Polycoloniality is a study of non-British European powers and players - travellers, merchants, colonial administrators, missionaries from Portugal, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark primarily, but also from Italy, Germany, Russia, etc. - from the late 13th to the early 19th century in South Asia, especially Bengal, and their role in developing print and educational activities to shape South Asia's brush with 'modernity'.
A major problem in theorisations on colonialism is that the colonial encounter is often seen as rather mononational, with the colonial history of a particular colonised nation being primarily ascribed to a single master colonising nation, e.g. England in the case of South Asia, and especially Bengal. This is obviously factually wrong, and there were more than one colonial power at work, and Bengal was colonised not by the English alone but by the Portuguese (1512-1632; in some parts of India, from 1498 till 1961), the Dutch (1625-1825), the Danish (1698-1868), and the French (1673-1950), while the British colonial era begins in 1757 and its cultural enterprises only by the 1830s (though they were in Bengal by the 1650s). Further, even before the advent of the Portuguese through the sea-route in 1498, South Asia has had a steady flow of 'modern' Europeans from at least the late 13th century, who also wrote back about their experiences. More importantly, it is these multiple European players, rather than the English, who can be credited with the setting up of the first colleges and universities, the first printing presses, and the foundations of the modern linguistic and literary registers in South Asia.