The British Rule By East India Company
10. The British Rule by East India Company
10.1. Timeline
1611 AD: East India Company is established in India by the British
1751 AD: Britain becomes the leading colonial power in India
1757 AD: British defeat Siraj-ud-daulah at the Battle of Plassey
1761 AD: Marathas rule over most of northern India
1764 AD: Britain expands to Bengal and Bihar
1769 AD: A famine kills ten million people in Bengal and the East India Company does nothing to help them
1773 AD: Warren Hastings, governor of Bengal establishes a monopoly on the sale of opium. Regulating Act passed by the British.
1793 AD: Permanent Settlement of Bengal
1799 AD: British defeat Tipu Sultan
1829 AD: Prohibition of Sati by law
1831 AD: Administration of Mysore is taken over by East India Company
1848 AD: Lord Dalhousie becomes the Governor-General of India
1853 AD: Railway, postal services & telegraph line introduced in India
1857 AD: First War of Indian Independence also known as Revolt of 1857 or Sepoy Mutiny
1858 AD: British Crown officially takes over the Indian Government
1877 AD: Queen of England is proclaimed as the Empress of India
1885 AD: First meeting of the Indian National Congress
10.2. Foundation:
On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to a group of 25 adventurers, giving them a monopoly on trade between England and the countries in the East Indies. Initially, the Company (Governor And Company of Merchants of London trading with the East Indies) struggled in the spice trade due to the competition from the already well established Dutch East India Company. Ships belonging to the company arriving in India docked at Surat, which was established as a trade transit point in 1608. In the next two years, the Company built its first factory in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal. The high profits reported by the Company after landing in India initially prompted King James I to grant subsidiary licenses to other trading companies in England. But in 1609 he renewed the charter given to the Company for an indefinite period, including a clause which specified that the charter would cease to be in force if the trade turned unprofitable for three consecutive years. The Company established settlements in Bombay, on India's west coast, and on India's east coast, in Calcutta and Madras. They became centers for Indian textiles that were in high demand in Europe, including cotton cloth, chintz, and calico.
Foothold in India: The Company s two primary competitors in the region were the Dutch East India Company and the French Compagnie des Indes Orientales. The Company decided to explore the feasibility of gaining a territorial foothold in mainland India, with official sanction of both countries, and requested that the Crown launch a diplomatic mission. In 1615, Sir Thomas Roe was instructed by James I to visit the Mughal Emperor Nuruddin Salim Jahangir (r. 1605 - 1627) to arrange for a commercial treaty which would give the Company exclusive rights to reside and build factories inSurat and other areas. In return, the Company offered to provide the Emperor with goods and rarities from the European market. This mission was highly successful as Jahangir sent a letter to James through Sir Thomas Roe.
Upon which assurance of your royal love I have given my general command to all the kingdoms and ports of my dominions to receive all the merchants of the English nation as the subjects of my friend; that in what place so ever they choose to live, they may have free liberty without any restraint; and at what port so ever they shall arrive, that neither Portugal nor any other shall dare to molest their quiet; and in what city so ever they shall have residence, I have commanded all my governors and captains to give them freedom answerable to their own desires; to sell, buy, and to transport into their country at their pleasure.
For confirmation of our love and friendship, I desire your Majesty to command your merchants to bring in their ships of all sorts of rarities and rich goods fit for my palace; and that you be pleased to send me your royal letters by every opportunity, that I may rejoice in your health and prosperous affairs; that our friendship may be interchanged and eternal.
10.3. Expansion:
The Company, benefiting from the imperial patronage, soon expanded its commercial trading operations, eclipsing the Portuguese Estado da India, which had established bases in Goa, Chittagong and Bombay. English traders frequently engaged in hostilities with their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean. The Company achieved a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally in 1612. King Charles II provisioned EAST India Company with the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas. In 1711, the Company established a trading post in Canton (Guangzhou), China, to trade tea for silver.
Trade monopoly: The prosperity that the officers of the company enjoyed allowed them to return to their country and establish sprawling estates and businesses, and to obtain political power. The Company developed a lobby in the English parliament. Under pressure from ambitious tradesmen and former associates of the Company (pejoratively termed Interlopers by the Company), who wanted to establish private trading firms in India, a deregulating act was passed in 1694. This allowed any English firm to trade with India, unless specifically prohibited by act of parliament, thereby annulling the charter that was in force for almost 100 years. By an act that was passed in 1698, a new "parallel" East India Company (officially titled the English Company Trading to the East Indies) was floated under a state-backed indemnity of 2 million. The powerful stockholders of the old company quickly subscribed a sum of 315,000 in the new concern, and dominated the new body. The two companies wrestled with each other for some time, both in England and in India, for a dominant share of the trade. It quickly became evident that, in practice, the original Company faced scarcely any measurable competition. The companies merged in 1708, by a tripartite indenture involving both companies and the state. Under this arrangement, the merged company lent to the Treasury a sum of 3,200,000, in return for exclusive privileges for the next three years,after which the situation was to be reviewed. The amalgamated company became the United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies. By 1720, 15% of British imports were from
India, almost all passing through the Company, which reasserted the influence of the Company lobby. The license was prolonged until 1766 by yet another act in 1730.
William Pyne notes in his book The Microcosm of London (1808) that
"On the 1 March 1801, the debts of the East India Company to 5,393,989 their effects to 15,404,736 and their sales increased since February 1793, from 4,988,300 to 7,602,041."
Military expansion: The Company continued to experience resistance from local rulers during its expansion. Robert Clive led company forces against Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Bihar, and Midnapore district in Orissa to victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, resulting in the conquest of Bengal. This victory estranged the British and the Mughals, since Siraj Ud Daulah was a Mughal feudatory ally. But the Mughal Empire was already on the wane after the demise of Aurangzeb, and was breaking up into pieces and enclaves. After the Battle of Buxar, Shah Alam II, the ruling emperor, gave up the administrative rights over Bengal, Bihar, and Midnapore District. Clive became the first British Governor of Bengal.
Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, the rulers of the Kingdom of Mysore, offered much resistance to the British forces. Having sided with the French during the war, the rulers of Mysore continued their struggle against the Company with the four Anglo-Mysore Wars. Mysore finally fell to the Company forces in 1799, with the death of Tipu Sultan.
With the gradual weakening of the Maratha Empire in the aftermath of the three Anglo-Maratha wars, the British also secured Bombay (Mumbai) and the surrounding areas. It was during these campaigns, both against Mysore and the Marathas, that Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, first showed the abilities which would lead to victory in the Peninsular War and at the Battle of Waterloo. A particularly notable engagement involving forces under his command was the Battle of Assaye (1803). Thus,the British had secured the entire region of Southern India (with the exception of small enclaves of French and local rulers), Western India and Eastern India.
The last vestiges of local administration were restricted to the northern regions of Delhi, Oudh, Rajputana, and Punjab, where the Company's presence was ever increasing amidst infighting and offers of protection among the remaining princes. Coercive action, threats, and diplomacy aided the Company in preventing the local rulers from puttingup a united struggle. The hundred years from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 to the Indian Rebellion of 1857 were a period of consolidation for the Company, which began to function more as a nation and less as a trading concern.
In the meanwhile several regulation acts were passes by the parliament, in effect curtailing the power of the company and bringing the company under the crown. The India Act of 1784 gave Parliament control of the company's affairs in London, but the heads of the Company oversaw the governance of India. Parliament transferred the Company's power over administration of the Indian territories to the Crown in 1858 after the Great Rebellion of 1857, an uprising of Indian soldiers (sepoys) that was largely blamed on the Company's mismanagement of the territory.
10.4. Lakshmi Bai (1835-1858 CE)
Lakshmi Bai (1835-1858 CE ) was a rani (queen) of the Maratha state of Jhansi (in Uttar Pradesh) and a leading figure in the struggle for Indian independence. As a child, Lakshmi Bai's education included fencing, weaponry, and horsemanship. Following the death of her husband, the Raja of Jhansi, in 1853, the British East India Company refused to recognize the Raja's adopted heir and seized Jhansi by invoking the "doctrine of lapse." Under this doctrine, the Company could annex states without male heirs, a practice that was among the grievances that led to the Great Rebellion of 1857. The Rani repeatedly petitioned the British for her adopted son's rightful inheritance,
but her pleas were rejected. When British army sepoys (Indian-born soldiers) rebelled in Jhansi, killing British women, children and soldiers, the Rani was held accountable despite her lack of involvement in the mutiny. In March 1858, the British Bombay army attacked Jhansi. The Rani defended her city until she was forced to flee after the storming of Jhansi Fort. In June, the Rani along with the military command of a fellow resistance leader, Tatya Topi seized Gwalior in northern India. They had held Gwalior Fort for less than a month when the Rani was killed during a British assault. Reports of her death vary, with some indicating she was killed while scouting from the fort's ramparts and others that she was shot in battle while leading her army. The Rani became a
symbol of resistance against British rule and is widely considered a heroine and martyr in India.
10.5. The Great Rebellion of 1857
The Great Rebellion of 1857 (also called the Indian Mutiny, Sepoy Rebellion, and First War of Independence) began as a mutiny by Bengal army soldiers, or sepoys, against their commanders in the army of the British East India Company. The rebellion came out of the sepoy's long-held grievances about unfair assignments, low pay, limited opportunities for advancement, and the reorganization of Awadh, a region from which a third of them had been recruited. A more immediate cause of insult to the sepoys was the new Lee Enfield rifle that required soldiers to reload by biting off the ends of cartridges greased with pig and cow fat, substances offensive to both Muslim and Hindu religions.
On May 10, 1857, the sepoys posted in Meerut attacked officers and marched on Delhi after their colleagues had been punished for refusing to use the new cartridges. Once in Delhi, the uprising gained legitimacy when the sepoys made the 82-year-old Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah II the leader of their rebellion. Other soldiers, primarily those stationed in northern India, joined the revolt, and popular uprisings also broke out in the countryside. Central India and the cities of Delhi, Lucknow, and Cownpore (Kanpur) became the primary areas of unrest while areas further south, where the Bombay and Madras armies and many princes and elites remained loyal, were largely untouched by the rebellion.
By September, the British had regained control, exiled Bahadur Shah, and killed both of his sons. After the siege of Gwalior in the summer of 1858, the British regained military control, and those sepoys who had revolted were severely punished a number of captured sepoys were fired from cannons. The army was reorganized to include a higher ratio of British to Indian soldiers, recruitment focused on regions that had not revolted, and units were composed of soldiers representing many Indian ethnicities, so as to prevent social cohesion among sepoys.
Loss of British revenue as a result of the rebellion was severe, and in 1858, an act of the British Parliament transferred the East India Company's rights in India to the Crown. The new administration of India included a British secretary of state, viceroy, and 15-member advisory council. In 1876, Queen Victoria declared herself Empress of India.
10.6. A.O. (Allan Octavian) Hume (1829-1912 CE)
A.O. (Allan Octavian) Hume (1829-1912 CE) was a Briton who served in the civil service in India and helped found the Indian National Congress. Born in 1829, he was the son of Joseph Hume, a Scottish doctor and radical politician. After studying medicine and surgery, Hume joined the Bengal Civil Service at Etawah,in Uttar Pradesh, in the mid-19th century and steadily rose within its ranks, becoming the central government's Director-General o f Agriculture in 1870. Throughout his career, he advocated for and initiated progressive social reforms, such as free primary education in Etawah, and was an unabashed critic of the British government, especially when its policies contributed to the unwarranted suffering of the Indian population. In 1883, a year after retiring from the civil service, he called on the graduates of Calcutta University to form an Indian political organization that would seek greater independence for their country and better treatment of its people from the British. This was the impetus for the creation of the Indian National Congress, which held its first meeting in Bombay in 1885. Hume left India in 1894, but remained a committed supporter of Indian independence. While in India, Hume also gained renown as an ornithologist and amassed an important collection of botanical and bird specimens. He died in 1912. The Indian Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor in 1973.
