Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company

by John Keay

  It would be hard to over-estimate the impact on the Company’s men of what the Madras Council called ‘this extraordinary revolution’. They now recognized that Dupleix had changed the rules of European involvement in India. For 150 years the Company had been endeavouring to appease the existing political hierarchy; in three years Dupleix had simply usurped it. The English must either follow suit or leave the table.

  In the person of Thomas Saunders, who had just succeeded Floyer as President of Madras, they accepted the challenge. In the summer of 1751 all available troops were rushed to Trichy (Trichinopoly, Tiruchirappalli) where Mohammed Ali was making what looked like his last stand; and to relieve the pressure still further by diverting some of the besieging forces, Robert Clive was re-commissioned as a captain and authorized to march on Arcot. ‘It is conceived that this officer may be of some service’, opined the Fort St David Council. With 800 recruits and three guns Clive left Madras in September 1751 to launch a campaign that would redeem the Company’s supremacy; or, in the words of his biographer, that would ‘lay the first stone of the foundation of our Indian Empire’.

  In the mightily confused struggle that followed, none of the European settlements was directly affected and only Company troops were involved. France and Britain were, after all, at peace. Instead of Madras and Pondicherry, it was Arcot, Chanda Sahib’s capital, and Trichy, Mohammed Ali’s headquarters, which bore the brunt of the fighting. There were no less than three sieges of Trichy plus countless skirmishes in its vicinity. In all these, as in the few really decisive engagements, European troops again demonstrated their superior firepower. But their numbers were always small. Although some of Boscawen’s Royal troops had taken service with the Company, and in spite of an erratic supply of recruits from Bengal, such was the mortality (more from the climate than the fighting) that the Company could rarely deploy over 1000 Europeans; at most engagements there were only a couple of hundred. The same was true of the French, many of whose best troops had marched with Muzaffar Jang to Hyderabad.

  In this situation battles were won by opportunism, mobility, surprise, individual acts of bravery, and sheer good luck. A single officer with a taste for improvisation and a reputation for victory could tip the balance. In the Marquis de Bussy the French had just such a man but he was now regulating the affairs of Hyderabad. In Clive and Lawrence the British had two and they were on the spot.

  After nine months of fighting their endeavours were rewarded with the surrender of the French at Srirangam and the murder of Chanda Sahib. Peace negotiations were opened but quickly broken off when Dupleix opportunely took delivery of 500 new recruits. The fighting flared up again. It dragged on throughout 1753 with neither party gaining a distinct advantage. More peace negotiations followed in January 1754 with Saunders offering an equal division of the spoils in the Carnatic; but Dupleix declined. By fighting on in the Carnatic, he was drawing the British fire and leaving de Bussy with a free hand in the greater affair of Hyderabad. Only when Dupleix was recalled to France in August 1754 was the way at last clear for a truce and a provisional treaty.

  iv

  If nothing else the Carnatic war marks the emergence of the European trading companies as territorial powers. As with the grant of Trivitore to Thomas Pitt at the beginning of the century, it was not always clear whether a particular piece of real estate had been made over to one of the Companies in perpetuity or to one of their servants as a life rent, a practice frowned on by both Companies. Dupleix had been in some difficulty on this score. As the Nizam’s deputy he was entitled to enjoy the revenues of extensive territories but as a servant of the Compagnie he was heavily censured for doing so. It was also true that in the Carnatic several of the estates and townships made over to the French, or their President, were never actually secured. But in Hyderabad it was a different story. There de Bussy and his troops, unopposed by the British, had made themselves indispensable to the Nizam, harrying his Maratha foes from one side of the Deccan to the other and repeatedly shoring up his tottering regime. As a result they had been rewarded with a long slice of coastline and hinterland north of Masulipatnam and known as the Northern Circars. It was now the largest piece of European territory in India.

  By contrast the English gains – notably San Thomé and Poonamallee – were modest and mainly designed to constitute a defensive enclave round Madras. They nevertheless had a dramatic effect on Madras’s revenue statements. Before the Carnatic Wars the settlements’ annual income was about 70,000 pagodas (£30,000), most of it deriving from customs duty on private trade. By 1754 the total had trebled, although ‘sea customs’ had in fact declined. Instead revenue from dependent territories now made up the bulk. Poonamalee alone contributed 40,000 pagodas (some thirty times what the Trivitore grant yielded) and there was a further figure of 64,000 pagodas from ‘countries mortgaged by Nabob [Nawab] Mohammed Ali to the Company towards the discharge of his debt to them’.

  Territory was good business – or it could become so as soon as these sums were no longer being swallowed up by the war. To justify his adventurism and its heavy cost to his sceptical employers, Dupleix had gone so far as to declare that the revenues to be derived from the French acquisitions would soon be sufficient to cover the annual investment for French trade; never again need the Compagnie send good bullion to India. Although no such claims were made by the English, the thought no doubt crossed their mind. But more to the point, it was plain that with political and territorial control of the main cotton production and finishing centres, the Carnatic trade might be freed from the constant stoppages and impositions which had occasioned a gradual decline in its value ever since the halcyon days of Thomas Pitt.

  The motivation for territorial expansion was thus wholly commercial and provoked no great debate amongst the Company’s men either in London or the East. Nor was it seen as posing any kind of moral dilemma. Those who imagine that after 150 years of fairly peaceful trade the Company suddenly elected – or was obliged – to embark on a policy of conquest and subjugation completely misunderstand the political situation in India. Imperial conceit would demand a glorious pedigree for ‘our Indian Empire’ but the plight of India’s indigenous peoples in the eighteenth century scarcely affords it.

  For in the Carnatic, as in Bengal, the local people – Tamil-speaking Hindus – were already in a state of abject subjugation. No ruler, from the Nawab down to the pettiest poligar (feudal chief) seems to have been of Tamil birth. Nor were any of his troops. While the Tamil ryot (peasant) took cover amongst the palmyras, the armies, including those of the English and French, which trampled his paddy and commandeered his buffalo were composed of Panjabis, Afghans, Rajputs, Pathans, and Marathas. All were outsiders, adventurers, mercenaries who when not fighting one another were employed in exacting tribute in the guise of revenue. Government was simply a euphemism for oppression under the imperial sanction of Moghul authority.

  In acquiring territory accustomed to such rank exploitation it was not obvious to either the French or the British that they thereby incurred some obligation for its better government or that they need propound some justification for their rule. But in so far as their forebears had been a feature on The Coast for a generation or two longer than the Moghul’s cohorts, they appeared if anything less foreign and certainly less grasping. In the Company’s records Tamil names appear only in relation to agriculture, manufacturing and trade. As growers, weavers, dyers, and merchants, Tamil-speaking Hindus were responsible for the Company’s investment and so shared with it a common interest. Given a choice, it could well be, as the Company’s men maintained, that the native population preferred the rule of Christian foreigners to that of Muslim foreigners, that of European factors to that of Asian imperialists, and that of a mercantile bourgeoisie to that of a militaristic aristocracy.

  But all this was incidental. To the Europeans on The Coast, as to their Asian allies and enemies, territory meant primarily revenue and was worth accumulating so long as the cost was not disprop
ortionate. A similar climate of pragmatic commercialism prevailed in Paris and London. At first the French Company had indulged Dupleix’s dreams (in so far as he divulged them) of a puppet Nawab showering trading privileges and revenue possibilities on Pondicherry. But when it became apparent that this could only be achieved – if at all – at the price of a life-and-death struggle with the English Company, and when these fears were swiftly confirmed by Lawrence’s victory at Srirangam and the death of Chanda Sahib, they panicked. A director of the Compagnie visited London. He proposed a cessation of hostilities in the Carnatic on terms which the English Company would happily have accepted had they also included the surrender of de Bussy’s acquisition of the Northern Circars. They did not; but even so the Leadenhall Street gentlemen might have come round, for in addition the Compagnie was proposing another of those non-aggression pacts. In effect this would have made India and the Indian Ocean a zone of peace and neutrality; military expenses could be reduced; trade would be unaffected by another European war. The directors warmed to the prospect.

  But at this point the British cabinet stepped in and vetoed the idea. Although the Company might still be free to make peace and war with Indian rulers, in this case its main adversary was a European power. Establishing an ominous precedent, the Government felt entitled to intervene and in fact negotiations were already in progress. In the course of them the French seem to have bowed to the demand that Dupleix be recalled. To the Newcastle ministry this seemed a much better solution than having their hands tied by a non-aggression pact which could only favour the French in that it gave them a free hand in Hyderabad and immunity from the attentions of the usually superior British navy.

  This logic, with its implication of continued conflict, the Company was reluctant to accept. Nonetheless, in the words of Professor Dodwell, ‘it was forced against its will into participating in the political action of the state’. It was not the first time, nor would it by any means be the last. For its commercial monopoly and its numerous privileges (of establishing settlements, raising taxes, administering justice, employing troops, etc) the Company had always had to pay in concessions as well as cash. Now, in an age of war, its growing dependence on Royal squadrons, regular troops, and political backing meant that the price was climbing steeply.

  As if to emphasize the Company’s dependent status, another squadron under Admiral Watson together with a further regiment of His Majesty’s Foot was readying to sail even as the negotiations dragged on. It got under way in January 1754, somewhat after the French fleet whose reinforcements it was designed to offset. Godeheu, the French commander, therefore reached India first and, knowing of Watson’s approach, it was he who swiftly relieved Dupleix of his office and reopened negotiations with Saunders and the Madras Council. Again the Northern Circars of Hyderabad constituted the main stumbling block to an agreement. Godeheu eventually gave way and accepted a situation of territorial parity in the Carnatic in return for relinquishing some of the Circars. But the treaty was purely provisional and no cessions of territory were to take place until London and Paris had approved.

  Overtaken by events, this approval was never forthcoming. In the winter of 1755 Watson took his squadron up to Bombay for refitting and then commanded the attack on Gheriah. In this he was joined by Clive on his way back from leave in England and accompanied by more Royal troops. The idea had been that from Bombay Clive would lead an Anglo-Maratha assault on de Bussy’s position in Hyderabad; but this was called off partly because of the provisional treaty agreed by Godeheu and Saunders and partly because of Bombay’s reluctance to co-operate. After the successful storming of Gheriah in February 1756 both Clive and Watson therefore returned to The Coast, the former as Deputy Governor of Fort St David. They were still there, preparing to meet further French reinforcements which were supposedly on the high seas when, in July, ‘a most disagreeable report’ reached Madras from quite another quarter. It came from Fort William. Apparently the new Nawab of Bengal had taken it into his head to assault the English factory at Kasimbazar.

  Scarcely were the first transports of our chagrin abated [writes Ives, Watson’s personal surgeon] before another dispatch arrived with the news of his having taken Calcutta, and of the dreadful tragedy which happened in the Black-hole prison. This was such a blow as filled us all with inexpressible consternation; and was enough indeed to shake the credit of our East India Company to its very foundations; for hereby they lost their principal settlement in Bengal and a fort which secured to them the most valuable part of their commerce.

  Both the Madras Council and Admiral Watson’s commanders immediately went into emgergency session. If help were to be sent to Bengal, plans for an attack on the French position in the Northern Circars would have to be abandoned and the whole Coast left at the mercy of the new French reinforcements. Although news of the outbreak of the Seven Years War would not reach India till the end of the year, it was already plain that another Anglo-French trial of strength was in prospect. On the other side of the world fighting had already broken out along the Ohio river, in Nova Scotia, and in the West Indies. The French would strike wherever the British were weakest and, if the expedition were sent to Bengal, that would assuredly mean Madras and the Carnatic.

  Nevertheless, Ives was right. The loss of Bengal was tantamount to the destruction of the Company’s commercial foundations. With reluctance but great courage, the Madras Council bade good luck and Godspeed to Clive, Watson, his squadron, his regiment, and 1000 Madras sepoys.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Famous Two Hundred Days

  REVOLUTION IN BENGAL

  The events connected with the establishment of the Company’s political supremacy in Bengal have been so frequently recounted that, according to Nirad Chaudhuri, the only latitude left to the writer is that of deciding how best to present them. In his Clive of India Chaudhuri considered some of the options. An epic style, like that of the Iliad or the Mahabharata, first suggested itself; but, as he explains, ‘that would be too clean a manner for a story interwoven with baseness and squalor’. On the other hand, this baseness and squalor hardly merited a Machia-velli-like analysis when the individual intrigues were ‘so inefficient and purposeless’. Chaudhuri, well able to rise to any of these literary challenges, also scouted the idea of telling it all in the disjointed style of a picaresque novel, and was then tempted to extract the more farcical elements for a comic opera. Finally he settled for the safer option of simply ‘employing the language of the participants’.

  This approach brings out the characters of those involved and the flavour of their endless intrigues. It just about accommodates all the other elements identified by Chaudhuri – the farcical as well as the epic, the adventitious as well as the intended – and it adds one more, a sense of historical awareness. In the midst of momentous changes the participants are revealed as starting to conjecture about the future of the Company in India. At last they see themselves as more than just merchants protecting a valued trade. Empire builders, among whom Clive must be included, would take it for granted that the individual was consciously master of his destiny and well capable of forcing the pace of history. Like revolutionaries, among whom Clive must also be numbered, they made things happen. Perhaps what the story of British expansion in Bengal needs is a Nietzschean gloss.

  But, as should by now be obvious, such attitudes of mind were not those to which servants of the Honourable Company had often subscribed. History for them was something that happened around them and to them. It was not something to which they contributed nor into which they expected to enter. They kept journals, ledgers, logs and diaries; occasionally they even penned an account of the geography or commerce of their region. But they did not write histories; they did not see themselves as participants in the historical process.

  All this changed with the work of Robert Orme, a contemporary of Clive, whose account of The Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan was the first history (excluding Downing’s modest nar
rative) composed by a Company servant. Orme was already working on it in the early 1750s, and in 1756 he was a member of the Madras Council which decided to send Clive and Watson to Bengal. He was also Clive’s partner in private trade, his attorney, and his confidant. To Clive he looked for first-hand accounts of the engagements and politicking which make up the grist of his tale.

  Not without pride, Clive responded with more than a collaborator’s zeal; he was not only observing history, he was making it. ‘I am possessed of volumes of material for the continuance of your history’, he wrote soon after Plassey, ‘in which will appear fighting, tricks, chicanery, intrigues, politics, and the Lord knows what; in short there will be a fine field for you to display your genius in.’ And then again ‘I have many particulars to explain to you relating to the said history which must be published.’

  Back in London between the Carnatic campaigns and the attack on Gheriah, Clive had first savoured celebrity. With Orme, who had accompanied him from India, busily chronicling his battles, comparisons had soon been made with the great Comte de Saxe, the recently deceased Marshal of France. The Chairman of the Company presented him with a diamond-studded sword and the directors obtained for him a royal commission as lieutenant-colonel; when he returned to India it was with the promise of succeeding to the Presidency of Madras – yet he was still only in his twenties. To such a disciple of fame news of the fall of Calcutta must have sounded like the muezzin of destiny. Lawrence was too old and too ill to command the land forces of the relief expedition; Colonel Aldercron of the Royal regiment brought out by Watson was too untried and too reluctant to defer to the Madras Council. That left Clive, ‘the capablest person in India’ according to the faithful Orme. He sailed for Bengal already aware of the bright lights and the sharp focus of history.