The epochs of Indian History have been determined from time to time by the appearance of foreign influences. Of immeasurable significance for India was the coming of the Europeans, for it eventually transformed the political destiny of the country. Inevitably, France, one of the five great European maritime powers of the time, had been vitally involved in this historic process. Yet, though there exists a cornucopia of material on French commercial history in the East Indies and on the various military and commercial phases of the Anglo-French rivalry in India, no one has so far undertaken to study the true character of the French presence in India from 1763 to 1783, within the setting of French global policy after the Seven Years' War. This is what the present study has endeavored to do.

According to conventional wisdom, and even scholarly opinion, the French were imperialistic in India. Yet a review of the French government's policy from 1763 to 1783 shows that, on the contrary, the French were, with remarkable consistency, non-expansionist in India. The Indian policy of the French government constituted only one part of its wider strategy to unseat British predominance throughout the world, and to retrieve France's position as a first-rank Power in Europe. The French government schemed to attack the founts of British power in India and in North America, not to succeed to British domination in these regions, but to liberate them.

In India, the French through a policy of diplomatic intrigue, labored to expel their rivals from the country. The story of the French presence in India post-1763 is largely the story of a desperate struggle by Frenchmen to block the extension of British imperialism in the region. The ultimate end was to restore freedom and liberty on the Indian soil. The French government may have aspired to establish in India a network of trade but not an empire of conquest. The prevailing belief that the French conflict with the English in India was primarily a conflict for an "Indian Empire" may now be revealed for what it always was: a myth.