Ideology and British expansion in Bengal, 1757-72

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 7-27

  Travers, Robert ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 14144249321     PISSN: 03086534     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0308653042000329997     Document Type: Review

References (140)

1. P.J. Marshall, 'British Expansion in India: A Historical Revision', History, LX (1975), 19-43. The paper was first presented at the Anglo-American Conference of Historians in 1973. It was reprinted in P.J. Marshall, Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance in India (Aldershot, 1993), 37.
2. P.J. Marshall, 'British Expansion in India: A Historical Revision', History, LX (1975), 19-43. The paper was first presented at the Anglo-American Conference of Historians in 1973. It was reprinted in P.J. Marshall, Trade and Conquest: Studies on the Rise of British Dominance in India (Aldershot, 1993), 37.
3. Ibid., 41. The now substantial body of work applying the concept of 'military-fiscalism' to eighteenth-century imperialism found one of its first sparks in this argument. For a recent essay arguing that the pressure of military costs was a prime motor of the wider process of European expansion between c. 1760 and 1820, see C.A. Bayly, 'The First Age of Global Expansion', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26 (1998), 29-47.
4. Ibid., 41. The now substantial body of work applying the concept of 'military-fiscalism' to eighteenth-century imperialism found one of its first sparks in this argument. For a recent essay arguing that the pressure of military costs was a prime motor of the wider process of European expansion between c. 1760 and 1820, see C.A. Bayly, 'The First Age of Global Expansion', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26 (1998), 29-47.
5. E. Said, Orientalism (London, 1978), 3.
6. P.J. Marshall and G. Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London, 1982), 156-57.
7. P.J. Marshall, '"A Free though Conquering People" (Aldershot, 2003), Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century', Inaugural Lecture in the Rhodes Chair of Imperial History, King's College, London, 1981, reprinted in Marshall (ed.), A Free Though Conquering People (Aldershot, 2003). This essay was a path-breaking attempt to relate Indian issues to new work in the history of British political thought. It suggested that a major transformation in British thought, from a pessimistic preoccupation with constitutional corruption, the legacy of civic republicanism, to new emphases on authoritarian patriotism, bureaucratic professionalism and domestic virtue, accompanied and worked to legitimise imperial expansion See also Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, especially chs.3-6 on Asia; and P.J. Marshall, 'The Moral Swing to the East: British Humanitarianism, India and the West Indies', in K. Ballhatchet (ed.), East India Company Studies (Hong Kong, 1986), 69-96, which argued that the reconciliation between British humanitarians and India after the 1790s was in part at least because British rule in India was understandable in terms familiar to longstanding British conceptions of political virtue, especially property rights and the rule of law; whereas the West Indian colonies, and the institution of slavery, could no longer be accommodated within domestic political discourse.
8. P.J. Marshall, '"A Free though Conquering People" (Aldershot, 2003), Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century', Inaugural Lecture in the Rhodes Chair of Imperial History, King's College, London, 1981, reprinted in Marshall (ed.), A Free Though Conquering People (Aldershot, 2003). This essay was a path-breaking attempt to relate Indian issues to new work in the history of British political thought. It suggested that a major transformation in British thought, from a pessimistic preoccupation with constitutional corruption, the legacy of civic republicanism, to new emphases on authoritarian patriotism, bureaucratic professionalism and domestic virtue, accompanied and worked to legitimise imperial expansion See also Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, especially chs.3-6 on Asia; and P.J. Marshall, 'The Moral Swing to the East: British Humanitarianism, India and the West Indies', in K. Ballhatchet (ed.), East India Company Studies (Hong Kong, 1986), 69-96, which argued that the reconciliation between British humanitarians and India after the 1790s was in part at least because British rule in India was understandable in terms familiar to longstanding British conceptions of political virtue, especially property rights and the rule of law; whereas the West Indian colonies, and the institution of slavery, could no longer be accommodated within domestic political discourse.
9. P.J. Marshall, '"A Free though Conquering People" (Aldershot, 2003), Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century', Inaugural Lecture in the Rhodes Chair of Imperial History, King's College, London, 1981, reprinted in Marshall (ed.), A Free Though Conquering People (Aldershot, 2003). This essay was a path-breaking attempt to relate Indian issues to new work in the history of British political thought. It suggested that a major transformation in British thought, from a pessimistic preoccupation with constitutional corruption, the legacy of civic republicanism, to new emphases on authoritarian patriotism, bureaucratic professionalism and domestic virtue, accompanied and worked to legitimise imperial expansion See also Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, especially chs.3-6 on Asia; and P.J. Marshall, 'The Moral Swing to the East: British Humanitarianism, India and the West Indies', in K. Ballhatchet (ed.), East India Company Studies (Hong Kong, 1986), 69-96, which argued that the reconciliation between British humanitarians and India after the 1790s was in part at least because British rule in India was understandable in terms familiar to longstanding British conceptions of political virtue, especially property rights and the rule of law; whereas the West Indian colonies, and the institution of slavery, could no longer be accommodated within domestic political discourse.
10. P.J. Marshall, '"A Free though Conquering People" (Aldershot, 2003), Britain and Asia in the Eighteenth Century', Inaugural Lecture in the Rhodes Chair of Imperial History, King's College, London, 1981, reprinted in Marshall (ed.), A Free Though Conquering People (Aldershot, 2003). This essay was a path-breaking attempt to relate Indian issues to new work in the history of British political thought. It suggested that a major transformation in British thought, from a pessimistic preoccupation with constitutional corruption, the legacy of civic republicanism, to new emphases on authoritarian patriotism, bureaucratic professionalism and domestic virtue, accompanied and worked to legitimise imperial expansion See also Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, especially chs.3-6 on Asia; and P.J. Marshall, 'The Moral Swing to the East: British Humanitarianism, India and the West Indies', in K. Ballhatchet (ed.), East India Company Studies (Hong Kong, 1986), 69-96, which argued that the reconciliation between British humanitarians and India after the 1790s was in part at least because British rule in India was understandable in terms familiar to longstanding British conceptions of political virtue, especially property rights and the rule of law; whereas the West Indian colonies, and the institution of slavery, could no longer be accommodated within domestic political discourse.
11. For a classic statement of this approach, see C.A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, New Cambridge History of India, II.1 (Cambridge 1988).
12. Ibid., 46. The most assertive version of this style of thought was encapsulated in David Washbrook's statement that 'in a certain sense colonialism was the logical outcome of South Asia's own history of capitalistic development'. 'Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History, c.1720-1860', Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1 (1988), 76.
13. Ibid., 46. The most assertive version of this style of thought was encapsulated in David Washbrook's statement that 'in a certain sense colonialism was the logical outcome of South Asia's own history of capitalistic development'. 'Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History, c.1720-1860', Modern Asian Studies, 22, 1 (1988), 76.
14. C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', first published in L. Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War (London and New York, 1994) and reprinted in Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998), see especially 241. In this work Bayly accepted Marshall's argument that Britons did not plan the 'revolution' of 1757 in Bengal, but suggested that 'the Company's long held desire to acquire a local fiscal base and its tendency to regard the Bengal rulers as mere officials rather than kings suggest that this "revolution" was an outcome of basic organization and assumptions of its Indian establishments, as much as of the contingent struggles of Indian and European actors'. Ibid., 247. For Brewer's treatment of the growth of the British state, see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). For another attempt to connect military-fiscalism in Britain and the empire, see S. Sen, 'The Colonial Frontiers of the Georgian State: East India Company Rule in India', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 368-92.
15. C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', first published in L. Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War (London and New York, 1994) and reprinted in Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998), see especially 241. In this work Bayly accepted Marshall's argument that Britons did not plan the 'revolution' of 1757 in Bengal, but suggested that 'the Company's long held desire to acquire a local fiscal base and its tendency to regard the Bengal rulers as mere officials rather than kings suggest that this "revolution" was an outcome of basic organization and assumptions of its Indian establishments, as much as of the contingent struggles of Indian and European actors'. Ibid., 247. For Brewer's treatment of the growth of the British state, see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). For another attempt to connect military-fiscalism in Britain and the empire, see S. Sen, 'The Colonial Frontiers of the Georgian State: East India Company Rule in India', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 368-92.
16. C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', first published in L. Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War (London and New York, 1994) and reprinted in Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998), see especially 241. In this work Bayly accepted Marshall's argument that Britons did not plan the 'revolution' of 1757 in Bengal, but suggested that 'the Company's long held desire to acquire a local fiscal base and its tendency to regard the Bengal rulers as mere officials rather than kings suggest that this "revolution" was an outcome of basic organization and assumptions of its Indian establishments, as much as of the contingent struggles of Indian and European actors'. Ibid., 247. For Brewer's treatment of the growth of the British state, see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). For another attempt to connect military-fiscalism in Britain and the empire, see S. Sen, 'The Colonial Frontiers of the Georgian State: East India Company Rule in India', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 368-92.
17. C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', first published in L. Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War (London and New York, 1994) and reprinted in Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998), see especially 241. In this work Bayly accepted Marshall's argument that Britons did not plan the 'revolution' of 1757 in Bengal, but suggested that 'the Company's long held desire to acquire a local fiscal base and its tendency to regard the Bengal rulers as mere officials rather than kings suggest that this "revolution" was an outcome of basic organization and assumptions of its Indian establishments, as much as of the contingent struggles of Indian and European actors'. Ibid., 247. For Brewer's treatment of the growth of the British state, see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). For another attempt to connect military-fiscalism in Britain and the empire, see S. Sen, 'The Colonial Frontiers of the Georgian State: East India Company Rule in India', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 368-92.
18. C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', first published in L. Stone (ed.), An Imperial State at War (London and New York, 1994) and reprinted in Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia (New Delhi, 1998), see especially 241. In this work Bayly accepted Marshall's argument that Britons did not plan the 'revolution' of 1757 in Bengal, but suggested that 'the Company's long held desire to acquire a local fiscal base and its tendency to regard the Bengal rulers as mere officials rather than kings suggest that this "revolution" was an outcome of basic organization and assumptions of its Indian establishments, as much as of the contingent struggles of Indian and European actors'. Ibid., 247. For Brewer's treatment of the growth of the British state, see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State 1688-1783 (Cambridge, MA, 1988). For another attempt to connect military-fiscalism in Britain and the empire, see S. Sen, 'The Colonial Frontiers of the Georgian State: East India Company Rule in India', Journal of Historical Sociology, 7 (1994), 368-92.
19. Ibid., 245. See also K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (London, 1978), 112.
20. Ibid., 245. See also K.N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company, 1660-1760 (London, 1978), 112.
21. P.J. Marshall, 'Britain and the World in the Eighteenth Century: Britain and India', TRHS, 6th series, 10 (2000), 12.
22. For the wide history of British nationalism, see L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, 1994).
23. Marshall himself showed how idea of 'native depravity' justified rough handling of Indian officials in Bengal after the conquests. P.J. Marshall, 'Indian Officials in under the East India Company Eighteenth Century Bengal', Bengal Past and Present, lxxxiv (1965), 95-120. These arguments were reprised in Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 159-60.
24. Marshall himself showed how idea of 'native depravity' justified rough handling of Indian officials in Bengal after the conquests. P.J. Marshall, 'Indian Officials in under the East India Company Eighteenth Century Bengal', Bengal Past and Present, lxxxiv (1965), 95-120. These arguments were reprised in Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 159-60.
25. For an account which emphasised 'sub-imperialism', see J.D. Nichol, 'The British in India: A Study of Imperial Expansion into Bengal', Unpublished PhD thesis, Cambridge, 1996.
26. Marshall, 'British Expansion in India in the Eighteenth Century', 3.
27. See, for example, letter of Court of Directors to President and Council at Fort William, 13 March 1761, urging the 'judicious management and improvement of our new acquired lands', Fort William-India House Correspondence, III (New Delhi, 1968), 83. In 1765, the directors reappointed Robert Clive as governor in Bengal, with extraordinary powers, knowing that he wished to expand the Company's armies, and that he would insist on close military and political controls over the nawab of Bengal. J. Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive (London, 1837), II, 302-16.
28. See, for example, letter of Court of Directors to President and Council at Fort William, 13 March 1761, urging the 'judicious management and improvement of our new acquired lands', Fort William-India House Correspondence, III (New Delhi, 1968), 83. In 1765, the directors reappointed Robert Clive as governor in Bengal, with extraordinary powers, knowing that he wished to expand the Company's armies, and that he would insist on close military and political controls over the nawab of Bengal. J. Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive (London, 1837), II, 302-16.
29. L.S. Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth Century Politics (London, 1952); and J. Gordon-Parker, 'The Directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790', Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1977.
30. L.S. Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth Century Politics (London, 1952); and J. Gordon-Parker, 'The Directors of the East India Company, 1754-1790', Unpublished PhD, University of Edinburgh, 1977.
31. For the idea of the 'British Atlantic world' as an 'empire of liberty', see Jack P. Greene, 'Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution', in P.J. Marshall (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), 228-30. Greene argues that liberty 'was the single most important element in defining a larger imperial identity for Britain and the British Empire'. For early eighteenth-century notions of the British Empire as 'Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free', see D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000); and for a stimulating account of the genealogy of 'Oriental despotism' and its uses in eighteenth-century India, see T. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, New Cambridge History of India, III.4 (Cambridge, 1995), 6-15.
32. For the idea of the 'British Atlantic world' as an 'empire of liberty', see Jack P. Greene, 'Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution', in P.J. Marshall (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), 228-30. Greene argues that liberty 'was the single most important element in defining a larger imperial identity for Britain and the British Empire'. For early eighteenth-century notions of the British Empire as 'Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free', see D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000); and for a stimulating account of the genealogy of 'Oriental despotism' and its uses in eighteenth-century India, see T. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, New Cambridge History of India, III.4 (Cambridge, 1995), 6-15.
33. For the idea of the 'British Atlantic world' as an 'empire of liberty', see Jack P. Greene, 'Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution', in P.J. Marshall (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998), 228-30. Greene argues that liberty 'was the single most important element in defining a larger imperial identity for Britain and the British Empire'. For early eighteenth-century notions of the British Empire as 'Protestant, commercial, maritime, and free', see D. Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000); and for a stimulating account of the genealogy of 'Oriental despotism' and its uses in eighteenth-century India, see T. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, New Cambridge History of India, III.4 (Cambridge, 1995), 6-15.
34. S. Suleri, The Rhetoric of English India (Chicago, 1992), 3.
35. S. Subrahmanyam, 'Frank Submissions: the Company and the Mughals between Sir Thomas Roe and Sir William Norris', in H.V. Bowen, M. Lincoln and N. Rigby (eds.), The Worlds of the East India Company (Woodbridge, 2002), 77.
36. Subrahmanyam, see 19 above, notes the way British visitors to the Mughal court consistently reverted to clichés of Asiatic despotism; for similar observations about Dutch traders at Surat, see James D. Tracy, 'Asian Despotism? Mughal Government as seen from the Dutch East India Company Factory in Surat', Journal of Early Modern History, 3, 3 (1999), 256-80. I am grateful to Phil Stern for pointing out this reference.
37. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. A Cohler, B. Miller and H. Stone (Cambridge 1989). The first French edition was published in 1748, and the first English edition in 1750. N. Boulanger, Origin and Progress of Despotism in the Oriental and Other Empires (Amsterdam, 1764).
38. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. A Cohler, B. Miller and H. Stone (Cambridge 1989). The first French edition was published in 1748, and the first English edition in 1750. N. Boulanger, Origin and Progress of Despotism in the Oriental and Other Empires (Amsterdam, 1764).
39. See the useful discussion by R. Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of the Permanent Settlement (Paris, 1963), 25-29.
40. Tracy, 'Asian Despotism?', 278-80.
41. I b i d.
42. This was composed in 1753, and published in Historical Fragments of the Mughal Empire, of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan (London, 1781, repr. edn. J.P. Guha, New Delhi, 1982), 254-91. For the date of authorship, see editor's introduction, xi.
43. Ibid., 259. Bernier was physician who visited the Mughal court and travelled widely in India between 1658 and 1668. For Bernier's role as 'the international authority on Mughal India', see Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 18-19.
44. Ibid., 259. Bernier was physician who visited the Mughal court and travelled widely in India between 1658 and 1668. For Bernier's role as 'the international authority on Mughal India', see Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, 18-19.
45. Orme, Historical Fragments, 260, 271, 276.
46. Ibid., 261-68.
47. Ibid., 272, 281-82, 285. Orme's comment reflected the widespread view that Asiatic despotism began in the home, in the supposedly tyrannical powers accorded to paternal heads of households in polygamous Muslim families, and in the 'enervation' and effeminate sensuality bred in the haram.
48. Ibid., 257. 'If the subjects of a despotic power are every where miserable, the miseries of the people of Indostan are multiplied by the incapacity of the power to controul the vast extent of its dominion."
49. Ibid., 291.
50. For the notion of 'extra-territoriality', see M.H. Fisher, 'Extra-territoriality: The Concept and its Application to Princely India', Indo-British Review, 15, 2 (1988); and C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', 246. For the political status of early Calcutta, see H.H.H. Dodwell, 'The Development of Sovereignty in British India', in Dodwell (ed.), Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume 5, British India, 1497-1858 (Cambridge, 1929), 590.
51. For the notion of 'extra-territoriality', see M.H. Fisher, 'Extra-territoriality: The Concept and its Application to Princely India', Indo-British Review, 15, 2 (1988); and C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', 246. For the political status of early Calcutta, see H.H.H. Dodwell, 'The Development of Sovereignty in British India', in Dodwell (ed.), Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume 5, British India, 1497-1858 (Cambridge, 1929), 590.
52. For the notion of 'extra-territoriality', see M.H. Fisher, 'Extra-territoriality: The Concept and its Application to Princely India', Indo-British Review, 15, 2 (1988); and C.A. Bayly, 'The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820', 246. For the political status of early Calcutta, see H.H.H. Dodwell, 'The Development of Sovereignty in British India', in Dodwell (ed.), Cambridge History of the British Empire: Volume 5, British India, 1497-1858 (Cambridge, 1929), 590.
53. For a subtle treatment of conflicts between the British and the Nawabs over the use and interpretation of the farman, see S. Sen, Empire of Free Trade: The East India Company and the Making of the Colonial Marketplace (Pennsylvania, 1998), ch.2.
54. Orme, Historical Fragments, 267.
55. Ibid., 268.
56. Marshall, 'British Expansion in India', 37.
57. R. Orme, History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan (London, 1764). This 'attempt to commemorate the successes of the British Arms in Indostan' was dedicated 'to his Most Excellent Majesty George the Third'.
58. Orme, History of the Military Transactions, II, 75-77. See also L Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of India (London, 1763), who drew on Holwell's account to describe the 'dreadful torments' of the Black Hole sufferers (58-59), and further noted the great mortality suffered by those English sheltering from the Nawab on boats on the river during the 'sickly season' (61). Scrafton almost gleefully described how Siraj was hacked to death soon after by his Indian enemies, emphasising 'how justly he deserved it' above all because of the 'death of the gentlemen in prison' (100). The true figure for the Black Hole dead was likely nearer 50 than Holwell's inflated estimate. For a recent treatment see K. Teltscher, '"The fearful name of the Black Hole"; fashioning an imperial myth', in B. Moore-Gilbert (ed.), Writing India, 1757-1990 (Manchester, 1996).
59. Orme, History of the Military Transactions, II, 75-77. See also L Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of India (London, 1763), who drew on Holwell's account to describe the 'dreadful torments' of the Black Hole sufferers (58-59), and further noted the great mortality suffered by those English sheltering from the Nawab on boats on the river during the 'sickly season' (61). Scrafton almost gleefully described how Siraj was hacked to death soon after by his Indian enemies, emphasising 'how justly he deserved it' above all because of the 'death of the gentlemen in prison' (100). The true figure for the Black Hole dead was likely nearer 50 than Holwell's inflated estimate. For a recent treatment see K. Teltscher, '"The fearful name of the Black Hole"; fashioning an imperial myth', in B. Moore-Gilbert (ed.), Writing India, 1757-1990 (Manchester, 1996).
60. Orme, History of the Military Transactions, II, 75-77. See also L Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of India (London, 1763), who drew on Holwell's account to describe the 'dreadful torments' of the Black Hole sufferers (58-59), and further noted the great mortality suffered by those English sheltering from the Nawab on boats on the river during the 'sickly season' (61). Scrafton almost gleefully described how Siraj was hacked to death soon after by his Indian enemies, emphasising 'how justly he deserved it' above all because of the 'death of the gentlemen in prison' (100). The true figure for the Black Hole dead was likely nearer 50 than Holwell's inflated estimate. For a recent treatment see K. Teltscher, '"The fearful name of the Black Hole"; fashioning an imperial myth', in B. Moore-Gilbert (ed.), Writing India, 1757-1990 (Manchester, 1996).
61. Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan, 19-24.
62. Ibid., 23.
63. W. Watts, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal (London, 1760, repr. Calcutta, 1988), 5.
64. See, for example, Clive to Warren Hastings, 6 Oct. 1758, warning the latter of the 'dark designs of these Mussulmen'. 'The Moors, in general, are villains enough to undertake anything which might benefit themselves at another's expence'. Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive, I, 381-82.
65. P.J. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1976), 8.
66. Clive to William Pitt the Elder, Calcutta, 7 Jan. 1759, repr. in Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive, II, 122.
67. See, for example, Watts, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, 65-66.
68. Marshall, East Indian Fortunes, 8.
69. Clive to William Pitt the Elder, Calcutta, 7 Jan. 1759, repr. in Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive, II, 119-20. Clive argued that the Company should send out a sufficient force 'to embrace the first opportunity of further aggrandizing themselves', which given 'the genius of the people' for disorder would surely come.
70. H. Vereist, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal (London, 1772), 55, argued that Clive's agreements with Mir Jafar established a balance of power, in which the Nawab (forced to maintain the English ally Ram Narrain as his Naib or deputy in the city of Patna) was effectively unable to attack the British, who would have stood, 'like the several nations of Europe, secure, not from their own strength alone, but protected by the irreconcilable interests of all around them.' This was the point, according to Verelst, 'at which is was possible to have stopped".
71. H. Vansittart, Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal (London, 1766, repr. Calcutta, 1976), ed. A.C. Bannerjee and B.K. Ghosh, vii. J.Z. Holwell, An Address from John Zephaniah Holwell to Luke Scrafton In Reply to his Pamphlet entitled Observations on Mr. Vansittart's Narrative (London, 1767), 54-56.
72. R. Ray, The Felt Community: Commonalty and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism (New Delhi, 2003), 252-59.
73. K. Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India. Bihar: 1733-1820 (Leiden, 1996), 113;
74. S. Sen, Empire of Free Trade, 85-86.
75. Extract of Consultation at Fort William, 1 March 1763, printed in Vansittart, Narratives of the Transactions in Bengal, 291, 309, 324. Warren Hastings, Vansittart's sole ally, was the only senior Company official who categorically defended the right of the Nawab's officials to exercise judicial powers over the Company's factories in the interior in March 1763; he did so on the basis of his own relatively favourable experience of residing in 'the most slavish dependence' to the Nawabs in Kasimbazar in the 1750s, but also on the principle that the sovereignty of the Nawabs must be honoured. 'It is as impossible', he said, 'for any state with a divided power as with none". Ibid., 306.
76. Extract of Consultation at Fort William, 1 March 1763, printed in Vansittart, Narratives of the Transactions in Bengal, 291, 309, 324. Warren Hastings, Vansittart's sole ally, was the only senior Company official who categorically defended the right of the Nawab's officials to exercise judicial powers over the Company's factories in the interior in March 1763; he did so on the basis of his own relatively favourable experience of residing in 'the most slavish dependence' to the Nawabs in Kasimbazar in the 1750s, but also on the principle that the sovereignty of the Nawabs must be honoured. 'It is as impossible', he said, 'for any state with a divided power as with none". Ibid., 306.
77. Select Committee at Fort William to Ct. of Directors, 30 Sept. 1765, printed in Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress, and Present State of the English Government at Bengal, Appendix, 9.
78. Vansittart, Narrative of Transactions in Bengal, 531-32.
79. Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan, 26-27. This view of the regulated despotism of the Mughals would be developed still further by W. Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs (London, 1772); and A. Dow, The History of Hindustan, 3 vols. (London, 1768-72).
80. Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan, 26-27. This view of the regulated despotism of the Mughals would be developed still further by W. Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs (London, 1772); and A. Dow, The History of Hindustan, 3 vols. (London, 1768-72).
81. Scrafton, Reflections on the Government of Indostan, 26-27. This view of the regulated despotism of the Mughals would be developed still further by W. Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs (London, 1772); and A. Dow, The History of Hindustan, 3 vols. (London, 1768-72).
82. The arguments over 'private trade' turned on interpretations of the imperial farman of 1717; the directors argued that the 'Court of Delhi' would never have granted a free passage to foreign merchants in the inland trade of the country, 'to the detriment of their revenues, and ruin of their own merchants' Extract of General Letter to Bengal, 26 April 1765, cited in Sen, Empire of Free Trade, 81.
83. Ray, The Felt Community, 249-50, 296.
84. H. V. Bowen 'A Question of Sovereignty? The Bengal Land Revenue Issue, 1765-67', JICH, XVI (1988), 155-76.
85. W. K. Firminger, The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, 1812 (Calcutta, 1917), introduction, cliii.
86. For an account of Clive's assumption of the diwani, see Malcolm, The Life of Robert, Lord Clive, II, ch.14; and for his appointment of an Indian Naib (deputy) to administer the diwani territories, see A.M. Khan, The Transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: A Study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan (Cambridge, 1969), 102-36.
87. For an account of Clive's assumption of the diwani, see Malcolm, The Life of Robert, Lord Clive, II, ch.14; and for his appointment of an Indian Naib (deputy) to administer the diwani territories, see A.M. Khan, The Transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: A Study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan (Cambridge, 1969), 102-36.
88. Ct. of Directors to Ft. William, 17 May 1766, printed in Fort William - India House Correspondence, IV (New Delhi, 1962), 184.
89. A. M. Khan, The Transition in Bengal, 12, noted that Robert Clive, founder of the so-called 'double government', was one of the most forthright British critics of the duplicity and degeneracy of Indian Muslims.
90. W.K. Firminger, Historical Introduction to the Bengal Portion of the Fifth Report (1917, repr. Calcutta, 1962), xciv, cxii.
91. J.Z. Holwell, An Address to the Proprietors of East India Stock: Setting Forth the Unavoidable Necessity and Real Motives of the Revolution in 1760 (London, 1764), 177-78.
92. 'Evidence of Zepheniah Holwell, 30 March, 1767', B.L., Add. MSS 18,469, fols.13-19.
93. Indeed, Henry Verelst (governor 1767-69) claimed that Clive would have enacted closer supervision over the diwani lands, if the directors (ever cautious) had not ordered their servants to stay out of the collections. Verelst, A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal, 68.
94. H.V. Bowen, 'British-India, 1765-1813: The Metropolitan Context', in P.J. Marshall (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume 2, The Eighteenth Century, 533.
95. H.V. Bowen, Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757-1773 (Cambridge, 1991), 119-32.
96. Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs, vi, xi, 32.
97. The Company's increasingly dismissive view of Indian officials was well documented in Marshall, 'Indian officials under the East India Company in eighteenth century Bengal', 95-120.
98. Khan, The Transition in Bengal, 182-83.
99. Bengal Select Committee Proceedings, 16 Aug. 1769, Verelst, View of the Rise Progress and Present State, Appendix, 229. See also the Select Committee's comments that Muslim officials in Bengal 'are generally adventurers from Persia, educated in the manners and principles of a government where tyranny, corruption and anarchy are predominant'. Ibid., 224.
100. Bengal Select Committee Proceedings, 16 Aug. 1769, Verelst, View of the Rise Progress and Present State, Appendix, 229. See also the Select Committee's comments that Muslim officials in Bengal 'are generally adventurers from Persia, educated in the manners and principles of a government where tyranny, corruption and anarchy are predominant'. Ibid., 224.
101. See Ct. of Directors to Fort William, 30 June, 1769, Fort William-India House Correspondence, 211-12, for their criticisms of Indian officials as 'numerous tribes' of 'idle sycophants'.
102. By 1772 the arrears to the emperor, the Nawab and Reza Khan [the Naib] ammounted to £60,406, £125,085 and £26,373 respectively. Khan, The Transition in Bengal, 288.
103. Bolts, Considerations on Indian Affairs, v-xiv.
104. Dow, History of Hindustan, III, xxii, iii.
105. R. Datta, Society, Economy and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c.1760-1800 (New Delhi, 2000), 348-50.
106. Verelst, View of the English Government in Bengal, 84.
107. Ibid., 93-95.
108. N. Chatterji, Verelst's Rule In India (Allahabad, 1939), 197-211.
109. J. Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of Coins in Bengal (London 1772). For useful discussions of the background and arguments of Steuart's text, see W. Barber, British Economic Thought and India 1600-1858 (Oxford 1975), 73-85; and S.R. Sen, The Economics of Sir James Steuart (Harvard, 1957), 155-79.
110. J. Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of Coins in Bengal (London 1772). For useful discussions of the background and arguments of Steuart's text, see W. Barber, British Economic Thought and India 1600-1858 (Oxford 1975), 73-85; and S.R. Sen, The Economics of Sir James Steuart (Harvard, 1957), 155-79.
111. J. Steuart, The Principles of Money Applied to the Present State of Coins in Bengal (London 1772). For useful discussions of the background and arguments of Steuart's text, see W. Barber, British Economic Thought and India 1600-1858 (Oxford 1975), 73-85; and S.R. Sen, The Economics of Sir James Steuart (Harvard, 1957), 155-79.
112. Hasting to George Colebrooke, 7 March 1773, cited in G.R. Gleig, Memoirs of Warren Hastings (London, 1841), I, 293.
113. According to Barber, British Economic Thought and India, 82, the Bengal government did not receive Steuart's recommendations until 1774, though he gives no reference for this assertion. For Hastings's currency and banking reforms, see W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta, 1868), 311; and M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal 1772-74 (Oxford, 1918), 253-54.
114. According to Barber, British Economic Thought and India, 82, the Bengal government did not receive Steuart's recommendations until 1774, though he gives no reference for this assertion. For Hastings's currency and banking reforms, see W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta, 1868), 311; and M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal 1772-74 (Oxford, 1918), 253-54.
115. According to Barber, British Economic Thought and India, 82, the Bengal government did not receive Steuart's recommendations until 1774, though he gives no reference for this assertion. For Hastings's currency and banking reforms, see W.W. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal (Calcutta, 1868), 311; and M. E. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal 1772-74 (Oxford, 1918), 253-54.
116. Hastings to John Graham, Kasimbazar, 23 July, 1772, B.L., Add. MSS, 29125, fol.166 v.
117. Monckton Jones, Warren Hastings in Bengal, 168-69.
118. As Steuart emphasised in his treatise, 'I have considered Bengal as a country by itself, not as making part of Hindustan'. Steuart, The Principles of Money, 62.
119. For a useful discussion of Steuart and the wide background of British political economy, see K. Tribe, Land, Labour and Economic Discourse (London, 1978), 83-84.
120. P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England, 1727-1783 (Oxford, 1989), 441.
121. For a classic nineteenth-century account of the famine, see Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal; see especially, 43-45, where Hunter, schooled in the hard disciplines of nineteenth-century laissez-faire, criticises British attempts at 'interference with private enterprise'. For a more recent account, see Datta, Society, Economy and the Market, chs.5-6. And for the scapegoating of leading Indian officials after the famine, see Khan, Transition in Bengal, 304-05.
122. For a classic nineteenth-century account of the famine, see Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal; see especially, 43-45, where Hunter, schooled in the hard disciplines of nineteenth-century laissez-faire, criticises British attempts at 'interference with private enterprise'. For a more recent account, see Datta, Society, Economy and the Market, chs.5-6. And for the scapegoating of leading Indian officials after the famine, see Khan, Transition in Bengal, 304-05.
123. For a classic nineteenth-century account of the famine, see Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal; see especially, 43-45, where Hunter, schooled in the hard disciplines of nineteenth-century laissez-faire, criticises British attempts at 'interference with private enterprise'. For a more recent account, see Datta, Society, Economy and the Market, chs.5-6. And for the scapegoating of leading Indian officials after the famine, see Khan, Transition in Bengal, 304-05.
124. Ducarel Papers, G.G. Ducarel to his mother, 15 Dec. 1769, D2091, f 11, Gloucestershire County Record Office.
125. G.G. Ducarel to Richard Becher, and the Controlling Council of Revenue at Murshidabad, 3 Dec. 1770, Proceedings of the Controlling Council of Revenue at Murshidabad (Bengal Record Department, Calcutta, 1920), II, 62-70.
126. Ibid., 66.
127. Marshall, 'Indian Officials under the East India Company'.
128. For the Company's efforts to raise the land tax in Bengal, and the problems they faced in doing so, see Marshall, Bengal: the British Bridgehead, 123, 140-44.
129. Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, 119.
130. See above, n.14.
131. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, 7-8.
132. Warren Hastings to Lord Mansfield, Ft. William, 21 March 1774, Gleig, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Hon. Warren Hastings, I, 400-01. Hastings argued that the 'Hindoos' had laws 'which have continued unchanged since the remotest antiquity', and were tolerated under the Mughals. Hence, he argued their 'right to possess those benefits under a British and Christian administration which the bigotry of the Mahomedan government has never denied them'.
133. Francis to Lord North, Calcutta, 21 Nov. 1775, printed in S. Weitzman, Warren Hastings and Philip Francis (Manchester, 1929), 242.
134. P. Francis, Original Minutes of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William on the Settlement and Collection of the Revenues of Bengal: with a Plan of Settlement, recommended to the Court of directors in January, 1776 (London, 1782), 30. Francis cited Book 13, ch.16 of Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, which argued that leniency of taxation explained the 'strange ease with which the Mohammedans made their conquests', 219.
135. See, for example, Thomas Pownall, The Right, Interest, and Duty of Government, as concerned in the Affairs of the East Indies, 2nd edn. (London, 1781), 35-38, which argued for the preservation of the 'internal constitutional polity' of Bengal.
136. The quotation is from the dispatch, drawn up under the Direction of Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control for India, authorising the enactment of the Permanent Settlement in 1793. It is cited in Marshall, Problems of Empire: Britain and India, 1757-1813 (London, 1968), 68-69. See also Metcalf's suggestive observation (Ideologies of the Raj, 18) that 'the entire structure of the rule of law established by Hastings and Cornwallis can be seen in large measure as a way of containing British fear of their own complicity in Asian despotism'.
137. The quotation is from the dispatch, drawn up under the Direction of Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control for India, authorising the enactment of the Permanent Settlement in 1793. It is cited in Marshall, Problems of Empire: Britain and India, 1757-1813 (London, 1968), 68-69. See also Metcalf's suggestive observation (Ideologies of the Raj, 18) that 'the entire structure of the rule of law established by Hastings and Cornwallis can be seen in large measure as a way of containing British fear of their own complicity in Asian despotism'.
138. For the idea of 'rule by law', in which 'while the state may make law for its subjects, it posits itself as above that law and unaccountable to it', see D. Washbrook, 'India, 1818-1860', in OHBE, III, 407.
139. N. Hussain, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law (Michigan, 2003), 25. This does not mean to say that slave labour was entirely absent from the Asian empire; just that questions of racial difference were less firmly tied to concepts of slavery than in the Atlantic world. For slavery in the Indian context, see I. Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and the Law in Colonial India (Oxford, 1999).
140. N. Hussain, The Jurisprudence of Emergency: Colonialism and the Rule of Law (Michigan, 2003), 25. This does not mean to say that slave labour was entirely absent from the Asian empire; just that questions of racial difference were less firmly tied to concepts of slavery than in the Atlantic world. For slavery in the Indian context, see I. Chatterjee, Gender, Slavery and the Law in Colonial India (Oxford, 1999).