Of the five great European maritime powers of 16 and 17 centuries, France was the fourth to enter into the race for commercial communication with India. The restless action that had made the France of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the fomenter of disturbances in Europe soon found in India a wide filed for its display, whilst the ambition that had urged her most famous monarch to dream of universal dominion in the West, began, before very long, to form plans for the attainment of a French empire in the east. Organised in eight chapters, this book tries to weave an authentic history of the French in India. Students, researchers and historians will find this useful and informative.