The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire
Page 58
23
Voyage en Inde du Comte de Modave, 1773–1776, ed. Jean Deloche, Pondicherry, 1971, p. 77.
24
Rajat Datta, ‘The Commercial Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, in H. V. Bowen, Elizabeth Mancke and John G. Reid, Britain’s Oceanic Empire: Atlantic and Indian Ocean Worlds, c. 1550–1850, Cambridge, 2012, p. 361.
25
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 245.
26
P. J. Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires: Britain, India and America c. 1750–1783, Oxford, 2007, p. 243.
27
P. J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead – Eastern India 1740–1828, Cambridge, 1987, p. 114; Datta, ‘The Commercial Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, p. 346.
28
H. V. Bowen, ‘British India, 1765–1813: The Metropolitan Context’, in Peter Marshall, The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998, p. 535; C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, p. 35; Datta, ‘The Commerical Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, p. 358.
29
Quoted in H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833, Cambridge, 2006, pp. 241–2; Holden Furber, ‘Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800’, in Maritime India, intro. Sanjay Subrahmanyam, New Delhi, 2004, p. 175.
30
Datta, ‘The Commercial Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, p. 346.
31
Marshall, The Making and Unmaking of Empires, pp. 248–51.
32
Datta, ‘The Commercial Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, p. 363.
33
Ibid., pp. 362–3; Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, p. 85. See also Seema Alavi, The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770–1830, Delhi, 1995.
34
Burton Stein, ‘Eighteenth Century India: Another View’, Studies in History, vol. 5, 1 n.s. (1989), p. 21.
35
Abdul Latif Shushtari: Kitab Tuhfat al-’Alam, written Hyderabad 1802 & lithographed Bombay 1847, p. 427.
36
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 247.
37
Quoted in Denys Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan, London, 1970, p. 205.
38
J. Michaud, History of Mysore Under Haidar Ali and Tippoo Sultan, trans. V. K. Raman Menon, Madras, 1924, pp. 47–8.
39
Burton Stein, ‘State Formation and Economy Reconsidered’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 19, no. 3, Special Issue: Papers Presented at the Conference on Indian Economic and Social History, Cambridge University, April 1984 (1985), pp. 387–413, p. 403. See also Irfan Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, New Delhi, 1999, Introduction, p. xxxi.
40
A. Subbaraya Chetty, ‘Tipu’s Endowments to Hindus and Hindu institutions’, in Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, pp. 101–11.
41
B. A. Saletore, ‘Tipu Sultan as a Defender of Hindu Dharma’, in Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, p. 125.
42
Ibid., p. 126.
43
Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, Introduction, p. xxvii. See also Mahmud Husain, The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, Karachi, n.d.
44
Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, Introduction, p. xxvi.
45
Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850, London, 2005, pp. 184–5; Habib (ed.), Resistance and Modernisation under Haidar Ali & Tipu Sultan, Introduction, p. xxxiv.
46
T. Venkatasami Row, A Manual of the District of Tanjore in the Madras Presidency, Madras, 1883, pp. 812–13. See also Stein, ‘Eighteenth Century India: Another View’, Studies in History, vol. 5, 1 n.s. (1989).
47
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 248.
48
James Rennell, The Marches of the British Armies in the Peninsula of India, London, 1792, p. 33.
49
Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 251.
50
Quoted in Forrest, Tiger of Mysore, p. 149.
51
Cornwallis to Malet, 25 March 1791, BL IOR, mmc P/252/60, ff. 2005–6; Cornwallis to Oakeley, 30 April 1791, mmc P/252/61, ff. 2318–2319; Letter from Madras, 15 July 1791, BL IOR, hm 251, ff. 9–11; Cornwallis to Oakeley, 24 May 1791, BL IOR, mmc P/252/62, ff. 2827–9; Cockburn to Jackson, 12 July 1791, BL IOR, mmc P/252/63, ff. 3317, 3321; Torin to Cornwallis, 21 October 1791, National Archives, pro 30/11/45, f. 5. Quoted in Mesrob Vartavarian, ‘An Open Military Economy: The British Conquest of South India Reconsidered, 1780–1799’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 57, no. 4 (2014), pp. 486–510, p. 496.
52
Quoted in Govind Sakharam Sardesai, A New History of the Marathas, 3 vols, Baroda, 1948, vol. 3, p. 193.
53
Military Operations BL, IOR, HM251, ff. 746–7, quoted in Vartavarian, ‘An Open Military Economy’, p. 497.
54
BL, OIOC, Eur Mss F228/52 Dec 1791, f. 1.
55
Jean-Marie Lafont, Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations 1630–1976, Delhi, 2000, p. 186.
56
BL, OIOC, Eur Mss F228/52 Dec 1791, f. 2.
57
Ibid.
58
Forrest, Tiger of Mysore, p. 200.
59
Sardesai, A New History of the Marathas, vol. 3, p. 192.
60
Datta, ‘The Commerical Economy of Eastern India under British Rule’, p. 342.
61
Durba Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire, Cambridge, 2006; William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, London, 2002.
62
R. B. Saksena, Indo-European Poets of Urdu and Persian, Lucknow, 1941, p. 21; Christopher J. Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833, London, 1996, ch. 4; William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, London, 2002, pp. 50–2; Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, p. 70.
63
C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914, Oxford, 2004, p. 111.
64
Anderson Correspondence, BL, Add Mss 45, 427, Wm Palmer to David Anderson, 12 November 1786, f. 196.
65
Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, pp. 122–5.
66
Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, p. 111; Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead, pp. 122–5; C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 466–7, 474, 479; Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, pp. 108, 150.
67
Kumkum Chatterjee, ‘Collaboration and Conflict: Bankers and Early Colonial Rule in India: 1757–1813’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, 30, 3 (1993), pp. 296–7. This whole argument was first made in the 1980s by Christopher Bayly in Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars and by Karen Leonard in her groundbreaking essay ‘The Great Firm Theory of the Decline of the Mughal Empire’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 21, 2 (1979), and in ‘Banking Firms in Nineteenth-Century Hyderabad Politics’, Modern Asian Studies, 15, 2 (1981). See also the dissent of J. F. Richards in ‘Mughal State Finance and the Premodern World Economy’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 23, no. 2 (1981).
68
Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818’, in Marshall, The Eighteenth Century, pp. 516–17.
69
‘Chahar Gulzar S
huja’ of Hari Charan Das in Sir H. M. Elliot and John Dowson, A History of India as Told By Its Own Historians, 8 vols, London, 1867–77, vol. VIII, p. 229.
70
At the cost, according to Washbrook, Bayly and more recently – in a different vein – Parthasarathi, of rendering the Indian economy relatively static, and unable to respond effectively to the new challenges of British industrialisation – though this is disputed: Tirthakar Roy offers a more optimistic account.
71
Ray, ‘Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818’, in Marshall, The Eighteenth Century, p. 517.
72
Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, 4 vols, New Delhi, 1991, vol. 3, p. 254.
73
The Company was, of course, not only dependent on ‘local money’ – it could also draw on the resources of the Company at home and the domestic state. See J. R. Ward’s important older article ‘The Industrial Revolution and British Imperialism, 1750–1850’, in Economic History Review, n.s., vol. 47, no. 1 (February 1994), pp. 44–65 on the role of domestic consumers in financing the tea trade.
74
Sayid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Shah ‘Abd al’Aziz: Puritanism, Sectarianism and Jihad, Canberra, 1982, p. 44.
75
In the lovely words of Ferdinand Mount, Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805–1905, London, 2016, p. 185.
76
Voyage en Inde, pp. 549–550.
77
Napoleon to Tipu, 7 Pluviôse VII [26 January 1799], OIOC, P/354/38. The second quotation, which is quoted by Andrew Roberts in Napoleon and Wellington, London, 2001, pp. 16–17, in fact dates from 1812 when Napoleon was flirting with launching a second Eastern expedition; but it reflected the ease with which he saw India falling into his hands on the earlier expedition. Maya Jasanoff is especially good on Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition in her brilliant Edge of Empire.
78
Quoted in Sir John Malcolm, Political History of India, 2 vols, London, 1826, vol. 1, p. 310.
CHAPTER 9: THE CORPSE OF INDIA
1
Quoted in Iris Butler, The Elder Brother: The Marquess Wellesley 1760–1842, London, 1973, p. 134.
2
When he first arrived in India, Richard Wellesley was still known as the 2nd Earl of Mornington. For ease of comprehension I have called him Marquis Wellesley, his title after 1799, throughout.
3
Quoted by Sir Penderel Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, London, 1989, p. 341.
4
Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 134.
5
Richard Wellesley, Two Views of British India: The Private Correspondence of Mr Dundas and Lord Wellesley: 1798–1801, ed. Edward Ingram, London, 1970, p. 16.
6
Quoted by Anne Buddle in The Tiger and the Thistle: Tipu Sultan and the Scots in India, Edinburgh, 1999, p. 33.
7
The ultimate source for this is the Proceedings of a Jacobin Club formed at Seringapatam by the French soldiers in the Corps commanded by M Domport. Paper C in Official Documents Relating the Negotiations Carried on by Tippoo Sultan with the French Nation, Calcutta, 1799; J. Michaud, History of Mysore Under Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan, trans. V. K. Raman Menon, Madras, 1924, pp. 108–9. See also Denys Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan, London, 1970, pp. 250–2; Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Conquest and Collecting in the East, 1750–1850, London, 2005, pp. 150–1, 159–60.
8
Quoted in Herbert Compton, The European Military Adventurers of Hindustan, London, 1943, pp. 8–9.
9
Forrest, Tiger of Mysore: The Life and Death of Tipu Sultan, p. 254.
10
Ibid., p. 259.
11
Richard Wellesley, Marquess Wellesley, The Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley KG during his Administration of India, ed. Montgomery Martin, 5 vols, London, 1840, vol. 1, p. 159.
12
Mark Wilks, Historical Sketches of the South Indian History, 2 vols, London, 1817, vol. 2, p. 689.
13
The full translations of Raymond’s correspondence can be found in Jadunath Sarkar, ‘General Raymond of the Nizam’s Army’, in Mohammed Taher, Muslim Rule in Deccan, Delhi, 1997, pp. 125–44.
14
Compton (ed.), The European Military Adventurers of Hindustan, pp. 382–6.
15
Wellesley, The Despatches, Minutes and Correspondence of the Marquess Wellesley KG, 5 vols, vol. 1, p. 209. See also Jac Weller, Wellington in India, London, 1972, pp. 24–5.
16
Rt Hon. S. R. Lushington, The Life and Services of Lord George Harris GCB, London, 1840, p. 235.
17
J. W. Kaye, The Life and Correspondence of Sir John Malcolm GCB, London, 1840, vol. 1, p. 78.
18
Ibid., vol. 1, p. 78n.
19
Quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 281.
20
Quoted in Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 166.
21
Quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 284.
22
Quoted in Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 167.
23
Quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 285.
24
Amales Tripathi, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833, Calcutta, 1979, pp. 4, 46–7, 72, 80–1; Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Indian Society and the Establishment of British Supremacy, 1765–1818’, in Peter Marshall, The Eighteenth Century, Oxford, 1998, pp. 516–17.
25
Burton Stein, ‘Eighteenth Century India: Another View’, Studies in History, vol. 5, 1 n.s. (1989), p. 21. Also see D. Peers, ‘State, Power and Colonialism’, in India and the British Empire, ed. Douglas Peers and Nandini Gooptu, Oxford, 2012, p. 33.
26
Pratul C. Gupta, Baji Rao II and the East India Company, New Delhi, 1939, p. 57. The politics of the period are extremely complex, even by Maratha standards. The death (whether by accident or suicide) in October 1795, had thrown the Peshwa’s succession wide open as the only surviving members of the Peshwa family, Baji Rao and his brother Chimaji, were in prison (being sons of the disgraced Raghunath Rao) and no love was lost between them and Nana Phadnavis. Daulat Rao, who was still in Pune, and Nana began a long drawn-out struggle to be in control of the next Peshwa. Baji Rao was a master in guile, behind an apparently sweet-natured exterior. He eventually promised Scindia money, obtained Nana’s concurrence and after fourteen months rose to be a Peshwa with no money, dependent on Scindia for arms and Nana for administrative experience. However, mutual suspicions were deep and Nana and Daulat Rao were at loggerheads. Nana wanted Scindia to go north. Scindia wanted money which he believed Nana alone had. By a clever deception using the ‘word of a European officer’ named Filose, Scindia lured Nana to his camp for a farewell meeting and arrested him. Nana was kept in the Scindia camp for three months but refused to disgorge any money. He was then sent as a prisoner to Ahmednagar. The administration collapsed and Nana had to be released and restored. But the suspicions remained and none of the advice that Nana gave was accepted. The British attack on Tipu had Nana pleading for an army to be sent, and finally, at the end April 1799, he wrote to the British that he would lead an army himself. However, it was too late. The British offer of a part of Tipu’s province in exchange for a humiliating treaty was rejected by Nana in 1799. He died in 1800.
27
Quoted in William Kirkpatrick, Select Letters of Tipoo Sultan to Various Public Functionaries, London, 1811. See also Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan’s Search for Legitimacy, New Delhi, 1997, p. 11.
28
Quoted in Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 162.
29
Quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 277.
30
Forrest, Tiger of Mysore, pp. 2
70–1.
31
Quoted in Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 166.
32
OIOC, India Office Library, Kirkpatrick letters, Mss Eur F228/11 f. 10.
33
Gupta, Baji Rao II and the East India Company, p. 58.
34
Michaud, History of Mysore Under Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan, pp. 100–3.
35
Ibid., p. 129.
36
Mahmud Husain, The Dreams of Tipu Sultan, Karachi, n.d.; Michaud, History of Mysore Under Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan, pp. 165–7.
37
Quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 285; C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire, Cambridge, 1988, p. 97.
38
Butler, The Elder Brother, p. 170.
39
Organising the carriage bullocks and sheep for feeding the army was one of James Kirkpatrick’s main concerns at this period. See OIOC, Kirkpatrick papers, Mss Eur F228/11, pp. 14, 15, 28, etc.
40
Wellesley’s remark quoted by Moon, The British Conquest and Dominion of India, p. 286; the subsistence remark quoted by Buddle, The Tiger and the Thistle.
41
Quoted by Buddle, The Tiger and the Thistle, p. 15.
42
David Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer on the Retired List of the Indian Army, London, 1839, p. 430.
43
Quoted by Buddle, The Tiger and the Thistle, p. 34.
44
Alexander Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultan, London, 1800, pp. 97, 139–40; Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer, pp. 434–5.
45
Price, pp. 418–21.
46
Captain G. R. P. Wheatley, ‘The Final Campaign against Tipu’, Journal of the United Service Institution of India, 41 (1912), p. 255.
47
Weller, Wellington in India, p. 73.
48
Michaud, History of Mysore Under Hyder Ali and Tippoo Sultan, p. 169; Forrest, Tiger of Mysore, p. 290.
49
Captain W. H. Wilkin, The Life of Sir David Baird, London, 1912, p. 68.
50
Price, Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer, p. 427.
51
Forrest, Tiger of Mysore, p. 291.
52
Beatson, A View of the Origin and Conduct of the War with Tippoo Sultan, p. civ.