Author:
Publication: New-Diaspora.com
Date: February 26, 2010
URL: http://www.new-diaspora.com/INDIA/History/India-%2018th%20century/Mughals+%20British%20plunder%20of%20Bengal.htm
Decline of the Mughals, Rise of the British
- Plunder of Bengal
Aurangzeb's successor, Bahadur Shah I, died
in 1712. Wars of succession followed and culminated in the accession of Mohammed
Shah. He was able to subdue the Sikhs but the Marathas proved tougher and
they forced a treaty in 1738 that required the province of Malwa to be ceded
to them.
In 1735, the Persians had defeated the Ottomans
at Baghavand and in 1739, the Persian King Nadir Shah invaded India from the
North West, taking Kabul and defeating the Mughals decisively at Karnal. He
occupied and plundered Delhi, departing with the Peacock throne. The Persian
invasion emboldened the Afghans to make incursions. They were repulsed in
1748 but Mohammed Shah died the same year. Soon Sind and Gujarat fell, followed
by Oudh and finally Punjab. Only Bengal was left.
The British were deeply involved with indigo,
saltpetre, cotton, silk and spices. Saltpetre was used to make gunpowder,
required for the European wars. With free trade concessions and easy access
to the waterways, the value of the trade was more than 10% of the revenues
collected in Britain itself. The East India Company, based in Calcutta, now
saw its chance for dominion. First the French tried their luck. After the
death of the old Nizam of Hyderabad in 1748, their astute governor, Dupleix,
had installed a puppet as successor and sought to surround the English-ruled
port of Madras with hostile forces. An EIC maverick with military talent,
Robert Clive, saved the day. He took charge with 210 men and seized Arcot
in 1751, leading to the eventual surrender of the French.
Bengal was still ruled by Mughal viceroys
or Nawabs. Alivardi Khan who had ruled since 1740, died in 1756 and was succeeded
by his impetuous grandson, Suraj-ud-Daulah, aged 20. Not happy with the designs
of the EIC, he marched to Calcutta and captured Fort William on June 20, 1756.
The prisoners were held overnight, it is claimed, in conditions so cramped
that most of them died from suffocation and heat exhaustion. The dungeon came
to be labelled the Black Hole of Calcutta by the British.
A British force had just arrived at Madras.
Clive again took charge, leading 900 European and 1500 Indian troops. In January
1757, Calcutta was retaken. But Clive did not stop there. Driven by ambition
and greed, he drew Siraj into battle and defeated him decisively at Plassey
in June 1757. It was turning point in the political fortunes of the British.
Clive found himself a rich man and the company rose from trader to a military
power to reckon with.
Regarding the Black Hole of Calcutta
A diary kept by John Zephaniah Holwell, a
survivor, claims that 123 prisoners died out of 146 prisoners held. However,
later historians say such a high number is unlikely or impossible.
Historian Nicholas B Dirks in his 2007 book
(The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain (2007,
Harvard University Press, 389 pp) dismisses the Black Hole as a myth:
"Consider the fabrication of European
deaths in the Calcutta Fort in 1756 into the mythical Black Hole incident.
Combat rather than imprisonment caused most of the deaths, and that there
were far fewer fatalities than initially claimed. But Europeans were so quick
to believe the lurid tale of Oriental barbarism that the Black Hole soon acquired
a mythical status. When the Company carried out sustained wars against indigenous
rulers in the last quarter of the 18th century, the desire to punish native
perfidy encouraged the brutal campaigns."
The Plunder of Bengal
The Company's servants, rapacious and racist,
helped themselves to the state revenues, leaving the former rich province
into utter destitution in a few years. And with rising military expenditures,
the Company itself was on the verge of bankruptcy. Robert Clive had returned
to England in 1760 with a fortune of £234,000 [£20 million in
today's money] but the Company sent him back in 1765. In two years, he had
transformed the situation and laid the foundation of the Company's Indian
dominion. With Mughal rule tottering, Clive restricted the rule of the heir-apparent
in Delhi, Shah Alam to a limited region near Allahabad and Bihar. He next
got the Company to become the official revenue collector for Bengal and Bihar.
And finally he disciplined the Company's servants with a system of graded
salaries. He returned to England in 1767 and died seven years later by slitting
his throat.
The great famine of 1769-70 claimed 10 million
victims; the Company did nothing to alleviate the situation. The Company,
still not in good shape, led to state intervention. Lord North's India Bill
(1773) provided for greater parliamentary control over the affairs of the
Company and appointed Warren Hastings as India's first Governor-General.
There are various accounts of the Plunder
of Bengal. Here is a sample.
1. Teresa Hayter, The Creation of World Poverty
(Pluto 1990, 2nd edition):
[pg 45] "The arrival of the Bengal loot
in London soon after (the Battle of Plassey 1757) coincided with the beginning
of the industrial revolution in Britain. It has been estimated that the total
British plunder of India between 1757 and 1815 amounted to £ 1000 million;
the national income of Britain in 1770 was about £125 million. Direct
tribute payments alone through the EIC approximated £1 million in some
years.
"The British subsequently proceeded to
destroy the industrial economy of India itself. Between 1815 and 1832 the
value of Indian cotton goods exported fell from £1.3 million to below
£100,000. BY the middle of the 19th century, India was importing a quarter
of all British cotton goods.
"The Indian weavers suffered great hardship.
Sir Charles Trevelyan declared to a parliamentary inquiry in 1840: "Dacca
which used to be the Manchester of India has fallen from a flourishing town
to a very poor one." A governor-general of the EIC wrote in 1835: "The
bones of the weavers are bleaching the plains of India."
Not only the textile industry, the iron and steel industry was destroyed as
well.
2. Peter Fryer, Black People in the British
Empire, (Pluto 1993, 2nd edition, p18-20)
The Battle of Plassey put an end once and
for all to the need for Britain to send precious silver to India (from the
sale of slaves in the West Indies). The EIC could now get their hands on India's
wealth without having to send wealth in return. The first step was the dewani.
the right to collect the revenue on Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Before the British
came, there was no private property; the self-governing village community
handed over each year to the ruler or his nominee, the 'king's share' of the
year's produce. The EIC stopped this practice and introduced a new system
in which the State was the supreme landlord. The cultivator had to pay a fixed
sum to the government every year whether or not his crop had been successful.
In the years of bad harvest, the cultivators were forced to borrow from moneylenders
to pay their taxes and British authorities did not hesitate to charge 200%
interest or more.
Furthermore, Indian and other merchants (French, Danish) were prevented from
trading in grain, salt, betel nuts and tobacco, In 1769, the Company prohibited
the homework of silk weavers and compelled them to work in its factories.
Weavers who disobeyed were seized, jailed, fined or flogged.
India was not only agricultural but also had
an established industrial base. It had a prosperous textile industry whose
cotton, silk and woollen products were marketed to Europe and elsewhere in
Asia.
It had remarkable skills in iron-working.
Calcutta, Daman, Surat, Bombay and Pegu were important shipbuilding centres
and in 1802 skilled Indian workers were building British warships at the Bombay
Shipyard of Bomanjee & Maneckjee. It was acknowledged that the teakwood
vessels of Bombay were greatly superior to the oaken walls of Old England.
Benares was famous for its brass, copper and bell-metal wares. Other industries
included the enamelled jewellery and stone-carving of Rajputana towns, as
well as filigree work in gold and silver, ivory, glass, tannery, perfumery
and paper-making.
The British destroyed the Indian textile industry
and throttled tha shipbuilding, metalwork, glass and paper industries. An
order by Sit Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India (1859-66) obliged
the British government in India to use only British-made paper. As the industrial
revolution took off in Britain, heavy duties were levied on Indian textiles
while British goods secured virtual free entry into India.
Systematic plunder led to the 1769-70 famine
in which 10 million people died. A commons Select Committee reported in 1783
that "the Natives of all ranks and orders had been reduced to a state
of depression and misery."
3. Third World Network postings (02 Aug 1998)
"A statement presented in the British
Parliament in 1773 said that the total net revenue from Bengal was £13,066,761.
The total expenditure was £9,027,609 and the total remitted to England
was the difference, a little over £4 million.
"Robert Clive, hero of Plassey, who came
with nothing returned home with a fortune of over £250,000."
The Times (29/9/1997) reviewed Robert Harvey's Clive: the Life and Death of
a British Emperor (Hodder 1997):
"Robert Clive came from the declining landed gentry. He looked to India
to pay his father's debts and so save his Shropshire estate, and provide dowries
for his five sisters. He joined the EIC as a clerk in 1743, bargained his
way to a commission. He discovered he could lead and a succession of sieges
and skirmishes led to the victory of Plassey in 1757. He left India in 1765,
was put on trial by Parliament in 1772 for violence and corruption and killed
himself in 1774 by slitting his throat with a pen-knife."
4. The Guardian (Feb 11, 2004) reported that
Part of a treasure looted by Robert Clive
and the East India Company was to be auctioned in London in the spring. The
star of the Christie's auction is a jewelled Mughal flask, made in jade and
studded with bands of emeralds and ruby flowers set in gold, which was once
part of the royal collection at the Imperial Court in Delhi, and is now valued
at over £1m. It is 25 cm high and only one of three such flasks. The
jade flask will go on display at Christie's with Clive's jewelled daggers,
bowls and jars, and an agate fly whisk set with rubies, before the auction
in April. Christie's experts describe it as one of the greatest surviving
pieces of Mughal craftsmanship. However, the treasures still owned by Clive's
descendants have been displayed by the Victoria and Albert Museum for many
years.
Clive, who came from minor country gentry
in Shropshire, eventually estimated his personal fortune, after 35 years with
the East India Company, at over £400,000. His original contract with
the company offered him £70 a year.
At the parliamentary inquiry in 1773, he declared fiercely: "By God,
Mr Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation."
However, the experience triggered another of his lifelong bouts of depression,
and he killed himself the following year.
5 Nick Robin's The Corporation that Changed
the World: how the East India Company shaped the modern multinational (Pluto
2006):
After Robert Clive's victory at Palashi (Plassey)
in 1757, the company literally looted Bengal's treasury. It loaded gold and
silver onto a fleet of more than 100 boats and sent it down river to Calcutta.
In one stroke, Clive netted a cool £2.5 million (more than £200m
today) for the company and £234,000 (£20m today) for himself.
Palashi was the company's most successful business deal...
It was the unrivalled quality and cheapness
of textiles that had lured the East India Company to Bengal, and it would
be Bengal's weavers who felt the full force of the company's newfound market
power. Never rich, the weavers nevertheless had a better standard of living
than their counterparts in 18th-century England. At a time when the British
state was intervening on the side of the employer--for example, to set maximum
levels for wages--India's weavers were able to act collectively, aiding their
ability to negotiate favourable prices. But the East India Company eliminated
the weavers' freedom to sell to other merchants, and so crushed their limited
but important market autonomy. It imposed prices 40 per cent below the market
rate, and enforced them with violence and imprisonment. Many weavers were
driven to despair. One account reports that, among the winders of raw silk,
"instances have been known of cutting off their thumbs to prevent their
being forced to wind silk"
6. From William Dalrymple's review of Nicholas
Dirks' book in Outlook India online (Apr 2007)
"Most terrible of all was the plunder
of Bengal following its conquest by the British in 1757. The British commander
Robert Clive returned to Britain with the huge fortune of £300,000,
making him one of the richest self-made men in Europe; after one single battle-Plassey-he
transferred to the company treasury no less than £2.5 million that he
had seized from the defeated Nawab of Bengal. The conquered province was left
devastated by war and high taxation, and stricken by the famine of 1769. [10
million died] Its wealth rapidly drained into British bank accounts, while
its prosperous weavers and artisans were coerced "like so many slaves"
by their new British masters, and the markets were flooded with British products.
As the contemporary historian Alexander Dow put it:
"At that time, Bengal was one of the richest, most populous and best
cultivated kingdoms in the world....We may date the commencement of decline
from the day on which Bengal fell under foreign dominion."
