The Anarchy
Page 54
34
Edward Ives, A Voyage From England to India in the Year 1754, London, 1733, quoted in Keay, The Honourable Company, p. 307.
35
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 221.
36
Ives, A Voyage From England to India in the Year 1754, p. 102.
37
Feiling, Warren Hastings, p. 23.
38
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin, pp. 369–70.
39
Captain Edward Maskelyne, Journal of the Proceedings of the Troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive on the expedition to Bengal, BL, OIOC, Mss Eur Orme, vol. 20, pp. 23–4; Watts and Campbell, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno. Dom. 1757, p. 18.
40
Watts and Campbell, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno. Dom. 1757, p. 20.
41
Clive’s Evidence – First Report of the Committee of the House of Commons; Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 1, pp. 354–5.
42
Captain Edward Maskelyne, Journal of the Proceedings of the Troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive on the expedition to Bengal, BL, OIOC, Mss Eur Orme, vol. 20, pp. 28–30.
43
Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 1, pp. 359–60.
44
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 222.
45
P. J. Marshall (ed.), The Eighteenth Century in Indian History. Evolution or Revolution, New Delhi, 2003, p. 362.
46
Ray, The Felt Community, p. 244.
47
The three British players in this story – the Crown, the Company and Parliament – rarely worked as a unified force. For a good analysis of the tensions between them see Lucy Sutherland’s classic, The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics, Oxford, 1952.
48
Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, p. 291. Cuba was a Spanish colony, only involved in the war at the very end, when Spain joined in.
49
Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 1, pp. 180–1, Letter to M Demontorcin, Chandernagar, August 1, 1756.
50
Jean Law de Lauriston, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, trans. G. S. Cheema, New Delhi, 2014, p. 87.
51
Keay, The Honourable Company, p. 314.
52
Quoted by Sir Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal, vol. II, The Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D., New Delhi, 1948, pp. 484–5.
53
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 98.
54
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin, pp. 373–4; BL, OIOC, HM 193, p. 88.
55
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 193.
56
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 66.
57
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 211, 213.
58
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, pp. 82–3.
59
Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 2, pp. 368–9, Letter from Colonel Clive to Mr Pigot, dated 30 April 1757.
60
This is why the eminent Indian scholar K. M. Pannikar famously called the Battle of Plassey a ‘transaction, not a battle, a transaction by which the compradors of Bengal, led by Jagat Seth, sold the Nawab to the East India Company’, K. M. Pannikar, Asia and Western Dominance, New York, 1954, p. 100. See also Sushil Chaudhury, Companies, Commerce and Merchants: Bengal in the Pre-Colonial Era, New Delhi, 2015, pp. 336–52.
61
Fort William Select Committee Proceedings of May 1, 1757, in Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 2, p. 370.
62
In an effort to declutter an already complicated narrative, I have omitted the important role in the conspiracy of another banker, this time a Punjabi, named Amir Chand, known to the Company as Omichand. He played a major role in the Plassey conspiracy. Clive made full use of Omichand as a negotiator and he also accompanied Watts to Murshidabad following the conclusion of the February treaty. Omichand wanted his share in the spoils of Plassey and demanded 5 per cent on all the Nawab’s treasure, threatening to reveal the conspiracy to Siraj. However, when the Select Committee met on 17 May Clive deviously persuaded it to draw up a double treaty to be signed by Mir Jafar and the British, in one the article in favour of Omichand’s ‘cut’ being inserted and in the other left out. See Sushil Chaudhury, The Prelude to Empire: Plassey Revolution of 1757, p. 127 and passim.
63
Letter from Petrus Arratoon to the Court of Directors, dated 25 January 1759, quoted in Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 1, p. 432.
64
Watts and Campbell, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno. Dom. 1757, pp. 98–9.
65
BL, OIOC, Mss Eur Orme India XI, no. 153.
66
BL, OIOC, IOR, HM 193, no. 158.
67
Ibid., no. 159.
68
Spear, Master of Bengal, p. 87.
69
Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 1, p. 440.
70
BL, OIOC, IOR, HM 193, no. 161.
71
Ibid., no. 162.
72
Ibid., no. 167.
73
Ibid., no. 169.
74
Ibid.
75
BL, OIOC, Orme Papers, O.V., CLXIV-A, f. 115.
76
NAI, Home Misc of Ancient Records, 1757, vol. 19, pp. 120–8, 26 July 1757.
77
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 230–1.
78
The Muzaffarnama of Karam Ali, in Bengal Nawabs, trans. Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1952, p. 76.
79
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin, pp. 375–6.
80
Captain Edward Maskelyne, Journal of the Proceedings of the Troops commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive on the expedition to Bengal, BL, OIOC, Mss Eur Orme, vol. 20, p. 30.
81
NAI, Home Misc of Ancient Records, 1757, vol. 19, pp. 120–8, 26 July 1757.
82
BL, OIOC, IOR, HM 193, no. 172.
83
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 55.
84
Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 2, p. 437, Clive to Select Committee, Fort William June 30th 1757.
85
BL, OIOC, IOR, HM 193, no. 194.
86
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 235–42.
87
The Muzaffarnama of Karam Ali, p. 78.
88
P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India and America c. 1750–1783, p. 150; John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal, Cambridge, 1993, p. 150.
89
Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 2, p. 35.
90
Philip Stern has shown how much earlier than was previously understood the Company acquired political power, but there can be no doubt that Plassey hugely augmented this. See Philip J. Stern, The Company State: Corporate Sovereignty & the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India, Cambridge, 2011.
91
Ray, The Felt Community, pp. 245–6.
92
Keay, The Honourable Company, pp. 317–18.
93
Alexander Dow, History of Hindostan, 3 vols, Dublin, 1792, vol. 3, p. xxiv.
94
P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1976, p. 8.
CHAPTER 4: A PRINCE OF LITTLE CAPACITY
1
Percival Spear, Master of Bengal: Clive and his India, London, 1975, p. 97.
2
Ibid.
3
Clive to Mir
Jafar, 15 July 1757, OIOC, HM 193, 180; Mark Bence-Jones, Clive of India, London, 1974, p. 157.
4
Clive to John Payne, 11 November 1758, National Library of Wales, Clive Mss 200 (2), pp. 102–4.
5
George Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, New Delhi, 1986, vol. 2, pp. 119–22.
6
Abdul Majed Khan, The Transition in Bengal 1756–1775, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 10–11.
7
J. Price, Five Letters from a Free Merchant in Bengal, to Warren Hastings Esq, London, 1778, p. 136; Peter Marshall, Problems of Empire: Britain and India 1757–1813, London, 1968, p. 26.
8
Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 2, p. 179; Tillman W. Nechtman, ‘A Jewel in the Crown? Indian Wealth in Domestic Britain in the Late Eighteenth Century’, Eighteenth Century Studies, 41:1 (2007), pp. 71–86, p. 74; Spear, Master of Bengal, p. 119.
9
Sir Penderel Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, London, 1947, p. 35; Abdul Majed Khan, The Transition in Bengal 1756–1775, pp. 28–9.
10
Syed Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai, Seir Mutaqherin, Calcutta, 1790–94, vol. 2, pp. 262, 270.
11
Sir Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, London, 1989, p. 62.
12
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 241.
13
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 351.
14
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 262, 250–1, 373; Henry Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal from the Year 1760, to the year 1764, during the Government of Mr Henry Vansittart, London, 1766, vol. 1, pp. 151–3.
15
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 86.
16
OIOC, Bengal Secret Consultations, 30 April, 25, 26, 30 July, 27 Aug 1764, Range A, vol. 5, pp. 156–61, 408–21, 444–58; P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1976, pp. 118, 128; Bence-Jones, Clive of India, p. 156.
17
Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 1, p. 25.
18
Marshall, East India Fortunes, p. 120.
19
Quoted in Bence-Jones, Clive of India, p. 156.
20
Voyage en Inde du Comte de Modave, 1773–1776, ed. Jean Deloche, Pondicherry, 1971, p. 48.
21
Ibid., pp. 282–7.
22
Quoted by Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 2, pp. 79–84.
23
Hastings to Vansittart, 25 April 1762, OIOC, BL Add Mss 29,098, f. 7–8. See also Walter K. Firminger and William Anderson, The Diaries of Three Surgeons of Patna, Calcutta, 1909, p. 16.
24
Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings, London, 1954, pp. 1–11; Jeremy Bernstein, Dawning of the Raj: The Life & Trials of Warren Hastings, Chicago, 2000, pp. 32–5.
25
Feiling, Warren Hastings, pp. 39, 66. The portrait is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 81.
26
Ibid., pp. 28, 41.
27
Kumkum Chatterjee, Merchants, Politics & Society in Early Modern India Bihar: 1733–1820, Leiden, 1996, pp. 118–23. For other complaints about Pearkes see Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 1, p. 28.
28
For the Jagat Seths writing to Shah Alam see Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 2, p. 126. For Mir Ashraf’s support for Shah Alam see BL, Or. 466, Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, pp. 635–6.
29
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080.
30
The historiography of the period usually contrasts the old thesis of Mughal decline against which are aligned revisionist claims of provincial autonomy and growth. Shah Alam’s story reveals a more complex story than just a case study of decentralisation, and reveals instead the fluidity of the situation and the shifting political allegiances and interests which are not incorporated in either of these linear positions.
31
Sayid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah Walli-Allah And His Times, Canberra, 1980, p. 170.
32
Fakir Khair ud-Din Illahabadi, ‘Ibrat Nama, BL Or. 1932, 20r–21v.
33
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080.
34
Krishna Dayal Bhargava, Browne Correspondence, Delhi, 1960, p. 1.
35
Jean Law de Lauriston, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, trans. G. S. Cheema, New Delhi, 2014, p. 297.
36
Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, 4 vols, New Delhi, 1991, vol. 2, p. 315.
37
Tarikh-i Shakir Khani, British Library Oriental manuscripts, Add. 6568, f. 14r.
38
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, pp. 265, 280, 290–1.
39
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080. Also John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal, Cambridge, 1993, p. 181.
40
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 338–41.
41
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 342.
42
Hastings to Vansittart, BL, OIOC, Add Mss 29132, f. 103–11; also Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, p. 37.
43
John Caillaud, A Narrative of What Happened in Bengal in the Year 1760, London, 1764, p. 15.
44
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 344–5.
45
Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, pp. 634–6. Also McLane, Land and Local Kingship, p. 181.
46
Caillaud, A Narrative of What Happened in Bengal in the Year 1760, p. 25.
47
Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, pp. 634–5.
48
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 3, p. 180.
49
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 297.
50
K. K. Dutta, Shah Alam II & The East India Company, Calcutta, 1965, p. 15. Shah Alam also lost some of his baggage and his writing desk, which was seized by Archibald Swinton and is now in the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh.
51
Jean-Baptiste Gentil, Mémoires sur l’Indoustan, Paris, 1822, pp. 203–4.
52
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 404.
53
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 403.
54
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 401–3.
55
Caillaud, A Narrative of What Happened in Bengal in the Year 1760, p. 35.
56
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 371–2.
57
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 374.
58
Hastings to Vansittart, BL, OIOC, Add Mss 29132, f. 103–11.
59
Hastings to Vansittart, 10 July 1760, BL, OIOC, Add Mss 29132, f. 103–11.
60
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 88; Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, p. 39; Nicholas B. Dirks, The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, Harvard, 2006, p. 50.
61
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin: A History of Bengal. Translated from the original Persian by Maulvi Abdus Salam, Calcutta, 1902, pp. 385–6.
62
Caillaud, A Narrative of What Happened in Bengal in the Year 1760, p. 50.
63
Lushington to Clive, 3 December 1760, cited in John Malcolm, Life of Robert, Lord Clive, London, 1836, vol. II, p. 268.
64
Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, p. 681.
65
Ibid., pp. 681–9.
66
P. J. Marshal
l, Bengal: The British Bridgehead – Eastern India 1740–1828, Cambridge, 1987, p. 86.
67
Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, pp. 683, 685.
68
All details on Sumru from Voyage en Inde, pp. 420–2.
69
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 500–3.
70
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 421, 434.
71
Ibid., vol 2, pp. 427, 433.
72
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 427.
73
Tarikh-i Muzaffari of Muhammad ‘Ali Khan Ansari of Panipat, pp. 683, 688.
74
Carnac’s Letter to the Select Committee, 5 March 1761, Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 1, p. 185.
75
Dutta, Shah Alam II & The East India Company, p. 18.
76
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 406–7.
77
Recently given by the Swinton family to the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh.
78
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 407.
79
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, pp. 92–3.
80
Dutta, Shah Alam II & The East India Company, p. 21.
81
G. J. Bryant, The Emergence of British Power in India, 1600–1784: A Grand Strategic Interpretation, Woodbridge, 2013, p. 161 n; Dutta, Shah Alam II & The East India Company, p. 47.
82
Nandalal Chatterji, Mir Qasim, Nawab of Bengal, 1760–1763, Allahabad, 1935.
83
Gentil, Mémoires sur l’Indoustan, p. 205.
84
Feiling, Warren Hastings, p. 42.
85
Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, p. 39.
86
Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 1, pp. 300–7, 322–3.
87
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 97–102; Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, vol. 2, pp. 227–8.
88
Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 2, pp. 97–102; Feiling, Warren Hastings, pp. 46–7; G. S. Cheema, The Ascent of John Company: From Traders to Rulers (1756–1787), New Delhi, 2017, p. 66.
89
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, pp. 98–9.
90
Moon, Warren Hastings and British India, pp. 50–1.
91
Gentil, Mémoires sur l’Indoustan, p. 210.
92
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin, pp. 387–8.
93
Vansittart, A Narrative of the Transactions in Bengal, vol. 2, pp. 164–8; also Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 282–7.