1 / 26

India After Clive…

India After Clive…. Where did we leave the situation?. Clive has won several battles and was in the position to decide which Mogul Nawab should in theory be head of state.

aderyn
Télécharger la présentation

India After Clive…

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. IndiaAfter Clive…

  2. Where did we leave the situation? • Clive has won several battles and was in the position to decide which Mogul Nawab should in theory be head of state. • While the employees of EIC were busy lining their own pockets, the company itself were getting into great difficulties, almost ran out of cash and so had to go to the government to bail it out. • The government agreed but this meant that the government would be much more deeply involved about how things were run.

  3. In India • … day to day running remained under the authority of the East India Company • Back home in Britain, this came to be seen as a new British empire in India and so the Company had to submit to increasingly close supervision by the British state and to periodical inquiries by parliament. • In India, the governors of the Company's commercial settlements became governors of provinces and, although the East India Company continued to trade, many of its servants became administrators in the new British regimes. • Huge armies were created, largely composed of Indian sepoys but with some regular British regiments. These armies were used to defend the Company's territories, to coerce neighbouring Indian states and to crush any potential internal resistance.

  4. In India • The new Company governments were based in those of the Indian states, and in that, they had an effective organisation. • Much of the work of administration was initially still done by Indians. Collection of taxes was the main function of government. • About one third of the produce of the land was extracted from the cultivators and passed up to the state through a range of intermediaries, who were entitled to keep a proportion for themselves. • In addition to enforcing a system to provide the Company with enough to maintain its armies and finance its trade, British officials tried to balance the situation between the rights of the cultivating peasants and those of the intermediaries, who resembled landlords.

  5. In India • British judges also supervised the courts, which applied Hindu or Islamic rather than British law. • There was little belief in the need for change. In fact men like Warren Hastings, who ruled British Bengal from 1772 to 1785, believed that Indian institutions were worked well in the India. • He also believed that if the ancient rule of law was restored, provinces like Bengal would naturally recover their past prosperity.

  6. In India • However towards 1800, opinions among the British were changing. • India seemed to be suffering not merely from an unfortunate recent history but from deeply ingrained backwardness. • It needed to be 'improved' by firm, benevolent foreign rule. • The legal system was not working efficiently • Superstition, in the guise of their religious beliefs needed challengingly by missionaries propagating the rationality embodied in Christianity • All obstacles to free trade between Britain and India should be removed, thus opening India's economy to the stimulus of an expanding trade with Europe. • Education should be remodelled.

  7. Examples of practices that the British hated • An example of this from the early nineteenth century was the discovery and condemnation of female infanticide, which was believed to be very widespread in parts of northern and western India. • The practice of suttee, the burning of widows on their husbands funeral pyres, which the British actually formally outlawed in 1829, caused outrage. It was seen as a very good reason to bring in the missionaries to persuade the Indians to reform their ways.

  8. Territorial expansion • In the 1750s It had never been the wish of EIC not the British government to expand its territories further. • But with collapse of the Mogul Empire, the EIC became embroiled in the internal politics almost without meaning to. • It sought to keep potential enemies at a distance by forming alliances with neighbouring states. These alliances led to increasing intervention in the affairs of such states and to wars fought on their behalf. • In Warren Hastings's period the British were drawn into expensive and indecisive wars on several fronts, which had a dire effect on the Company's finances and were strongly condemned at home.

  9. In theory the idea was … • Rather than waste precious resources in yet more wars of conquest, the EIC drew up treaties by which the princes enjoyed a theoretical autonomy, but were in fact dominated by Britain, especially where their external relations were concerned. • These arrangements suited both parties. The princes kept their wealth, their privileges, their palaces and harems and hunting elephants; they continued to rule their people – providing they treated them ‘nicely’ (according to British standards) – and the British didn’t have to takeover yet more territory which would have meant more complex administration. • They could also rely on the co-operation and support of the princes when it mattered and, just to make sure, they appointed a British Resident to keep an eye on things as well as act as a channel of communication!

  10. The princely states varied enormously in size and importance. Some were a few square miles of territory but others – Hyderabad for example – was bigger than Spain. The arrangement had its negative side of course, especially for the millions of the Indian princes’ subjects. They were denied the impartial administration and occasionally beneficial impact of the economic development of British India. Too often the princes swaggered like medieval monarchs, lords of all they surveyed. Some did try to emulate the British by sending their sons to Oxford and Cambridge and playing cricket! What these princely kingdoms like?

  11. However, between 1815 and 1857 the EIC continued to flex its muscles by getting involved in local conflicts’. Apart from the disastrous invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the EIC’s armies were doing well. It was the Company's governor general, Richard Wellesley (brother of the Duke of Wellington) was willing to stop pretending that the battles were being forced on EIC by circumstances and to use war as an instrument for imposing British *hegemony on all the major states in the subcontinent. A series of intermittent wars was beginning which would take British authority over the next fifty years up to the mountains of Afghanistan in the west and into Burma in the east. *the dominance or leadership of one social group or nation over others – which group over which? So what happened? Prince Ranjitsinhji (1872 – 1933) played so well that a British commentator said: Here was a black man playing cricket not as a white man but as an artist of another and superior strain.

  12. 2 Poems The Field of Ferozshah (First Sikh War, 1845) Our wounded lay upon the ground, But little help was nigh, No lint or bandage for the wound! They laid them down to die. Their wounds unstaunch’d, with cold and thirst Our heroes suffered then the worst Upon that fatal plain. Many a man whose wounds were slight Thro’ the fell horrors of that night Will never fight again. At length our gallant cavalry Scarce fifteen hundred men, The flower of Britain's chivalry Prepare to charge again. The gallant chieftain Colonel White, These heroes bravely led; They sought the hottest of the fight, Their path was strewn with dead. ‘Twas plainly marked for all to see Where charged our British cavalry. By a young soldier (Sergeant Bingham) who Fought in that glorious campaign (London 1848) The Young British Soldier Rudyard Kipling When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An’ go to your death like a soldier, Go, go, go like a soldier…. So – oldier of the Queen! What are they telling you? Which do you like best? Which do you think tells the truth?

  13. Afghanistan • The British had very mixed success fighting the Afghans – this is what the Kipling poem is commenting on. • Three times we tried between 1839 and 1921 and lost each time. • We have tried twice since then. • When was the last time? What happened?

  14. So how was it going in general? • The EIC armies, increasingly dependent upon tens of thousands of Indian sepys, had little difficulty in subduing local resistance. The superiority of Western military technology, organization and supply were sufficient to do the job. • But having achieved these conquests how were these newly acquired subjects to be treated – Baluchis, Sikhs, Punjabis and the rest? • On the positive side there was: • The collaboration of the princes • The swarms of eager ‘native’ recruits into the army • The military prowess of the north-west frontier tribes that found their way into the army • The stoic and generally passive qualities of village India. • On the negative side there were: • The rising numbers of newly educated, ‘Westernized’ Indians who might create trouble if they found British rule distasteful.

  15. As the C19 unfolded however, social contacts between British and Indians lessened. Indian princes and dignitaries were still quite acceptable to the British as both hosts and guests. Early in the century, the Mughal court and the leading lights of British society in Old Delhi mixed at afternoon receptions. • An Englishwoman describes the scene: • A perfect bevy of princes, suave, watchful, ready at the slightest encouragement to crowd round the Resident, or the Commissioner, or the Brigadier, with noiseless white-stockinged feet. Equally ready to relapse into indifference when unnoticed……

  16. But … • Indian nizams, rajas and maharajahs were not, however, plentiful; and also, as more British women came out to join their men folk, the British communities in India became more self-sufficient, more sealed off from non-European society. • In the C17 and C18 British men had often married or lived with Indian women, producing large numbers of children of mixed blood. The ‘Anglo-Indians,’ so-called, occupied an awkward place in Indian society. They felt superior to mere ‘natives’ on account of their European blood but, to the ‘pukkah’ British families they were not accepted as equals.

  17. British and Indian people • As their numbers grew and their self-confidence blossomed, British women in India became notorious for their gossip: • What did they find to say about one another? The veriest trifles in the world….What Mr. This said to Miss That,….And then all the interminable gossip about marriages and no-marriages, and will-be marriages and ought-to-be marriages…and the last burrakhana (big dinner) • Perhaps the main reason why so much gossiping took place was that, with the ready availability of cheap servants, British women – including the wives of common soldiers – had plenty of time on their hands. • What happened in the families of the officer class, or among the administrators or merchants? For these better-off families, servants were even more affordable and plentiful - not that they were necessarily better treated. They were ‘often visited with blows and such abuse as no respectable man will bear.’

  18. Even considerate behaviour by an employer could be misunderstood by an employee: • ‘One day I said to my Ayah’ (this from a very elegant lady in white muslin) ‘Ayah bring me a glass of toast-and-water if you please.’ • She crept to the door and then came back looking extremely perplexed, and whined out,' What Mistress tell? I don’t know.’ • ‘I told you to bring me some toast-and-water.’ • ‘Toast-and-water I know very well, but Mistress tell if you please; I don’t know if you please.’

  19. British Families in India • While the growing legions of British women were busy with servant problems and bringing up small children in a difficult climate, their men folk got on with the task of governing the Company’s possessions. As commerce became a less important part of the EIC’s activities, and the ruling and taxation of Indian territory more significant, the administration and the army provided the twin pillars upon which British interests rested. • It was the administration that presented the fairer, more enlightened face of British rule. Recruits into the Civil Service had first to pass a fairly stiff entrance examination • Each candidate shall be examined in the four gospels of the Greek Testament….and be able to render into English some portion of one of the following Greek authors: Homer, Herodotus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Sophocles and Euripides…and Latin authors: Livy, Terence, Tacitus Virgil…..Each candidate shall also be examined in modern history and geography, and in the elements of mathematical science …..and in moral philosophy…..

  20. Civil servants • If he passed, the new recruit sailed at his own expense round the Cape of Good Hope to one of three administrative ‘Presidencies’ – Bengal, Madras or Bombay. • The cost of a cabin could be £100, without any furniture, (a bit prohibitive) even though administrators were generally well paid on arrival. • The voyage out was tedious and lasted between three and four months, but at least it got the new man used to heat and boredom!

  21. The Army • Recruits to the EIC’s army passed through the military college at Addiscombe, before sailing for India. By the middle of the C19 they numbered some 200,000 men the vast majority of whom were sepoys (Indian foot soldiers.) In normal times there might be 5,000 British personnel. • Despite the heat and the dust, and the distance from home, routine military duties for the officers were hardly exhausting: • Well, a black rascal makes an oration by my bed every morning about half an hour before daylight. Wake, and see him salaaming with a cp of hot coffee in his hand. I sit on a chair …while he introduces me gradually into an ambush of pantaloons and wellingtons – if there is a parade. I am shut up in a red coat, and a glazed lid set upon my head, and thus, carefully packed, exhibit my reluctance to do what I am going to do – to wit, my duty – by riding a couple of hundred yards to the parade.

  22. The Army • For the other ranks, the barracks in India were as cheerless, noisy and rough as any back in Britain: • The barracks were exceptionally noisy. The passage was sounding and reverberating, and each occupant of a quarter had much of the benefit of his neighbour’s flute. fiddle or French horn ……shoe brushings, occasional yells of servants undergoing the discipline of fists or cane, jolly ensigns and cadets clattering up and down, cracking horsewhips…whistling…On the ground might be seen a goodly display of trays, with egg shells, fish bones, rice, muffin and other wrecks of breakfast……

  23. Even the senior men of the military saw how bad things were • Lord Roberts of Kandahar – one of the greatest of the Victorian military men – wrote in 1898: • The men were crowded into small badly-ventilated buildings, and the sanitary arrangements were as deplorable as the state of the water supply. The only efficient scavengers were the huge birds of prey called adjutants, and so great was the dependence placed upon the exertions of these unclean creatures that the young cadets were warned that any injury done to them would be treated as gross misconduct.

  24. So here we have set the scene • The British were becoming increasingly convinced that these poor backward Indians need to be told what to, since they did understand the proper and true ways to behave. • Gone was the mutual respect that the 17th and 18th century Brits held the Mughal empire in. • They were ill-educated savages who needed to learn how to do things the way Europeans did. • Gone was the intermarriage and easy friendship between British and Indian peoples. In came social segregation, and with mutual mistrust and misunderstanding.

  25. So here we have set the scene • On the British side, the civil servants ran the administration, whilst the soldiers kept order. • The administrators had a fairly good time of it, now that their wives could join them and they could live in the sort of luxury undreamed of at home. They were also seen as largely benevolent. • The senior soldiers equally lived well. But this was hardly true for the lower ranks, where things were far less pleasant.

  26. Homework • What is the Indian Mutiny? • When did it happen? • Why? • Any good pictures you come across, please pop them in • Although beyond that, keep it brief – but at least you will bring to the lesson some ideas about where we are headed!

More Related