The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
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The British consistently portrayed Tipu as a savage and fanatical barbarian, but he was in truth a connoisseur and an intellectual, with a library containing some 2,000 volumes in several languages, mainly on law, theology and the secular sciences, as well as amassing a large collection of modern scientific instruments including thermometers and barometers.45 When in the course of a raid on the outskirts of Madras, Tipu’s troops captured some scholarly volumes on Indian botany, Tipu had the books rebound and added to his library. The culture of innovation Tipu fostered in Mysore stands record to a man very different from that imagined by Calcutta: a modernising technocrat who, as Christopher Bayly nicely put it, attempted to fight ‘European mercantilist power with its own weapons: state monopoly and an aggressive ideology of expansion’. His imported French military technology was if anything more advanced than that of the Company; he failed only because the resources of the Company were now larger, and expanding significantly faster, than those of Mysore.
Tipu did, however, have some severe flaws which left him vulnerable to his enemies. For Tipu was prone, even by the standards of the time, to use unnecessary violence against his adversaries and those he defeated, creating many embittered enemies where conciliation would have been equally possible and much wiser. Rebels had their arms, legs, ears and noses cut off before being hanged. He routinely circumcised and brutally converted to Islam captive enemy combatants and internal rebels, both Hindu and Christians, Indian and British. More often than not he destroyed the temples and churches of those he conquered. He did this on a particularly horrific scale on his various campaigns in Malabar, Mangalore and Coorg. Huge numbers of people were forced to migrate from their homes: 60,000 Christians from the southern Carnatic to Mysore in one year alone.46 Christian Portuguese missionaries wrote that ‘he tied naked Christians and Hindus to the legs of elephants and made the elephants move around till the bodies of the helpless victims were torn to pieces’.
Allied to this often counter-productive aggression and megalomania was a fatal lack of diplomatic skills. When Cornwallis reached Calcutta in September 1786, Tipu was already at war with both the Maratha Peshwa and the Nizam of Hyderabad, both of whom had been allies of his father. Unlike Haidar, who joined the Triple Alliance coalition against the British, Tipu’s aggressive attacks on his neighbours so alarmed both Marathas and Hyderabadis that, when courted by Cornwallis, they agreed to form a new Triple Alliance. This time the alliance would be with the Company, and it was aimed against Tipu’s Mysore.
As if he had not made enough enemies, Tipu then decided to break off relations with Shah Alam, so becoming the first Indian ruler formally to disown even a nominal sovereignty to the Mughal Emperor. He ordered that the Friday sermon, the khutbah, should be read in his own name not that of the Emperor, observing that ‘as to those idiots who introduce the name of Shah Alam into the khutbah, they act through ignorance, since the real condition of the so-called Emperor is this: that he is actually enslaved and a mere cypher, being the servant of Scindia at the monthly wages of Rs15,000.* Such being the case, to pronounce the name of a dependant of the infidels while reciting the sacred khutbah is a manifest sin.’47
Then, in December 1789, Tipu opened a new front. He had already conquered northern Malabar as far as Cochin; now he decided to bring to obedience the Raja of Travancore to its south. The Raja had protected himself with some remarkable fortifications known as the Travancore Lines: a forty-mile rampart flanked by a sixteen-foot ditch and topped by an impenetrable bamboo hedge. He had also signed a mutual defence pact with the Company.
So when, at daybreak on 29 December 1789, Tipu brought up his heavy artillery and blew a wide gap in the Travancore defences, sending in his crack Tiger Sepoys to massacre the unsuspecting Raja’s troops, he suddenly found himself at war not only with the Marathas, the Hyderabadis and the people of Travancore – but also, yet again, with his oldest and bitterest enemy, the East India Company.
The Third Anglo-Mysore War began, as had the previous two, with Tipu marching with unprecedented speed and violence into the Carnatic. He reached Trichinopoly in early December 1790, where he effortlessly outmanoeuvred a lumbering Company army. He then fell on the coast between Madras and Pondicherry, where his cavalry burned and devastated the undefended towns and villages. The great temple town of Tiruvannamalai was bloodily sacked in mid-January.
The Company had no ability to match the speed of Tipu’s marches. One officer, Major James Rennell, recorded that the Mysore troops used to ‘make three marches for one of ours … The rapidity of Tippoo’s marches was such that no army appointed like ours could ever bring it to action in the open country.’48 This was partly because every Company officer travelled with at least six servants, a complete set of camp furniture, ‘his stock of linens (at least 24 suits); some dozens of wine, brandy and gin; tea, sugar and biscuits; a hamper of live poultry and his milch goat’.49 Tipu’s troops had few such encumbrances.
But Cornwallis had no intention of allowing Tipu to run rings around him. He was also determined to redeem his military reputation, tarnished by his surrender to George Washington at Yorktown five years earlier. So he decided to lead the counter-attack in person: ‘We have lost time and our adversary has gained reputation, which are the two most valuable things in war,’ wrote Cornwallis. ‘I have no other part to take but to go myself … and see whether I can do better.’50
In early February 1791, the portly figure of Marquess Cornwallis could be seen mounting his charger and trotting out of Madras at the head of an army of 19,000 sepoys. By 21 March he had climbed the Eastern Ghats and reached the plateau beyond without encountering opposition. He then seized by assault Tipu’s second-largest city, Bangalore. Here he was joined by his Hyderabadi ally, Mir Alam, who brought with him 18,000 Mughal cavalry.
By May the combined force was ready and began the advance deep into Tipu’s territory; but it was here that their problems began. Tipu had laid waste to the fields and villages on Cornwallis’s line of march, so supplies of food were low and by the time they neared Tipu’s island capital, Srirangapatnam, 10,000 Company transport bullocks had died; those that remained were so close to starvation they could hardly pull their loads. The dearth of carriage bullocks meant rank-and-file Europeans, sepoys and camp followers had to carry heavy ordnance for the artillery train on their backs. To add to Cornwallis’s problems, sickness had broken out in the army and the monsoon arrived early, spoiling a large proportion of his rice rations and soaking his ailing troops. Low-caste followers were forced to survive on the decaying flesh of dead bullocks. Before long, smallpox was raging throughout the Company lines.51 On 24 May, after a brief skirmish with Tipu, Cornwallis ordered his battering train and heavy guns to be destroyed and a muddy withdrawal to Bangalore to begin.
The retreating army had only marched for half a day when, near the temple town of Melkote, a troop of horses 2,000-strong appeared on the road in front of them. The alarm was raised and the first shots had been fired before it was realised that the cavalry were not Tipu’s, but belonged to the Company’s new Maratha allies. A much larger force came up soon after and was found to be carrying ample supplies for both Cornwallis’s bullocks and his men.
After weeks of growing austerity and deprivation, the Company soldiers could hardly believe the profusion of goods available in the Maratha bazaar: ‘English broadcloths, Birmingham pen-knives, the richest Kashmiri shawls, rare and costly jewellery together with oxen, sheep, poultry and all that the most flourishing towns could furnish.’52 Famished sepoys and camp followers hurried into the Maratha camp to buy food at inflated prices. British officers bought up all the carriage bullocks they could and pressed them into service.53 Together, the three allied armies marched back to Bangalore to sit out the rains and make preparations for a fresh attack when the monsoon subsided and the rivers had ebbed.
After two months of resting, feasting and military parades with their Maratha and Hyderabadi allies, Cornwallis sent his men off to begin besi
eging Tipu’s mountain fortresses that guarded the remaining passes through the ghats. They started with those commanding the Nandi Hills, overlooking Bangalore, and the fearsome fort of Savandurga, perched on a near-vertical peak and believed to be one of the most impregnable fortresses in the Deccan. By New Year, Cornwallis had secured the safety of his supply routes and made sure that there would be no repetition of May’s logistical failures.
Finally, on 26 January 1792, the three armies marched out of Bangalore for a second attempt to corner the Tiger of Mysore in his lair. Cornwallis now had 22,000 sepoys, plus 12,000 Marathas and a slightly larger number of Hyderabadis.54
Tipu had a larger army than this – more than 50,000 sepoys and cavalry troopers – but he was too careful a general to risk open battle against such a formidable force. Instead he stayed within the magnificent fortifications of Srirangapatnam which had been designed for him by French engineers on the latest scientific principles, following Sébastian de Vauban’s research into artillery-resistant fortification designs, as adapted by the Marquis de Montalembert in his book La Fortification Perpendiculaire. These provided the most up-to-date defences that the eighteenth century could offer, and took into account the newly increased firepower of cannon, bombs and mines, as well as the latest developments in tactics for storming and laying siege to forts.55 Penetrating these defences was the challenge now facing Cornwallis’s army.
Late on 5 February 1792, the three armies arrived in front of the formidable walls of Srirangapatnam island for the second time. Without waiting for Tipu to make the first move, and without telling his allies of his plans, Cornwallis launched an immediate attack, taking advantage of the moonless night. He concentrated his initial fire on Tipu’s fortified encampment on the high ground opposite the island which overlooked and guarded the bridges and fords over the Kaveri. Tipu, who had thought Cornwallis would wait until his entire force had assembled, was taken completely by surprise. He led a brave resistance for two hours, but by midnight had retreated onto the island and into the walls of his citadel.
Once Tipu had abandoned the encampment, and the fords were left unguarded, Cornwallis unleashed a second column towards the fortress at the eastern end of the island. By daybreak, the beautiful Lal Bagh, the Red Garden, was in Cornwallis’s hands. James Kirkpatrick, who was in the second column, had gazed across the river and seen Tipu’s magnificent Mughal-style garden palace, ‘Lall Baug, in all its glory’, the day before: ‘Alas!’ he wrote to his father, ‘it fell sacrifice to the emergencies of war.’ The palace was made a hospital for the wounded and the beautiful garden ‘toppled to supply materials for the siege. Whole avenues of tall and majestic cypresses were in an instant laid low, nor was the orange, apple, sandal tree or even the fragrant bowers of rose and jasmine spared in this indiscriminate ruin. You might have seen in our batteries fascines of rose bushes, bound with jasmine and picketed with pickets of sandal wood. The very pioneers themselves became scented …’56
Even the ‘alarming mortality’ among the European troops and the ‘infectious exhalations from millions of putrid carcases that cover the whole surface of the earth for twenty miles around the capital’, he wrote, could not blind him to the astonishing loveliness of the city he was engaged in besieging: ‘The palaces and gardens both upon the island and without the city as far exceed the palace and gardens at Bangalore in extent, taste and magnificence, as they are said to fall short of the principal ones within the city.’57
The following day, Tipu made a series of ineffectual counter-attacks, but, as the hopelessness of his position became apparent, more and more of his troops deserted and he was forced to send a message to Cornwallis, through some captured Company officers, suggesting peace negotiations. Cornwallis accepted, but his terms were severe: Tipu must surrender half his kingdom, and pay an indemnity of 30 million rupees,* release all his prisoners of war, and give his two eldest sons as hostages to guarantee full payment. The borderlands next to the Marathas were to be handed over to the Peshwa; those next to Hyderabad to the Nizam; and the Company was to receive his territories in the Eastern Ghats as well as those in Coorg and spice-rich Malabar.
The treaty was finally signed, and the two young princes – Abdul Khaliq, who was eight, and Muizuddin, aged five – handed over to Cornwallis on 18 March 1792. The boys were taken off by elephant to Madras, which they appeared in general to like, though they clearly did not enjoy being made to sit through entire performances of Handel’s Messiah and Judas Maccabaeus.58 Having created a sensation in Madras society with their dignity, intelligence and politeness, they were sent back two years later when Tipu delivered the final tranche of his indemnity payment.
All this was a crushing blow to Tipu. Over the course of the war he had already lost 70 forts and 800 guns, and sustained 49,340 casualties. Now he stood to lose one entire half of the kingdom he had inherited from his father. But even as negotiations over the peace treaty were wrangling on, it was clear that Tipu was unbowed even by his defeat.
Around this time he reached out to Nizam Ali Khan of Hyderabad: ‘Know you not the custom of the English?’ he wrote. ‘Wherever they fix their talons they contrive little by little to work themselves into the whole management of affairs.’ One night just before the treaty was signed, according to Maratha sources, Tipu appeared secretly in the Maratha camp, and asked to be taken to the tent of the ‘lordly old Brahmin’ general, Haripant Phadke: ‘You must realise I am not at all your enemy,’ he said. ‘Your real enemy is the Englishman, and it is he of whom you must beware.’59
In many ways 1792 was the major turning point for the East India Company in India: before this, the Company was often on the defensive and always insecure. After this year, the Company appeared increasingly dominant. Up to this point, too, the EIC was still, in terms of land, a relatively small Indian power, controlling only 388,500 out of 4.17 million square kilometres – about 9.3 per cent of the Indian land mass, almost all in the north and east.60 But with the great chunks of land it had just seized from Tipu in the south, the Company Raj was now on its way to becoming a major territorial, as well as a military and economic, power.
The reforms Cornwallis initiated on his return to Calcutta further consolidated this position. In America, Britain had lost its colonies not to Native Americans, but to the descendants of European settlers. Cornwallis was determined to make sure that a settled colonial class never emerged in India to undermine British rule as it had done, to his own humiliation, in America. By this period one in three British men in India were cohabiting with Indian women, and there were believed to be more than 11,000 Anglo-Indians in the three Presidency towns.61 Now Cornwallis brought in a whole raft of unembarrassedly racist legislation aimed at excluding the children of British men who had Indian wives, or bibis, from employment by the Company.
In 1786 an order had already been passed banning the Anglo-Indian orphans of British soldiers from qualifying for service in the Company army. In 1791 the door was slammed shut when an order was issued that no one with an Indian parent could be employed by the Civil, Military or Marine branches of the Company. A year later, this was extended to ‘officers of the Company ships’. In 1795, further legislation was issued, again explicitly disqualifying anyone not descended from European parents on both sides from serving in the Company’s armies except as ‘pipers, drummers, bandsmen and farriers’. Yet, like their British fathers, the Anglo-Indians were also banned from owning land. Thus excluded from all the most obvious sources of lucrative employment, the Anglo-Indians quickly found themselves at the beginning of a long slide down the social scale. This would continue until, a century later, the Anglo-Indians had been reduced to a community of minor clerks, postmen and train drivers.62
It was under Cornwallis, too, that many Indians – the last survivors of the old Murshidabad Mughal administrative service – were removed from senior positions in government, on the entirely spurious grounds that centuries of tyranny had bred ‘corruption’ in them.63 Increasingly, all
non-Europeans began to be treated with disdain by the exclusively white officials at the Company headquarters of Fort William. Around this time, Warren Hastings’ Military Secretary, Major William Palmer, who was married to a Mughal princess, wrote expressing his dismay at the new etiquette regarding Indian dignitaries introduced to Calcutta by Cornwallis: ‘They are received,’ he wrote, ‘in the most cold and disgusting style, and I can assure you that they observe and feel it, and no doubt they will resent it whenever they can.’64
Cornwallis then set about making a series of land and taxation reforms guaranteeing a steady flow of revenue, particularly in time of war, as well as reinforcing the Company’s control of the land it had conquered. The Permanent Settlement, introduced in 1793, gave absolute rights to land to zamindar landowners, on the condition that they paid a sum of land tax which Company officials now fixed in perpetuity. So long as zamindars paid their revenues punctually, they had security over the land from which the revenue came. If they failed to pay up, the land would be sold to someone else.65