What were the characteristics of British rule in India?

1
What were the characteristics of British rule
in India?
2
The Company at the beginning of the eighteenth
century

• Company Structure
• Approx. 3,000 shareholders subscribed to a stock
  of 3,200,000
• 20-30 ships sent to Asia each year
• Annual sales in London worth up to 2 million
• Run by 24 directors (elected annually by
  shareholders)
• Key exports
• Spice
• Textiles
• Saltpetre (for gunpowder)
• Trading with Asia high-risk and high-cost.
• Trading Companies could raise large sums of money
  on a permanent basis, allowing them to spread
  risk among a corporate body of investors and to
  pursue long-term commercial strategies. The
  companies projected their huge outlays by
  maintaining close links with their parent
  states. (P. J. Marshall. The Oxford History of
  the British Empire p.488)

3
The structure of the English Company at the
beginning of the eighteenth century

• By the 1750s the Company held 3 main trading
  stations in India
• Calcutta
• Madras
• Bombay
• Independently managed through presidents and
  councils, reporting separately to the British
  directors.
• Each responsible for its own internal management
  and defence.
• Average sailing time from England 6 months. So
  initiative left to men in India.

4
The structure of the French Company at the
beginning of the eighteenth century

• French La Compagnie française des Indes
  orientales held 2 main trading stations
• Pondicherry
• Chandernagore
• French Company (founded 1664) closely connected
  with home government.
• Deep in debt to the crown and so at its mercy.
• French hoped to entrench Company within the
  Indian political system.

5
The Companys relationship to Indian politics and
economy

• Throughout the c.17th and c.18th the Company
  operated within an Indian commercial and
  political system.
• Only at sea or in dealing with small-scale Asian
  regimes could Europeans hope to impose their own
  terms. (Marshall, p.489)
• Company didnt have the power or inclination to
  challenge large Indian powers few commercial
  rewards.
• European merchants accommodated themselves with
  Indian rulers and were offered protection in
  return for bringing trade to the region.
• The Company's trade was built on a sophisticated
  Indian economy. During the seventeenth century
  the effective rule maintained by the Mughal
  emperors provided a secure framework for trade.
• The British only started to intervene in Indian
  politics in the 1750s

6
British intervention in regional Indian politics

• Mughal empire disintegrating and replaced by
  regional states.
• Earlier interpretations this produced a
  situation of anarchy and chaos
• More recent views no overall economic decline
  and some of the regional states maintained stable
  rule
• Conflicts within new states contestants for
  power willing to seek European support.
• Rivalry between British and French in India.
  Allied with opposing regional political factions.
• Private ambitions great personal rewards for
  European King-makers. e.g. Robert Clive.

7
The shift from the Company as traders to rulers

• Amal Chatterjee identifies 3 parts in the period
  1740-1840
• 1740-1760 the Company became involved in local
  politics, establishing Company power in Bengal.
• 1760-1800 a period of concerted military
  activity. Company run by soldiers who then became
  administrators.
• 1800-1840 power was transferred to civil
  administrators.
• The Company controlled a large amount of land in
  India so had to submit to increasingly close
  supervision by the British state. Periodical
  inquiries by parliament.
• Regions where the Company had helped rulers gain
  their control, many of its servants became
  administrators in the new British regimes.
• Huge armies created, largely composed of Indian
  sepoys. Used to defend Company territories,
  coerce neighbouring Indian states and crush
  potential internal resistance.
• Why change in British rule?
• French aggression forced the peaceful British
  into action?
• British as more assertive? New ambitions of the
  Company and its leading figures. Hostilities
  between French and British exploiting weaknesses
  in the Indian political system.

8
Maps showing British territory in the late
eighteenth century
9
Calcutta

• 1756 relations between the Company and the
  Nawab of Bengal turned violent when the Company
  rejected an ultimatum from the new Nawab, who
  then took Calcutta.
• British expedition from Madras (led by Robert
  Clive) recovered Calcutta and defeated the Nawab,
  Siraj-ud-Daula at Plassey in 1757.
• Bengal then effectively became a client state
  with a new Nawab ruling under British protection.
  
• Within a few years Bengal had become a province
  under actual British rule.
• Settlement arising from the Battle of Buxar
  (1764) gave the Company the responsibility for
  the civil administration of Bengal and its
  connected provinces.
• Gave the British rule over 20m people in Bengal
  and access to a revenue of about 3m, and taking
  British influence nearly up to Delhi.

10
The relationship between the Company and the
British Government

• The Company depended on the state for its
  charter.
• Parliament could insist on internal changes to
  the Companys structure when its charter came to
  be renewed, the charter could be withheld if the
  Company refused to comply.
• Dispute between Clive and Sulivan meant that the
  British government got involved in the activities
  of the Company. In the clash over Clives jagir
  (Mughal reward of territory and its income),
  Sulivan enlisted the help of the government and
  from then on the two were inseperable.
• Inquiry into the management of the Company in
  1760s.

11
Company Governments based on Indian systems

• New Company governments based on those of the
  Indian states effective work of administration
  initially done by Indians.
• Collection of taxes main function of
  government.
• British judges supervised the courts but they
  applied Hindu or Islamic rather than British law.
  
• Little belief in the need for outright
  innovation.
• Warren Hastings believed that Indian institutions
  were well adapted to Indian needs and that the
  new British governments should try to restore an
  'ancient constitution', which had been subverted
  during the upheavals of the 18th century.

12
Shift to British systems at the end of the
eighteenth century

• Changing opinions about British rule in India.
• Belief that India suffered from deeply ingrained
  backwardness which needed to be 'improved' by
  foreign rule
• Property relations should be reformed to give
  greater security to the ownership of land.
• Laws should be codified on scientific principles.
  
• All obstacles to free trade between Britain and
  India should be removed.
• Education should be remodelled.
• Ignorance and superstition thought to be
  inculcated by Asian religions should be
  challenged by Christian missionaries.

13
The Regulating Act of 1773

• 1773 dire financial situation of the Company,
  especially due to loss of tea sales to America
  since 1768. The Company owed money to Bank of
  England and the government.
• Lord North wanted to overhaul the management of
  the East India Company with the Regulating Act.
• Company men not trained to govern so North's
  government began moves towards government
  control.
• Provisions of The Act
• Governor-General and Council of 4 required for
  the government of the presidency of Fort William
  in Bengal.
• Supreme court of judicature set up at Fort
  William, over all British subjects in Bengal and
  their native servants.
• British officials in India were prohibited from
  receiving any gifts, presents, pecuniary
  advantages from the Indian princes or other powers

14
The India Act of 1784

• This Act said that
• Trading in India had to be separated from the
  ruling of the country.
• A Board of Control was to be appointed.
• Ministerial board to review all Company papers
  and issue orders to the directors.
• The Company could still appoint offices in India,
  but was subject to the king's over-riding power
  to veto or remove.
• The Governor-General in Calcutta and his council
  had absolute power with regard to foreign policy
  over the other presidencies in Bombay and Madras.
  
• British subjects were made responsible to English
  courts for wrongs done in India.
• All returning "nabobs" were to declare their
  fortunes.
• System of dual control between Company and Crown
  worked for the next 75 years, until the Indian
  Mutiny. After that, parliament took over complete
  responsibility for India.