In the pursuit of this end he displayed great tact and untiring activity, perhaps also a somewhat soaring and fantastic imagination; but when he met La Bourdonnais, whose simpler and sounder views aimed at sea supremacy, at a dominion based upon free and certain communication with the home country instead of the shifting sands of Eastern intrigues and alliances, discord at once arose.
"Naval inferiority," says a French historian who considers Dupleix to have had the higher aims, "was the principal cause that arrested his progress;"[88] but naval superiority was precisely the point at which La Bourdonnais, himself a seaman and the governor of an island, aimed.
It may be that with the weakness of Canada, compared to the English colonies, sea power could not there have changed the actual issue; but in the condition of the rival nations in India everything depended upon controlling the sea.
Such were the relative situations of the three countries in the principal foreign theatres of war.

No mention has been made of the colonies on the west coast of Africa, because they were mere trading stations having no military importance.

The Cape of Good Hope was in possession of the Dutch, who took no active part in the earlier wars, but long maintained toward England a benevolent neutrality, surviving from the alliance in the former wars of the century.

It is necessary to mention briefly the condition of the military navies, which were to have an importance as yet unrealized.

Neither precise numbers nor an exact account of condition of the ships can be given; but the relative efficiency can be fairly estimated.