The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (39 page)

Although this Five-Year Settlement was more ordered and systematic than Clive’s dismal attempts to make the
diwani
work, it also

fl oundered on the Company’s inability to exert control at the local

level. The collectors were too ignorant of Bengali tribute relations to

be effective, and Hastings had to replace them with their Indian deputies. Moreover, unreasonably high agricultural prices after the 1770

famine led many of the new revenue collectors to overpay for their

concessions. They therefore failed to maintain the irrigation systems

that sustained Bengali agriculture and continued to drive off
ryots

with their unreasonable demands for revenue.

Faced with pronounced revenue shortfalls and rising administrative and military costs, Hastings correctly recognized that real authority in Bengal required more intimate knowledge of local conditions.

Investigations in some of the largest and most important
zamindaris

hinted at widespread fraud in tribute collection and suggested that

large tracts of valuable land were underassessed or not assessed at all.

Like earlier generations of empire builders, Company offi cials found,

much to their frustration, that effi cient imperial extraction hinged

on the cooperation of local authority. The nabobs’ personal fortunes,

the EIC’s balance sheet, and the metropolitan British government’s

fi nances all depended on their ability to make the
diwani
pay by

exploiting common Bengalis.

Company

India 199

Hastings therefore tried to circumvent the complex Bengali hierarchical system of revenue collection by gathering taxes directly

from the
ryots
. This would have allowed him to dispense with the

services of the petty
zamindars
and bureaucratic middlemen who

took a share of the tribute in return for their services. In 1776, he

appointed a special commission to conduct a new comprehensive survey of Bengal with an eye to revising revenue assessments when the

fi ve-year concessions expired in 1777. The architects of Akbar’s
zabt

survey had tried and failed to accomplish much the same thing several centuries earlier, and the commissioners struggled to fulfi ll their

charge because local authorities made it diffi cult for them to get their

hands on district revenue records. Nevertheless, they concluded that

the lower-level
zamindars
and tributaries were intentionally underreporting the value of their holdings, and they blamed the unreasonable demands of the new revenue speculators, who had replaced the

Mughal
jagir
holders, for depressing production.

Both charges were largely accurate.
Zamindars
had no reason to

let Company assessors know how much wealth they actually took

from
ryots
and craftsmen in their concessions, and the speculative

revenue farmers who had overbid for the right to collect tribute from

them needed draconian tactics to meet their infl ated obligations to the

Company. Their desperate attempts to avoid default invariably drove

some communities to revolt. This was the case in Rangpur in 1783,

when an outsider named Devi Singh tried make up for a 30 percent

shortfall in his collection quota by jailing noncompliant
ryots
and

selling off communal land allocated to schools, mosques, and temples.

Led by minor
zamindars
who also felt the weight of his demands,

the tenants burned revenue records and looted storehouses. Interestingly, they appealed to the Company for redress and appointed their

own administrators and revenue collectors. The Bengal Presidency

removed Devi Singh and abolished his extra taxes, but it could not

allow this expression of local autonomy to go unpunished. The forces

it sent to Rangpur made quick work of
ryots
armed with sticks and

farm tools, but Company troops had to remain in the district to provide the law and order needed to restart revenue collection.

Garrisoning Rangpur was a considerable drain on the EIC’s limited resources, and the nabobs’ empire would have become unworkable if the revolt had spread. The Bengal Presidency could deal with

direct and isolated challenges, but like all empire builders, Company

200 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

offi cials were acutely aware of how little actual control they had

over the countryside. Clive created special paramilitary battalions

to enforce revenue collection, but Hastings disbanded them when it

became clear the troops were preying on rural communities. In the

1780s, the Company stripped the
zamindars
of responsibility for local

law and order and divided Bengal into twenty-square-mile police districts where British magistrates oversaw Indian inspectors and constables. These new security arrangements had little popular support

and were ineffective in dealing with the banditry and burglary that

spread as discharged Indian soldiers and village watchmen turned to

crime to support themselves. Ultimately, violent intimidation was the

most effective means of forcing common Indians to acknowledge the

Company’s imperial authority. After burning several villages that

had rebelled against an EIC’s client ruler in 1782, Major J. Gilpin

candidly admitted: “Knowing from long experience no other means

would prevail, I did this by way of example to [strike] a degree of terror into others, and deter them from rebellion.”23

This was an honest acknowledgment of the inherent terror that

lay below the surface of all imperial enterprises. Although the nabobs

cloaked their conquests in the garb of civilization and good government, it was impossible to conceal the corruption and unalloyed

self-interest that led them to turn the East India Company into an

empire. Clive built his fortune through extortion, shameless stock

speculation, and the “oriental despotism” of his
jagir
. He was reasonably moderate in his personal behavior, but many young Company

offi cials were seduced by the wealth, power, and personal freedom

of empire. As the growing capital of the Bengal Presidency, Calcutta

acquired a reputation as a South Asian Sodom where aspiring nabobs

gambled, drank, smoked opium, and fought duels.

At least the nabobs were less judgmental of their subjects than

were the more staid Company bureaucrats who built on their conquests in the nineteenth century. Aspiring nabobs needed Indian

help in making their fortunes and were relatively unconcerned with

marking and enforcing clear boundaries between imperial citizen and

subject. While they could be ruthless in demanding tribute, they also

appreciated the fi ner qualities of high Mughal culture. Once-lowly

Company clerks learned Indian languages, wore Indian clothes, and

ate Indian food. Like the Pizarrists in the Andes, they often took local

women as wives and mistresses because there were extremely few

Company

India 201

available European women. The opportunities for sexual exploitation

in these relationships are obvious, but it was also relatively common

for them to acknowledge the legitimacy of their Indian spouses and

children in their wills.

The nabobs’ avarice also left them open to manipulation by

wealthy Indians with the means to satisfy their appetite for treasure

and luxury. Nawab Muhammad Ali of Arcot even infl uenced metropolitan British politics by giving George Pigot, the former governor

of Madras, three hundred thousand pounds to help sympathetic politicians buy seats in Parliament. Reasoning that he was secure if the

nabobs had a personal stake in his rule, Muhammad Ali also bought

the cooperation of Company offi cials with bonds backed by tribute

collection. These bonds paid 20 percent interest while their holders

remained in India, but the
nawab
tended to allow them to go into

default when his domesticated nabobs returned to Britain. In 1775,

the outraged creditors sent Pigot back to Madras to force Muhammad Ali to pay up, but the
nawab
ensured that his former client was

arrested and died in jail by making two million pounds’ worth of

“presents” to the Madras presidential council.24

It was only a matter of time before these kinds of outrages provoked a backlash in Britain. The nabobs’ greed and licentiousness

fed fears that the contagion of empire would spread to the metropole. Assuming that all Indians were inherently corrupt, moralists

charged that the embrace of their women and luxurious culture contaminated young Company men. The ability of the nabobs to buy

their way into Parliament produced fears that the wealth of India

was undermining the political order in Britain. Rumors that Indian

princes controlled these MPs led William Pitt to warn the House of

Lords: “The riches of Asia have been poured in upon us, and brought

with them not only Asiatic luxury, but, I fear, Asiatic principles of

government.”25 Imperial critics in Rome, Damascus, and Madrid

would have understood this complaint.

Equally alarming, the nabobs’ purchase of great landed estates

appeared to threaten the aristocratic foundations of metropolitan

society. Hastings built a grand house for himself in the English midlands that was topped with a Mughal dome and furnished with Indian

art and amenities. These sorts of oriental excesses inspired Pitt to

lament that “without connections, without any natural interest in the

soil, the importers of foreign gold forced their way into Parliament

202 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

by such a torrent of corruption, as no private hereditary fortune can

resist.”26 Similarly, Edmund Burke noted that Company men used

Mughal wealth to buy their way into the British elite aristocracy.

Sounding an alarm, he warned his fellow gentlemen: “[The nabobs]

marry into your families; they enter into your senate; they ease your

estates by loans.”27

In 1772, Samuel Foote staged a play called
The Nabob
that captured the growing public alarm over the sudden rise of men such as

Clive and Hastings. In it the mayor of “Bribe’em” negotiates the sale

of his borough’s parliamentary seats to the nabob Sir Matthew Mite.

Asked the origins of Mite’s fortune, the nabob’s underling Touchit

explains how Company men arrived in Indian states as merchants

but “cunningly encroach and fortify little by little, till at length, we

grow too strong for the natives, we turn them out of their lands, and

take possession of their money and jewels.” Touchit reassures the

mayor that the displaced Indian rulers were “little better than Tartars

or Turks,” to which the mayor replies, “No, no, Mr. Touchit; just the

reverse; it is they have caught the Tartars in us.”28

The nabobs’ Tartarism invariably raised questions about the actual

value of the Company’s new Indian empire. Critics charged that metropolitan taxes paid to defend it from the French, thereby infl ating

the national debt. The economist Adam Smith went even further by

pointing out that Clive’s failure to make the
diwani
pay demonstrated

that Company directors could not balance the dual role of merchant

and imperial ruler. “Since they became sovereigns . . . they have been

obliged to beg extraordinary assistance of government in order to

avoid immediate bankruptcy. In their former situation, their servants

in India considered themselves as the clerks of merchants: in their

present situation, those servants consider themselves as the ministers

of sovereigns.”29 Smith’s criticism refl ected widespread concerns that

the Company had become uncontrollable, and rumors fl ew in 1784

that Hastings was planning to declare it an independent state.

It was only a matter of time before the metropolitan authorities

brought the East India Company under tighter supervision. Just as

the Spanish Crown prosecuted Hernando Pizarro for slipping the

bonds of propriety in the Andes, the Company’s enemies struck back

against the nabobs. In some cases they were motivated by civic concern, but more often than not the architects of the counterstroke were

Company men themselves who had been on the losing end of power

Company

India 203

struggles in India. Even Edmund Burke, who was the most eloquent

metropolitan critic of the EIC, speculated in the Company’s stock and

suffered heavy loses during the crash of 1769.

Inevitably Clive, as the most famous nabob and the hero of

Plassey, bore the brunt of the backlash. In 1773, his enemies in the

House of Commons accused him of corruption and proposed to strip

him of any illegally acquired wealth. In an impassioned defense Clive

pointed out that his stock speculation was legal and offered a careful

accounting of his fi nances to demonstrate that he had not accepted

any private gifts during his second term as governor of Bengal. He

made no mention of his conduct after Plassey. Clive justifi ed his
jagir

as a reward for service from a grateful Mir Jafar and suggested that it

spared the Company the expense of pensioning him. Wrapping himself in the newly spun garb of patriotic nationalism, he depicted himself as a loyal servant of the emerging British nation. Clive beat back

the attack, but the parliamentary inquiry was humiliating. In 1774,