The outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1744, though not anticipated at the time, was to develop into a seventeen-year struggle between their rival East India companies to exclude the other from trading in India by obtaining a preponderant exclusive influence in three major Indian governments in the east of the subcontinent — in the Carnatic, the Deccan and Bengal. The war ended in January 1761 (following the annihilation of the French political and military position in Bengal in 1757) with the conclusive capture of the French seat of government in the East at Pondicherry in the Carnatic by a combined force of Company and British Army troops, with a Royal Navy squadron off the coast. Thereafter, though the French Compagnie des Indes continued to trade for a few more years before it was dissolved, it was never again able to mount an effective challenge to the expansion of British political power in India. To do so would have required a massive injection of resources from France, latterly by the French Government, while the British Company was able to finance growing military establishments in India entirely from revenues it had acquired locally.