FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY-The Company Establishes Power

 

CLASS- VIII    OUR PASTS -III

 

2.   FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY-The Company Establishes Power

·       Aurangzeb was the last of the powerful Mughal rulers.

·       After his death in 1707, many Mughal governors ( subadars ) and big zamindars began asserting their authority and establishing regional kingdoms. As powerful regional kingdoms emerged in various parts of India, Delhi could no longer function as an effective centre.

 

East India Company comes East:

·       The British originally came to India as a small trading company and were reluctant to acquire territories. Ultimately, they became the masters of the vast territory. This did not happen overnight. It took a long time.

·       In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to East India Company, for a monopoly of trade with nations in the East.

·       The Royal Charter, however, could not prevent other European powers from entering the eastern markets. The Portuguese established their presence in the western coast of India and got their base in Goa.

·       By the early 17^th century, the Dutch too were exploring the possibilities of trade in the Indian Ocean. Soon, the French traders arrived.

·       All the companies wanted to buy the same things such as fine qualitiesof cotton and silk, pepper, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon from the Indian market.

·       They reduced the profits and tried to remove rival competitors.

·       Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they regularly sank each other’s ships, blockaded routes, and prevented rival ships from moving with supplies ofgoods.

·       Trade was carried on with arms and trading posts were protected through fortification.

·       Mercantile trading companies made profit primarily by excluding competition. So that they could buy cheap and sell dear.

 

East India Company begins trade in Bengal:

·       The first factory of East India Company, which worked as a  warehouse and base for the workers of the company, was established in 1651. The workers were known as factors.

·       As trade expanded, the company asked merchants to settle near the factory.

·       1696: Fort was built around settlement.

·       It bribed Mughal officials into giving the Company zamindari rights over three villages. One of these was Kalikata, which later grew into the city of Calcutta or Kolkata as it is known today. It also persuaded the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to issue a farman granting the Company the right to trade duty free.

·       Company refused to pay duty- led to loss in revenue.

 

How trade led to battles:

·       After the death of Aurangzeb, the Bengal nawabs (Murshid Quli Khan was followed by Alivardi Khan and then Sirajuddaulah) one after another refused to grant concessions to the Company.

·       In such a situation the company began to think about replacing Sirajuddaulah with a puppet ruler who would willingly give trade concessions and other privileges.

·       They began helping one of Sirajuddaulah’s rivals become the Nawab. Sirajuddaulah got infuriated. This finally led to the Battle of Plassey in which Sirajuddaulah got defeated.

 

The Battle of Plassey:

·       Name from Persian “Palashi” or Palash tree that flowers (used in Holi).

·       After Ali Vardi Khan died in 1756, Sirajuddaulahbecame the Nawab of Bengal.

·       Company wanted a puppet ruler and his rivals as Nawab.

·       An infuriated Sirajuddaulah asked the Company to stop interfere in the political affairs of his dominion, stop fortification, and pay the revenues.

·       The Nawab marched with 30,000 soldiers to the English factory at Kassimbazar, captured the Company officials, locked the warehouse, disarmed all Englishmen, and blockaded English ships.

·       Then he marched to Calcutta to establish control over the Company’s fort there. On hearing the news of the fall of Calcutta, Company officials in Madras sent forces under the command of Robert Clive, reinforced by naval fleets.

·       Finally, in 1757, Robert Clive led the Company’s army against Sirajuddaulah at Plassey.

·       Sirajuddaulah lost as troops under Mir Jafar, one of Sirajuddaulah’s commanders, never fought the battle,as he was promised by Clive to become Nawab.

Battle of Buxar:

·       After the defeat at Plassey, Sirajuddaulah was assassinated and Mir Jafar made the nawab.

·       Soon the Company discovered that this was rather difficult.

·       some puppet Nawabs were not giving all rights to maintain a basic appearance of dignity and sovereignty.

·       When Mir Jafar protested, the Company installed Mir Qasim in his place. When Mir Qasim complained, he in turn was defeated in a battle fought at Buxar (1764), driven out of Bengal, and Mir Jafar was reinstalled.

·       The Nawab had to pay Rs 500,000 every month but the Company wanted more money to finance its wars, and meet the demands of trade and its other expenses. It wanted more territories and more revenue.

·       By the time Mir Jafar died in 1765 the mood of the Company had changed. In 1765, Clive ordered we must indeed become Nawabs ourselves.

·       In 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the Company as the Diwan of the provinces of Bengal. The Diwani allowed the Company to use the vast revenue resources of Bengal.

·       Now revenue from India could finance the company expenses- to purchase textiles, maintain troops and build forts and offices.

Robert Clive:

·       He had come to Madras from England in 1743 at the age of 18.

·       In 1767, when he left India his Indian fortune was worth £ 401,102.

·       He was appointed as Governor of Bengal in 1764 to remove corruption in company administration.

·       In 1772, he was cross-examined by the British Parliament which was suspicious of his vast wealth.

·       In 1774, he was acquitted and committed suicide.

·       Those Britishers who amassed wealth in India and moved back to Britain to led good life were known as ‘nabobs’, anglicised version of the Indian word’ Nawab’.

 

Expansion of Company rule:

·       No direct military attack on an unknown territory.

·       It used a variety of political, economic and diplomatic methods to extend its influence before annexing an Indian kingdom.

·       After the Battle of Buxar (1764), the Company appointed Residents in Indian states- political agents to serve Company’s interest.

·       Company forced the states into a “subsidiary alliance”. According to the terms of this alliance, Indian rulers were not allowed to have their independent armed forces.

·       They were to be protected by the Company, but had to pay for the “subsidiary forces” that the Company was supposed to maintain for the purpose of this protection.

·       If the Indian rulers failed to make the payment, then part of their territory was taken away as penalty.

·       When Richard Wellesley was GovernorGeneral (1798-1805), the Nawab of Awadh was forced to give over half of his territory to the Company in 1801, as he failed to pay for the “subsidiary forces”.

·       Hyderabad was also forced to cede territories on similar grounds.

Tipu Sultan- The Tiger of Mysore:

·       Mysore had grown in strength under the leadership of powerful rulers like Haidar Ali (ruled from 1761 to 1782) and his famous son Tipu Sultan (ruled from 1782 to 1799).

·       Mysore controlled the profitable trade of the Malabar coast where the Company purchased pepper and cardamom.

·       In 1785 Tipu Sultan stopped the export of sandalwood, pepper and cardamom through the ports of his kingdom, and disallowed local merchants from trading with the Company.

·       He also established a closerelationship with the French in India, and modernised his army with their help.

·       Four wars were fought with Mysore (1767-69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799).

·       Only in the last – the Battle of Seringapatam (combined attack of Marathas, Nizam of Hyderabad and Company), Company ultimately win a victory.

·       Tipu was forced to sign a treaty with the British by which two of his sons were taken as hostages.

·       Tipu Sultan was killed defending his capital Seringapatam, Mysore was placed under the former ruling dynasty of the Wodeyars and a subsidiary alliance was imposed on the state.

·       Tipu’s toy tiger kept in Victoria and Albert Museum in London and was taken away in 1799.

 

War with the Marathas:

·       Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, war between Marathas and Company and British won.

·       The Marathas were divided into many states under different chiefs (sardars) belonging to dynasties such as Sindhia, Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle.

·       These chiefs were held together in a confederacy under a Peshwa (Principal Minister) who became its effective military and administrative head based in Pune. In 18^th century: MahadjiSindhia and Nana Phadnis were two famous Maratha soldiers and statesmen.

·       The FirstAnglo- Maratha war - Treaty of Salbai (1782)

·       The Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803-05) was fought on different fronts, resulting in the British gaining Orissa and the territories north of the Yamuna river including Agra and Delhi.

·       The Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817-19 crushed Maratha power. The Peshwa was removed and sent away to Bithur near Kanpur with a pension.

 

Paramountcy:

·       In the early nineteenth century the Company went on with aggressive policy of territorial expansion.

·       Under Lord Hastings (GovernorGeneral from 1813 to 1823) a new policy of “paramountcy” was initiated.

·       Now the Company claimed that its authority was paramount or supreme, hence its power was greater than that of Indian states.

·       When the British tried to annex the small state of Kitoor (in Karnataka today), Rani Channamma took to arms and led an anti-British resistance movement. She was arrested in 1824 and died in prison in 1829.

·       But Rayanna, a poor chowkidar of Sangoli in Kitoor, carried on the resistance. With popular support he destroyed many British camps and records. He was caught and hanged by the British in 1830.

·       British got fear from Russia. It imagined that Russia might expand across Asia and enter India from the north-west.

·       Driven by this fear, the British now wanted to secure their control over the north-west. They fought a prolonged war with Afghanistan between 1838 and 1842 and established indirect Company rule there.

·       Sind was taken over in 1843.

·       In 1849, Punjab was annexed, after the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839.

The Doctrine of Lapse :

·       The final wave of annexations occurred under Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor-General from 1848 to 1856.

·       He devised a policy that came to be known as the Doctrine of Lapse.

·       The doctrine declared that if an Indian ruler died without a male heir his kingdom would “lapse”, that is, become part of Company territory.

·       One kingdom after another was annexed simply by applying this doctrine: Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1850), Udaipur (1852), Nagpur (1853) and Jhansi (1854).

·       Finally, in 1856, the Company also took over Awadh. This time the British had an added argument – they said they were “obliged by duty” to take over Awadh in order to free the people from the “misgovernment” of the Nawab! Enraged by the humiliating way in which the Nawab was deposed, the people of Awadh joined the great revolt that broke out in 1857.

 

New Administration:

·       Warren Hastings (Governor-General from 1773 to 1785) played a significant role in the expansion of Company power.

·       British territories were broadly divided into administrative units called Presidencies. There were three Presidencies: Bengal, Madras and Bombay.

·       Each was ruled by a Governor.

·       The supreme head of the administration was the Governor-General.

·       Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General, introduced several administrative reforms, notably in the sphere of justice. From 1772 a new system of justice was established. Each district was to have two courts – a criminal court ( faujdariadalat ) and a civil court ( diwaniadalat ).

·       Maulvis and Hindu pandits interpreted Indian laws for the European district collectors who presided over civil courts.

·       The criminal courts were still under a qazi and a mufti but under the supervision of the collectors.

·       The Brahman pandits gave different interpretations of local laws based on different schools of the dharmashastra. To bring about uniformity, in 1775 eleven pandits were asked to compile a digest of Hindu laws. N.B. Halhed translated this digest into English.

·       By 1778 a code of Muslim laws was also compiled for the benefit of European judges.

·       Under the Regulating Act of 1773, a new Supreme Court was established, while a court of appeal – the SadarNizamat Adalat – was also set up at Calcutta.

·       The principal figure in an Indian district was the Collector, his main job was to collect revenue and taxes and maintain law and order in his district with the help of judges, police officers and darogas .

·       His office – the Collectorate – became the new centre of power and patronage that steadily replaced previous holders of authority.

The Company army:

·       In the eighteenth century when Mughal successor states like Awadh and Benaras started recruiting peasants into their armies and training them as professional soldiers.

·       The East India Company adopted the same method when it began recruitment for its own army, which came to be known as the sepoy army (from the Indian word sipahi , meaning soldier).

·       As warfare technology changed from the 1820s, the cavalry requirements of the Company’s army declined. This is because the British empire was fighting in Burma, Afghanistan and Egypt where soldiers were armed with muskets and matchlocks.

·       In the early nineteenth century the British began to develop a uniform military culture.

·       Soldiers wereincreasingly subjected to European-style training, drill and discipline that regulated their life far more than before.

·       Often this created problems since caste and community feelings were ignored in building a force of professional soldiers.

 

Slave Trade in South Africa:

·       The Dutch trading ships reached southern Africa in the seventeenth century.

·       People were captured, chained, and sold in slave markets.

·       When slavery ended in 1834 there were 36,774 privately owned slaves at the Cape – located at the southernmost tip of Africa.

Word glossary:

Mercantile – A business enterprise that makes profit primarily through trade, buying goods cheap and selling them at higher prices.

Farman – A royal edict, a royal order.

Puppet – Literally, a toy that you can move with strings. The term is used disapprovingly to refer to a person who is controlled by someone else.

Injunction – Instruction

Subservience – Submissiveness

Confederacy – Alliance

Qazi – A judge

Mufti – A jurist of the Muslim community responsible for expounding the law that the qazi would administer.

Impeachment – A trial by the House of Lords in England for charges of misconduct brought against a person in the House of Commons.

Dharmashastras – Sanskrit texts prescribing social rules and codes of behaviour, composed from c . 500 BCE onwards

Sawar – Men on horses

Musket – A heavy gun used by infantry soldiers

Matchlock – An early type of gun in which the powder was ignited by a match

 

 

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