British : British India of 18th century - Part II
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The new state was in fact in the framework of the Indian tradition. It had little in common with English institutions; the checks and balances of eighteenth-century England were in fact the very things which had been cast aside in the previous twenty years. A 'constitutional' governor became a virtually absolute governor-general, independent presidencies became subordinate. But when a comparison is made with the Mughal and Nawabi regimes which preceded it the story is quite different. We find the head of the state comparable to the emperor or the Subedar. Each had his great show of authority, his inner ring of advisers, the public opinion of his own officials to consider.

The governor-general, it is true was subordinate to London was distant and pre-occupied and he had in practice a large latitude of action . His position resembled that of a Bengal Subedar nearly a century before, who, while subject in a very real sense to the Emperor Aurangzeb in the distant Deccan, could enjoy a large liberty of action so long as he obeyed orders, collected the revenue.

With the arrival of Lord Mornington (better known as Lord Wellesley) a dramatic change occurred. There had been a change in the climate of opinion in England, for Pitt and Dundas were now faced with an embattled revolutionary France and the rising young general Napoleon Bonaparte. He was even then conducting his army to Egypt with its implied threat to India. In India itself the company had a declared enemy in the brilliant if erratic Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and the great and mighty Marathas for all their divisions, might yield to France, prudence therefore seemed to dictate some forward move.

In Company circles, also, there was increasing pressure to advance as the cheapest way, in the long run, of securing satisfactory conditions of trade. Wellesley, then only thirty-seven years old, full of ambition and energy and an imperialist as he was. He at once seized on the reception by Tipu of a stranded French party and the advertisement of the fact by the French governor of Mauritius (then the lle de france) to stage a campaign against him, as an opportunity. Wellesley organized this himself and showed that his ability matched both his energy and ambition. In May 1799 Tipu fell fighting bravely in the breach of his fortress capital of Srirangapatam. Half his state was annexed and the rest restored to the child heir of the dispossessed Raja of Mysore. This was the real beginning of British territorial dominion in south India.

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