Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company

by John Keay

  Much, of course, depends on one’s perspective. From the standpoint of nineteenth-century British India the idea of a governor-general being defied by anyone was quite monstrous. So was that of a governor-general stooping to personal vengeance against an Indian courtier (Nand Kumar), or emptying a duelling pistol into one of his Councillors (Philip Francis), or buying off the husband of his prospective bride (Marian Imhoff who became Mrs Hastings in 1777). But from the Company’s eighteenth-century standpoint such conduct was not at all unusual. Conversely the tramp of British troops across the length and breadth of the Indian subcontinent and the capture of supposedly impregnable strongholds a thousand miles from Bengal, though unremarkable to anyone acquainted with Wellesley’s campaigns in the early 1800s, made a profound impression in the 1780s when only Hastings dared to anticipate, and dread, a British India that stretched from Calcutta to Bombay and Madras.

  It goes without saying that Hastings, a good Company civilian, disowned the idea of military conquest. When in 1772 the Emperor Shah Alam II accepted overtures from the resurgent Marathas to help him recover his patrimony, and when he then proposed to transfer to them the two districts (Allahabad and Kora) granted him by Clive and garrisoned for him ever since by the Company, Hastings saw merely a good opportunity to disengage from ‘a remote connection’ and reduce Bengal’s deficit. Accordingly he stopped the Company’s payments of 2.6 million rupees per year (made to the Emperor by way of tribute for the diwani), and restored the two districts to the Nawab of Oudh for 5 million rupees. ‘Shocking, horrible and outrageous’ would be Burke’s verdict on this ‘breach of faith’ with the Moghul. Hastings contended that the Emperor had broken faith first by entering into an alliance with the Marathas.

  A year later, though, he cheerfully invited an even remoter connection by undertaking to support the Nawab of Oudh in a dubious campaign against the latter’s Rohilla neighbours on the upper Ganges. This eventually entailed deploying British troops, albeit as mercenaries, within 100 miles of Delhi itself. Hastings evidently regretted his commitment and did his best to wriggle out of it. But when the Nawab was insistent, he complied.

  This time a breach of faith had clearly been avoided; instead Burke would accuse him of naked aggression and the genocide of an innocent and Arcadian people (i.e. the warlike Rohillas). It was another gross overstatement, and Hastings could fairly claim that in both cases he was loyally standing by the Nawab of Oudh and loyally trying to rescue Bengal’s finances. He set great store by securing Oudh as part of a ‘ring fence’ designed to keep out the Marathas and any other restless warlords capable of threatening Bengal’s tranquillity. In that the Nawab of Oudh, like his opposite number in the Carnatic, was always billed for the loan of British troops, Hastings in effect transferred to the Nawab the crippling military expenses of the Bengal establishment. Neatly summarized by Dr K. M. Panikkar, the idea of the ring fence was simply ‘the defence of your neighbour’s territories, of course at his expense, in order to protect your own territories’. Thus, in the early years of his administration, and before his responsibilities were extended by the Regulating Act to include Madras and Bombay, Hastings may be seen as pursuing a policy of retrenchment in external affairs that matched that of retraction in internal affairs.

  It is nevertheless evident that, in the words of Messrs Thompson and Garret, he ‘sat loose to principles as we use the word today’; ‘his place is not with the proconsuls of our orderly period, but with such men as Akbar’. Constraints he knew aplenty but, in a man answerable only to his eighteenth-century conscience, they did not include an obsession with consistency nor great delicacy in the respect of human consequences. Decision, improvisation, and the chess-player’s cool orchestration of a crowded board are the qualities on which rest his reputation as ‘the greatest of all British statesmen’. ‘Amid such a coil and swirl of possibilities’ as awaited and all but engulfed him, they would be sorely tested. Seldom can a ruler so averse to war and so avowedly indifferent to conquest have been engaged on so many different fronts.

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  South, across the wide and rolling spaces of central and peninsular India, the demise of Moghul power had opened up rich and extensive possibilities for a new generation of power brokers. Excluding de Bussy and his now aborted exploits in Hyderabad, these aspirants had not so far included a European power. The British presence, though formidable enough in upper India, elsewhere remained marginal, extending no further than the coastal plain of the Carnatic, the islets that constituted Bombay, and those invariably beleaguered trading posts on the Malabar shoreline. No Company troops had yet tramped up either the Eastern Ghats on to the uplands of Mysore nor the craggier Western Ghats into Maharashtra. Here, and across the vast intervening plateaux, the power struggle raged between that ex-Moghul feudatory, the Nizam of Hyderabad, his upstart neighbour, Hyder Ali of Mysore, and the ubiquitous, hydra-headed Maratha confederacy.

  From Gujarat to Orissa, the patchwork of Maratha territories now spanned the subcontinent and straggled north almost to Delhi. But rapid expansion had entailed many reverses including rout at the hands of Afghan invaders in 1761 and a growing tendency towards political fragmentation. The great Maratha commanders were carving out their own regional power bases – the Gaikwars of Baroda in the west, the Scindias of Gwalior in the north, the Bhonslas of Berar in the east, and the Holkars of Indore in the middle. Meanwhile a series of succession crises weakened the authority which still supposedly attached to their nominal overlords, the Peshwas of Poona in the south. Although formidable when united, the Marathas were increasingly engaged in scheming and skirmishing among themselves.

  Such dissent had not gone unnoticed in Bombay and Surat, the only British enclaves in Maratha territory. Surat, wrested from its long nominal Moghul Governors by the British in 1759, remained a place of commercial importance but of no political pretensions. It was otherwise with Bombay. Long the poor relations among the Company’s servants in India, the inmates of Bombay Castle had watched their colleagues in Forts William and St George accumulating territory and fortunes at the expense of their Indian neighbours. They had also noted how effective was European firepower against India’s unwieldly armies, how marketable this advantage could be, and how lucrative the princely liaisons that might result. Having finally disposed of the maritime threat from the Angreys in the 1750s, Bombay began to cast covetous glances towards its continental hinterland.

  The first move was obvious. In 1739 the Marathas had evicted the Portuguese from their old base at Bassein and from the adjacent island of Salsette. Although nowadays unrecognizable as part of an archipelago (its current attractions include Juhu Beach, the Bombay film studios, and the international airport), Salsette was then the last stepping-stone between the Company’s island properties and the mainland. For the security of Bombay’s harbour and the free passage of its inland trade, some control over Salsette was highly desirable. Arguably these few square miles of marsh and mangrove should have been handed over to Charles II (and thence to the Company) as part of Catherine of Braganza’s Indian dowry; the directors in Leadenhall Street seemed to think so and in 1772, when Warren Hastings took up the reins of government in Bengal, they again urged Bombay to look to its landward security. Accordingly the cession of Bassein and Salsette figured prominently in the then current negotiations between the Bombay Council and a disaffected scion of the Poona Peshwas. These negotiations stalled; but they were sufficient to prompt the Portuguese in Goa to consider a pre-emptive strike to reclaim their old patrimony, news of which in turn furnished the British in Bombay with just the pretext they needed. Thana, the main fort on Salsette, was accordingly stormed and taken in late 1774.

  Such a blatant move by one of the now subordinate Presidencies was clearly contrary to the intentions of the 1773 Regulating Act in that it posed a direct challenge to the superintending powers entrusted to the new Governor-General and his Council. The action was therefore roundly condemned by Calcutta. But it was soon equally clear that ov
er this, as over every other issue, Hastings and his new Council were bitterly divided. While the faction led by Philip Francis condemned the capture of Salsette, Hastings secretly applauded it; and later London would positively endorse it.

  Confused but by no means discouraged, the Bombay authorities cheerfully proceeded to explore these differences by embarking on an infinitely more ambitious policy of aggrandizement. Less than two months after the capture of Thana an army of 2500 men was sailing for Surat to join Raghunath Rao (Raghoba), the leading claimant to the Peshwa-ship, and march with him on Poona. Bombay argued that Raghoba was the legitimate heir and that only by supporting him could they be sure of having the conquest of Salsette ratified. If the campaign was successful, Bassein and several of Bombay’s off-shore islands were also to be awarded to the Company plus the revenues of two undefined districts on the mainland. It was an offer, in short, that was too good to refuse; it was also an opportunity too good to jeopardize by a reference to Calcutta.

  When word of this undertaking leaked out, Calcutta reacted predictably. ‘We totally condemn the measure’, wrote Hastings and his Council in a rare display of unanimity. The treaty of Surat with Raghoba was invalid, the war itself ‘impolitic, dangerous, unauthorized and unjust’. And both were ‘expressly contrary to the late Act of Parliament’.

  You have imposed on yourselves the charge of conquering the whole Maratha empire for a man who appears incapable of affording you an effectual assistance in it; the plan which you have formed, instead of aiming at a decisive conquest, portends an infinite scene of troubles without an adequate force, without money or certain resources to extricate yourselves from him; nor have you the plea either of injury sustained from the party which you have made your enemy, or of any prior obligation to defend the man whose cause you have espoused.

  There was truth in all this. Raghoba was bankrupt, his other allies – including the mighty Scindia – failed to materialize, and his own forces waited only an. occasion to desert. By engaging in a Maratha power struggle, Bombay had invited retaliation against the British and their allies elsewhere in India and had subverted Hastings’s policy of containment and retrenchment. Nevertheless, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that Calcutta’s criticisms might have been blunted had news of the war been preceded by the reasoned arguments retrospectively marshalled by Bombay, or had it been overtaken by the rather impressive reports that were soon coming from the battle front. For contrary to Calcutta’s expectations, the Bombay forces under Colonel Keating were making steady progress, albeit in an unlikely quarter.

  Raghoba’s troops were tied down near Ahmadabad in Gujarat and it was between there and Baroda, a very long way indeed from Poona, that Keating scored two initial successes and then narrowly defeated the entire Poona army at the battle of Arras (Adas). Excluding those skirmishes with Sivaji’s troops during the defence of Surat a century earlier, this was the first time British troops had engaged the Marathas. Both sides suffered heavy casualties, the British loss, including eleven out of the fifteen British officers, being reckoned ‘greater than was ever known in India’ – a record destined to be quickly broken. But the Marathas, the most awesome military force in the whole subcontinent, had been forced to retreat and Keating was confident that, if funds could be found to hold Raghoba’s army together during the monsoon, they would reach Poona during the ensuing campaign.

  It was not to be. As Keating swept through Broach and on to his monsoon quarters at Dabhoi, Calcutta damned the whole enterprise and ordered a cessation of hostilities, unconditional withdrawal, and direct negotiations with Poona. Bombay protested at great length – but in vain. ‘We sincerely lament’, they told Keating, ‘that these gentlemen [a disparaging reference to the Governor-General and Council] have so unluckily taken upon themselves to interfere at this juncture.’ Nevertheless, they had no choice but to order his withdrawal to Surat. Later in the year an emissary from Calcutta arrived in Poona to negotiate.

  At this point proceedings, already a trifle confusing, took a sharp turn towards the labyrinthine. Calcutta was evidently once again divided with Hastings, though furious at Bombay’s defiance, equally furious at Philip Francis’s unwillingness to sacrifice the advantage gained by Keating’s victories. This dissent, however, was as nothing compared to that which reigned at Poona where, with Raghoba’s rival for the Peshwa-ship as yet a babe-in-arms, the regency junta combined mutual suspicion with consummate prevarication. Events faithfully mirrored the confusion. In February 1776, with the idea of breaking the deadlock at Poona, Calcutta countermanded its previous countermanding order and bade Bombay resume its ‘invalid’ treaty with Raghoba and march again. But these orders reached Bombay just as news came from Poona of the conclusion of the new treaty (of Purandhar) by which the Company undertook to disown Raghoba. Whereupon Bombay showed its contempt of Calcutta’s emissary by offering Raghoba asylum; Hastings did not like the new treaty either and recalled his unfortunate emissary; and London set a third cat among the pigeons with a dispatch wholeheartedly approving the original treaty (of Surat) by which Bombay had first pledged its support to Raghoba.

  Next year, 1777, word that a French representative had been welcomed in Poona added a further complication. M. de St Lubin, who claimed to be an accredited envoy seeking an alliance between the Marathas and the French crown, had apparently imported sufficient firearms and uniforms (though he had forgotten the buttons) to equip a force of 15,000. There was talk of a secret agreement having already been made, of further troops being sent from France, and of the Marathas having made over one of their ports as a French base. No one was quite sure that St Lubin was not a brilliant impostor; equally no one could be sure that, even if he was, a France on the brink of war with Britain would not readily endorse any alliance he might arrange. St Lubin had evidently studied de Bussy’s Mémoires. If, like de Bussy at Hyderabad or Dupleix at Arcot, he could insinuate into Poona a body of French troops buttoned or unbuttoned, then ‘we can expect nothing’, predicted the Bombay Council, ‘but a repetition of the scene of wars and intrigues formerly acted on the coast of Coromandel, which will certainly be fatal to the influence of the English on this coast, and may end in our total subversion’.

  Hastings shared this anxiety; and the timely disaffection of a member of the Poona regency council duly supplied the justification for interference. Raghoba’s cause was resurrected, Bombay was vindicated, and Poona was once again to be invaded. Thanks to the death of one of Philip Francis’s supporters, Hastings was now able to outvote the dissident faction in his Council. Francis condemned the new policy with his usual string of adjectives – it was ‘illegal, unjust, impolitic’. Hastings ignored him. Perhaps it was indeed somewhat contradictory to be invoking the Purandhar Treaty, by which the British had disowned Raghoba, as a basis for now supporting him; but, with Hastings as with most of his contemporaries, exigency outweighed principle. The Purandhar Treaty had never been implemented (by either party) and the French threat must be snuffed out. Accordingly Bombay was authorized to prepare to storm the Western Ghats while a supporting contingent of the Bengal army was ordered to march from Oudh.

  The idea of marching six battalions complete with artillery and the inevitable horde of camp-followers clean across the subcontinent was nothing if not bold. No such feat had ever before been contemplated by the British and even private travellers seldom strayed into the jungles of central India. The march provided tangible proof that the Company’s hitherto isolated settlements now acknowledged a common purpose and formed a single political unit. It presumed a right of passage through what had previously been regarded as inviolable sovereignties. And it foreshadowed an attitude of mind that would regard the whole of India as one political entity.

  It was also exceedingly timely. For without waiting for these reinforcements, the Bombay army had crossed to the mainland, begun crawling up the Ghats, and fallen an easy prey to a combined Maratha force headed by the redoubtable Scindia. Although incompetently commanded and pathet
ically inadequate for the task in hand, the real problem for the Bombay force had been logistical. Baggage trains that could lumber across the plains at ten miles a day could scarcely manage two miles a day on the steep gradients and amongst the deep defiles of the Ghats. The expedition had practically ground to a standstill before it sighted the Maratha troops. It then abandoned its guns and turned tail before a shot had been fired only to find that in retreat it was just as slow and even more vulnerable. Harassed and then surrounded by the Maratha horse, it had finally chosen to capitulate rather than fight.

  The resulting Wargaum (Wadgaon) Convention, signed on the spot in January 1779, was admitted even by its crestfallen British signatories to be ‘humiliatingin the highest degree’. Raghoba was to be surrendered, the advancing Bengal force was to be sent back, even Salsette was to be given up. There was implicit mention of British guilt, and two British hostages were handed over by way of guarantee for its implementation. Not since Bombay’s other capitulation nearly a century earlier to Aurangzeb had an Indian power forced such humiliating terms on the Company. Hastings was profoundly mortified. This time he repudiated the agreement openly and, though it meant all-out war against the whole Maratha confederacy plus an abrupt end to his financial retrenching, he determined ‘to efface the infamy which our national character has sustained’.

  Happily the Bengal contingent under Colonel Thomas Goddard, after protracted negotiations with the Bhonslas in what is now Madhya Pradesh, had crossed the watershed and was entering Maharashtra. On receiving news of the Wargaum fiasco Goddard, instead of turning back, forced the pace still harder and at last saluted the Indian Ocean at Surat having covered the final 300 miles in nineteen days. The march ‘through regions unknown in England and untraced on our maps’ was a personal triumph both for Hastings, who had authorized it against fierce opposition from his Council, and for Goddard who was now promoted to general and appointed Commander-in-Chief.