Expansion and territory
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India in 1612 after Mughal emperor Jahangir granted it the rights to establish a factory, or trading post, in the port of Surat on the western coast. In 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler farther south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Two decades later, the Company established a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges river delta, a factory was set up in Calcutta. Since, during this time other companies—established by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish—were similarly expanding in the region, the English Company's unremarkable beginnings on coastal India offered no clues to what would become a lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent.
The Company's victory under Andrea Bustamante and Robert Clive in the 1757 Battle of Plassey and another victory in the 1764 Battle of Buxar (in Bihar), consolidated the Company's power, and forced emperor Shah Alam II to appoint it the diwan, or revenue collector, of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the lower Gangetic plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore Wars (1766–1799) and the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1772–1818) left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer.[6] The end of the last Anglo-Maratha War in 1818 marked the era of British paramountcy over India.[7]
The proliferation of the Company's power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively came to comprise British India. The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab) (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam (Ahom Kingdom 1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir, were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849-1856 (Period of tenure of Marquess of Dalhousie Governor General); however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra Dynasty of Jammu, and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later.[8]
The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the Company's hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy. Since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule.[9] The most important such support came from the subsidiary alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule.[9] In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-third of India.[9] When an Indian ruler, who was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects.[10] In return, the Company undertook the "defence of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor."[10] Subsidiary alliances created the princely states, of the Hindu maharajas and the Muslim nawabs. Prominent among the princely states were: Cochin (1791), Jaipur (1794), Travancore (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Cis-Sutlej Hill States (1815), Central India Agency (1819), Cutch and Gujarat Gaikwad territories (1819), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur (1833).[8]
The Governors-General
(The Governors-General (locum tenens) are not included in this table unless a major event occurred during their tenure.)| Governor-General | Period of Tenure | Events |
|---|---|---|
| Warren Hastings | 20 October 1773 – 1 February 1785 | Bengal famine of 1770 (1769–1773) Rohilla War (1773–1774) First Anglo-Maratha War (1777–1783) Chalisa famine (1783–84) Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780–1784) |
| Charles Cornwallis | 12 September 1786 – 28 October 1793 | Cornwallis Code (1793) Permanent Settlement Cochin become semi-protected States under British (1791) Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789–1792) Doji bara famine (1791–92) |
| John Shore | 28 October 1793–March 1798 | East India Company Army re-organised and down-sized. First Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar(1793–1797) Jaipur (1794) & Travancore (1795) come under British protection. Andaman Islands occupied (1796) Company took control of coastal region Ceylon from Dutch (1796). |
| Richard Wellesley | 18 May 1798 – 30 July 1805 | Nizam of Hyderabad becomes first State to sign Subsidiary alliance introduced by Wellesley (1798). Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–1799) Second Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar(1800–1805) Nawab of Oudh cedes Gorakhpur and Rohilkhand divisions; Allahabad, Fatehpur, Cawnpore, Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah districts; part of Mirzapur; and terai of Kumaun (Ceded Provinces, 1801) Treaty of Bassein signed by Peshwa Baji Rao II accepting Subsidiary Alliance Battle of Delhi (1803). Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805) Remainder of Doab, Delhi and Agra division, parts of Bundelkhand annexed from Maratha Empire (1805). Ceded and Conquered Provinces established (1805) |
| Charles Cornwallis (second term) | 30 July 1805 – 5 October 1805 | Financial strain in East India Company after costly campaigns. Cornwallis reappointed to bring peace, but dies in Ghazipur. |
| George Hilario Barlow (locum tenens) | 10 October 1805 – 31 July 1807 | Vellore Mutiny (10 July 1806) |
| Lord Minto | 31 July 1807 – 4 October 1813 | Invasion of Java Occupation of Mauritius |
| Marquess of Hastings | 4 October 1813 – 9 January 1823 | Anglo-Nepal War of 1814 Annexation of Kumaon, Garhwal, and east Sikkim. Cis-Sutlej states (1815). Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818) States of Rajputana accept British suzerainty (1817). Singapore was founded (1818). Cutch accepts British suzerainty (1818). Gaikwads of Baroda accept British suzerainty (1819). Central India Agency (1819). |
| Lord Amherst | 1 August 1823 – 13 March 1828 | First Anglo–Burmese War (1823–1826) Annexation of Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and Tenasserim from Burma |
| William Bentinck | 4 July 1828 – 20 March 1835 | Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829 Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–1848 Mysore State goes under British administration (1831–1881) Bahawalpur accepts British Suzerainty (1833) Coorg annexed (1834). |
| Lord Auckland | 4 March 1836 – 28 February 1842 | North-Western Provinces established (1836) Post Offices were established (1837) Agra famine of 1837–38 Aden is captured by Company (1839)[11] First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) Massacre of Elphinstone's army (1842). |
| Lord Ellenborough | 28 February 1842–June 1844 | First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) Annexation of Sindh (1843) Indian Slavery Act, 1843 |
| Henry Hardinge | 23 July 1844 – 12 January 1848 | First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–1846) Sikhs cede Jullundur Doab, Hazara, and Kashmir to the British under Treaty of Lahore (1846) Sale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu under Treaty of Amritsar (1846). |
| Marquess of Dalhousie | 12 January 1848 – 28 February 1856 | Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849) Annexation of Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (1849–1856) Construction begins on Indian Railways (1850) Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850 First telegraph line laid in India (1851) Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853) Annexation of Lower Burma Ganges Canal opened (1854) Annexation of Satara (1848), Jaipur and Sambalpur (1849), Nagpur and Jhansi (1854) under Doctrine of Lapse. Annexation of Berar (1853) and Awadh (1856). Postage Stamps for India were introduced. (1854). Public Telegram services starts operation (1855). |
| Charles Canning | 28 February 1856 – 1 November 1858 | Hindu Widows Remarriage Act (25 July 1856) First Indian universities founded (January–September 1857) Indian Rebellion of 1857 (10 May 1857 – 20 June 1858) largely in North-Western Provinces and Oudh Liquidation of the English East India Company under Government of India Act 1858[12] |
Regulation of Company rule
|
Main article: East India Company
Until Clive's victory at Plassey, the East India Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable—town councils, all composed of merchants.[13]
The councils barely had enough powers for the effective management of
their local affairs, and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall
Company operations in India led to some grave abuses by Company officers
or their allies.[13] Clive's victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain.[13]
The Company's money management practices came to be questioned,
especially as it began to post net losses even as some Company servants,
the "Nabobs," returned to Britain with large fortunes, which—according
to rumors then current—were acquired unscrupulously.[14]
By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat,
and there was fear in London that the Company's corrupt practices could
soon seep into British business and public life.[15] The rights and duties of the British government with regards the Company's new territories came also to be examined.[16] The British parliament then held several inquiries and in 1773, during the premiership of Lord North, enacted the Regulating Act, which established regulations, its long title stated, "for the better Management of the Affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe"[17]Although Lord North himself wanted the Company's territories to be taken over by the British state,[16] he faced determined political opposition from many quarters, including some in the City of London and the British parliament.[15] The result was a compromise in which the Regulating Act—although implying the ultimate sovereignty of the British Crown over these new territories—asserted that the Company could act as a sovereign power on behalf of the Crown.[18] It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament.[18] The Court of Directors of the Company were required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government.[19] For the governance of the Indian territories, the act asserted the supremacy of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal) over those of Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay.[20] It also nominated a Governor-General (Warren Hastings) and four councilors for administering the Bengal presidency (and for overseeing the Company's operations in India).[20] "The subordinate Presidencies were forbidden to wage war or make treaties without the previous consent of the Governor-General of Bengal in Council,[21] except in case of imminent necessity. The Governors of these Presidencies were directed in general terms to obey the orders of the Governor-General-in-Council, and to transmit to him intelligence of all important matters."[17] However, the imprecise wording of the Act, left it open to be variously interpreted; consequently, the administration in India continued to be hobbled by disunity between the provincial governors, between members of the Council, and between the Governor-General himself and his Council.[19] The Regulating Act also attempted to address the prevalent corruption in India: Company servants were henceforth forbidden to engage in private trade in India or to receive "presents" from Indian nationals.[17]
William Pitt's India Act of 1784 established a Board of Control in England both to supervise the East India Company's affairs and to prevent the Company's shareholders from interfering in the governance of India.[22] The Board of Control consisted of six members, which included one Secretary of State from the British cabinet, as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.[19] Around this time, there was also extensive debate in the British parliament on the issue of landed rights in Bengal, with a consensus developing in support of the view advocated by Philip Francis, a member of the Bengal council and political adversary of Warren Hastings, that all lands in Bengal should be considered the "estate and inheritance of native land-holders and families ..."[23] Mindful of the reports of abuse and corruption in Bengal by Company servants, the India Act itself noted numerous complaints that "'divers Rajahs, Zemindars, Polygars, Talookdars, and landholders"' had been unjustly deprived of 'their lands, jurisdictions, rights, and privileges'."[23] At the same time the Company's directors were now leaning towards Francis's view that the land-tax in Bengal should be made fixed and permanent, setting the stage for the Permanent Settlement (see section Revenue settlements under the Company below).[24] The India Act also created in each of the three presidencies a number of administrative and military posts, which included: a Governor and three Councilors, one of which was the Commander in Chief of the Presidency army.[25] Although the supervisory powers of the Governor-General-in-Council in Bengal (over Madras and Bombay) were extended—as they were again in the Charter Act of 1793—the subordinate presidencies continued to exercise some autonomy until both the extension of British possessions into becoming contiguous and the advent of faster communications in the next century.[26] Still, the new Governor-General appointed in 1786, Lord Cornwallis, not only had more power than Hastings, but also had the support of a powerful British cabinet minister, Henry Dundas, who, as Secretary of state for the Home Office, was in charge of the overall India policy.[27] From 1784 onwards, the British government had the final word on all major appointments in India; a candidate's suitability for a senior position was often decided by the strength of his political connexions rather than that of his administrative ability.[28] Although this practice resulted in many Governor-General nominees being chosen from Britain's conservative landed gentry, there were some liberals as well, such as Lord William Bentinck and Lord Dalhousie.[28]
British political opinion was also shaped by the attempted Impeachment of Warren Hastings; the trial, whose proceedings began in 1788, ended, with Hastings' acquittal, in 1795.[29] Although the effort was chiefly coordinated by Edmund Burke, it also drew support from within the British government.[29] Burke, accused Hastings not only of corruption, but—appealing to universal standards of justice—also of acting solely upon his own discretion and without concern for law and of willfully causing distress to others in India; in response, Hastings' defenders asserted that his actions were in concert with Indian customs and traditions.[29] Although Burke's speeches at the trial drew applause and focused attention on India, Hastings was eventually acquitted, due, in part, to the revival of nationalism in Britain in the wake of the French Revolution; nonetheless, Burke's effort had the effect of creating a sense of responsibility in British public life for the Company's dominion in India.[29]
Soon rumblings appeared amongst merchants in London that the monopoly granted to the East India Company in 1600 to facilitate it to better organise against Dutch and French competition in a distant region, was no longer needed.[26] In response, in the Charter Act of 1813, the British parliament renewed the Company's charter but terminated its monopoly except with regard to tea and trade with China, opening India both to private investment and missionaries.[30] With increased British power in India supervision of Indian affairs by the British Crown and parliament increased as well; by the 1820s British nationals could transact business or engage in missionary work under the protection of the Crown in the three presidencies.[30] Finally, in Charter Act of 1833, the British parliament revoked the Company's trade licence altogether, making the Company a part of British governance, although the administration of British India remained the province of Company officers.[30] The Charter Act of 1833 also charged the Governor-General-in-Council (to whose title was now added "of India") with the supervision of civil and military administration of the totality of India, as well the exclusive power of legislation.[26] Since the British territories in north India had now extended up to Delhi, the Act also sanctioned the creation of a Presidency of Agra, later constituted, in 1936, as the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces (current-day western Uttar Pradesh).[26] With the annexation of Oudh in 1856, this territory was extended, and eventually became the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh.[26] In addition, in 1854, a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed for the region of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, leaving the Governor-General to concentrate on the governance of India.[26]
Revenue collection
|
In 1772, under Warren Hastings, the East India Company took over revenue collection directly in the Bengal Presidency (then Bengal and Bihar), establishing a Board of Revenue with offices in Calcutta and Patna, and moving the pre-existing Mughal revenue records from Murshidabad to Calcutta.[35] In 1773, after Oudh ceded the tributary state of Benaras, the revenue collection system was extended to the territory with a Company Resident in charge.[35] The following year—with a view to preventing corruption—Company district collectors, who were then responsible for revenue collection for an entire district, were replaced with provincial councils at Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta, and with Indian collectors working within each district.[35] The title, "collector," reflected "the centrality of land revenue collection to government in India: it was the government's primary function and it moulded the institutions and patterns of administration."[36]
The Company inherited a revenue collection system from the Mughals in which the heaviest proportion of the tax burden fell on the cultivators, with one-third of the production reserved for imperial entitlement; this pre-colonial system became the Company revenue policy's baseline.[37] However, there was vast variation across India in the methods by which the revenues were collected; with this complication in mind, a Committee of Circuit toured the districts of expanded Bengal presidency in order to make a five-year settlement, consisting of five-yearly inspections and temporary tax farming.[38] In their overall approach to revenue policy, Company officials were guided by two goals: first, preserving as much as possible the balance of rights and obligations that were traditionally claimed by the farmers who cultivated the land and the various intermediaries who collected tax on the state's behalf and who reserved a cut for themselves; and second, identifying those sectors of the rural economy that would maximise both revenue and security.[37] Although their first revenue settlement turned out to be essentially the same as the more informal pre-existing Mughal one, the Company had created a foundation for the growth of both information and bureaucracy.[37]
In 1793, the new Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, promulgated the permanent settlement of land revenues in the presidency, the first socio-economic regulation in colonial India.[35] It was named permanent because it fixed the land tax in perpetuity in return for landed property rights for zamindars; it simultaneously defined the nature of land ownership in the presidency, and gave individuals and families separate property rights in occupied land. Since the revenue was fixed in perpetuity, it was fixed at a high level, which in Bengal amounted to £3 million at 1789-90 prices.[39] According to one estimate,[40] this was 20% higher than the revenue demand before 1757. Over the next century, partly as a result of land surveys, court rulings, and property sales, the change was given practical dimension.[41] An influence on the development of this revenue policy were the economic theories then current, which regarded agriculture as the engine of economic development, and consequently stressed the fixing of revenue demands in order to encourage growth.[42] The expectation behind the permanent settlement was that knowledge of a fixed government demand would encourage the zamindars to increase both their average outcrop and the land under cultivation, since they would be able to retain the profits from the increased output; in addition, it was envisaged that land itself would become a marketable form of property that could be purchased, sold, or mortgaged.[37] A feature of this economic rationale was the additional expectation that the zamindars, recognising their own best interest, would not make unreasonable demands on the peasantry.[43]
However, these expectations were not realised in practice, and in many regions of Bengal, the peasants bore the brunt of the increased demand, there being little protection for their traditional rights in the new legislation.[43] Forced labour of the peasants by the zamindars became more prevalent as cash crops were cultivated to meet the Company revenue demands.[37] Although commercialised cultivation was not new to the region, it had now penetrated deeper into village society and made it more vulnerable to market forces.[37] The zamindars themselves were often unable to meet the increased demands that the Company had placed on them; consequently, many defaulted, and by one estimate, up to one-third of their lands were auctioned during the first three decades following the permanent settlement.[44] The new owners were often Brahmin and Kayastha employees of the Company who had a good grasp of the new system, and, in many cases, had prospered under it.[45]
Since the zamindars were never able to undertake costly improvements to the land envisaged under the Permanent Settlement, some of which required the removal of the existing farmers, they soon became rentiers who lived off the rent from their tenant farmers.[45] In many areas, especially northern Bengal, they had to increasingly share the revenue with intermediate tenure holders, called jotedars, who supervised farming in the villages.[45] Consequently, unlike the contemporaneous Enclosure movement in Britain, agriculture in Bengal remained the province of the subsistence farming of innumerable small paddy fields.[45]
The zamindari system was one of two principal revenue settlements undertaken by the Company in India.[46] In southern India, Thomas Munro, who would later become Governor of Madras, promoted the ryotwari system, in which the government settled land-revenue directly with the peasant farmers, or ryots.[34] This was, in part, a consequence of the turmoil of the Anglo-Mysore Wars, which had prevented the emergence of a class of large landowners; in addition, Munro and others felt that ryotwari was closer to traditional practice in the region and ideologically more progressive, allowing the benefits of Company rule to reach the lowest levels of rural society.[34] At the heart of the ryotwari system was a particular theory of economic rent—and based on David Ricardo's Law of Rent—promoted by utilitarian James Mill who formulated the Indian revenue policy between 1819 and 1830. "He believed that the government was the ultimate lord of the soil and should not renounce its right to 'rent', i.e. the profit left over on richer soil when wages and other working expenses had been settled."[47] Another keystone of the new system of temporary settlements was the classification of agricultural fields according to soil type and produce, with average rent rates fixed for the period of the settlement.[48] According to Mill, taxation of land rent would promote efficient agriculture and simultaneously prevent the emergence of a "parasitic landlord class."[47] Mill advocated ryotwari settlements which consisted of government measurement and assessment of each plot (valid for 20 or 30 years) and subsequent taxation which was dependent on the fertility of the soil.[47] The taxed amount was nine-tenths of the "rent" in the early 19th century and gradually fell afterwards.[47] However, in spite of the appeal of the ryotwari system's abstract principles, class hierarchies in southern Indian villages had not entirely disappeared—for example village headmen continued to hold sway—and peasant cultivators sometimes came to experience revenue demands they could not meet.[49] In the 1850s, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that some Indian revenue agents of the Company were using torture to meet the Company's revenue demands.[34]
Land revenue settlements constituted a major administrative activity of the various governments in India under Company rule.[9] In all areas other than the Bengal Presidency, land settlement work involved a continually repetitive process of surveying and measuring plots, assessing their quality, and recording landed rights, and constituted a large proportion of the work of Indian Civil Service officers working for the government.[9] After the Company lost its trading rights, it became the single most important source of government revenue, roughly half of overall revenue in the middle of the 19th century;[9] even so, between the years 1814 and 1859, the government of India ran debts in 33 years.[9] With expanded dominion, even during non-deficit years, there was just enough money to pay the salaries of a threadbare administration, a skeleton police force, and the army.[9]
Army and civil service
|
| East India Company armies after the Re-organisation of 1796[52] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| British troops | Indian troops | ||
| Bengal Presidency | Madras Presidency | Bombay Presidency | |
| 24,000 | 24,000 | 9,000 | |
| 13,000 | Total Indian troops: 57,000 | ||
| Grand total, British and Indian troops: 70,000 | |||
In 1796, under pressure from the Company's Board of Directors in London, the Indian troops were re-organised and reduced during the tenure of John Shore as Governor-General.[52] However, the closing years of the 18th century saw, with Wellesley's campaigns, a new increase in the army strength. Thus in 1806, at the time of the Vellore Mutiny, the combined strength of the three presidencies' armies stood at 154,500, making them one of the largest standing armies in the world.[53]
| East India Company armies on the eve of the Vellore Mutiny of 1806[54] | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Presidencies | British troops | Indian troops | Total |
| Bengal | 7,000 | 57,000 | 64,000 |
| Madras | 11,000 | 53,000 | 64,000 |
| Bombay | 6,500 | 20,000 | 26,500 |
| Total | 24,500 | 130,000 | 154,500 |
| East India Company armies on the eve of the Indian rebellion of 1857[56] | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presidencies | British troops | Indian troops | |||||||
| Cavalry | Artillery | Infantry | Total | Cavalry | Artillery | Sappers & Miners |
Infantry | Total | |
| Bengal | 1,366 | 3,063 | 17,003 | 21,432 | 19,288 | 4,734 | 1,497 | 112,052 | 137,571 |
| Madras | 639 | 2,128 | 5,941 | 8,708 | 3,202 | 2,407 | 1,270 | 42,373 | 49,252 |
| Bombay | 681 | 1,578 | 7,101 | 9,360 | 8,433 | 1,997 | 637 | 33,861 | 44,928 |
| Local forces & contingents |
6,796 | 2,118 | 23,640 | 32,554 | |||||
| " " (unclassified) |
7,756 | ||||||||
| Military police | 38,977 | ||||||||
| Total | 2,686 | 6,769 | 30,045 | 39,500 | 37,719 | 11,256 | 3,404 | 211,926 | 311,038 |
| Grand Total, British and Indian troops | 350,538 | ||||||||
Trade
Main article: Economy of India under Company rule
|
At this time, the East India Company's trade with China began to grow as well. In the early 19th century demand for Chinese tea had greatly increased in Britain; since the money supply in India was restricted and the Company was indisposed to shipping bullion from Britain, it decided upon opium, which had a large underground market in China and which was grown in many parts of India, as the most profitable form of payment.[63] However, since the Chinese authorities had banned the importation and consumption of opium, the Company engaged them in the First Opium War, and at its conclusion, under the Treaty of Nanjing, gained access to five Chinese ports, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo; in addition, Hong Kong was ceded to the British Crown.[63] Towards the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, opium export constituted 40% of India's exports.[64]
Another major, though erratic, export item was indigo dye, which was extracted from natural indigo, and which came to be grown in Bengal and northern Bihar.[65] In late 17th and early 18th century Europe, blue clothing was favored as a fashion, and blue uniforms were common in the military; consequently, the demand for the dye was high.[66] In 1788, the East India Company offered advances to ten British planters to grow indigo; however, since the new (landed) property rights defined in the Permanent Settlement, didn't allow them, as Europeans, to buy agricultural land, they had to in turn offer cash advances to local peasants, and sometimes coerce them, to grow the crop.[67] The European demand for the dye, however, proved to be unstable, and both creditors and cultivators bore the risk of the market crashes in 1827 and 1847.[65] The peasant discontent in Bengal eventually led to the Indigo rebellion in 1859-60 and to the end of indigo production there.[68] In Bihar, however, indigo production continued well into the 20th century; the centre of indigo production there, Champaran district, became the staging ground, in 1917, for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's first experiment in non-violent resistance against the British Raj.[66]
Justice system
|
By the mid-18th century, the British too had completed a century and a half in India, and had a burgeoning presence in the three presidency towns of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. During this time the successive Royal Charters had gradually given the East India Company more power to administer justice in these towns. In the charter granted by Charles II in 1683, the Company was given the power to establish "courts of judicature" in locations of its choice, each court consisting of a lawyer and two merchants. This right was renewed in the subsequent charters granted by James II and William III in 1686 and 1698 respectively. In 1726, however, the Court of Directors of the Company felt that more customary justice was necessary for European residents in the presidency towns, and petitioned the King to establish Mayor's Courts. The petition was approved and Mayor's courts, each consisting of a Mayor and nine aldermen, and each having the jurisdiction in lawsuits between Europeans, were created in Fort William (Calcutta), Madras, and Bombay. Judgments handed down by a Mayor's Court could be disputed with an appeal to the respective Presidency government and, when the amount disputed was greater than Rs. 4,000, with a further appeal to the King-in-Council. In 1753, the Mayor's courts were renewed under a revised letters patent; in addition, Courts of Requests for lawsuits involving amounts less than Rs. 20 were introduced. Both types of courts were regulated by the Court of Directors of the East India Company.
After its victory in the Battle of Buxar, the Company obtained in 1765 the Diwāni of Bengal, the right not only to collect revenue, but also to administer civil justice in Bengal. The administration of criminal justice, the Nizāmat or Faujdāri, however, remained with the Nawāb, and for criminal cases the prevailing Islamic law remained in place. However, the Company's new duties associated with the Diwāni were leased out to the Indian officials who had formerly performed them. This makeshift arrangement continued—with much accompanying disarray—until 1771, when the Court of Directors of the Company decided to obtain for the Company the jurisdiction of both criminal and civil cases.
Soon afterwards Warren Hastings arrived in Calcutta as the first Governor-General of the Company's Indian dominions and resolved to overhaul the Company's organisation and in particular its judicial affairs. In the interior, or Mofussil, diwāni adālats, or a civil courts of first instance, were constituted in each district; these courts were presided over by European Zilā judges employed by the Company, who were assisted in the interpretation of customary Indian law by Hindu pandits and Muslim qazis. For small claims, however, Registrars and Indian commissioners, known as Sadr Amīns and Munsifs, were appointed. These in their turn were supervised by provincial civil courts of appeal constituted for such purpose, each consisting of four British judges. All these were under the authority of the Sadr Diwāni Adālat, or the Chief Civil Court of Appeals, consisting of the Governor of the Presidency and his Council, assisted by Indian officers.
Similarly for criminal cases, Mofussil nizāmat adālats, or Provincial courts of criminal judicature, were created in the interior; these again consisted of Indian court officers (pandits and qazis), who were supervised by officials of the Company. Also constituted were Courts of circuit with appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases, which were usually presided over by the judges of the civil appellate courts. All these too were under a Sadr Nizāmat Adālat or a Chief Court of Criminal Appeal.
Around this time the business affairs of the East India Company began to draw increased scrutiny in the House of Commons. After receiving a report by a committee, which condemned the Mayor's Courts, the Crown issued a charter for a new judicial system in the Bengal Presidency. The British Parliament consequently enacted the Regulating Act of 1773 under which the King-in-Council created a Supreme Court in the Presidency town, i.e. Fort William. The tribunal consisted of one Chief Justice and three puisne judges; all four judges were to be chosen from barristers. The Supreme Court supplanted the Mayor's Court; however, it left the Court of Requests in place. Under the charter, the Supreme Court, moreover, had the authority to exercise all types of jurisdiction in the region of Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, with the only caveat that in situations where the disputed amount was in excess of Rs. 4,000, their judgment could be appealed to the Privy Council. Both the Act and the charter said nothing about the relation between the judiciary (Supreme Court) and the executive branch (Governor-General); equally, they were silent on the Adālats (both Diwāni and Nizāmat) created by Warren Hastings just the year before. In the new Supreme Court, the civil and criminal cases alike were interpreted and prosecuted accorded to English law; in the Sadr Adālats, however, the judges and law-officers had no knowledge of English law, and were required only, by the Governor-General's order, "to proceed according to equity, justice, and good conscience, unless Hindu or Muhammadan law was in point, or some Regulation expressly applied."
There was a good likelihood, therefore, that the Supreme Court and the Sadr Adālats would act in opposition to each other and, predictably, many disputes resulted. Hastings' premature attempt to appoint the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey, an old schoolmate from Winchester, to the bench of the Sadr Diwāni Adālat, only complicated the situation further. The appointment had to be annulled in 1781 by a parliamentary intervention with the enactment of the Declaration Act. The Act exempted the Executive Branch from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It recognised the independent existence of the Sadr Adālats and all subsidiary courts of the Company. Furthermore, it headed off future legal turf wars by prohibiting the Supreme Court any jurisdiction in matters of revenue (Diwāni) or Regulations of the Government enacted by the British Parliament. This state of affairs continued until 1797, when a new Act extended the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to the province of Benares (which had since been added to the Company's dominions) and "all places for the time being included in Bengal." With the constituting of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1805, the jurisdiction would extend as far west as Delhi.
In the other two presidencies, Madras and Bombay, a similar course of legal changes unfolded; there, however, the Mayor's Courts were first strengthened to Recorder's Courts by adding a legal president to the bench. The Supreme Courts in Madras and Bombay were finally established in 1801 and 1823, respectively. Madras Presidency was also unusual in being the first to rely on village headmen and panchāyats for cases involving small claims. This judicial system in the three presidencies was to survive the Company's rule, the next major change coming only in 1861.
Education
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The first goal was supported by some administrators, such as Warren Hastings, who envisaged the Company as the successor of a great Empire, and saw the support of vernacular learning as only befitting that role. In 1781, Hastings founded the Madrasa 'Aliya, an institution in Calcutta for the study of Arabic and Persian languages, and Islamic Law. A few decades later a related perspective appeared among the governed population, one that was expressed by the conservative Bengali reformer Radhakanta Deb as the "duty of the Rulers of Countries to preserve and Customs and the religions of their subjects."
The second goal was motivated by the concerns among some Company officials about being seen as foreign rulers. They argued that the Company should try to win over its subjects by outdoing the region's previous rulers in the support of indigenous learning. Guided by this belief, the Benares Sanskrit College was founded in Varanasi in 1791 during the administration of Lord Cornwallis. The promotion of knowledge of Asia had attracted scholars as well to the Company's service. Earlier, in 1784, the Asiatick Society had been founded in Calcutta by William Jones, a puisne judge in the newly established Supreme Court of Bengal. Soon, Jones was to advance his famous thesis on the common origin of Indo-European languages.
The third related goal grew out of the philosophy then current among some Company officials that they would themselves become better administrators if they were better versed in the languages and cultures of India. It led in 1800 to the founding of the College of Fort William, in Calcutta by Lord Wellesley, the then Governor-General. The College was later to play an important role both in the development of modern Indian languages and in the Bengal Renaissance. Advocates of these related goals were termed, "Orientalists." Many leading Company officials, such as Thomas Munro and Montstuart Elphinstone, were influenced by the Orientalist ethos and felt that the Company's government in India should be responsive to Indian expectations. The Orientalist ethos would prevail in education policy well into the 1820s, and was reflected in the founding of the Poona Sanskrit College in Pune in 1821 and the Calcutta Sanskrit College in 1824.
The Orientalists were, however, soon opposed by advocates of an approach that has been termed Anglicist. The Anglicists supported instruction in the English language in order to impart to Indians what they considered modern Western knowledge. Prominent among them were evangelicals who, after 1813—when the Company's territories were opened to Christian missionaries—were interested in spreading Christian belief; they also believed in using theology to promote liberal social reform, such as the abolition of slavery. Among them was Charles Grant, the Chairman of the East India Company. Grant supported state-sponsored education in India 20 years before a similar system was set up in Britain. Among Grant's close evangelical friends were William Wilberforce, a prominent abolitionist and member of the British Parliament, and Sir John Shore, the Governor-General of India from 1793 to 1797. During this period, many Scottish Presbyterian missionaries also supported the British rulers in their efforts to spread English education and established many reputed colleges like Scottish Church College (1830), Wilson College (1832), Madras Christian College (1837), and Elphinstone College (1856).
However, the Anglicists also included utilitarians, led by James Mill, who had begun to play an important role in fashioning Company policy. The utilitarians believed in the moral worth of an education that aided the good of society and promoted instruction in useful knowledge. Such useful instruction to Indians had the added consequence of making them more suitable for the Company's burgeoning bureaucracy. By the early 1830s, the Anglicists had the upper hand in devising education policy in India. Many utilitarian ideas were employed in Thomas Babbington Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education of 1835. The Minute, which later aroused great controversy, was to influence education policy in India well into the next century.
Since English was increasingly being employed as the language of instruction, Persian was abolished as the official language of the Company's administration and courts by 1837. However, bilingual educations was proving to be popular as well, and some institutions such as the Poona Sanskrit College commenced teaching both Sanskrit and English. Charles Grant's son, Sir Robert Grant, who in 1834 was appointed Governor of the Bombay Presidency, played an influential role in the planning of the first medical college in Bombay, which after his unexpected death was named Grant Medical College when it was established in 1845. During 1852–1853 some citizens of Bombay sent petitions to the British Parliament in support of both establishing and adequately funding university education in India. The petitions resulted in the Education Dispatch of July 1854 sent by Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control of the East India Company, the chief official on Indian affairs in the British government, to Lord Dalhousie, the then Governor-General of India. The dispatch outlined a broad plan of state-sponsored education for India, which included:[70]
- Establishing a Department of Public Instruction in each presidency or province of British India.
- Establishing universities modeled on the University of London (as primarily examining institutions for students studying in affiliated colleges) in each of the Presidency towns (i.e. Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta)
- Establishing teachers-training schools for all levels of instruction
- Maintaining existing Government colleges and high-schools and increasing their number when necessary.
- Vastly increasing vernacular schools for elementary education.
- Introducing a system of grants-in-aid for private schools.
Social reform
In the first half of the 19th century, the British legislated reforms against what they considered were iniquitous Indian practices. In most cases, the legislation alone was unable to change Indian society sufficiently for it to absorb both the ideal and the ethic underpinning the reform. For example, upper-caste Hindu society had long looked askance at the remarriage of widows in order to protect both what it considered was family honour and family property. Even adolescent widows were expected to live a life of austerity and denial. The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, enacted in the waning years of Company rule, provided legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for a remarrying Hindu widow, though not of the inheritance due her from her deceased husband. However, very few widows actually remarried. Some Indian reformers, such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, even offered money to men who would take widows as brides, but these men often deserted their new wives.Post and telegraph
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After the recommendations of the commission appointed in 1850 to evaluate the Indian postal system were received, Act XVII of 1837 was superseded by the Indian Postal Act of 1854. Under its provisions, the entire postal department was headed by a Director-General, and the duties of a Postmaster-General were set apart from those of a Presidency Postmaster; the former administered the postal system of the larger provinces (such as the Bombay Presidency or the North-Western Provinces), whereas the latter attended to the less important Provinces (such as Ajmer-Merwara and the major Political Agencies such as Rajputana). Postage stamps were introduced at this time and the postal rates fixed by weight, dependent no longer also on the distance traveled in the delivery. The lowest inland letter rate was half anna for 1/4 tola, followed by one anna for 1/2 tola, and 2 annas for a tola, a great reduction from the rates of 17 years before. The Indian Post Office delivered letters, newspapers, postcards, book packets, and parcels. These deliveries grew steadily in number; by 1861 (three years after the end of Company rule), a total of 889 post offices had been opened, and almost 43 million letters and over four and a half million newspapers were being delivered annually.
Before the advent of electric telegraphy, the word "telegraph" had been used for semaphore signaling. During the period 1820–30, the East India Company's Government in India seriously considered constructing signaling towers ("telegraph" towers), each a hundred feet high and separated from the next by eight miles, along the entire distance from Calcutta to Bombay. Although such towers were built in Bengal and Bihar, the India-wide semaphore network never took off. By mid-century, electric telegraphy had become viable, and hand signaling obsolete.
Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy, a Professor of Chemistry in the Calcutta Medical College, received permission in 1851 to conduct a trial run for a telegraph service from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour along the river Hooghly. Four telegraph offices, mainly for shipping-related business, were also opened along the river that year. The telegraph receiver used in the trial was a galvanoscope of Dr. O'Shaughnessy's design and manufactured in India. When the experiment was deemed to be a success a year later, the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, sought permission from the Court of Directors of the Company for the construction of telegraph lines from "Calcutta to Agra, Agra to Bombay, Agra to Peshawar, and Bombay to Madras, extending in all over 3,050 miles and including forty-one offices." The permission was soon granted; by February 1855 all the proposed telegraph lines had been constructed and were being used to send paid messages. Dr. O'Shaughnessy's instrument was used all over India until early 1857, when it was supplanted by the Morse instrument. By 1857, the telegraph network had expanded to 4,555 miles of lines and sixty two offices, and had reached as far as the hill station of Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills and the port of Calicut on the southwest coast of India. During the Indian rebellion of 1857, more than seven hundred miles of telegraph lines were destroyed by the rebel forces, mainly in the North-Western Provinces. The East India Company was nevertheless able to use the remaining intact lines to warn many outposts of impending disturbances. The political value of the new technology was, thus, driven home to the Company, and, in the following year, not only were the destroyed lines rebuilt, but the network was expanded further by 2,000 miles.
Dr. O'Shaughnessy's experimental set-up of 1851–52 consisted of both overhead and underground lines; the latter included underwater ones that crossed two rivers, the Hooghly and the Haldi. The overhead line was constructed by welding uninsulated iron rods, 13½ feet long and 3/8 inch wide, end to end. These lines, which weighed 1,250 pounds per mile, were held aloft by fifteen-foot lengths of bamboo, planted into the ground at equal intervals—200 to the mile—and covered with a layer each of coal tar and pitch for insulation. The bamboo supports were also strengthened by teak or sal posts at approximate intervals of a furlong (one-eighths of a mile); the conducting iron rods were attached to the posts by secure iron clamps. The underground line, which was laid in Calcutta and its suburbs, used conducting rods that were similar to the overhead line, but these were now wrapped in two layers of Madras cloth previously saturated with melted tar and pitch. The insulated line obtained in such manner was then pressed into a row of curved roofing tiles that, in turn, had been filled with melted sand and resin. The underwater cables had been manufactured in England and consisted of copper wire covered with gutta-percha. Furthermore, in order to protect the cables from dragging ship anchors, the cables were attached to the links of a 7⁄8-inch-thick (22 mm) chain cable. An underwater cable of length 2,070 yards was laid across the Hooghly river at Diamond Harbour, and another, 1,400 yards long, was laid across the Haldi at Kedgeree.
Work on the long lines from Calcutta to Peshawar (through Agra), Agra to Bombay, and Bombay to Madras began in 1853. The conducting material chosen for these lines was now lighter, and the support stronger. The wood used for the support consisted of teak, sal, fir, ironwood, or blackwood (Terminalia elata), and was either fashioned into whole posts, or used in attachments to iron screw-piles or masonry columns. Some sections had uniformly strong support; one such was the 322-mile Bombay-Madras line, which was supported by granite obelisks sixteen feet high. Other sections had less secure support, consisting, in some cases, of sections of toddy palm, insulated with pieces of sal wood fastened to their tops. Some of the conducting wires or rods were insulated, the insulating material being either manufactured in India or England; other stretches of wire remained uninsulated. By 1856, iron tubes had begun to be employed to provide support, and would see increased use in the second half of the 19th century all over India.
The first Telegraph Act for India was the British Parliament's Act XXXIV of 1854. When the public telegramme service was first set up in 1855, the charge was fixed at one rupee for every sixteen words (including the address) for every 400 miles of transmission. The charges were doubled for telegrammes sent between 6PM and 6AM. These rates would remain fixed until 1882. In the year 1860–61, two years after the end of Company rule, India had 11,093 miles of telegraph lines and 145 telegraph offices. That year telegrammes totaling Rs. 500,000 in value were sent by the public, the working expense of the Indian Telegraph Department was Rs. 1.4 million, and the capital expenditure until the end of the year totaled Rs. 6.5 million.
Railways
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Contracts were awarded in 1849 to the East Indian Railway Company to construct a 120-mile railway from Howrah-Calcutta to Raniganj; to the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company for a service from Bombay to Kalyan, thirty miles away; and to the Madras Railway Company for a line from Madras city to Arkonam, a distance of some thirty nine miles. Although construction began first, in 1849, on the East Indian Railways line, with an outlay of £1 million, it was the first-leg of the Bombay-Kalyan line—a 21-mile stretch from Bombay to Thane—that, in 1853, was the first to be completed (see picture below).
Map of the completed and planned railway lines in India in 1871, thirteen years after the end of Company rule.
During this time work had been proceeding on the experimental lines as well. The first leg of the East Indian Railway line, a broad gauge railway, from Howrah to Pandua, was opened in 1854 (see picture of locomotive below), and the entire line up to Raniganj would become functional by the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857. The Great Indian Peninsular Railway was permitted to extend its experimental line to Poona. This extension required planning for the steep rise in the Bor Ghat valley in the Western Ghats, a section 15¾ miles long with an ascent of 1,831 feet. Construction began in 1856 and was completed in 1863, and, in the end, the line required a total of twenty five tunnels and fifteen miles of gradients (inclines) of 1 in 50 or steeper, the most extreme being the Bor Ghat Incline, a distance of 1¾ miles at a gradient of 1 in 37 (see picture above).
Each of the three companies (and later five others that were given contracts in 1859) was joint stock company domiciled in England with its financial capital raised in pound sterling. Each company was guaranteed a 5 per cent return on its capital outlay and, in addition, a share of half the profits. Although the Government of India had no capital expenditure other than the provision of the underlying land free of charge, it had the onus of continuing to provide the 5 percent return in the event of net loss, and soon all anticipation of profits would fall by the wayside as the outlays would mount.
The technology of railway construction was still new and there was no railway engineering expertise in India; consequently, all engineers had to be brought in from England. These engineers were unfamiliar not only with the language and culture of India, but also with the physical aspect of the land itself and its concomitant engineering requirements. Moreover, never before had such a large and complex construction project been undertaken in India, and no pool of semi-skilled labour was already organised to aid the engineers. The work, therefore, proceeded in fits and starts—many practical trials followed by a final construction that was undertaken with great caution and care—producing an outcome that was later criticised as being "built to a standard which was far in excess of the needs to the time." The Government of India's administrators, moreover, made up in their attention to the fine details of expenditure and management what they lacked in professional expertise. The resulting delays soon led to the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons in 1857–58 to investigate the matter. However, by the time the Committee concluded that all parties needed to honour the spirit rather than the letter of the contracts, Company rule in India had ended.
Although, railway construction had barely begun in the last years of this rule, its foundations had been laid, and it would proceed apace for much of the next half century. By the turn of the 20th century, India would have over 28,000 miles of railways connecting most interior regions to the ports of Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Chittagong, and Rangoon, and together they would constitute the fourth-largest railway network in the world.
Canals
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In plains above Delhi, the mid-14th century Sultan of Delhi, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, had constructed the 150-mile long Western Jamna Canal. Taking off from the right bank of the Jamna river early in its course, the canal irrigated the Sultan's territories in the Hissar region of Eastern Punjab. By the mid-16th century, however, the fine sediment carried by the Himalayan river had gradually choked the canal. Desilted and reopened several decades later by Akbar the Great, the Western Jamna Canal was itself tapped by Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan, and some of its water was diverted to Delhi. During this time another canal was cut off the river. The 129-mile Eastern Jamna Canal or Doab Canal, which took off from the left bank of the Jamna, also high in its course, presented a qualitatively different difficulty. Since it was cut through steeply sloped land, its flow became difficult to control, and it was never to function efficiently. With the decline of Mughal power in the 18th century, both canals fell into disrepair and closed. The Western Jamna Canal was repaired by British army engineers and it reopened in 1820. The Doab Canal was reopened in 1830; its considerable renovation involved raising the embankment by an average height of 9 ft. for some 40 miles.
The Ganges Canal highlighted in red stretching between its headworks off the Ganges river in Hardwar and its confluence with the Jumna river below Cawnpore (now Kanpur).
The first new British work—with no Indian antecedents—was the Ganges Canal built between 1842 and 1854.[75] Contemplated first by Col. John Russell Colvin in 1836, it did not at first elicit much enthusiasm from its eventual architect Sir Proby Thomas Cautley, who balked at idea of cutting a canal through extensive low-lying land in order to reach the drier upland destination. However, after the Agra famine of 1837–38, during which the East India Company's administration spent Rs. 2,300,000 on famine relief, the idea of a canal became more attractive to the Company's budget-conscious Court of Directors. In 1839, the Governor General of India, Lord Auckland, with the Court's assent, granted funds to Cautley for a full survey of the swath of land that underlay and fringed the projected course of the canal. The Court of Directors, moreover, considerably enlarged the scope of the projected canal, which, in consequence of the severity and geographical extent of the famine, they now deemed to be the entire Doab region.
The enthusiasm, however, proved to be short lived. Auckland's successor as Governor General, Lord Ellenborough, appeared less receptive to large-scale public works, and for the duration of his tenure, withheld major funds for the project. Only in 1844, when a new Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, was appointed, did official enthusiasm and funds return to the Ganges canal project. Although the intervening impasse, had seemingly affected Cautely's health and required him to return to Britain in 1845 for recuperation, his European sojourn gave him an opportunity to study contemporary hydraulic works in the United Kingdom and Italy. By the time of his return to India even more supportive men were at the helm, both in the North-Western Provinces, with James Thomason as Lt. Governor, and in British India with Lord Dalhousie as Governor-General. Canal construction, under Cautley's supervision, now went into full swing. A 350-mile long canal, with another 300 miles of branch lines, eventually stretched between the headworks in Hardwar and—after splitting into two branches at Nanau near Aligarh—the confluence with the Ganges at Cawnpore (now Kanpur) and with the Jumna (now Yamuna) mainstem at Etawah. The Ganges Canal, which required a total capital outlay of £2.15 million, was officially opened in 1854 by Lord Dalhousie. According to historian Ian Stone:
It was the largest canal ever attempted in the world, five times greater in its length than all the main irrigation lines of Lombardy and Egypt put together, and longer by a third than even the largest USA navigation canal, the Pennsylvania Canal.
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