| |
|
There the episode should have concluded with Clive's return to Madras with his men. But there were the French to be dealt with. The Nawab's alarm at Ahmad Shah Abdali's capture of Delhi secured his consent to the capture of French Chandernagar and thus to his own isolation. Clive then became aware of plots to dethrone Siraj-ud-Daula. He was moved by ambition, greed (forty millions sterling were said to lie in the treasury of Murshidabad), and the example of de Bussy (could not rich Bengal be run in the interest of the Company's trade). He selected the most eligible pretender in the person of the elderly general Mir Jafar and then, after a gruesome battle of Plassey in June 1757, replaced him as the ruler of Bengal. The financial bleeding of Bengal had begun. As appetite grows by what it feeds there was a prize to be paid. Mir Kasim on his accession in 1760 paid pound 200,000 to the Council and his successor three years later another pound 139,000 to the same council. The returned merchants demanded their share and were rewarded with the abolition of duties on their personal or private trade in Bengal. They were thus able to undercut their Bengali competitors at every turn. Once the Company's forces had established their superiority over the Nawab's the whole countryside lay at the mercy of its agents. Any merchant who could hire a few followers could browbeat the Nawabi officers and intimidate the villagers. This process was made the more easy by the fact that the Company at this time had no direct ruling powers and could plead that it had no responsibility for the actions of its merchants in the interior. After 1757 there thus grew up a state of Bengal administered by the Nawab but where the military power was in the hands of the Company who used it to help themselves to the revenue and to give their merchants a free run of the country's internal trade. The sponsored state became a plundered state. In a few years Bengal was ruined and the Company brought to the verge of bankruptcy. Clive was sent back to Britain in 1760. Within a year the Calcutta Council displaced Mir Jafar for a supposedly more pliant Nawab Mir Kasim, and, when they found that in fact he was more resolute and was organizing an army, replaced him in turn after a severe campaign. Alarmed by this news and that of a renewed invasion of Shah Alam, and perhaps still more by a reduction in profits (for fighting costs money), the Company sent Clive, back to Calcutta in 1765. Acting with extraordinary vigour in two years he transformed the situation and laid the foundation of the Company's Indian dominion. He first defeated the combined troops of Shah Alam and Nawab of Awadh Shuja-ud-daula in the battle of Buxar. next page >> |
Copyright ©2000 indiansaga.info. All rights reserved.
By using this service, you accept that you won't copy or use the data given in this website for any commercial purpose.
The material on indiansaga.info is for informational & educational purpose only.
This site is best viewed at 800 X 600 picture resolution.
