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Initial Contacts with the British
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The Portugese were actually the first European power to come into contact with India when Vasco de Gama sailed into Calicut in 1498. After that date, Portugese ships would frequently return to Europe laden with spices and commodities that would fetch fabulous prices. Other European powers looked enviously at this stream of exotica coming from the Orient. Portugal managed to hold on to its preeminent position largely in part to the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. This treaty had been created to divide the New Worlds between the Catholic countries of Portugal and Spain. In effect they had carved up these New Worlds with Spain receiving a monopoly of power in most of South America and Portugal in the Indies. Working together, the two Catholic countries were able to maintain an effective blockade of these new markets for the majority of the sixteenth century.
The lure of potential wealth of the East was too much for the rising Protestant powers of England and Holland. The English began to look for a Northern route to the Indies. The Treaty of Tordesillas specifically stated that Portugese and Spanish monopolies were only in effect south of the Cape Verde Islands. An English company was chartered to undertake just such an expedition. in 1553 Sir Hugh Willoughby set off to find the Northern Passage to India. Two years later the crew were found dead on the Siberian coastline. It dawned on the English that there was no northern route to the Indies. Therefore an alternative scheme was hatched. In 1554, a royal charter was granted to the Muscovy company. This company was set up to explore the possibility of trade through Russia to Persia. Although economically expensive to transport goods this way, the company did actually achieve a modicum of success and allowed some Indian products to be transported back to Northern Europe. The company actually survived until the latter stages of the eighteenth century.
Ships would always prove to be a more economically viable way of trading with India. And, as the English could not directly trade with India, its sailors resorted to buccaneering and piracy of the Portugese ships as they headed to Europe with their fabulously valuable cargoes. It was with the era of Drake and Cavendish looting and shooting their way around the world that the first cracks appeared in the Catholic monopoly. In fact, it was Drake's victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588 that really opened the floodgates. The Navies of the Catholic countries were no longer strong enough to ensure an effective blockade of their New Worlds. English and Dutch ships began to pass the Cape of Good Hope in increasing numbers. Both nations quickly established Chartered companies to exploit the commercial possiblities presented to them. The English East India Company was established in 1600. The EIC would lead the vanguard for British political power in India.
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Establishment of Formal Relations
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Initial EIC approaches to the Mughal Emperors were brushed off with disdain. This was partly due to the residual influence of Portugese Jesuit advisers who sought to frustrate Protestant England's attempts at making inroads into this part of the world. However, it was also due to the fact that the English had no products of value to the Mughals. The English at this time did not produce anything that was even remotely of interest to what was effectively an Indian superpower. This would remain the case for many years to come and would force the English to trade precious gold and silver for the spices and commodoties of India.
The breakthrough in negotiations came when the English demonstrated the one aspect that the Mughals did appreciate; raw military power. In 1612, Captain Best entered the busy harbour of Surat in his ship The Red Dragon. Four Portugese galleons and a number of Portugese frigates attempted to repel the English ship. When this one English ship dispersed the entire fleet of Portugese ships, the Indians were impressed. English stock rose and that of the Portugese fell. Although in truth, the more important fact was that by this time the English had surpassed the Portugese in terms of maritime technology and technique. The Portugese would never again seriously rival the power of the English at sea.
Captain Best's victory opened the door for King James' ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, to attend the court of Emperor Jahangir in 1616. Sir Thomas Roe was painfully aware of the mismatch in power between the two respective powers and found negotiations with the Mughals tedious and difficult at the best of times. However, after nearly three years of haggling, he managed to gain permission for the EIC to build a factory at the port of Surat. However, this was on the condition that EIC ships escort Mughal vessels on their annual pilgrim to Mecca.
This first English toe-hold on the Indian sub-continent would prove to be vitally important as relations broke down with the Dutch. In 1623, the Dutch executed 10 English merchants for conspiracy to overthrow their fortress in Amboina in the Indies of the Spice Islands. This soured relations to such an extent that the EIC were forced to abandon their bases throughout the Indies. They were compelled to consolidate their power and fall back to Surat. At the time, this was a devastating blow for the EIC as they watched their Dutch counterparts thrive on their Spice Islands' monopoly. However, with hindsight, it allowed the English to cultivate economic and political relations with an area of the world that would ultimately dwarf the wealth and power provided by the Spice Islands.
The EIC may not have appreciated the significance of these events for the Company's future, but the next century provided the EIC with an opportunity to expand and consolidate their power base in India. Factories were opened up in Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Fairly insignificant ports at the time, these three factories would ultimately turn these trading posts into hugely important urban ports. In the following century, British power would emanate from these small enclaves to engulf most of the sub-continent.
Not everything was to be plain sailing for the EIC. To the horror of the company, Charles I granted another Charter to a rival company led by Sir William Courten. Even worse for the EIC, this rival resorted to piracy of Mughal vessels and left EIC officials to pick up the pieces. The EIC were severely punished after one such incident. This competition led to a dimunition in the value of EIC stock and there was serious discussion of withdrawing from the sub-continent altogether. It was not until the Charles I had literally lost his head and been replaced by Oliver Cromwell that the EIC saw its reckless competitor's Charter being revoked. In fact, Oliver Cromwell ushered in two reforms that would transform and revitalise what had been an ailing EIC. First of all in 1654, a treaty was drawn up with Portugal which would allow English ships to have full access to all Portugese ports in Asia. This effectively concluded any residual power behind the Treaty of Tordesillas. Secondly, Cromwell inaugurated the first permanent joint stock subscription to the EIC. This replenished the EIC coffers and would allow it to continue buying Indian commodoties with gold and silver. Fortunately for the EIC the restoration of the Crown in England did not compromise the EIC in the eyes of the new king and Charles II was content to preside over what would become a golden age of trade for the EIC.
Ideally, the EIC would have liked their commercial relationship with the sub-continent to remain just that; commercial. However, one of England's age-old rivals appeared on the scene and increasingly began to dabble in Indian politics. The French were relative late comers to the Indian sub-continent, and for most of the early part of the eighteenth century, they were more than content to limit their interests to commercial activity. Besides, their island bases at Mauritius and Bourbon gave the French East India Company a real competitive advantage over their English rival. That all changed with the appointment of Joseph Dupleix in Pondicherry in 1741. He would embark on meddling in Indian local affairs to a level unprecendented by any former European power. Dupleix was long familiar with the Indian ways of conducting business. He had already spent twenty years on the sub-continent as a trading merchant. Now, in a position of considerable local power, he embarked on a policy of expanding French power in India at the expense of Britain. The war of Austrian Succession gave Dupleix his excuse to summon the French fleet from Mauritius and to capture Madras from the British. This set off a chain of events that taught even Dupleix a lesson in how powerful he had actually become. The nawab of the Carnatic insisted that Dupleix hand over back Madras to the Carnatic. When Dupleix refused, the Nawab sent 10,000 soldiers to forcibly retake it. Dupleix could only muster 230 French soldiers and 700 Sepoys. However, their superior firepower and discipline allowed them to defeat this huge Indian army. The result of this battle was to decisively shift the balance of power to the Europeans. In addition, Dupleix had become the effective Nawab of the Carnatic.
Had Dupleix received more direct support from France, he would almost certainly have been capable of turning India into a French concern. Fortunately for the British, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle returned Madras back to the British. The French had missed their opportunity to dominate the sub-continent. As it was, the person who learnt the most from Dupleix's machinations was a young EIC writer named Robert Clive.
It did not take Clive long to put the lessons learnt from Dupleix into action. Almost immediately, he took advantage of a dispute between the Nawab of the Carnatic, Chanda Sahib - who had been installed by Dupleix, and Muhammad Ali who claimed that he was the rightful Nawab of the Carnatic. Chanda Sahib formed a vast army and marched to Trichinopoly and laid seige to Muhammad Ali's garrison. Clive, taking advantage of the situation, led a small expedition of 200 Englishmen and 300 sepoys over 100 miles to Chanda Sahib's capital of Arcot. Clive had correctly anticipated the fact that Chanda Sahib would have all but vacated his capital city in order to pursue his vendetta against Muhammad Ali. This left Arcot open for Clive's men to do as they wished. It forced Chanda Sahib to all but lift the siege of Trichonopoly and return to besiege his own capital. In fact, the Marathas also turned against the hapless Chanda Sahib and sent an army to relieve both Clive and Trichonopoly. Clive had made his reputation as a daring general and became the effective Nawab broker of the Carnatic. He duly installed Muhammad Ali as the Nawab of the Carnatic. Additional fallout from this venture was the fact that Dupleix was recalled to France. His political adventures had cost the French company dearly in financial and political terms.
The Seven Years war would provide Clive with another excuse to extend British power in India. The focus of his endeavours shifted from Madras to Fort William (Calcutta). The nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ad-Daula, learned that the British were building fortifications at Fort William in order to defend themselves from possible French attack. He ordered the British to cease building. When they refused, he gathered an army of 50,000 soldiers and descended on the small garrison of 1,000 British soldiers, many of whom escaped to nearby ships. The remainder of the garrison surrendered when realising that the powder for their antiquated guns had become damp and unusable. Siraj's victorious army gave Britain an excuse for moral outrage by what has become known as 'The Black Hole of Calcutta'. This is where a number of prisoners were placed in a room too small to hold them. The resulting deaths led to the creation of Imperial martyrs and gave British soldiers a carte blanche excuse to do whatever it took to avenge their deaths.
Clive and a fleet of warships were despatched from Madras. The warships bombarded the French base at Chandranagar whilst Clive led an attack on the French fortress at Hughli. This removed French influence from the region of Bengal. Clive then turned his attention on Siraj. Clive found a suitable replacement Nawab, Mir Jafar. He also found allies in the form of Hindu bankers who were willing to bribe Siraj's soldiers not to fight. Then on June 23rd 1757, Clive met the 50,000 army of Siraj with only 700 European soldiers and some 2,000 Sepoys. This battle has gone down in history as one of the turning points in Indian history. Although the events of the day were a little more on the squalid side. Mir Jafar defected with many of Siraj's men midway through the battle, most of Siraj's troops had been paid not to risk their life or limb. Those who did fight were overwhelmed by the ferocity of Clive's superior firepower and with the resolve of the men using it. The battle itself may not have been historic, but its results were. Clive installed Mir Jafar as ruler, he awarded himself the lion's share of the financial spoils and granted himself a substantial area of land. Not only had the EIC gained financially, but the Nawab, by granting so much land to gain his position, had denuded his treasury of funds. It was not too long before Mir Jafar stood down to be replaced by another Nawab - willing to grant yet more land for the privilege of becoming ruler.
British ascendency was confirmed in 1764 when the remnants of the Mughal emperors amassed their armies in a last attempt to rid India of the British once and for all. The remains of the Mughals were comprehensively defeated by the much smaller force of Major Hector Munro. This victory, more than Plassey, sealed the fate of the Indian continent once and for all. In fact, there was nothing to stop the British force from then marching directly to Delhi and proclaiming itself as the new Empire for India. Instead, they took the more cautious route of hiding behind whatever legitimacy the Mughal empire might have had. They agreed to pay a paltry 230,000 pounds annually to the Emperor in return for the rights to the revenue of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in perpetuity. Of course, the EIC did not volunteer to take over the civil administration of these regions. For the EIC, this was the best of all world's; Power without Responsibility.
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EIC Administration
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Although power without responsibility was useful for the EIC, it was anything but for the Indians who found themselves under EIC administration. Early direct EIC rule of their provinces was characterised as a time of almost lawlessness. The revenues that EIC officials were collecting were being rapidly repatriated back to Britain - this left the Indian officials with no means to pay for their judicial system. From the British government's point of view, this was leading to an extremely bad press. And even worse than this was the fact that it was the EIC officials who were getting rich off of this system. As individuals were making fortunes for themselves, the EIC itself was in dire straits economically. The company never got to see the vast majority of the revenues collected in India. The financial problems of the EIC came to public prominence in the 1770s, when the EIC first of all defaulted on payments for use of British armed services and then was forced to ask the British government for a one million pound loan to keep the company going. Many people in Britain were incensed that so many EIC officials were coming back to Britain as incredibly wealthy individuals, but that the British government would have to bail out the company itself. The loan was reluctantly forwarded to the company in 1773 but it had strict provisions that directly involved the British government in EIC affairs for the first time - at least on a formal basis. They established a Supreme Court in Calcutta to which Indians also had recourse and which could even make appeals to the Privy Court in London. The Crown was also to appoint members to a Supreme Council which could advise the newly created post of Governor General of Bengal. Efforts were also made to stamp out official profiteering - although these measures were less successful.
The EIC had successfully used their significant presence in Westminster to avoid direct Crown rule in India. However, EIC administration was still more concerned with revenue collection than for the betterment of civil society in the sub-continent. This made perfect sense to the EIC, but sat uneasily with many of the more liberal sentiments coming out of Britain at the time. In fact, little more than a decade later, the British parliament found that it had to scrutinise EIC activities in India to an even greater extent. The result was the creation of a 'Board of Control' in 1784 whose president was a member of the Cabinet and was directly answerable to parliament. This Act still left the day to day running of the provinces to EIC officials on the ground - however it was clear that the British Government was being drawn further and further into the administrative affairs of India. In fact, the first Governor General of Bengal, Warren Hastings, resigned almost immediately when he discovered that the Board of Control had power to force any Governor General to resign.
Warren's successor, Lord Cornwallis, ushered in a period of profound reform in company rule of India. Cornwallis' honesty and integrity saw his administration remove all officials considered to be corrupt or disreputable. He professionalised and increased the salaries of the civil service in an attempt to remove temptation for corruption. He introduced revenue reforms that were designed to simplify revenue collection - but would also create an Indian gentry of sorts. This artificially created class would later become staunch defenders of the British Empire and would be instrumental in preventing the spread of rebellion in the middle of the following century. Cornwallis also reformed the military wing of the EIC by Europeanising its officer corps. This effectively barred Indians from advancement to commissioned status. This particular rule proved to be one of the more pernicious rules and one that may explain much of the snobbery and disdain that was to follow in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Perhaps the most important of Cornwallis' reforms were what became known as the 48 regulations. These basically formally accepted EIC responsibility for civil services and the judicial system. It may have been a peculiarly British legal system, but it was better than none at all - which had been the case for the previous four decades. These reforms would shape not only the remaining half century of EIC control of India, but much of the subsequent Raj as well.
In fact, one of the major aspects of EIC control in India is how it slowly and surely shifted from being a trading company to an administrative arm of the British Government. Trade became less and less important as tax collecting took increasing precedence within the company. Part of this transformation was the removal of the privileged monopoly rights that had been granted to the EIC way back in the seventeenth century. The British government passed acts in both 1813 and 1833 which effectively withdrew these privileges. However, there was an element of compensation built into these Acts and the EIC was effectively subsidised to collect taxes. The distinction between EIC rule and British rule was becoming increasingly hazy as the century wore on. It is hard to say whether this effective 'privatised imperialism' would have continued throughout the century or whether it would have naturally transferred itself to government rule anyway. This question would remain an academic one as the north of India would unexpectedly test the EIC to destruction and force the British Government to become directly involved in the subcontinent. These convulsions were what has become known as 'The Indian Mutiny.'
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Mutiny
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The administration of Governor General Lord Dalhousie was hailed as the apogee of Company rule. His 1848 - 1856 tenure would prove to be an uncommonly interventionist and expansionist period of EIC rule. Indeed, these would be halcyon days for the EIC before being plunged into a desperate battle for survival as a minor military mutiny spread into a full scale rebellion.
In fact, it was the increasing tendency of the EIC to intervene and expand in internal Indian affairs and princedoms that led to the rebellion in the first place. Lord Dalhousie was only following along with one of the major mid-nineteenth century political philosophies; that of utilitarianism. Lord Bentinck had really got the ball rolling as he tried to rein in some of the more unpalatable of Indian traditions; ritual murder (Thuggee), female infanticide, widow burning (suttee) and slavery. At the time, it seemed as if many Indians supported these aims. With hindsight, it would appear that they deeply resented tampering with traditions that went back thousands of years, however unpalatable those traditions might have been. They perceived British tampering in their social order as proof that the British wished to forcibly convert Hindus and Muslims alike to Christianity. British utilitarian reforming zeal combined with increasing Christian missionary activity helped to form this unlikely alliance of Hindu and Muslim sepoys.
Lord Dalhousie's expansionist policies also helped to foster resentment. In fact, the majority of the mutiny took place in areas of India that the EIC had barely ruled for little more than a decade. Lord Dalhousie had instituted a reform entitled 'Doctrine of Lapse'. Basically, this doctrine held that if any ruler died without a suitable heir, control of the princedom would pass to company rule. Now, not only did this doctrine attack a long held Indian tradition of adopting an heir, it also managed to offend virtually every ruling family on the sub-continent. They would all now feel vulnerable to EIC control. And rightfully so as minor and major principalities began to be picked up by the company; Jhansi, Satara, Nagpur and Oudh were all absorbed into EIC India. Again, Hindu and Muslim leaders were equally discriminated against by this policy. In fact, Dalhousie felt so confident of EIC power on the sub-continent that he even refused to accept an heir for the Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah unless the imperial title be renounced. Dabbling in Indian internal affairs had taken on dangerous proportions.
The EIC had supplied the powder for an insurrection and they also happily provided the match. The introduction of a new cartridge for the army entailed the biting off of their ends. Unfortunately, there were rumours (quite correctly at first) that these cartridges had been greased with animal fat. There was no way of telling if this fat was from a cow (offending the Hindus) or from a pig (offending the Muslims). Again, the EIC had managed to offend both sections of society. As regiment after regiment refused to use the new cartridges, discipline began to break down. Three cavalry regiments at Meerut broke out into full scale mutiny. Soon, at cantonments throughout the north of India, regiment after regiment followed suit. Any European was considered fair game as many sepoys headed towards Delhi to 'restore' Bahadur Shah to the throne of Mughal India.
The events of the mutiny are detailed elsewhere on this site. Suffice it to say that the initial atrocities were more than amply matched by the indignant British soldiers rushed to India from all corners of the Empire. The British were actually fortunate that the mutiny did not engender a deeper and more widespread rising. Many, indeed most, Indians either stood on the sidelines or actively supported the British. Most of the rebels were drawn from the company army. Rebel support was also found amongst the landowners in the recently annexed province of Oudh and from dispossessed or threatened princes. However, it never ignited support from the masses. Although, there were plenty of hangers on who were keen to take advantage of the break down in civil administration. Anarchy in large swathes of northern India was one of the main results of the mutiny.
A key plank of support for the British was from the Zamindars and the gentry artificially created by Cornwallis some half century before. A number of Indians realised that their positions and fortunes were dependent upon the continued rule of the British. The British were therefore able to contain the spread of much of the rebellion. The British were also helped by the lack of a coordinated command structure amongst the rebels. Once they had mutinied, most rebels were content to loot a little, head towards Delhi, wait a little and then go home. When attacked, the rebels defended stoutly. However, they were reluctant to attack British forces of any consequence.
Back in Britain, reaction to the slaughter of British men, women and children was hysterical. The British government was unable to resist the pressure for major political reform once order had been restored. In November 1858, the Act for the Better Government of India was passed. It replaced the EIC with direct rule from Britain. John Company had been replaced by the Raj.
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Raj Administration
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