CHAPTER VI

THE COMPANY BECOMES PARAMOUNT POWER IN INDIA

Wellesley 1798-1806

THE Governor-Generalship of the Marquess Wellesley represents a very important stage in the development of the British power: a stage which has been summarised in the phrase that under his direction the British Empire in India was transformed into the British Empire of India. The period of Clive had seen the Company of traders become king-makers in two regions, Bengal and the Carnatic, but as yet without any desire to assume the responsibilities of territorial sovereignty. After an interval of very ineffective dual government, direct responsibility for the government of Bengal had been assumed under Warren Hastings; and the immensely difficult task of organising a just and efficient system had been begun by Hastings himself, and by the British Parliament in the Act of 1773. The Act of 1784 and the reforms of Cornwallis had carried this development further; and the British territories had come to be, beyond all comparison, the most justly and firmly governed state in India, capable of dealing on more than equal terms with any Indian power or combination of powers. One great state, Oudh, had been brought into a condition of vassalage; another, that of the Nizam, was ready to enter into such a condition as a means of protection against its neighbours, as soon as the Company was willing; and the Carnatic had been a vassal state since 1753. But the direct

territorial authority of the Company was still almost limited to Bengal. There had been no important acquisition of territory, except Benares in 1775 and the districts taken from Mysore by Cornwallis. The Company was anxious that there should be no further acquisitions and no further assumption of responsibility for the protection of vassal states. Their representatives were instructed to avoid intervention in Indian politics. The Act of 1784 itself had laid it down (§ 34) that "to pursue schemes of conquest and extension of dominion in India are (sic) measures repugnant to the wish, honour, and policy of this nation."

But circumstances made this policy of restraint impracticable. The British power in India, in the midst of States which were in a perpetual unrest, must fight in self-defence if not in aggression, and found that it was faced by the alternative of expansion or destruction. Lord Cornwallis, sent out to give effect to the policy of quiescence, and sincerely believing in it, had nevertheless found himself forced into a war with Tipu Sahib, and into the annexation of territories as a safeguard against future attack. He made a permanent defensive alliance with the Nizam and the Mahrattas, and hoped by this means to establish peace. But in the time of his successor, Sir John Shore, one of the Allies, the Nizam, was attacked by the other, the Mahrattas. Shore, honestly anxious to carry out the policy of the Directors, decided that the Company was not required to intervene. The result was a collapse of British prestige, and the creation of a very dangerous situation. The Nizam was completely defeated and reduced to vassalage by the Mahrattas. Indignant at what he considered the Company's betrayal, he welcomed French officers to organise an army for him. Tipu, thirsting for revenge, was already in open negotiations with the French. The Mahrattas, who saw the supremacy over all India within their reach, and regarded the Company as their chief obstacle, also obtained the aid of French officers, since they realised that European military methods were essential for success. The French republic had entered upon its career of conquest, and was bent

upon recovering the position in India which the Bourbon monarchy had lost; and Bonaparte was in Egypt. Thus non-intervention and abstention from "schemes of conquest" had brought about a situation of extreme danger.

This was the situation with which the Marquess Wellesley was faced when he landed in India in 1798. All his actions can be treated as defensive measures against this danger. But to do so would not be quite honest. Wellesley, in fact, was convinced that the only permanent security lay in boldness, and that if the Company was to remain in India it must become the paramount power. He achieved this grandiose design almost completely in a very few years. Within four years of his landing, Tipu had been defeated and killed, half of his territory was under British administration, and the remainder, under an old dynasty restored, was brought under the effective protectorate of the Company; the Nizam had willingly accepted a treaty which made him definitely a British vassal; the whole of the Carnatic had been brought under direct British rule, and the Company was the paramount power throughout Southern India. In the Ganges valley also a new treaty, imposed upon Oudh, brought half of the territory of that state under direct British rule, and reduced the remainder to a more complete dependence than ever. Southeast of the Sutlej and the Indus there remained only the great Mahratta confederacy. Wellesley very nearly succeeded in reducing it to a similar subjection, and did succeed in breaking up its unity and imposing an English protectorate upon some of its principal members.

The Mahrattas are a clearly-marked race, with a language of their own; as Arthur Wellesley acutely observed, theirs was the only Indian power which was strengthened by a national sentiment. In religion they were Hindus, holding the same faith as the vast majority of the population of India, and this fact in part accounts for the rapidity with which their power grew; before their rise all the greater powers of India were Mahomedan. The race spread over a wide area in western and central India, but the heart of it was the rough

country of the Western Ghats, behind Bombay.

Here, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the founder of Mahratta greatness, Sivaji, held his own against the last great Mogul emperor, Aurangzib. When the Mogul empire collapsed, after the death of Aurangzib in 1707 and the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah, the Mahrattas made a bold bid to be its inheritors. Their raiding hosts of light horsemen spread over all India. They brought under their direct rule the territory northwards almost as far as Delhi, and eastwards to the Bay of Bengal ; while all the rulers of the Ganges valley and southern India were forced to pay them chauth, a sort of tribute or blackmail. Their severe defeat by the Afghans at Panipat in 1761 (just when the English were establishing themselves in Bengal) perhaps alone prevented them from achieving the dominion of all India. But they quickly recovered, and in 1771 (as we have seen) got control of Delhi and the person and influence of the Mogul, who may be described as the symbol of Indian supremacy. The fall of the power of Mysore removed one obstacle to their supremacy, and they had eagerly accepted Cornwallis's invitation to help in bringing it about. The only serious obstacle remaining was the English Company, which seemed to have shown, by its failure to protect the Nizam in 1795, that it could safely be neglected. With French aid the Mahrattas might hope to deal on equal terms with the British power; and the real question for India in those years was, whether the supreme power was to be British or Mahratta. There was no third alternative.

But the great weakness of the Mahrattas was, that they had never shown any capacity to develop an efficient and just system of government. Their rule was purely arbitrary, like that which it replaced; they did not try to create an impartial and unvarying administration of justice, such as forms the essential foundation of healthy political life. Their rule brought to their subjects only a change of tribute-receiving masters; and the provinces which paid chauth to them got nothing in return. On the other hand their British rivals, after many initial abuses, had established the reign of law,

a new thing in India; had given peace and justice to the provinces which they ruled; and were endeavouring to act on the principle that the interests of the ruled, not the arbitrary will of the master, must be the supreme consideration of a government. For these reasons the victory of the Company was the best thing for India, since it would bring law and order, while the victory of the Mahrattas, as things then were, could only have brought a prolongation of war and anarchy. Their victory would have been immediately followed by a struggle for supremacy among the chief princes of their confederacy.

For as the Mahrattas had developed no efficient system of government, their central authority had never been secure of the obedience of its greater subjects, and the more the Empire grew, the greater became the independence of the captains of the great war-bands, by whom new conquests were mainly won. The titular head of the confederacy, the Raja of Sattara, descendant of Sivaji, was a state prisoner, and all his power was exercised by his hereditary prime minister, the Peshwa, ruling from Poona. The Peshwa was fairly well obeyed by the feudatories of the southern Mahratta country, known as the Southern Jaghirdars; but four great hereditary chieftains, who held sway in the non-Mahratta regions of the Empire, obeyed him only when it suited them. These were the Gaekwar of Baroda, in the west (the weakest of the four); the families of Sindhia and Holkar in the north; and the family of Bhonsla, related to Sivaji, who ruled from Nagpur the huge area now known as the Central Provinces, and were called Rajas of Nagpur or Berar. It is needless to relate the endless and confused rivalries of these princes. Warren Hastings had known how to turn them to advantage, and the skill with which Wellesley used them is very clearly set forth in the documents which follow.

Wellesley's general idea was to treat the Peshwa and each of the great Mahratta chieftains as separate and independent powers, that is to say, to break up the confederacy. He aimed at drawing clear lines of demarcation between their