The Making of British India, 1756-1858

At the beginning of the century which is covered by this volume a group of traders are seen desperately arming themselves to defend their very existence against the ruler of one of the provinces of India; and then, to secure themselves for the future, they are seen taking the lead in a plan to replace this ruler by one who will be more favourable to them. At the end of the century, and in the last chapter of this book, the successors of these traders are called upon, by an Act of the Imperial Parliament,' to transfer to the British Crown the sovereignty of the whole Indian continent, a land equal in area and population to the whole of Europe excepting Russia; a land full of cities of old renown, and inhabited by races of an ancient and noble civilisation.

The history of India has extended over scores of centuries; but no one of these centuries has seen anything to match this amazing change; indeed, there is nothing that can be compared with it in the whole history of the world.

And there is another contrast yet more startling between the beginning and the end of this century. At the beginning of the century India was a mere chaos of warring principalities; dynasties rose and fell; the patient peasant endured the ravages and exactions of one plundering master after another; the waste and carnage of war never ceased; and everywhere Might was Right, and the arbitrary will of the strongest prevailed. At the end of the century, after one final convulsion, war had altogether ceased. There were

armies in the wild frontier lands guarding the limits of a vast populous empire; but within these limits peace reigned. And throughout its area, in every town and village, judges and magistrates administered one fixed and unvarying law, without bribes and without favour, to all who appealed to have their rights protected or their wrongs redressed. That is a contrast not only more impressive, but more important, than the first; because it was the change which this contrast represents that had justified the first and made it possible.

The most astonishing and paradoxical thing of all in regard to this Empire is that the traders who made it never at any time planned it or wanted it. They struggled against it. They regarded it as a burden to be avoided, a distraction from their true business of buying and selling. Their chief representatives in India, with few exceptions, shared this view. They went out determined not to make conquests, breathing condemnations on their predecessors who had given way to the temptations of ambition. And then Fate took them in hand; and they added provinces equal to European kingdoms, protesting all the while quite sincerely that they could not help it; and shamefacedly exculpating themselves from the reproaches of their embarrassed masters. Never was Empire less the result of design than the British Empire of India.

The British power, which came into being in this strangely unwilling and unintentional way, has-not of set purpose, but none the less really-rendered three immeasurable services to the peoples of India. In the first place, it has given them a firmly organised political unity, which they never in all their history possessed before. In the second place, it has given them an extraordinary period of unbroken peace. For nearly sixty years no armies have fought on Indian soil, except for the defence of the frontiers. That can be said of no other country in the civilised world except Britain, Canada, Australia, Holland and Scandinavia. The pax Britannica has been a yet more wonderful thing than the pax Romana. And in the third place, this Empire has given to the Indian

peoples for the first time impartial and unvarying justice; under its guardianship the Reign of Law, which is the foundation of healthy political life, has taken the place of the arbitrary will of innumerable despots. Whatever the defects of the British rule in India-and of course it has had many defects, being human—these are three priceless gifts. They alone can make possible what without them could never have existed in India, the rise of a sense of unity and nationality among her many sundered races and religions. Nationhood is a plant of slow growth, which is apt to die if it is forced. But if it is not unnaturally forced, it will come in due time in India indeed, it is already visibly coming. And when it comes it will have been made possible by three things, born of the British rule: political unity, assured peace (bringing easy intercourse), and the Reign of Law.

In this book an attempt is made to trace the growth and government of the British Empire under the East India Company in the actual dispatches and other writings of those who were chiefly concerned, in the treaties which they made with Indian powers, and in the enactments by which the British Parliament intervened in the process. These documents for the most part explain themselves; but as a help to the reader short introductions are prefixed to each set of documents, in order to give the necessary framework and explanations. In the present general introduction all that we are concerned to do is to note certain broad features of the wonderful story.

When the Company's arms had in 1757 replaced Sirajuddaula by Mir Jafar as Nawab of Bengal, it was the hope and expectation both of the Directors at home and of their agents in India that they would now enjoy special trading privileges; but that otherwise things would go on exactly as they had done before. They had no notion that they had acquired an Empire. Only the daring and ambitious spirit of Clive

« Նախորդը Շարունակել »

Books