CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY THE theme of this book is the growth and government of the British dominion in India under the direction of the East India Company, which became a territorial power, in an almost accidental way, in the middle of the eighteenth century. No attempt will therefore be made to illustrate the history of the East India Company during its purely commercial period, which occupied the century and a half from 1600. The three passages contained in the present chapter are meant only to afford some illustration of the conditions precedent to the main story, without some understanding of which that story must remain unintelligible. The first excerpt is from the travels of Dr. Fryer, who went out to India as a surgeon in the service of the Company, and describes the organisation and working of a typical factory of the Company as it was in 1696. The most important point to be noted is the extremely small salaries paid to the servants of the Company. It is obvious that no one would spend the best years of his life so far from home for a salary of £10 or £20 per annum, under a bond for good behaviour of £500 or £1000. These salaries were little more than retaining fees, and from the first the Company's servants looked to make their income from private trade. The terms of their indentures, printed in a later chapter (No. 30), show that this system was fully recognised by the Company itself. It is best to think of the Company's affairs as being administered, not by salaried agents, but by groups of individual traders, who in return for a small honorarium with board and lodging, and favourable conditions for their own business, undertook to see that the Company's ships were supplied with suitable goods. This system worked well enough while the Company was purely a trading body, under the effective control of the native governments. But it was utterly unsuitable for the management of territorial possessions, and the evils of the first period of the Company's rule in Bengal (see Chapters II. and III.) are mainly to be attributed to the tardiness with which the Company recognised this fact. The second excerpt describes the defects of the native Indian government as seen by an Englishman who had an intimate knowledge of the country. Written in 1753, Orme's analysis of Indian government describes the condition of things existing on the eve of the establishment of the British dominion in Bengal. He treats India as a single vast Empire ruled by the Great Mogul at Delhi, the descendant of the house of Timur, which, since the time of the great Akbar in the sixteenth century, had exercised undisputed sway over northern India, and since the time of Aurangzib (1659–1707) had held a more or less nominal supremacy over the southern part of the country, the Deccan. But, when Orme wrote, the mighty Mogul Empire had already fallen into ruin. Its Nawabs, or deputies, had set up as independent princes. Adventurers (like Hyder Ali in Mysore a little later) were carving out principalities from the chaos. The fighting chiefs of the Mahratta race, who had been able, under Sivaji, to hold their own among the fortresses of the western Ghats against even the great Aurangzib, had, during the half-century since Aurangzib's death, established their power over the greater part of western and central India; while their clouds of raiding horsemen were feared in every part of India, from Tanjore to Bengal and Delhi, and collected chauth or blackmail from nearly every ruling prince. The Mahrattas were Hindus in religion; and it seemed as if the supremacy of the Mahomedan conquerors, to which the mass of the Hindus had submitted since the eleventh century, and of which the Mogul Empire was the last and greatest expression, was about to come to an end, and to be replaced by a Hindu-Mahratta supremacy. Perhaps only the incapacity of the Mahrattas to develop an efficient system of government prevented this consummation. But in the meanwhile the unceasing raids of the Mahratta war-bands intensified the chaos. The existence of this chaos forced the European traders, English, French, and Dutch, to become military powers in self-defence. The genius of the Frenchman, Dupleix, had seen that the small bodies of European-trained native troops which the trading companies maintained could be effectively employed in the constant strife of Indian princes and adventurers; and that by these means a political ascendancy and, as a consequence, commercial monopoly might without much difficulty be secured. The dazzling success which Dupleix achieved between 1748 and 1751 in carrying out this programme, had alarmed the English, and had forced them, in self-defence, to adopt the same methods; with the result that they had succeeded in placing a prince under their protection on the throne of the Carnatic, while a French force under Bussy dominated Hyderabad, the capital of southern India. Thus the European traders had become further elements in the confusion-new claimants for a share in the inheritance of the tottering Mogul Empire. It was thus an Empire in dissolution and confusion which Orme described. What impressed him most in all this chaos was the absence of any impartial justice, and of any efficient means of protecting the weak against the strong. In Orme's view, the Reign of Law, which is the very basis of Western civilisation, and the condition precedent to all healthy political life, simply did not exist in the India that he knew. And this was to be the one supreme gift of the British power to the peoples of India-the greatest justification of the establishment of that power. The third excerpt, from a popular English magazine of 1757, has little historical value, except as an illustration of the way in which India appeared to the home-keeping Englishman. It is the land of fabulously rich potentates, sitting on thrones of jewelled gold, riding forth to hunt with trains of 10,000 followers, on elephants caparisoned in velvet and brocade. The India of the patient, laborious and frugal ryot has not yet begun to reach his imagination, and it is not surprising that when the news of Plassey reached him, his chief expectation was that an inexhaustible stream of wealth must now pour into Britain. The really surprising thing is, not that a people 7000 miles away, and represented in India by men whose primary business had always been the accumulation of private profits, should have permitted abuses at first, when this glittering Empire fell by chance into their hands, and should have made initial mistakes in dealing with the problem: the surprising and wonderful thing is that these abuses should have lasted so short a time. Within twenty years of the battle of Plassey Bengal had received from Warren Hastings the first outlines of a system of justice, logical, efficient, and impartial to a degree never known before. Within sixty years almost the whole of India had accepted the Company as paramount power; corruption and the tyrannous abuse of authority had been banished from among its servants, and vast and populous regions enjoyed an immunity from war and a security of justice such as India had not seen for centuries, if ever. That is the remarkable achievement which we are to trace in the following pages in the words of the men who brought it about. 1. A FACTORY OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY IN THE From Fryer's "Travels," published 1696 The house the English live in at Surat, is partly the King's1 gift, partly hired; built of stone and excellent timber, with good carving, without representations; very strong, for that each floor is half a yard thick at least, of the best plastered cement, which is very weighty. It is contrived after the Moors' 2 buildings, with upper and lower galleries, terras 1 I.e. the Mogul's. 2 Moor was commonly used for Mahomedan by the Europeans in India down to the time of Warren Hastings. walks, a neat oratory, a convenient open place for meals. The President has spacious lodgings, noble rooms for counsel and entertainment, pleasant tanks, yards, and an hummum to wash in; but no gardens in the city, or very few, though without they have many, like wildernesses, overspread with trees. The English had a neat one, but Sivaji's1 coming destroyed it; it is known, as the other factories are, by their several flags flying. Here they live (in shipping time) in a continual hurly-burly, the Banyans 2 presenting themselves from the hour of ten till noon; and then afternoon at four till night, as if it were an exchange in every row; below stairs, the Packers and Warehouse-keepers, together with merchants bringing and receiving musters, make a meer Billingsgate; for if you make not a noise, they hardly think you intent on what you are doing. Among the English, the business is distributed into four offices; the Accomptant, who is next in dignity to the President, the general accompts of all India, as well as this place, passing through his hands; he is quasi treasurer, signing all things, though the broker keeps the cash. Next him is the Warehouse-keeper, who registers all Europe goods vended, and receives all Eastern commodities bought; under him is the Purser-marine who gives account of all goods exported and imported, pays seamen their wages, provides waggons and porters, looks after tackling for ships, and ships' stores. Last of all is the Secretary, who models all consultations, writes all letters, carries them to the President and Council to be perused and signed; keeps the Company's seal, which is affixed to all passes and commissions; records all transactions and sends copies of them to the Company; though none of these, without the President's approbation, can act or do anything. The affairs of India are solely under his regulation; from him issue out all orders, by him all preferment is disposed; by which means the Council are biassed by his arbitrament. The whole mass of the Company's servants may be comprehended in these classes, viz., Merchants, Factors, and Writers; some blewcoat boys also have been entertained under notion of apprentices for seven years, which being expired, if they can get security, they are capable of employ 1 Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta power. 2 Native agents (see No. 27 below). 3 I.e. the affairs of the Company throughout India. |