the Indian trade, attracted a number of private traders, both outside merchants and dismissed or retired servants of the company, who cameThe interlopers.to be known as “interlopers.” In 1683 the case of Thomas Sandys, an interloper, raised the whole question of theroyal prerogative to create a monopoly of the Indian trade. The case was tried by Judge Jeffreys, who upheld the royal prerogative; but in spite of his decision the custom of interloping continued and laid the foundation of many great fortunes. By 1691 the interlopers had formed themselves into a new society, meeting at Dowgate, and rivalling the old company; the case was carried before the House of Commons, which declared in 1694 that “all the subjects of England have equal right to trade to the East Indies unless prohibited by act of parliament.” This decision led up to the act of 1698, which created a new East India Company in consideration of a loan of two millions to the state. The old company subscribed £315,000 and became the dominant factor in the new body; while at the same time it retained its charter for three years, its factories, forts and assured position in India. The rivalry between the two companies continued both in England and in India, until they were finally amalgamated by a tripartite indenture between the companies and Queen Anne (1702), which was ratified under the Godolphin Award (1708). Under this award the company was to lend the nation £3,200,000, and its exclusive privileges were to cease at three years’ notice after this amount had been repaid. But by this time the need for permanence in the Indian establishment began to be felt, while parliament would not relinquish its privilege of “milking” the company from time to time. In 1712 an act was passed continuing the privileges of the company even after their fund should be redeemed; in 1730 the charter was prolonged until 1766, and in 1742 the term was extended until 1783 in return for the loan of a million. This million was required for the war with France, which extended to India and involved the English and French companies there in long-drawn hostilities, in which the names of Dupleix and Clive became prominent.

So long as the company’s chief business was that of trade, it was left to manage its own affairs. The original charter of Elizabeth had placed its control in the hands of a governor and a committee of twenty-four, and thisThe company and the crown.arrangement subsisted in essence down to the time of George III. The chairman and court of directors in London exercised unchecked control over their servants in India. But after Clive’s brilliant victory at Plassey (1757) had made the company a ruling power in India, it was felt to be necessary that the British government should have some control over the territories thus acquired. Lord North’s Regulating Act (1773) raised the governor of Bengal—Warren Hastings—to the rank of governor-general, and provided that his nomination, though made by a court of directors, should in future be subject to the approval of the crown; in conjunction with a council of four, he was entrusted with the power of peace and war; a supreme court of judicature was established, to which the judges were appointed by the crown; and legislative power was conferred on the governor-general and his council. Next followed Pitt’s India Bill (1784), which created the board of control, as a department of the English government, to exercise political, military and financial superintendence over the British possessions in India. This bill first authorized the historic phrase “governor-general in council.” From this date the direction of Indian policy passed definitely from the company to the governor-general in India and the ministry in London. In 1813 Lord Liverpool passed a bill which further gave the board of control authority over the company’s commercial transactions, and abolished its monopoly of Indian trade, whilst leaving it the monopoly of the valuable trade with China, chiefly in tea. Finally, under Earl Grey’s act of 1833, the company was deprived of this monopoly also. Its property was then secured on the Indian possessions, and its annual dividends of ten guineas per £100 stock were made a charge upon the Indian revenue. Henceforward the East India Company ceased to be a trading concern and exercised only administrative functions. Such a position could not, in the nature of things, be permanent, and the great cataclysm of the Indian Mutiny was followed by the entire transference of Indian administration from the company to the crown, on the 2nd of August 1858.

SeePurchas his Pilgrimes(ed. 1905), vols. 2, 3, 4, 5, for the charter of Elizabeth and the early voyages; Sir W.W. Hunter,History of British India(1899); Beckles Willson,Ledger and Sword(1903); Sir George Birdwood,Report on the Old Records of the India Office(1879);The East India Company’s First Letter Book(1895),Letters Received by the East India Company from its Servants in the East, ed. Foster, (1896 ff.). See also the interesting memorial volumeRelics of the Honourable East India Company(ed. Griggs, 1909), letterpress by Sir G. Birdwood and W. Foster.

EAST INDIES, a name formerly applied vaguely, in its widest sense, to the whole area of India, Further India and the Malay Archipelago, in distinction from the West Indies, which, at the time of their discovery, were taken to be the extreme parts of the Indian region. The term “East Indies” is still sometimes applied to the Malay Archipelago (q.v.) alone, and the phrase “Dutch East Indies” is commonly used to denote the Dutch possessions which constitute the greater part of that archipelago. The Dutch themselves use the termNederlandsch-Indië.

EASTLAKE, SIR CHARLES LOCK(1793-1865), English painter, was born on the 17th of November 1793 at Plymouth, where his father, a man of uncommon gifts but of indolent temperament, was solicitor to the admiralty and judge advocate of the admiralty court. Charles was educated (like Sir Joshua Reynolds) at the Plympton grammar-school, and in London at the Charterhouse. Towards 1809, partly through the influence of his fellow-Devonian Haydon, of whom he became a pupil, he determined to be a painter; he also studied in the Royal Academy school. In 1813 he exhibited in the British Institution his first picture, a work of considerable size, “Christ restoring life to the Daughter of Jairus.” In 1814 he was commissioned to copy some of the paintings collected by Napoleon in the Louvre; he returned to England in 1815, and practised portrait-painting at Plymouth. Here he saw Napoleon a captive on the “Bellerophon”; from a boat he made some sketches of the emperor, and he afterwards painted, from these sketches and from memory, a life-sized full-length portrait of him (with some of his officers) which was pronounced a good likeness; it belongs to the marquess of Lansdowne. In 1817 Eastlake went to Italy; in 1819 to Greece; in 1820 back to Italy, where he remained altogether fourteen years, chiefly in Rome and in Ferrara.

In 1827 he exhibited at the Royal Academy his picture of the Spartan Isidas, who (as narrated by Plutarch in the life of Agesilaus), rushing naked out of his bath, performed prodigies of valour against the Theban host. This was the first work that attracted much notice to the name of Eastlake, who in consequence obtained his election as A.R.A.; in 1830, when he returned to England, he was chosen R.A. In 1850 he succeeded Shee as president of the Royal Academy, and was knighted. Prior to this, in 1841, he had been appointed secretary to the royal commission for decorating the Houses of Parliament, and he retained this post until the commission was dissolved in 1862. In 1843 he was made keeper of the National Gallery, a post which he resigned in 1847 in consequence of an unfortunate purchase that roused much animadversion, a portrait erroneously ascribed to Holbein; in 1855, director of the same institution, with more extended powers. During his directorship he purchased for the gallery 155 pictures, mostly of the Italian schools. He became also a D.C.L. of Oxford, F.R.S., a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and member of various foreign academies.

In 1849 he married Miss Elizabeth Rigby, who had already then become known as a writer (Letters from the Baltic, 1841;Livonian Tales, 1846;The Jewess, 1848) and as a contributor to theQuarterly Review. Lady Eastlake (1809-1893) had for some years been interested in art subjects, and after her marriage she naturally devoted more attention to them, translating Waagen’sTreasures of Art in Great Britain(1854-1857), and completing Mrs Jameson’sHistory of our Lord in Works of Art. In 1865 Sir Charles Eastlake fell ill at Milan; and he died at Pisa on the 24th of December in the same year. Lady Eastlake, who survived him for many years, continued to play an active part as a writer on art (Five Great Painters, 1883, &c.), and had a large circle of friends among the most interesting men and women of the day. In 1880 she published a volume ofLetters from France(describing events in Paris during 1789), written by her father, Edward Rigby (1747-1821), a distinguished Norwich doctor who was known also for his practical interest in agriculture, and who is said to have made known the flying shuttle to Norwich manufacturers.

As a painter, Sir Charles Eastlake was gentle, harmonious, diligent and correct; lacking fire of invention or of execution; eclectic, without being exactly imitative; influenced rather by a love of ideal grace and beauty than by any marked bent of individual power or vigorous originality. Among his principal works (which were not numerous, 51 being the total exhibited in the Academy) are: 1828, “Pilgrims arriving in sight of Rome” (repeated in 1835 and 1836, and perhaps on the whole hischef-d’œuvre); 1829, “Byron’s Dream” (in the Tate Gallery); 1834, the “Escape of Francesco di Carrara” (a duplicate in the Tate Gallery); 1841, “Christ Lamenting over Jerusalem” (ditto); 1843, “Hagar and Ishmael”; 1845, “Comus”; 1849, “Helena”; 1851, “Ippolita Torelli”; 1853, “Violante”; 1855, “Beatrice.” These female heads, of a refined semi-ideal quality, with something of Venetian glow of tint, are the most satisfactory specimens of Eastlake’s work to an artist’s eye. He was an accomplished and judicious scholar in matters of art, and published, in 1840, a translation of Goethe’sTheory of Colours; in 1847 (his chief literary work)Materials for a History of Oil-Painting, especially valuable as regards the Flemish school; in 1848,Contributions to the Literature of the Fine Arts(a second series was edited by Lady Eastlake in 1870, and accompanied by a Memoir from her pen); in 1851 and 1855, translated editions of Kugler’sHistory of the Italian School of Painting, andHandbook of Painting(new edition, by Lady Eastlake, 1874).

See W. Cosmo Monkhouse,Pictures by Sir Charles Eastlake, with biographical and critical Sketch(1875).

(W. M. R.)

EAST LIVERPOOL, a city of Columbiana county, Ohio, U.S.A., on the Ohio river, about 106 m. S.E. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890) 10,956; (1900) 16,485, of whom 2112 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 20,357. It is served by the Pennsylvania railway, by river steamboats, and by interurban electric lines. Next to Trenton, New Jersey, East Liverpool is the most important place in the United States for the manufacture of earthenware and pottery, 4859 out of its 5228 wage-earners, or 92.9%, being employed in this industry in 1905, when $5,373,852 (83.5% of the value of all its factory products) was the value of the earthenware and pottery. No other city in the United States is so exclusively devoted to the manufacture of pottery; in 1908 there were 32 potteries in the city and its immediate vicinity. The manufacture of white ware, begun in 1872, is the most important branch of the industry—almost half of the “cream-coloured,” white granite ware and semivitreous porcelain produced in the United States in 1905 (in value, $4,344,468 out of $9,195,703) being manufactured in East Liverpool. Though there are large clay deposits in the vicinity, very little of it can be used for crockery, and most of the clay used in the city’s potteries is obtained from other states; some of it is imported from Europe. After 1872 a large number of skilled English pottery-workers settled in the city. The city’s product of pottery, terra-cotta and fireclay increased from $2,137,063 to $4,105,200 from 1890 to 1900, and in the latter year almost equalled that of Trenton, N.J., the two cities together producing more than half (50.9%) of the total pottery product of the United States; in 1905 East Liverpool and Trenton together produced 42.1% of the total value of the country’s pottery product. The municipality owns and operates its water-works. East Liverpool was settled in 1798, and was incorporated in 1834.

EAST LONDON, a town of the Cape province, South Africa, at the mouth of the Buffalo river, in 33° 1′ S. 27° 55′ E., 543 m. E.N.E. of Cape Town by sea and 666 m. S. of Johannesburg by rail. Pop. (1904) 25,220, of whom 14,674 were whites. The town is picturesquely situated on both sides of the river, which is spanned by a combined road and railway bridge. The railway terminus and business quarter are on the east side on the top of the cliffs, which rise 150 ft. above the river. In Oxford Street, the chief thoroughfare, is the town hall, a handsome building erected in 1898. Higher up a number of churches and a school are grouped round Vincent Square, a large open space. In consequence of the excellent sea bathing, and the beauty of the river banks above the town, East London is the chief seaside holiday resort of the Cape province. The town is the entrepot of a rich agricultural district, including the Transkei, Basutoland and the south of Orange Free State, and the port of the Cape nearest Johannesburg. It ranks third among the ports of the province. The roadstead is exposed and insecure, but the inner harbour, constructed at a cost of over £2,000,000, is protected from all winds. A shifting sand bar lies at the mouth of the river, but the building of training walls and dredging have increased the minimum depth of water to 22 ft. From the east bank of the Buffalo a pier and from the west bank a breakwater project into the Indian Ocean, the entrance being 450 ft. wide, reduced between the training walls to 250 ft. There is extensive wharf accommodation on both sides of the river, and steamers of over 8000 tons can moor alongside. There is a patent slip capable of taking vessels of 1000 tons dead weight. An aerial steel ropeway from the river bank to the town greatly facilitates the delivery of cargo. The imports are chiefly textiles, hardware and provisions, the exports mainly wool and mohair. The rateable value of the town in 1908 was £4,108,000, and the municipal rate 15⁄8d.

East London owes its foundation to the necessities of the Kaffir war of 1846-1847. The British, requiring a port nearer the scene of war than those then existing, selected a site at the mouth of the Buffalo river, and in 1847 the first cargo of military stores was landed. A fort, named Glamorgan, was built, and the place permanently occupied. Around this military post grew up the town, known at first as Port Rex. Numbers of its inhabitants are descendants of German immigrants who settled in the district in 1857. The prosperity of the town dates from the era of railway and port development in the last decade of the 19th century. In 1875 the value of the exports was £131,803 and that of the imports £552,033. In 1904 the value of the exports was £1,165,938 and that of the imports £4,688,415. In 1907 the exports, notwithstanding a period of severe trade depression, were valued at £1,475,355, but the imports had fallen to £3,354,633.

EASTON, a city and the county-seat of Northampton county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., at the confluence of the Lehigh river and Bushkill Creek with the Delaware, about 60 m. N. of Philadelphia. Pop. (1890) 14,481; (1900) 25,238, of whom 2135 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 28,523. Easton is served by the Central of New Jersey, the Lehigh Valley, the Lehigh & Hudson River and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railways, and is connected by canals with the anthracite coal region to the north-west and with Bristol, Pa. A bridge across the Delaware river connects it with Phillipsburg, New Jersey, which is served by the Pennsylvania railway. The city is built on rolling ground, commanding pleasant views of hill and river scenery. Many fine residences overlook city and country from the hillsides, and a Carnegie library is prominent among the public buildings. Lafayette College, a Presbyterian institution opened in 1832, is finely situated on a bluff north of the Bushkill and Delaware. The college provides the following courses of instruction: graduate, classical, Latin scientific, general scientific, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mining engineering and chemical; in 1908 it had 38 instructors and 442 students, 256 of whom were enrolled in the scientific and engineering courses. Overlooking the Bushkill is the Easton Cemetery, in which is the grave of George Taylor (1716-1781), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, with a monument of Italian marble to his memory. Among the city’s manufactures are silk, hosiery and knit goods, flour, malt liquors, brick, tile, drills, lumber and planing mill products and organs; in 1905 the value of all the factory products was $5,654,594, of which $2,290,598, or 40.5%, was the value of the silk manufactures. Easton is the commercial centre of an important mining region, which produces, in particular, iron ore, soapstone, cement, slate and building stone. The municipality owns and operates an electric-lighting plant.Easton was a garden spot of the Indians, and here, because they would not negotiate elsewhere, several important treaties were made between 1756 and 1762 during the French and Indian War. The place was laid out in 1752, and was made the county-seat of the newly erected county. It was incorporated as a borough in 1789, received a new borough charter in 1823, and in 1887 was chartered as a city. South Easton was annexed in 1898.

EAST ORANGE, a city of Essex county, New Jersey, U.S.A., in the north-eastern part of the state, adjoining the city of Newark, and about 12 m. W. of New York city. Pop. (1890) 13,282; (1900) 21,506, of whom 3950 were foreign-born and 1420 were negroes; (1910 census) 34,371. It is served by the Morris & Essex division of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railway and by the Orange branch of the Erie (the former having four stations—Ampere, Grove Street, East Orange and Brick Church), and is connected with Newark, Orange and West Orange by electric line. The city covers an area of about 4 sq. m., and has broad, well-paved streets, bordered with fine shade trees (under the jurisdiction of a “Shade Tree Commission”). It is primarily a residential suburb of New York and Newark, and has many beautiful homes; with Orange, West Orange and South Orange it forms virtually one community, popularly known as “the Oranges.” The public school system is excellent, and the city has a Carnegie library (1903), with more than 22,000 volumes in 1907. Among the principal buildings are several attractive churches, the city hall, and the club-house of the Woman’s Club of Orange. The principal manufactures of East Orange are electrical machinery, apparatus, and supplies (the factory of the Crocker-Wheeler Co. being here—in a part of the city known as “Ampere”) and pharmaceutical materials. The total value of the city’s factory products in 1905 was $2,326,552. East Orange has a fine water-works system, which it owns and operates; the water supply is obtained from artesian wells at White Oaks Ridge, in the township of Milburn (about 10 m. from the city hall); thence the water is pumped to a steel reinforced reservoir (capacity 5,000,000 gallons) on the mountain back of South Orange. In 1863 the township of East Orange was separated from the township of Orange, which, in turn, had been separated from the township of Newark in 1806. An act of the New Jersey legislature in 1895 created the office of township president, with power of appointment and veto. Four years later East Orange was chartered as a city.

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