THE ESTABLISHMENT OF BRITISH RULE 1757–1813
Amar Farooqui
Tulika Books; 96 pages; Rs 200
Political history had once occupied high status in the teaching and study of historiography in universities and schools not only in Europe and America but also in India. The focus of studies in political history was all-inclusive; it did not confine itself to narrations of forms of governance but also comprehensively devoted attention to society, economy, culture, architecture, art and so on. Later, the boundaries of this discipline were extended to the study and teaching of colonial conquests and expansion and peoples’ struggles against colonial exploitation.
In reply to such non-empirical claims that political history confines itself to the narrative of “rulers from above” the Aligarh Historians Society has been publishing a series called “A Peoples History of India”, which has nothing to do with subaltern history or colonial apologists. Amar Farooqui’s is the 23rd book in this series.
Three chapters with brief notes narrate the story of colonial expansion and subjugation of a people described by the new foreign conquerors as “savages and brutes”. They are titled: (i) The Road to Colonial Conquest; (ii) British Territorial Expansion to 1813; and (iii) Colonial Administration 1765-1813. They succinctly sum up the process by which the establishment of a trading house, the British East India Company, culminated in the conquest of a country. The phenomenon of traders becoming rulers deserves serious attention because they fought real military battles to emerge as a major territorial power in India.
A few facts in this volume deserve to be highlighted for a better understanding of the real nature of expansion that led to the emergence of the British as rulers of India. First, it is a fact that the Battle of Plassey of 1757 can be chronologically mentioned as the beginning of British Rule in Bengal (which included Bihar and Orissa in those days). But the other process that led to Britain’s dominance of the sub-continent was taking place in the Deccan where the British were fighting French forces. It was only after defeating their European enemy, especially in the second Carnatic War (1751-54), that the British were able to establish control over Deccan with the Madras Presidency in 1758.
Second, if one part of the story is that the Indian Nawabs were not equal to the artillery power of British soldiers, the other fact is that Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan proved more than a match for the British in the battlefields by innovating and modernising their weaponry, and this shift earned them the title of military geniuses.
Third, the East India Trading Company and its British owners sitting in London alongside employees of the company and officials appointed by the British in India (including and up to the Governor-Generals), indulged in the collective loot of India. The so-called land revenue system and the other taxes imposed by the rulers were treated as private profit by many generations of exploiting plunderers such as Robert Clive and Warren Hastings. This was the basis of Dadabhai Naoroji’s famous “drain of wealth theory” that, he pointed out, led to the “development of England and the underdevelopment and backwardness of India”.
The British employed every trick in the trade to establish their control over India, not least of which was the notorious Permanent Settlement Act of Lord Cornwallis (1786-1795), which compelled zamindars to pay a fixed revenue, irrespective of the harvest. This led to serial famines and widespread peasant destitution during British rule, which is why one of the first acts of post-independence India was to abolish the zamindari system and redistribute land among the peasantry. The British also established a civil service to govern its dominions, an inheritance that has become a liability for independent India because it has simply replicated the structures of colonial control in a democratic polity.
One of the most important messages from this slim volume is that ruling a country, whether as colonialists or as elected governments, demands control of the levels of knowledge and ideological institutions, the better to inculcate the values of compliance. This task of gathering of knowledge about the land and its people – essentially producing knowledge on India for the rulers – created a class of western scholars known as “orientials”.
Which brings me to the real crux of the issue. This volume, while transmitting the larger message about the disastrous consequences of colonial rule in India, also compels historians to re-think intellectual fashions in historiography. The new imported wisdom does not enlighten the newly liberated about the real causes of underdevelopment. History has always been contested, with the politics of history being moulded to suit the rulers of the day, whether it was the British colonisers over a century ago or the Sangh Parivar today. The latter appears to be dead set against any serious analysis of colonial rule, choosing instead to focus on the Muslim rulers of India as the real villains of the piece. Hence the relevance of this volume.
Amar Farooqui
Tulika Books; 96 pages; Rs 200
Political history had once occupied high status in the teaching and study of historiography in universities and schools not only in Europe and America but also in India. The focus of studies in political history was all-inclusive; it did not confine itself to narrations of forms of governance but also comprehensively devoted attention to society, economy, culture, architecture, art and so on. Later, the boundaries of this discipline were extended to the study and teaching of colonial conquests and expansion and peoples’ struggles against colonial exploitation.
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Of late, however, it has become fashionable for elite historians from the Subaltern School of historiography to belittle the importance of political history; they have incorrectly alleged that the discipline is narrow in scope because it focuses on politics in a very limited sense and particularly because it ignores the reality of the “subaltern classes” and their struggles. It has been alleged that there is a real need to study “people in history and cultures” and shift attention away from empire or emperors or colonies or anticolonial mass struggles for freedom.
In reply to such non-empirical claims that political history confines itself to the narrative of “rulers from above” the Aligarh Historians Society has been publishing a series called “A Peoples History of India”, which has nothing to do with subaltern history or colonial apologists. Amar Farooqui’s is the 23rd book in this series.
Three chapters with brief notes narrate the story of colonial expansion and subjugation of a people described by the new foreign conquerors as “savages and brutes”. They are titled: (i) The Road to Colonial Conquest; (ii) British Territorial Expansion to 1813; and (iii) Colonial Administration 1765-1813. They succinctly sum up the process by which the establishment of a trading house, the British East India Company, culminated in the conquest of a country. The phenomenon of traders becoming rulers deserves serious attention because they fought real military battles to emerge as a major territorial power in India.
A few facts in this volume deserve to be highlighted for a better understanding of the real nature of expansion that led to the emergence of the British as rulers of India. First, it is a fact that the Battle of Plassey of 1757 can be chronologically mentioned as the beginning of British Rule in Bengal (which included Bihar and Orissa in those days). But the other process that led to Britain’s dominance of the sub-continent was taking place in the Deccan where the British were fighting French forces. It was only after defeating their European enemy, especially in the second Carnatic War (1751-54), that the British were able to establish control over Deccan with the Madras Presidency in 1758.
Second, if one part of the story is that the Indian Nawabs were not equal to the artillery power of British soldiers, the other fact is that Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan proved more than a match for the British in the battlefields by innovating and modernising their weaponry, and this shift earned them the title of military geniuses.
Third, the East India Trading Company and its British owners sitting in London alongside employees of the company and officials appointed by the British in India (including and up to the Governor-Generals), indulged in the collective loot of India. The so-called land revenue system and the other taxes imposed by the rulers were treated as private profit by many generations of exploiting plunderers such as Robert Clive and Warren Hastings. This was the basis of Dadabhai Naoroji’s famous “drain of wealth theory” that, he pointed out, led to the “development of England and the underdevelopment and backwardness of India”.
The British employed every trick in the trade to establish their control over India, not least of which was the notorious Permanent Settlement Act of Lord Cornwallis (1786-1795), which compelled zamindars to pay a fixed revenue, irrespective of the harvest. This led to serial famines and widespread peasant destitution during British rule, which is why one of the first acts of post-independence India was to abolish the zamindari system and redistribute land among the peasantry. The British also established a civil service to govern its dominions, an inheritance that has become a liability for independent India because it has simply replicated the structures of colonial control in a democratic polity.
One of the most important messages from this slim volume is that ruling a country, whether as colonialists or as elected governments, demands control of the levels of knowledge and ideological institutions, the better to inculcate the values of compliance. This task of gathering of knowledge about the land and its people – essentially producing knowledge on India for the rulers – created a class of western scholars known as “orientials”.
Which brings me to the real crux of the issue. This volume, while transmitting the larger message about the disastrous consequences of colonial rule in India, also compels historians to re-think intellectual fashions in historiography. The new imported wisdom does not enlighten the newly liberated about the real causes of underdevelopment. History has always been contested, with the politics of history being moulded to suit the rulers of the day, whether it was the British colonisers over a century ago or the Sangh Parivar today. The latter appears to be dead set against any serious analysis of colonial rule, choosing instead to focus on the Muslim rulers of India as the real villains of the piece. Hence the relevance of this volume.