section_path: British in India/Portuguese, French, and British competition in India (1600–1763)
section_name: Portuguese, French, and British competition in India (1600–1763)
paragraph_text: Portuguese, French, and British competition in India (1600–1763)
  
  The English sought to stake out claims in India at the expense of the Portuguese dating back to the Elizabethan era. In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I incorporated the English East India Company (later the British East India Company), granting it a monopoly of trade from the Cape of Good Hope eastward to the Strait of Magellan. In 1639, it acquired Madras on the east coast of India, where it quickly surpassed Portuguese Goa as the principal European trading Centre on the Indian Subcontinent.
  
  Through bribes, diplomacy, and manipulation of weak native rulers, the company prospered in India, where it became the most powerful political force, and outrivaled its Portuguese and French competitors. For more than one hundred years, English and French trading companies had fought one another for supremacy, and, by the middle of the 18th century, competition between the British and the French had heated up. French defeat by the British under the command of Robert Clive during the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) marked the end of the French stake in India.