The employees of EIC and other members of the Select Committee set up monopolies for internal trade in tobacco, salt and beetle nut. In six years beginning in 1765, they smuggled salt to such an extent that they defrauded the government of duty to an aggregate amount at upward of four million rupees, as estimated by the committee for secrecy in 1773. The Company and its employees also fought over the loot, as it was a free for all in the absence of any control by the Company over its employees. In fact, EIC encouraged lawlessness as no one was in charge. They destroyed the existing order and Britain was too far away for any effective control. Later, when they questioned some of their traders one of them, Francis Sykes, wrote to the Company “towards the company have not ever been attentive nor would one six pence I enjoy ever could come the Company’s treasury; it was this whether it would go in to a blackman’s pocket or into my own.” Those people indulged in unconscionable and reprehensible behavior. The salt and beetle nut monopolies alone netted the EIC close to a million pounds per year.
In fact, the British started remitting funds to Britain both on personal and the company account and the money started piling up in England. At some stage, the Company denied them remitting facilities as they suspected that the company business was being undermined. The private traders and the company employees started using the French and the Dutch channels, to remit their loot home. So, the Europeans were flushed with funds deposited by EIC employees who they started using for their own trading accounts. So the Europeans also stopped importing bullion for their purchases and Bengal earned nothing for its goods. There was so much scramble for the riches of India, the boundaries between India, Britain, North American and China vanished, as there was such a huge flow of men, money and materials. The British Government too made extraordinary demands for revenue on account of the ongoing War of Independence in the American colony. Their agents in Bengal ruled by caprice and their vested interests began to dominate the economy of Bengal. After all, the entire assault and the attack on the Treasury at Murshidabad were driven by the need for funds to fight the wars. How the British used the political power in their despotic pecuniary exploits is best described by the following horror stories.
From 1757 till 17 77, the British abused the collection of land revenue and confiscated hereditary properties. Rights of zamindars were abrogated and fraud and villainy carried the day. Revenue demands were increased exorbitantly, to release the value of the land against future taxes and EIC gloated over their successes in auctioning private lands. The employees of EIC, Holwell, Griffith and Frankland, the men in charge of collection of illegal taxes against the laws of Hindustan, themselves became farmers and zamindrs, as they misappropriated the private land holdings. Laws of England were applied in their confiscatory raids in India.
Take the case of Rajah Chyton Singh of Beerbhoom District, Bishenpore Mehala, who was a zamindar (land holder) and he led a peaceful life tending his flock. He looked after his peasants and farmers and provided them with security and encouraged cultivation of land. He was a respectable man who built temples and people looked up to him for help and support. He was in possession of hereditary property until the British menace snared him in their trap. His land and crop taxes suddenly shot up by phony taxes and he had to keep up with ever increasing demands until he was charged for unpaid taxes of over thirty thousand rupees. It was an exorbitant amount and he could not pay. The British wanted to make an example of him to instill fear in others, knowing fully well that he had exhausted all his resources and he was imprisoned on February 18, 1789. There are thousands of such cases which are in the reports of the various Collectors from the Revenue Department of the Governor General in Council Proceedings, dated May 1790.
Here is another horrible story of over assessment in the Eastern districts where the landed gentry, using the British terminology, was brutally mistreated and destroyed in their quest for ever increasing demand for revenues. Rani Bhowani (Queen Bhowani) was a zamindar who was by tradition obliged to keep the ryots (peasants) from ruin and give them whatever assistance was necessary to keep them loyal citizens. She was obligated to pay the revenue of her District and provide relief to the Peasantry in case of shortfall. She gave a review of the farming and revenues of her District in 1775, but was unable to keep up with ever increasing demand for revenue, while providing relief to her peasantry for crop failures. She gave time to her peasantry to make up the shortfall, but the British Collector did not show her similar consideration. Her house was surrounded and all her property was taken. The Rani dreaded the disgrace of the loss of zamindari. She made a petition to make good the revenue and requested her zamindari be restored. She sold jewels, her personal effects and mortgaged all she had. The British Provincial Council of Revenue at Murshidabad ascribed her failure to the embezzlement of her ministers and showed no mercy. In pursuit of money, the British had no difficulty fabricating stories as long as they could get away with the local capital. Such examples of over assessment were sickening and heartless. Not only did the British disgrace themselves, they illegally interfered with the land holdings of the landed gentry which were in their possession for many generations, they destroyed the established order as well.
Silk factories were broken up by force and sericulture areas of Bengal were depopulated. Farmers were forced to cultivate mulberry trees and pay the taxes in cocoons so that the British silk industry could be developed and gain the market share. In England, Lombe Bros. built the first factory in Derby but they were unable to compete successfully against the French and Italian from the Calabria region of Spain. The workers in Bihar and Bengal were forced to rear silk worms and the workers were forced to work in the company filatures. Force was also used against peasants and extreme measures were taken to develop the British silk industry. They even tried to introduce the European reeling technology, but the Bengal silk never reached the standard with the new method. At best they could produce a large quantity of low quality raw silk and gain some market share in Europe.
While the revenue collection was destroying the local order, the political administration was set up by Clive, during his two stays in Bengal between the periods 1757 to 1765, leading to direct political control from London. Various Princes and the Hindu bankers, Jagat Seths, zamindars and the influential (landed gentry), were forced to contribute money to the Company and the individual Englishmen, as tributes and that amount was broadly estimated to be about fifty million rupees also found its way to England mostly in diamond bulses.
How much money floated from India to Britain, during the initial period immediately after Plassey, has never been documented by Britain. That money helped to build Britain’s capital and wealth. There were about one hundred thousand people, the covenanted and non covenanted employees of the Company, the private merchants and their families and the share holders of the Company, who were in possession of that wealth, besides the British government. At the head of that list was Rothschild, and those people went on to develop the whole banking and borrowing system in England, as well as the Anglo-American trade, which will be evident as this narrative unfolds.
The methods those people used to send money from India to Britain demonstrate the ingenuity of those people. They used foreign contacts, they procured Bills, they lent upon diamonds, they used bills of Exchange drawn on France, Netherlands and other European countries, they paid in to the Treasury of other European countries operating in India, such as the Dutch and money to be collected in London, they lent money against Respondent bonds and sent those bonds to China where money was collected and remitted to London by ships sailing to Europe. William Barwell, a member of the British Bengal Civil Service and Governor of Fort William Calcutta, was reported to have amassed 80 lakh rupees (£800,000); which in to day’s money, based on wage differential, will be about £800 million, and his letters give a clue how it was accomplished. Those letters appear in’ Bengal Past & Present’:
“I have commissioned Frank Scott to procure bills or to lend respondent
ia the Europe Captains that sail from Bombay or to lend upon diamonds. I have in this manner commissioned Garden at Bussrorah and Donston and Coles at Bencoolin” (28 February 1768).
“Having received advises from my correspondent at Aleppo that he will remit money to the best advantage I shall send what I have of Grady’s and yours to him as soon as I can procure bills on Aleppo” (Letter from Bussorah, dated 13 August 1768 addressed by Garden at Bussorah).
“The first bill of exchange on John Bardett for £4,054. The second bill now I enclose with a Bill of Exchange on the French for £5,000.” (27 December 1769) “In case the French bills are not made good I have negotiated another private remittance for £10,000 through Captain Mercer a trader to this port” (25 February 1775).
“I have paid into the treasury of the Dutch company at Chinsura a sum equal to £30,000 on condition of having bills on the Dutch Company payable in London granted to me in November next” (17 My 1775).
“My distress on the disappointment of Middleton and Gibb’s bills to have been such that under apprehension a sufficient sum would not have been thrown into my sister’s hand I sent a lac. Of rupees (£10,000) in bullion.” (5 August 1775). I shall consign to Mr. Harrison a remittance if I can affect it and I think I can of 4 lacs. (£40,000) to China.” (23 November 1775). “I will take care to advice you in time to make insurance for the sum that may be lent on respondentia to China.”
“On calculating the exchange of the China remittance I find it so low. This has determined me to stint my negotiations for conveying my money there to one lac. Of rupees (£10,000). Yet as low as the exchange is had I wanted to have sent more I should have been difficulties (?) To have done it so great is the anxiety of people to get money to England at any rate “(27 March 1776).
“The certain remittances by this season are shipping to the Dutch bills for current rupees 2, 98,120 (£29,812) and the bills on the English company advised by Mr. Carton for £2,400 The Dutch bills will turn out to you £30,000 or very little short of it.” (27 March 1776).
“I enclose Mr. Joseph Price’s respondentia bonds of this date for. Rs. 24,733-2-6 to Messrs. Scott Pringle & Co. merchants of the Island of Madeira. As agent for those gentlemen I authorize you to receive the amount due on it at Canton and if possible lend the same or as much of it as you can upon respondentia on some Danish ship or ships bound from China to Europe.” (20 March 1776)
“I have engaged to send Mr. Charles Lloyd 46,000 arcot rupees at run at respondentia upon the ship true Boston Bartken… bound to the Malabar Coast, Mocha, and Suez…
“you will insure from this place to Grand Cairo at the rate of 2 shillings and 3 pence per current rupee as Mr. Lloyd is to allow the respondentia premium till this is paid to my agent at Grand Cairo… this money I lent to Mr. Lloyd with a view to remit the amount to Mary Burwell of Grand Ormond Street, London.” (30 Nov. 1777).
The loot after Plassey invasion shows that at least £40 million from the treasury at Murshidabad was whisked away post haste. Other monies included £5million from the various Princes and the Hindu bankers. Other monies started flowing regularly such as about £2 million per year of its purchases in Bengal, and another million pound per year from China trade, produced a capital formation of three million pounds per year. When the merchandise procured with these funds reached England, it fetched five times that amount resulting in the capital formation of fifteen million pounds. This practice lasted for four decades, or a capital formation of £645 million in the immediate aftermath of the Plassey invasion. In today’s money, based upon wage differential, this amount would be in excess of two trillion pounds. In a very perverse way, the Indian money went to develop the British economy and the vast Anglo-American trade.
In a contrast, Charles II’s government in 1683 was bankrupt, England had put a moratorium on its debt and it was receiving gratuity form the East India Company in Calcutta. Did the loot stop there? No. From 1771 until about the end of the century, Britain resorted to harvesting of the revenue from the populace, from crop levies, from land taxes, from inland trade, so much so nothing was spared from their greed to fuel their dream of becoming an empire and they did that with all the vigor and bestial passion that despotism brings. In 1771 there was a massive famine in the country side of Bengal, when the rains failed and the crops withered and even during the famine, the despotic plunder continued when the populace had to sell the generational land holdings to pay the ever increasing taxes and levies.
The looted Treasure was put to good use by the British to safeguard their nation’s future, knowing that the sudden windfall was never to befall their lap. The money the British took out of India was unprecedented; they had never seen or dreamt of anything on such a scale. Most of it was invested, which formed the basis of the capitalist society. However, some star players who amassed huge personal wealth indulged in self glory and left behind stately mansions in England. Clive’s at Claremont, Hasting’s at Daylesford, Pitt’s at Swllowfield. Pitt diamond, weighing some 140 carats, a product of Golcanda mine, was sold to the Prince Regent of France and is incorporated in the French Crown. Britain has the Koh-I Noor diamond from India and it is in the Queen’s crown. (See Predatory Wars). The British people, the natural born subjects of England, people who made money in India and returned to Britain, were usually referred to as nabobs. Their women, who accompanied their men as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, escorts and paramours indulged in luxury, consumerism, and material opulence and they developed interesting relationships between the native population of wealth and influence. Most of them were after riches and jewels, and some were there in amorous relationships for political reasons to minimize the resistance to their presence and to project the image of Imperial Britain.
The Indian economy, which was the largest economy in the world before Plassey, perished with the British onslaught and a new world order was started by the British capitalist society, which in today’s lingo is called market based economy. It was based on loot, pillage and plunder. As stated, the British did not wish to pay for anything in cash, they wanted to improvise instead, such as piracy when they started out, later they resorted to slavery and used slaves as cash tokens, in Bengal they borrowed from the Dadni merchants and Jagat Seths and traded opium for the Chinese tea, and when the need arose for huge funds to fight the wars with France and the American war of independence, they resorted to massive invasion of the Mughal treasury at Murshidabad. Their capitalist model, which may be called predatory capitalism, was practiced throughout their rule of two hundred years, relying upon militarism, trickery, treachery, deception and fraud.
The French were also in India, for the same reason as the British, and when the Mughal administration collapsed, they grasped the situation much better than the British and their governor Dupleix found it necessary to intervene in Indian political affairs to protect their interests. Though Dupleix had formed a vast project, for establishing the French supremacy in India, intervening in native politics, intrigues, and warfare, and while he controlled the Carnatic and nearly the entire Deccan by 1751, the French government, thought it prudent to wind its affairs in India and move out in honor.
Both the British and the French espoused free market economy, the French model, a centralized state based economy, formed the basis of their civil society where as the British model, the predatory capitalism, had no basis based on law but greed, pillage, loot, and plunder. The French model enlightened the masses to an extent that it was blamed for the French Revolution. As people got a taste of the commercial civil society, the British model’s weakness became obvious from much strife and civil wars wherever the British footprints were found, particularly in the mineral (diamonds), mining (gold) and oil based economies and the British predatory capitalism remains on trial.
Imperial Britain:
The initial predatory phase of the British attack on India had limited objective, which was money and they succeeded well beyond their own wildest imagination. Their objective in India how
ever went through a drastic revision after the loss of the American colony and suddenly they decided to make India a central core of their colonial ambition. With that goal, the unregulated plunder of India was brought under control and they put Warren Hastings to control the situation. Warren Hastings had arrived in India in 1750 at age eighteen to work for the East India Company and as stated before, he returned to England in 1764 and sailed back in 1769 with a job at Madras. After Clive, there were two other successors who excelled in loot and knavery and in 1774, after the American colony was lost, the East India Company appointed Warren Hastings as the first governor general of India.
Upon his appointment, the Company focussed on the management of the entire revenue streams as their most important priority and in the process they unleashed a reign of terror. The Mughal administrative offices were shifted from Murshidabad to Calcutta, a new British supreme court of judicature with four British justices was appointed, the English law was extended to a foreign culture without any knowledge of the local language or the culture, entire fabric of revenue administration was scrapped and even the sanctity of women’s chamber (zenana) which was sacred both to the Hindus and the Muslims was violated by the sheriff’s orders.
Reign of Terror
In 1772, Hastings introduced a new land revenue system to get maximum revenue. Unfortunately for India, the rains failed and a catastrophic draught set in and for six months there was no rain and the tanks and watercourses dried up both in Bengal and Bihar. Normally, those regions enjoyed heavy rainfall during the summer monsoons and the country side was always lush green with tropical produce, plants and trees. During normal rainy seasons, there was a bounty of nature, mangoes and banana trees swayed in the tropical rains but that summer the parched land could not support any plant life, crops failed and a massive famine set in. There was total failure of crops and an acute scarcity of food grains. The crop failure and famine did not concern the British. Their priority was loot and revenue and in that chase, millions of people perished. The Zamindars (landowners) and Talukdars lost control over their holdings as the British colonizers were chasing them for revenue. Hereditary land holdings were put to public auctions; the zamindars (landowners) became farmers. People’s ownership rights on their properties were violated and anarchy and lawlessness destroyed the social order.
1757- East of the Cape of Good Hope Page 9
