25
Mrs Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the East Indies, London, 1777, p. 17. Also very good for Calcutta at this period is Farhat Hasan, ‘Calcutta in the Early Eighteenth Century’, in J. S. Grewal, Calcutta: Foundation and Development of a Colonial Metropolis, New Delhi, 1991, and Rajat Datta, ‘From Medieval to Colonial: Markets, Territoriality and the Transition in Eighteenth-Century Bengal’, in Medieval History Journal, vol. 2, no. 1 (1999).
26
K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company 1660–1760, Cambridge, 1978, p. 253.
27
Kaushik Roy, ‘Military Synthesis in South Asia: Armies, Warfare, and Indian Society, c.1740–1849’, in Journal of Military History, vol. 69, no. 3 (July 2005), pp. 651–90; V. G. Dighe and S. N. Qanungo, ‘Administrative and Military System of the Marathas’, in R. C. Majumdar and V. G. Dighe (eds), The Maratha Supremacy, Mumbai, 1977, pp. 567–8; Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, 1789–1803, 4 vols, 1950; reprint, New Delhi, 1992, p. 85. The English factory records graphically described the anarchy: ‘The Marathas are plundering Birbhum (1742) which has put a stop to all businesses, the merchants and weavers flying whenever they can.’ Some of their reports are quoted in Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 1, p. 43.
28
Quoted in Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 1, p. 44.
29
Velcheru Narayana Rao, David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800, New York, 2003, pp. 236–7.
30
John R. McLane, Land and Local Kingship in Eighteenth-Century Bengal, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 163–5; The Maharahtra Purana: An Eighteenth Century Bengali Historical Text, trans. and ed. Edward C. Dimock Jr and Pratul Chandra Gupta, Honolulu, 1965, pp. 28–32. There are many other accounts that corroborate Ganga Ram’s account. The historians Salimullah and Ghulam Husain Salim, for example, also endorse these accounts. They write, ‘The Bargis cut off the ears, noses and hands of multitudes of people, or killed them with many kinds of torture and suffering – by gagging their mouths with bags of dust and destroying them’ (i.e. outraged their women); see Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 1, p. 44. Sarkar provides a long narrative of Vidyalankar’s account. The letters from the French factory at Chandernagar and the English settlement of Calcutta narrate the same story of oppression and destruction.
31
Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 1, p. 8.
32
Francis Gladwin, trans., The Memoirs of Khojeh Abdulkurreem, Calcutta, 1788, pp. 147–8.
33
Roy, East India Company, p. 165.
34
Ibid., pp. 25, 141–2, 165–7.
35
C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, p. 49.
36
Roy, East India Company, p. 23. The problem with seeing Calcutta as a kind of shelter or tax haven for Indian merchants is that these merchants were not only operating in Calcutta, but instead depended on far-flung networks of merchants and suppliers throughout eastern and northern India. Calcutta’s status as a flourishing port, and the Company’s deep pockets, made it a magnet, but it’s also true that the city could only flourish in symbiosis with large sectors of the late Mughal economy. Calcutta was not the only city with a ‘legal system’, and it is possible Roy may have overestimated the distinctiveness of the Company in this regard.
37
Abdul Latif Shushtari, Kitab Tuhfat al-’Alam, written Hyderabad 1802 and lithographed Bombay 1847, p. 427.
38
Ibid., p. 434.
39
P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1976, pp. 218–19.
40
See Andrew Ward, Our Bones Are Scattered, London, 1996, p. 8.
41
Marshall, East India Fortunes, p. 159.
42
Scottish Records Office, Hamilton-Dalrymple Mss, bundle 56, GD 110, folios 1021,1021. Stair Dalrymple to Sir Hew Dalrymple, 3 Jan 1754; Marshall, East India Fortunes, pp. 159, 215.
43
Causes of the Loss of Calcutta 1756, David Renny, August 1756, OIOC, BL, O.V. 19, pp. 147–61; OIOC, HM vol. 66, pp. 821–4.
44
Jean Law de Lauriston, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, trans. G. S. Cheema, New Delhi, 2014, p. 59.
45
OIOC, Bengal Correspondence, Court of Directors to the Fort William Council, 16 January 1752; Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, p. 37.
46
Watts to Drake and the Fort William Council, BL, OIOC, Bengal Public Consultations, 15 August 1755; Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, p. 38.
47
Philip B. Calkins, ‘The Role of Murshidabad as a Regional and Subregional Centre in Bengal’, in Richard L. Park, Urban Bengal, East Lansing, 1969, pp. 25–6.
48
J. P. Losty, ‘Murshidabad Painting 1750–1820’, in Neeta Das and Rosie Llewellyn Jones, Murshidabad: Forgotten Capital of Bengal, Mumbai, 2013, pp. 82–105; J. P. Losty, ‘Towards a New Naturalism: Portraiture in Murshidabad and Avadh, 1750–80’, in Barbara Schmitz (ed.), After the Great Mughals: Painting in Delhi and the Regional Courts in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Mumbai, 2002; J. P. Losty, ‘Eighteenth-century Mughal Paintings from the Swinton Collection’, in The Burlington Magazine, CLIX, October 2017, pp. 789–99; Tilottama Mukherjee, ‘The Coordinating State and the Economy: the Nizamat in Eighteenth Century Bengal’, in Modern Asian Studies, 43, 2 (2009), p. 421.
49
The miniature shows the Delhi exile Natthu Khan heading the band on his great rabab, the beautiful young Muhammad Khan with his astonishing blue eyes singing, while his elders Chajju Khan and Dindar Khan accompany him, one on either side, on the tambura, with Taj Khan strumming the been and Sita Ram on the pakhawaj; 1755 is the date of Shahamat Jang’s death. See also ‘Eighteenth-century Mughal Paintings from the Swinton Collection’, in The Burlington Magazine, CLIX, October 2017, pp. 789–99, fig. 29. Thanks to Katherine Butler Schofield for explaining this image for me.
50
Syed Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai, Seir Mutaqherin, Calcutta, 1790–4, vol. 2, pp. 156–62; Mukherjee, ‘The Coordinating State and the Economy: The Nizamat in Eighteenth Century Bengal’, p. 412.
51
Sir Jadunath Sarkar (ed.), The History of Bengal, vol. II, The Muslim Period 1200 A.D.–1757 A.D., New Delhi, 1948, p. 448.
52
NAI, Home Dept, Public Branch, vol. 1, 9 January 1749, p. 73; Mukherjee, ‘The Coordinating State and the Economy: The Nizamat in Eighteenth Century Bengal’, pp. 389–436.
53
Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, p. 45.
54
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 164. Another good account of this period is Waqa-i-Mahabat Jang [The Full History of Aliverdi Khan] or Ahwal-i-Mahabat Jang of Yusuf Ali, English translation by Sir Jadunath Sarkar, published by Asiatic Society of Bengal as Nawabs of Bengal, Calcutta, 1952.
55
Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal, Cambridge, 2007, p. 3; McLane, Land and Local Kingship, p. 6; Marshall, East India Fortunes, p. 34.
56
BL, OIOC, IOR, Bengal Public Consultations, 10 June 1753, Range 1, vol. 26, f. 169. Despite the overwhelming evidence from contemporary sources of Siraj behaving rather like Uday Hussain in pre-9/11 Baghdad, there have been several spirited post-Colonial attempts to resuscitate his reputation, for example see Sushil Chaudhury, who argues that Sira ud-Daula’s villainous character is a misrepresentation. See Sushil Chaudhury, The Prelude to Empire: Plassey Revolution of 1757, New Delhi, 2000, pp. 29–36.
57
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, pp. 65–6.
58
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqher
in, vol. 2, pp. 122, 183–4, 188.
59
J. H. Little, The House of Jagat Seth, Calcutta, 1956, p. 165.
60
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 225. See also the excellent discussion in Lakshmi Subramanian and Rajat K. Ray, ‘Merchants and Politics: From the Great Mughals to the East India Company’, in Dwijendra Tripathi, Business and Politics in India: A Historical Perspective, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 19–45.
61
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 95.
62
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 52.
63
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 163.
64
Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, pp. 39, 51; S. C. Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, 3 vols, London, 1905, vol. 1, p. 147.
65
‘The Muzaffarnama of Karam Ali’, in Bengal Nawabs, trans. Jadunath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1952, p. 58.
66
Ibid., p. 63.
67
Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, p. 54.
68
Narrative of the Capture of Calcutta from April 10 1756 to November 10 1756, William Tooke, BL, OIOC, O.V. 19, Bengal 1756, pp. 5–46; Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, p. 233.
69
Narrative of the Capture of Calcutta from April 10 1756 to November 10 1756, pp. 5–46.
70
Feiling, Warren Hastings, p. 21.
71
Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, pp. 14, 53; Hill, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 1, p. 3.
72
Voyage en Inde du Comte de Modave, 1773–1776, ed. Jean Deloche, Pondicherry, 1971, pp. 67–8.
73
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, pp. 218–19.
74
CPC ii, no. 1101; Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 2, pp. 315, 328.
75
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080, f. 21.
76
Khurshidul Islam and Ralph Russell, Three Mughal Poets: Mir, Sauda, Mir Hasan, New Delhi, 1991, pp. 30, 59.
77
Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, vol. 1, p. 222.
78
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 126.
79
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 3, p. 334.
80
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 126; Manna Kai, ‘Imad ul-Mulk’, in The Encyclopedia of Islam – Three, ed. Kate Fleet and Gudrun Krämer, Brill, 2018, pp. 110–13.
81
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 125.
82
Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Writing the Mughal World: Studies on Culture and Politics, New York, 2012, pp. 434–4.
83
This section derives from a remarkable essay by Katherine Schofield and David Lunn, ‘Delight, Devotion and the Music of the Monsoon at the Court of Emperor Shah Alam II’, in Margit Pernau, Imke Rajamani and Katherine Schofield, Monsoon Feelings, New Delhi, 2018, pp. 185–218.
84
Ibid. It may be a little reductive to draw too strong a contrast between Shah Alam as a ‘Sufi’ and his father, who had many Sufi connections, as a ‘puritan’. There was a distinction, but Nile Green’s work has convincingly argued that Mughal Sufism should be seen less as a distinct branch of ‘mystical Islam’ than as a many-headed and multi-faceted group of scholarly and sacred lineages which had in fact become over the early modern period the Muslim ‘establishment’. Nile Green, Sufism: A Global History, London, 2012.
85
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080, f. 18.
86
Fakir Khair ud-Din Illahabadi, ‘Ibrat Nama, BL Or. 1932, 17v–18r.
87
Tarikh-i-Alamgir Sani, BL Mss Or. 1749, f. 166 verso.
88
Ibid., f. 167 recto.
89
Fakir Khair ud-Din Illahabadi, ‘Ibrat Nama, BL Or. 1932, 17v–18r. I have added several details from the related and slightly earlier account of the same event in the Tarikh-i-Alamgir Sani, BL Mss Or. 1749, f. 166 verso.
90
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 3, pp. 365–8.
91
Law, A Memoir of the Mughal Empire 1757–61, p. 254.
92
Fakir Khair ud-Din Illahabadi, ‘Ibrat Nama, BL Or. 1932, 17v–18r. I have added a line of dialogue here from Ghulam Hussain Khan’s closely related account of the same event.
93
Ghulam Ali Khan alias Bhikhari Khan, Shah Alam Nama, BL, Add 24080, f. 30.
94
K. K. Dutta, Shah Alam II & The East India Company, Calcutta, 1965, pp. 1–2.
95
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, pp. 286–9, vol. 3, pp. 189–90; Ray, The Felt Community, p. 333.
CHAPTER 3: SWEEPING WITH THE BROOM OF PLUNDER
1
William Tooke, Narrative of the Capture of Calcutta from April 10, 1756 to November 10, 1756, BL, OIOC, O.V. 19, Bengal 1756, pp. 5–46.
2
John Zephaniah Holwell, quoted in John Keay, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, London, 1991, p. 301.
3
William Watts and John Campbell, Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno. Dom. 1757, p. 14.
4
John Zephaniah Holwell, quoted in Bruce P. Lenman, Britain’s Colonial Wars 1688–1783, New York, 2001, p. 106.
5
An Account Of The Capture Of Calcutta By Captain Grant, BM Add Mss 29200, f. 38.
6
Ibid.
7
Concerning the Loss of Calcutta, BL, OIOC, HM vol. 66, pp. 821–4.
8
An Account Of The Capture Of Calcutta By Captain Grant, BM Add Mss 29200, f. 39.
9
Ibid.
10
Account of the loss of Calcutta by David Renny, BL, OIOC, HM vol. 66, pp. 821–4.
11
Cooke’s Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), Great Britain, House of Commons, Report on East India Affairs, Fifth report from the Select Committee, vol. III, p. 299.
12
Quoted in Sir Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, London, 1989, p. 42.
13
Syed Ghulam Hussain Khan Tabatabai, Seir Mutaqherin, Calcutta, 1790–4, vol. 2, p. 190.
14
Concerning the Loss of Calcutta, BL, OIOC, HM vol. 66, pp. 821–4.
15
Narrative of the loss of Calcutta, with the Black Hole by Captain Mills, who was in it, and sundry other particulars, being Captain Mills pocket book, which he gave me, BL, OIOC, O.V. 19, pp. 77–92.
16
Ibid.
17
Account of the loss of Calcutta by John Cooke Esq. who was in the Black Hole, June 1756, in Cooke’s Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), Great Britain, House of Commons, Report on East India Affairs, Fifth report from the Select Committee, vol III, p. 299.
18
Ghulam Husain Salim, Riyazu-s-salatin: A History of Bengal, Translated from the original Persian by Maulvi Abdus Salam, Calcutta, 1902, p. 366.
19
S. C. Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, 3 vols, Calcutta, 1905, vol. 1, p. 51, French letter from Chandernagar.
20
Account of the loss of Calcutta by John Cooke Esq. who was in the Black Hole, June 1756, in Cooke’s Evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), Great Britain, House of Commons, Report on East India Affairs, Fifth report from the Select Committee, vol. III, p. 299.
21
&
nbsp; Yusuf Ali Khan, Tarikh-i-Bangala-i-Mahabatjangi, trans. Abdus Subhan, Calcutta, 1982, pp. 120–2.
22
John Zephaniah Holwell, A Genuine Narrative of the Deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and others, who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort William, in Calcutta, in the Kingdom of Bengal; in the Night Succeeding the 20th June 1756, London, 1758.
23
There is a large literature on the Black Hole. The best forensic examination of the primary evidence is to be found in Brijen K. Gupta, Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company, 1756–7, Leiden, 1966, pp. 70–81. There are also good discussions in Partha Chatterjee, The Black Hole of Empire: History of a Global Practice of Power, Ranikhet, 2012, p. 255; Jan Dalley, The Black Hole: Money, Myth and Empire, London, 2006; Rajat Kanta Ray, The Felt Community: Commonality and Mentality before the Emergence of Indian Nationalism, New Delhi, 2003, pp. 235–7; Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600–1850, London, 2002; Ian Barrow, ‘The many meanings of the Black Hole of Calcutta’, in Tall Tales and True: India, Historiography and British Imperial Imaginings, ed. Kate Brittlebank, Clayton, Vic., 2008, pp. 7–18. Betty Joseph has argued that the Black Hole helped the Company avoid much public and political scrutiny of the crucial shift that had taken place in its role in India, and as a result, the Company moved from being a commercial power to a territorial power and began the conquest of India without criticism. Betty Joseph, Reading the East India Company, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 70–1.
24
Concerning the Loss of Calcutta, BL, OIOC, HM vol. 66, pp. 821–4.
25
Causes of the Loss of Calcutta 1756, David Renny, August 1756, BL, OIOC, O.V. 19, pp. 147–61.
26
G. J. Bryant, Emergence of British Power in India 1600–1784: A Grand Strategic Interpretation, Woodbridge, 2013, pp. 118–21.
27
Hill, Indian Records Series, Bengal in 1756–7, vol. 1, p. 233, Extract of a letter from Colonel Clive to the Secret Committee, London, dated Fort St George, 11 October, 1756.
28
George Forrest, The Life of Lord Clive, 2 vols, London, 1918, vol. 1, p. 278.
29
Mark Bence-Jones, Clive of India, London, 1974, p. 94.
30
Daniel Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754–63, New York, 2014, p. 286.
31
Ghulam Hussain Khan, Seir Mutaqherin, vol. 2, p. 220.
32
Bence-Jones, Clive of India, p. 98; Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings, London, 1954, p. 23.
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Page 53