The Rise of British Power in

IndiaInihanda ni: ROSE FE M. WAMAR- MAEdAng GRADES pinaghihirapan HINDI inililimos!

British India, 1858India’s boundaries were gradually expanded after the British government took over the administration of India from the English East India Company in 1858. British India eventually came to include what are now the independent countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), and Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

© Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Mughal Collapse

Reasons why the Mughal Collapse

1. India was left in chaos at the death of Aurangzeb in 1707.

2. his military campaigns in the south and is continued persecution of Hindus and Sikhs had exhausted the treasury and brought most of the country to rebellion.

3. his successors on the throne at Delhi were far weaker men.

Mughal EmpireThe Mughal Empire was founded in 1526. At its height, about 1700, it

encompassed most of the Indian subcontinent. Mughal rulers developed a stable, centralized form of government that served as a model for later Indian rulers. The empire declined in the 1700s and was officially abolished by the British in 1858.

\was originally named Muhi-ud-Din Muhammad, but was given the name Aurangzeb (“Ornament of the Throne”) while still a prince.

AurangzebAurangzeb was the last of the powerful Mughal emperors of India, taking the throne in 1658. He greatly extended the Indian empire during his rule, but also weakened it by severely persecuting all non-Muslim peoples.

The Mughal CollapseHis three sons fought for each other in the usual battles of the Mughal succession.After two and half years of civil war, the victor was then virtually besieged by a Sikh uprising that swept the Punjab and by guerrilla warfare to the west and south.His death in 1712 brought on another struggle for the throne among his sons

Unfortunately, this did not bring peace and most of the rest of India continued to be torn by factional fighting, civil war, local banditry and widespread raiding by Maratha cavalry all over the Deccan, along the east coast and into the north.Aurangzeb’s immediate successors had accepted reality by officially recognizing the Maratha confederacy (so called, although it never really achieved unity) and its extensive conquests in and on the southeast coast.

The Mara has were made nominally tributary allies of the Mughals but controlled their own growing territories and large revenues

They were in effect given both the means and the license to extend their raids or conquest into still more of central, southern and eastern India, whose revenues could further augment their power

They continued to nibble away at the remaining shreds of Mughal authority in the

north and Hindustan, ultimately raiding Delhi itself as well as deep into Bengal and as far as Agra and Calcutta, though English

defenses kept them out of the day.For the time it looked as if the Marathas

might inherit the former Mughal position, but they proved bitterly and incurably

divided into contending factions, and no outstanding leader emerged who might have

welded them into a coalition.

The Maratha cavalry operated more and more as bandits and plunders, rarely even attempting to set up any administration in areas they swept for loot and then left in chaos

Their by now traditional role as spoilers and harriers of the Mughal drive into the Deccan had perhaps spoiled too for any them too for any more constructive approaches.

In the south, Hyderabad became a large and wealthy kingdom independent both the Mughals and the Marathas, while in the

central Ganges Valley the independent kingdom of Oudh(Awadh) with its capital its

capital at Lucknow also emerged from the breakup of the once great Mughal Empire.

In many parts of India cultivated areas were abandoned by peasants because they were

unable to defend their crops or their homes against raiders and bandits

Hyderabad

Kingdom

Trade dwindled in many areas, famine increased and much of India slipped further into mass poverty.At the same time there was a revival of trade in other areas, especially in the north, with the collapse of Mughal controlThe last shreds of Mughal power were swept away when the Persian army sacked and looted Delhi in 1739, massacred its inhabitants and took back with them the famous Peacock Throne

Iran was in a period of revived strength under its new ruler ; Nadir Shan (1688-1747), a powerful general who repulsed an Afghani invasion and seized the Persian throne in 1736He then asked for Mughal help to crush Afghanistan, formerly a part of the Mughal Empire, but the Mughals were by now hard-pressed to defend even the Delhi against Maratha raiders.

Nadir Shan

Turkmen military leader Nadir Shah took the Iranian throne in 1736 and rapidly built an empire through conquest. By 1738 he had conquered Afghanistan, and in 1739 he dealt a disastrous blow to the tottering Mughal Empire of India when he sacked Delhi. His empire eventually stretched from Iraq to northern India, but it disintegrated quickly after his assassination in 1747.

In 1738 Nadir Shah, acting alone, first conquered Afghanistan and then went on to Lahore and Delhi, which he left in smoldering ruins in 1739.

Th dynasty continued in name and successive Mughal emperors sat in state in Delhi’s Red Fort until 1858, when the last of them, an old man, was banished by the British

Surprisingly, the once-brilliant aura of the Mughals continued to be acknowledged by most other Indian rulers after 1739 with ceremonial gifts and recognition of Mughal authority, at least ritually

Even the British followed suit until well into the nineteenth century.

Unfortunately, Rajputs, Marathas, Sikhs, Gujaratis, Bengalis and other regional groups who had fought against the Mughals saw each other as rivals and indeed as enemies rather than as joint Indian inheritors of power

Rajputs

Their language, though related like those of Europe, were different and they differed culturally as well.

They were comparable to the separate European cultures and states in size as well

Their divisions now made it possible for the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French to make a place for themselves and increase their leverage

Westerners in India

For about a century after Vasco da Gama’s voyage to Calicut in 1498 the Portuguese dominated Western trade with India, as well as with Southeast Asia, China and Japan

In India they completed with Indian and Arabs traders and increasingly after the end of the sixteenth century, with Dutch and English merchants and their ships

Westerners fought among themselves for control of the sea routes but their objectives in India were purely commercial except for the early Portuguese interest in winning converts to Catholicism

Vasco da Gama

Flagship of Vasco da Gama - São Gabriel

In their competition for trade, the Europeans commonly sought agreements with local rulers,

offering them guns and naval help for their conflicts with other Indians states as well as a

share of trade profits in exchange for commercial privileges or the use of a port

Different Europeans might involve themselves on opposite sides of such inter-Indian conflicts,

seeking to ally themselves with the winning side as with those who had the most desirable

concessions to give or were most amenable as partners or patrons

Once the Mughals became the dominant Indian power, permission to trade at port and in areas

they controlled was sought too by each European group, in competition with one another but as

the humblest of petitioners before the Peacock Throne, whose power was so much greater than

their own.

The Portuguese were first in India and hence, obtained the largest number and geographical

spread of bases or more properly in most cases (except for Goa) trading arrangements and

permission for warehouses and residences. These included several small ports on both east and

west coast, as well as commercial sites inland in Bengal

Commercial sites inland in Bengal.- was the source of finest cotton textiles wanted by all the

European traders and was thought to be the richest and biggest market

Portuguese

By early seventeenth century, however, the Portuguese were rapidly losing ground to Dutch

and English traders.Their ships were being out classes in size, speed,

maneuverability, firepower and number and their poor and tiny home base could no longer

maintain an overextended commercial empireThe Dutch and later the English were able to

move into the Indian market by making their own agreements with local rulers or with the Mughals

and to begin to establish their own trade bases

Dutch traders

It most be remembered that India was the size of Europe and with at least equal cultural and political diversity; the north was in a strong Mughal grip, but the south was divided among many large and small

kingdomsThe Portuguese had earlier provided Vijayanagara

with imported horses and cannon and had benefited commercially from their association with this

dominant state of the south, but the ruler’s urgent request for more aid in his greatest hour of need was

shortsightedly refusedAfter the defeat of Vijayagara in 1565, Portuguese

trade and their position in India rapidly declined

It most be remembered that India was the size of Europe and with at least equal cultural and political diversity; the north was in a strong Mughal grip, but the south was divided among many large and small

kingdomsThe Portuguese had earlier provided Vijayanagara

with imported horses and cannon and had benefited commercially from their association with this

dominant state of the south, but the ruler’s urgent request for more aid in his greatest hour of need was

shortsightedly refusedAfter the defeat of Vijayagara in 1565, Portuguese

trade and their position in India rapidly declined

Dutch interest in Asia was from the beginning centered on the spice trade and

its Southeast Asian sources in the Indonesian archipelago but they

established several bases in small ports along the east coast of India, retaining

many of the India late in the eight century and giving first the Portuguese and then

the English vigorous competitionTheir involvement in Ceylon was far more

extensive

The Portuguese had fortifies a base at Colombo some years after arriving there in

1502 and controlled large parts of the lowland west coast of the island, including

the profitable trade in cinnamon bark from the Colombo area

Their effort to extend their control inland were repelled by the Sinhalese kingdom of Kanya in the central highlands, which had

become the chief power in a divided Ceylon after the late thirteenth-century collapse of

the classical and medieval state based at Anuradhapura and Polonaruwa

The Portuguese had fortifies a base at Colombo some years after arriving there in 1502 and controlled large parts of the lowland west coast of the island, including the profitable trade in cinnamon bark from the Colombo area

Their effort to extend their control inland were repelled by the Sinhalese kingdom of Kanya in the central highlands, which had become the chief power in a divided Ceylon after the late thirteenth-century collapse of the classical and medieval state based at Anuradhapura and Polonaruwa

The Dutch drove out the Portuguese between 1640 and 1658 and established their own more extensive position in Ceylon, including bases on the east and west coasts

Although they too failed in several attempt to conquer the mountain girt Kandyan kingdom, they made Ceylon an even profitable commercial enterprise and begin the plantation system there first for coconuts and later for coffee, brought in from their territories in Java

Like Portuguese, they intermarried with the Sinhalese, producing a Eurasian group still known as “Burghers”

The Dutch were to maintain their control of the trade of Ceylon from their several coastal bases until the Napoleon Wars, when the British took over the island and in 1795 finally conquered the Kandyan kingdom

The Early English Presence

The English, like other European trader nations, learned about and began explorations for a northern passage to India by sea around Russia and Siberia in 1580

A later effort to run the Portuguese blockade in 1583 the ship Tiger ended in Portuguese capture of the vessel but one of the English merchants aboard, Ralph Fit escaped and went on to India, where he visited Akbar’s capitals at Agra and Fatehpur Sikri as well as Goa, returning to London in 1591 with firsthand accounts of India’s wealth

The first two ventures of the English East India Company, founded in 1600, were aim at the spice trade Southeast Asia, but the third went to India and reach Surat, the major port of Gujarat on the west coast, 1608

Gujarat had been absorbed into the Mughal Empire in 1573 and Captain William Hawkins, were commanded the fleet of three English ships, carrying presents and a letter from King James I to the Mughal emperor, Jahangir, requesting a trade treaty

Hawkins claimed that the Portuguese, especially the Jesuits w were already ensconced at the Mughal court, conspiracy against him, but in any case he was kept waiting for over two years and was finally obliged to return home emperor handed

A second English envoy reached Agra in 16 but was sent away even more summarily after the Jesuits urged the emperor not to deal with him

However, later in 1612 a single English ship defeated and dispersed four Portuguese galleons and a number of frigates off Surat, in full view of the people on shore feat that was repeated in 1615

Indians now saw that he English were more valuable clients than the Portuguese and better able to defend Indian shipping and coasts from pirates and from rival Europeans (sometimes of __ and the same, especially with the Portuguese, who had been characteristically aggressive and ruthless whenever they had an opportunity)

In 1616, King James sent another ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, who finally won permission from Jahangir for the East India Company to build a “factory” (warehouse; “factor” is an old word for “merchant”) in Surat

Seven years later the Dutch tortured and then murdered ten English merchants who had been sharing in the spice trade of eastern Indonesia, signaling the end of Dutch willingness to allow any European competition in what thus became their private preserve

The Indian market, and the Mughals, had little or no interest in trade with England and were not impresses by the samples of goods they were offered from what was, after all, a much let advanced economy, which accordingly sought to b Indian goods but had little that was attractive exchange for them

However, the Mughals had no navy and had to depend on foreigners for protection against piracy; of these, it now seemed clear, the English were the least troublesome and the most effective

Sir Thomas Roe

The English were obliged to abandoned their effort to penetrate Dutch territory and to concentrate their attention on India

Territorial Bases

View of East India House

Click icon to add picture

From Surat, English ships completed the elimination of Portuguese power at sea, and English merchants became the principal traders in the port.

But they still sought bases on the east coast and in Bengal, where they could buy the finesr-0quality cottons more directly as well as the indigo and saltpeter (for gunpowder) produced in the finest quality in the world

After their early attempts to penetrate Bengal had been driven off by the Dutch from their already established east coast bases, the English in 1639 negotiated with a small local ruler to the south to buy land near the village of Mandaraz around a small lagoon at the mouth of the tiny Coum River

This later became Madras, where they soon built what they called Fort St. George, named for England’s patron saint.

Fort St. George, named for England’s patron saint

St. George, England’s patron saint

From Madras as their chief base in eastern India, which also gave access to south Indian cottons and other goods, they made repeated efforts to trade directly in Bengal and finally established a “factory” (a base for merchants) upriver near the provincial capital

They had traded periodically at a small market called Sutanuti (a hank of cotton) a day’s sail up the Hooghly River, one of the lesser mouths of the Ganges, that was occupied only on a market days.

In 1690 they decided to make a settlement there where they thought their ships could protect or rescue them if needed and where they were more in the fringes of Indian authority

Shortly thereafter, they received permission to build fort, and the new settlement was called Fort William (after William III, who had come to the English throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688), soon to be known instead as Calcutta. The name probably came from the nearby shrine of the goddess Kali at Kalighat (ghat is a set of steps descending to a river) or from the adjoining village of Kalikata

Rear view of the East India Company's Factory at Cossimbazar

At Surat, the English were only one among many merchant groups and were depending on the fickle pleasure of Mughal and Gujarati powers

Put Bombay, originally a chain of small islands enclosed in a large bay was ceded to the English crown by Portugal in 1661 as part of the marriage contract of the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza and Charles II

The Portuguese had built no settlement there and used it only occasionally, since it was highly exposed to piracy, was cut off from landward access to markets by the rampaging Marathas, and had a harbor that was really too big for the small ships of the time

But the quite different draw-packs of Surat and the attractions of a more nearly independent and protected base, as at Madras and (later) Calcutta, led the East India Company to move its western India headquarters to Bombay in 1687.

With the founding of Calcutta in 1690, they now had three small territories footholds, well placed to tap the trade of India in west, south and east

But the English, like all other foreigners in India, remained petitioners, still dependent on the favors of the Mughal state or of local rulers and still liable to be driven to expropriated, or denied trading privileges

No one certainly English realized at the time what was happening to Indian power after the death of Aurangzeb as the country as a whole slid ever more deeply into chaos.

The Company sent an embassy by then virtually powerless Mughal emperor in 1714

The embassy’s leader prostrated himself before the throne as the smallest particle of “sand” giving “the reverence due from the slave.”

He asked first for additional trade privileges and then, more significantly, for the right to collect revenues in the immediate areas around Madras and Calcutta, where the Company was by now the de facto government

The embassy was largely ignored and would probably never have been acknowledge if the emperor had not fallen ill and asked for treatment from the embassy’s English doctor, Walter Hamilton

His success, probably just as much a stroke of luck as the emperor’s illness, led to the embassy’s reception, and in 1717 all their requests were granted

English doctor, Walter Hamilton

The Mughals viewed that the English were little different from scores of other who had long been granted such right, equivalent to the Mughal jagir or zamindari, and Delhi attached little importance to the 1717 concession

Indeed, it seems important now only because we know what followed and can recognize it as the first step towards English territorial sovereignty in India

The Mughal and Post-Mughal

Contexts

Part of the context of the time was that the death of Aurangzeb neither the Mughals nor the local or provincial administrations had been able to keep order

The East India Company was able to carry out this basic function of government in its small but fortified bases and, with the help of small private armies their they developed, in the areas immediately around their bases

Hence, the main consequence of the fading Mughal power was not that the English were seen or saw themselves as rising political powers in India but they were driven increasingly to provide their own defense, policing, revenue collection to pay the costs and local government

They did this well enough to survive, as well as to attract Indian merchants to deal with them and even become residents of the English bases, where their profits and property could also be secure.

The Company prospered and Indian cottons became too popular in England that in 1701 Parliamentary, feeling that need to protect English textiles, prohibited their import.

When that ban was ignored, a parliamentary ruling in 1702 prohibited their use or wear, but reexport to the continent continued, and even domestic consumption could not be prevented

Indian cottons were clearly superior, the finest of them never surpassed even now.

But it was not only the company that prospered.

At every period, from the first “factory” at Surat to Indian Independent in 1947, Indians found new employment, new scope and new wealth in expanding economy of colonial ports and inland trading posts, as well as in the colonial bureaucracy. However, most of the biggest gainer were British; most Indians remain poor, while those prospered did so as junior partner.

Anglo-French Rivalry and the

Conquest of Bengal

The French had also been active contenders for the trade of India since the rather belated founding of the French East India Company in 1664

It had established a “factory "at Surat, an east coast base at Pondicherry south of Madras, and another “factory” just upriver from Calcutta

The French in India had the advantage of superb leadership under Joseph Dupleix and of equally outstanding military and naval commanders

Their forcers captured Madras in 1746 and went on to defeat the local Indian ruler of the southeast, becoming the dominant power in the whole of southern India

Unfortunately to them, they got little support from home, and the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 restored Madras to the English

Two years later Robert Clive defeated both the French and their southern Indian allies with only a small force of Indian and British troops

When the Seven Years War erupted in Europe, fighting spread to the French and British holdings overseas, in India as in North America, and the home government took a deprived of Dupleix’s leadership– he had been called home for spending too much of the French company’s resources in “unprofitable adventures” – the French lost out in this struggle, which was fought mainly by Indian troops in the service of both sides as well as by independent but client Indian groups

As western military local authority increased, the English became less deferential to the still technically sovereign rulers of Bengal, now independent of the Mughals

No longer humble petitioners who had kissed the feet of the nawad (ruler) of Bengal, their independent behavior and their addition to the fortifications of Fort William offended the new nawab, Siraj-ud-Dowlah, who came to throne in 1756

In a last flash of imperial fire, his army and war elephants overwhelmed Calcutta and its relative handful of defenders in June 1756

Some escaped in boats and fled to Madras, but about 60 were left behind, to be thrown into the fort’s tiny, airless dungeon and spend a hot night in this steamy climate

The next morning all but about 20 were dead of suffocation

The incident of the “Black Hole of Calcutta” became infamous. It seemed the end of the English position in Bengal but appearance were deceiving.

Within four months an expedition sailed from Madras under the same Robert Clive who had earlier ousted the French from their remaining bases in Bengal. With support from Indian groups, he then defeated the huge army of the nawab at the Battle of Plassey, some 75 miles northwest of Calcutta

Robert Clive and the Beginnings of British India

Robert Clive

Robert Clive had shipped out to Madras as an East India Company’s clerk, but he soon developed a reputation as an adventurer

He found his clerk’s job so boring that he tried unsuccessfully to kill himself with a pistol that misfired

Adventure soon came when the French captured Fort St. George in 1746 and he was taken prisoner.

He escaped and took a commission in the company’s small army

His first military expedition, against a powerful southern kingdom allied with the French, was won by brilliant strategy even though his opponents outnumbered him 20 to 1

Clive was acclaimed as a hero; he then repeated his successes by driving out the French and their allies in the major Deccan kingdom of Hyderabad

Still only 27 years old, he was praised as a deliverer and granted two years’ home leave

Already known to Indians as “He Who Is Daring in War”, Clive sailed north with a small force

He recaptured Calcutta, defeated the vastly superior army that tried to stop him just north of the city, and, four months later met the main Bengali contingent at Plassey. By this time he had just 1,000 British troops and about 2,000 Indians under his command.

The Bengali army totaled 18,000 cavalry and 50,000 foot soldiers, as well as over 50 field guns managed by French artillerymen

Robert Clive, became the first British Governor of Bengal after he had instated the schismatic Mir Jafar as the Nawab of Bengal.

Again Clive’s tactical genius won the day, confusing, outmaneuvering and finally routing the enemy.

He then marched on to the Bengali capital, where he installed his own Indian client and ally as ruler

Clive and his English and Indian colleagues helped themselves to the provincial treasury, and the Company too was richly repaid in reparations and new revenues now under its control

Four years of incessant activity broke his health, and he spent five years in England but was sent back to India in 1765 to try to check the plundering excess of his successors and reorganize what now amounted to East India Company government in Bengal

Two years later he was back in England to face charges in Parliament that he had defrauded the Company and enriched himself by extortion, accusations brought by people whom he had tried to restrain from exactly those things and who were jealous of his unbroken string od successes

Although in the end he was cleared, he brooded over his grievances and still suffering from poor health, he shot himself in 1774 at age 49

He was far more than a brilliant field commander and was concerned about larger patterns of British policy in India

His immediate successors were more interested in personal enrichment

The Establishment of British Rule

The beginning of Britain’s Indian empire

1. Sir Thomas Roe’s mission in 1616

2. The founding of Madras in 1639

3. And of Calcutta in 1690

With Bengal now in their hands, many of the English turned to simple plunder as well as trade, extorting silver and jewels from the rich and demanding what amounted to “protection money”

After a few years this brought severe criticism from home, parliamentary inquiries, and finally in 1784, the India Act, which created a new Board of Control for India in London

By this time the worst of the plunder was over, although beyond Bengal, the rest of India remained in turmoil

Afghan armies repeatedly ravaged the northwest and looted Delhi again in 1757, slaughtering most of the inhabitants

A huge Maratha army gathered to repel yet another Afghan invasion in 1760 was crushed in a great battle near Delhi early in 1761, removing the only Indian power able to contest the English

The much smaller force of Company troops beat them soundly in a battle at Buxar at the western edge of Bengal in 1764, surmounting the last serious challenge to their power in the north

Three years later, the surviving government of Bengal, still nominally in place, then made common cause with the remnants of Mughal power and raised a large army to drive out the English, now belatedly recognized as the most dangerous contenders.

The Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, who with his allies fought against the East India Company during his early years (1760–1764), only accepting the protection of theBritish in the year 1803, after he had been blinded by his enemies and deserted by his subjects.

From Trading Company to Government

From then on, the policy of both the East India Company and its London supervisors was to acquire no more territory, but to achieve their ends through alliances with Indian princes, offering them military protection in exchange for trading rights

In Bengal as in the smaller areas around Madras and Bombay, they continued to collect taxes and run the administration as nominal agents of the local or regional Indian rulers, not as a sovereign power

Administration was expensive and distracted from the Company’s main business, trade.

Collection of rural taxes was farmed out to Bengali agents or zamindars, a bad system but one that gave the zamindars a stake in British rule, especially as they also became landlords, with British approval, acquiring land from defaulting taxpayers

Calcutta was made the capital of all of British India, which by 1785 had settled down to a generally efficient and honest administration bent on promoting trade and revenues and on attracting Indian collaboration, although all higher administrative and military posts were reserved for the British

The omissions of the war against Napoleon in Europe made Britain anxious to end the French threat in India in 1799, Mysore was overwhelmed by company troops.

The peninsular south was now firmly under Company control, but the Marathas, despite their early defeat by the Afghans in 1761, remained a formidable power and their home base in Maharastra blocked Bombay’s access to inland markets

Taking advantage of internal Maratha division, the Company signed treaty with one side in 1802 promising military support in exchange for territorial rights

When the Marathans puppet, the British had installed tried later to revive its power, the Company defeated his forces and took control all the Maratha domains in 1818, soon joining then the Bombay Presidency, the major British territory in western India

Meanwhile in Bengal, Warren Hastings had been appointed governor of Fort William and was later confirmed as governor-general of British-power Bengal, Madras and Bombay

Hastings had long experience working for the Company and like so many of the English who went out to India, he become fascinated by the rich Indian tradition; he was a scholar of Persian and Urdu and had many Indian friends

He largely checked the extortion and corruption by Company officials that had been widespread earlier and made sure that the official revenue collections got to hid government rather than into private pockets

Warren Hastings

Hastings reduced the nawab of Bengali even more to a British client and stopped the annual tribute that was still being paid to the Mughal emperor

But he also began the British strategy of intervention in the fraction fighting within the Maratha confederacy, partly to forestall the French, but also partly to strengthen the overall British position in India and meet the still-serious threat of Maratha power Hastings began the first moves against the ruler of Mysore and sent a Company army south to defend Madras all this cost money and Hastings was driven to extort funds from several of his Indian “tributary states” to support the “pacification of India,” which, he argued, was in everyone’s interest

Jealous rivals at home engineered impeachment proceedings against him, and when the new India Act of 1784 was passed setting up the Board of Control in London, he felt further threatened

He resigned in 1785 and left India for good

He was succeeded as governor-general by Lord Cornwallis, the same man who had surrendered the British forces to the Americans and French at Yorktown

Cornwallis had a reputation for honesty and integrity and cracked down still more on extortion and corruption, but in 1793 he confirmed the landowning rights of the Indians, many Bengalis, who had been made zamindars, in what was called “The Permanent Settlement,” thus strengthening an exploitative system that became still more so in subsequent years.

Cornwallis, anxious not to be responsible for losing another colony, further pursued the campaign against Mysore and issued a new administrative code for all British territories, establishing rules for all services, courts and revenue systems and empowering British magistrates to administer legal justice

In 1798, Richard Wellesley elder brother of the future duke of Wellington who was to become the hero of Waterloo and who had also campaigned in southern India, succeeded to the governor-generalship as the Napoleonic Wars were in full spate

He completed the conquest of Mysore in 1799 and subsequently added still more territory in the south to British control

The ruler of the state of Oudh (Awadh) with its capital at Lucknow was forced to accept British protection, although he was promised that his own formal sovereignty would remain, as company ally

The same arrangement was made with the still- reigning Mughal emperor for his domains in the Delhi- Agra area.

Southern Gujarat, including the commercially important port of Surat, was also brought under the Company control

Only Rajasthan, the Indus valley and Sindh, Kashmir and Punjab remained outside the British sphere, although much of what the British controlled was nominally ruled by Indian princes as allies

Fear of the still-live French threat during the Napoleonic Wars and the memory of French naval successes in the Bay of Bengal 50 years earlier prompted the British to move on Dutch-held Ceylon after Napoleon occupied Holland

Their first concern was to take over the fine harbor of Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon, where they could base their naval vessels.

fine harbor of Trincomalee on the east coast of Ceylon

With the fading of the French threat, British attention shifted to the far more productive southwestern lowlands of Ceylon and the colonial capital was fixed at Colombo

Roads were built crisscrossing the island followed by railways after 1815

Coffee plantation spread rapidly with this improved access to export markets, as did coconut production

Tea replace coffee after a disastrous coffee blight in the 1870s and rubber was added at the end of the century

Ceylon was designated a Crown Colony, not part of British India and was administered separately despite its long and close Indian connections

The Reasons for British

Hegemony

1. This relatively sudden rush of land grab and the rise of the East India Company could not have happened without the a great deal of Indian (and Sinhalese) support

2. Factional divisions fatally weakened what efforts there were at Indian resistance

Most people accepted Company control either because they benefited from it as merchants, bankers, collaborators, agents or employees or because they saw it as preferable to control by the Mughals, the Marathas or any of the local rulers, whose records were not attractive

4. Most contemporary Indian states were oppressive, taxing merchants and peasants unmercifully and often arbitrarily while at the same time failing to keep order, suppress banditry, maintain roads and basic services or administer justice acceptably5. Revenues went disproportionately to support court extravagances and armies, which spent their energy more in interregional conflict than in genuine defense.That was enough to win Indian

support.

Thank you for Listening!!!