Empire in Asia : how we came by it ; a book of confessions

Contents

I. Introduction", II. A Foothold nbab the Sea, .

III. Beginnings of Aggression,

IV. Plundeepul Times, .

Chapter I. Intkoduction

" It would be an ill lesson indeed for the people of India, that while they are subjects to Vizier or Soubahdar we will protect them in their rights, that while they hold of him we will stand forth in their favour. If he attempts to oppress you, we will rescue you from the hands of your lawful master ; but if by conquest or by any other means we become your sovereign, remember there is none can guarantee the treaty between you and us. The power of the sovereign is all, the right of the vassal is nothing. You are persons without right, engagement, or any political existence, but our will and arbitrary pleasure. That this doctrine is unjust, that it is inequitable, that it is monstrous, that it is detestable, is so clear that I am almost ashamed of having misspent time in showing how impolitic it is." ^

— Charles James Fox.

A T the beginning of the seventeenth century, India may ■^^ be said to have been, to the people of Europe, an unknown land. Save to the learned who had read of its ancient fame, or to such as listened to the wonder-weaving legends that now and then made their way from the shores of the Levant, its name was a sound that woke no echo of individual hope or national solicitude. It was out of reach ; it was out of sight : from the cupidity of Christendom it was safe. The command which said, "Ye shaU not

^ Speech on the Benares charge ; impeachment of Warren Hastings, 22d February 1788.— Speeches in the Trial, edited by E. A. Bond, vol. i. p. 197.

A covet," spake of a neighbour's goods ; for it is those things that are pleasant to the eye to see, and pleasant to the lip to taste, that stand "chiefly in need of its inhihition.

But distance, which had hitherto left fair Hindustan secure from European lust, seemed to lessen year by year, after the Portuguese and Dutch mariners had proved that the Cape of Storms could be safely passed in ships of heavy burthen. The prolific isles of the Eastern Sea were speedily lit upon by these birds of adventure ; and the loud satisfaction they were heard to express, invited by degrees successive migratory expeditions of the rival or kindred dwellers in the colder regions they had wandered from. Finding on their arrival that there was room enough for all, certain of these latter set about the business in a more methodical way, and strove by various regulations, charters, laws, — and, whenever needful, forgetfulness of laws, — ^to establish for themselves the most lucrative and gigantic monopoly that the annals of commerce contain.

In the accomphshment of this gradually formed and slowly developed plan, they were eminently successful. By degrees they drove the Portuguese, or first discoverers, completely from the field ; and the Dutch, who came somewhat later, and who made a harder fight for their share, were eventually reduced to so low an ebb, that they continue now rather by sufferance than by any inherent power of self-defence to retain a remnant of their once great possessions. The Spaniards were engrossed with their acquisitions in the West, but the French were easUy led to put faith in fortune in the Eastern seas ; and, at a later period, fair promises of factories and fortresses, influence and dominion, in Asia, seemed likely to be realised. The English, for a time, lagged slowly in the race of gain and glory. They had come last, and they stood long at disad-

INTRODUCTION. 3

vantage. Civil dissensions and tlie want of a strong and wise Government at home left them without material support ; and they had to be content, from the accession to the overthrow of the house of Stuart, to chaffer and bargain as best they might with the rulers and people of the land.

The bravest hearts and clearest heads among them during the seventeenth century, never dreamed that they were marking the site, if not laying the foundation, of an empire — ^not of the ocean merely, or its isles, — not of trade alone, with its infinite produce, — but of territory won by the sword for its own rich sake, and kept by the same for the like reason.

Southern Asia, in the days of Walpole and the elder Pitt, was still ruled, like Western Europe, by a number of distract and independent Governments differing in origin, creed, power, and civilisation ; frequently at feud with one another, and often suffering from overweening vanity and ambition, just as if they had been blessed with the paternal sway of most Christian kings, august and apostolic kaisers, or most religious and gracious sovereigns of immortal memory : but they were practically self-ruled and locally free. Even where the loosening ties of fealty to Moslem or Mahratta suzerain rendered states of a secondary rank dependent in diplomacy or war upon the superior will of Peishwa or Padishah, the people of each separate province still saw in the midst of them the camp and the court of the prince whom they obeyed ; and, whatever may have been the burthens on their industry, they cotild not be unconscious that its produce was lavished or husbanded within their borders. .

The whole of the vast region lying between the Affghan hiUs and those of Burmah, and from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin, 1,500,000 square miles, with upwards of

200,000,000 of inliabitants, consists to-day of revenue districts under an English Minister, or of mediatised states dependent for their contiauance in that equivocal condition on his win.

No change like this, effected within a single century, is to be found in the chronicles of conquest. It may be said to have been begu.n in 1757, when India was but a geographical expression, identical with no political unity, and to have been completed in 1858 by the proclamation that her present Majesty assumed thenceforth the rights, duties, and responsibilities of sovereignty throughout the wide domains partially or perfectly brought beneath her sway. As foreshorteniag is in art the means whereby the -most vivid sense of reality is imparted, it is even so in history. The infinitely varied lights and shades that fall upon events as they unfold themselves in succession, render it difficult, if not impossible, to realise as one the aggregate of facts which we know to be indisputable. But it is instructive as well as startling, to place for a moment the beginning and the end of recent and contemporary changes in the degree of proximity, wherein from afar they will by and by appear in the view of the historian. How will our acquisition of empire in the East, and our actual position there, look in the sight of those who shall come after us ? How does it look in the .sight of Heaven ?

These are not merely curious questions fit to amuse the speculative or idle. If public morals be a reality, and if there be such a thing as national conscience and national accountability, it behoves us, as a free people, to consider how we came by Asiatic empire, and how, for its sake, and for our own, we ought to deal with it.

If the attempt of Napoleon to subjugate Europe to his authority may be said to have begun at Campo Formio, and

if we can imagine the course of victory rolling onwards at Lis bidding until it reached at length the shores of the Dardanelles- and those of Lapland, the banks of the Vistula and the mouth of the Tagus, we shall have something like an accurate parallel, as far as space is concerned, and the variety of creeds and G-overnments existing in that space, to that which is now presented to the world by the spectacle of British India. Great and manifold as are the discrepan- ' cies between the two, there are points of analogy not ascribable to accident. Napoleon, when he conquered, did not always or generally annex or seek to crush the memory or the spirit of separate political existence. He pulled down kings and set up his nominees in their room ; but he left Naples, Spain, Holland, and Westphalia the titular dignity and the municipal freedom of separate states, and was prudently content with the absorption of comparatively limited acquisitions, and their incorporation as provinces of France. No scruple would assuredly have withheld him from adopting an indiscriminate policy of imperial amalgamation. But we know from his public acts, and from his private after-thoughts in captivity, that his ambition was not to be head constable, but Lord Paramount of Western and Southern Europe. He was a fearless and a selfish man, but he had the discernment, foresight, and magnanimity of genius ; and to him it would have seemed purbliad impolicy and greedy blundering to have afi'ected to establish, for such widely-scattered realms, one centralised administration in Paris. On the contrary, he spent no end of time and toil in replacing firmly, as he thought, the foundations and the outworks of separate and local government in nearly all the subordinated states over which his power extended. His aim was to be suzerain — appellate judge in peace, generalissimo in- war. But he thoroughly understood that the vigour of the gigantic system he essayed to form, and the chance of its prolonged existence, rested upon the degree in which it might be possible to reconcile loyalty to empire with the preservation of traditional and progressive ideas of separate nationality and local self-rule. That this was his splendid dream is demonstrable not merely from his words, but from his actions ; and in truth, no other supposition is intelligible. Nor is there in any of his numerous confessions of error and miscalculation, a trace to be found of misgiving as to the Avisdom of this characteristic portion of his conduct. He feU through other, causes, not from this ; a,nd the fact that his vast designs perished ere they were complete, ought not to blind us to the lessons that may be gathered from the manner in which he made use of partial success.

The spirit of conquest breathes so fearlessly through every page of England's history, that it would probably be reckoned by the majority of her people rather absurd to attempt, by any timid or ingenious paraphrase, to hide from view the real nature of an attribute whereof they are nationally not a little proud. From the earliest times, they appear to have cherished a longing for foreign possessions ; and from the days when Edward and Henry devoted aU the flower of English knighthood, and all the contributions of English trade, to " the conquest of France," to those when the red Indian of America was proclaimed a usurper of the hunting-grounds his forefathers immemoriaUy had enjoyed, the love of territorial acquisition has been ' deemed by most of our distinguished, royal, and noble authorities, worth gratifying at any cost which the nation from time to time might be brought to think it could aiford. That many notable attempts ended in memorable discomfiture is indeed most true. "Such," as court chaplains preach-

INTRODUCTION. 7

ing for a bishopric were wont to utter with a sigh, " are the ways of Providence ! " But the history of European Governments must be re-written ere Christendom can honestly disclaim the practical belief that it is pleasant, glorious, and profitable, when you can, to hold down a neighbour by the throat, and take his sword and money from him. The longing for forbidden fruit seems to be ineradicable, and few of the great names we are accustomed to recall with admiration are wholly clear from the charge. The pen that signed reluctantly, after six years' costly and disastrous war, the recognition of American independence, traced an enlarged scheme of territorial compensation for the loss, in Hindustan.

Though Chatham in opposition scandalised all good society by exclaiming that " he rejoiced to hear the Colonies had resisted," Chatham in ofl&ce never would agree to let them go. His greater son was by temperament averse from war, and disapproved, he said, of encroachments in the East; but he never gave back anything his subordinates had got by fair means or foul. In. later times, English statesmen have indeed taken credit for greater magnanimity; and Lord Castlereagh in particular has been praised for restoring Java to the Dutch, and Sicily to the Italians. But if in this respect, in Europe, he made a great character, in Asia he took care to spend it like a gentleman. It would be useless to multiply examples, worse than useless to set up invidious contrasts and recriminations. Our duty is not to judge others, but ourselves ; to beware of covetousness, and of being betrayed into passive complicity by unpardonable laziness to seek, or still more despicable cowardice to own, the truth. We cannot undo what is done, but for that we are not accountable. We are accountable, as a freespeaking and freely represented people, for all that may hereafter be done in our name ; and if upon investigation^ — wHcli with, honour and in conscience we are not at liberty to elude — ^we are convinced, with Burke and Fox, with Cornwallis and Bentinck, with the elder MUl and Eichard Cobden, that a great debt of reparation is due to India by this countrj"-, we are bound to use every just and fair occasion to press for restitution to individuals of such rights and benefits as can be restored to them, compatibly with justice to others equally claiming our care, and for such restitution of local self-rule to the nations of the East as may not be incompatible with the preservation of peace amongst them, and the maiutenance of that suzerainty in the English crown, which they,in common, never acknowledged as due to any other single authority.

It wiU be necessary that we should briefly recall the commencement of the intercourse between England and the Eastern peninsula. Nor ■will it, perhaps, be thought waste of time if we try to retrace the stealthy steps by which strangers got a permanent footing in the country, and how they stood, contrasted with the people and the native Governments of India, at the period when, properly speaking, the struggle for ascendancy began.

Chapter II. A Foothold Near The Sea

1500—1700.

•* I cannot think that, if all the ranks of the different communities of Europe and India are comparatively viewed, there is just ground for any arrogant feeling on the part of the former."

— SiK J. Maloolji.i

TN the reign of Emanuel, King of Portugal, a fleet of four armed vessels was sent forth on an expedition of discovery, and the command of it was given to Vasco de Gama. Steering his venturous course beyond Madeira and the coast of Guinea, he reached at length the southernmost point of Africa ; and believing that a path to India lay through those waters, whose insincere repose invited him to trust his weary fleet upon their bosom, he spread his sails once more, and with a prosperous voyage attained the coast of Malabar. After a brief stay, De Gama returned to Europe. His countrjnnen were intoxicated with joy. The key of the East was found. Infinite wealth, imperishable fame, was theirs. Let new fleets be equipped and launched without delay. Who or what should hinder their prosperity ? ^

This was the morning time of Eastern discovery, and every object wore a glittering and exaggerated form. Ignorance lay like a soft haze over aU things, and in the distance anything might dwell, waiting to be revealed.

' Memoirs of India. ^ Eeynal's Indies, book I.

As tte clearer light of information grew, the dreams of dawn passed reluctantly away. There were no treasures, to be had for merely asking ; but there was abundant scope for industry and enterprise. The people of Hindustan were not timid savages, capable of being robbed or swindled by whoever chose to try ; they were a great and intelligent ^ race, acquainted with commerce and the arts, and ready to exchange the various produce of their skill for objects of Western workmanship. By degrees these soberer but far more lucrative advantages arising from the discovery of De Grama became understood, and the Portuguese succeeded in establishing relations of commercial friendship with the minor princes of the East, and finally with the imperial court of Delhi. They confined their ambition to mercantile pre-eminence, and engaged in naval warfare only with those European powers who sought to interfere with them.^ Among these, the Dutch for a while were the most conspicuous, and eventually the most successful. In 1611, they worsted the Portuguese fleet, and forcibly took possession of Surat. By degrees they gained a complete ascendancy over their forerunners, and they would probably have sought more extensive continental possessions than those adjoining their factories at Ormuz and at Goa, had not their attention soon after been engrossed by the culture of those garden isles that stud the Indian Sea. Meantime the English and French began to seek their share of a traffic which promised to be so profitable. The design of an East India Company^ was among the many schemes of Colbert for developing the maritime power of his coimtry ; and, though ill-conducted and sustained, the plan of establishing a like association was not forgotten by the Ministers of England.

^ Anderson's History of Commerce, and Reynal. ' In 1644.

A FOOTHOLD NEAR THE SEA. n

Little more than two centuries have elapsed since a few English merchants humbly solicited from the princes of . India permission to traffic with their people. " Our dominion now embraces nearly the whole of that vast region which extends from Cape Comorin to the mountains of Thibet;" — such are the significant words in which the great historian of English power in India opens his narrative. The first charter to a Company trading to the East was granted in the year 1600. Its provisions are in no way remarkable, but it may be recalled, as an apt illustration of the exclusively mercantile character of the undertaking, that when the Government of that day endeavoured to impose a court favourite upon the first expedition as a sinecurist, the committee of the Company declared that they desired " not to employ any gentlemen in any place of charge, and requested that they might be allowed to sort their business, with men of their own qualitie." ^ For many years afterwards, they were content with fitting out a few vessels, adapted to the commerce of the East ; and they deemed themselves fortunate when their annual adventures proved remunerative. The Portuguese and Dutch, their only rivals, possessed several factories or entrepots of trade on different parts of the Indian coast. It becanie an early object with the English Company to gain similar places of security for their goods ; and as the jealousy between them and the Dutch grew warm, their anxiety to get a footing on the continent increased. James I. addressed a letter to his " illustrious brother," the Mogul, commending them to his protecting care. Jehanglr sufi'ered them to found settlements at Surat, Cambay, and Ahmedabad, and in 1613 • issued a firman confirming them in these possessions.

Sir Thomas Eoe was sent as ambassador to the court at

1 Mill's History of India, I, book I. vol. i.

Delhi in 1615, and was received with honour and hospitality there. Another factory was founded in the following year. In 1616 the Company had established themselves at Calicut and Masulipatam. In 1624 they obtained a grant of jurisdiction over their own servants, — it being as difficult to keep order in a distant factory, amidst a foreign community, as among the crew of a ship at sea. The Padishah, being a just man and wise, understood their needs, and yielded what they asked, little dreaming that the time would come, when, from such root of title, they would claim jurisdiction over his subjects and successors, and, as the penalty of resistance, decimate the' one, and imprison the other for life as guUty of rebellion.

In 1639 Fort St George was founded, and eventually raised into what was called a Presidency or residence of those who were intrusted with the chief direction of the Company's aiFatrs in those distant regions. From the outset the Company maintained the strictest principles of monopoly. Any ships but their own, whether manned by their countrymen or by foreigners, were causes of complaint, and, when unarmed, of pursuit and capture. They grumbled at being undersold by the Dutch, and the English who ventured on independent traffic they designated and treated as pirates. The horrors of this system have been often told. The Dutch resented the cruelties practised upon their countrjrtnen, and every school history recounts how several Englishmen were put to the rack at Amboyna. But the truth, says an old chronicler, founding his statements upon English authorities of the period, was, " that they themselves at this very time were in the habit of perpetrating tortures upon their own countrymen, even their own servants. Before they were intrusted with the powers of martial law, they made it a rule to tvhip to death or starve

J FOOTHOLD NEAR THE SEA. 13

to death those of -whom they wished to get rid ; and the power of executing for piracy was made use of to murder private traders." ^

When Bombay was overrun by the Mahratta chief Sivajl in 1664, the English, under Sir E. Oxenden, the governor, successfully defended Surat, and thereby laid the basis of their reputation for constancy and prowess in the East. Aurungzebe, who reigned at Delhi, sent to compliment them on the courage they had shown, and volunteered further privileges as their reward. In the reign of Charles II., Bombay, which had been a Portuguese settlement, was ceded to the King of England, as part of Princess Catherine's marriage portion ; and it was thought of so little value, that the open-hearted monarch conceded it to his open-handed subjects the Company. Thus, in the \ progress of the first eighty years of their intercourse with /'' the East, they contrived to make some money, to establish themselves as colonists in several important places, to commit an infinity of misdemeanours of various degrees of enormity upon friends and foes, but not as yet to excite the jealousy of the Oriental powers.

Some years later, their rash and ofi"ensive demeanour at Bombay provoked the Mogul also to wage war against them. He issued orders declaring that it was no longer compatible with the safety of his dominions that they should be suffered to remain for their purposes of encroachment. They were driven from Surat ; Bombay was be- \ sieged ; and possession was taken of their factories at Visigapatam, and other places ; but they had already learned to diplomatise, and "stooped to the most abject submissions." ^ The Emperor yielded to entreaty, and sufi"ered the restoration of Surat. He deemed the loss of their trade

1 Note to Mill, I. book I. chap. ii. ' Mill, book I. chap. v.

likewise a consideration ;^ and in the recent consciousness of having broiight them to the verge of extinction, he relapsed into false security, believing that in case of renewed danger he might easily at any future day bridle their presumption again.

The chiefs of Bengal appear to have been more upon their guard than the rest of their neighbours. They viewed with alarm the insidious progress of the strangers in founding and fortifying new positions along their shores. The advantages of augmented revenue and trade they suspected might be bought too dear ; and after numerous petty misunderstandings with the Company, matters came to an open rupture. Of the rights of the immediate quarrel we are uninformed; and it shoxdd be carefully borne in mind that, until a very modem period, we are totally destitute of statements upon any side but one. AU we know is the result of unwary admissions, or of the comparison and translation into vulgar truth of official documents. Thus we may be satisfied that, however dark the colouring seems throughout the strange and eventful history we are entering upon, it is lighter than the revelation of much that can never be dragged into the view of this world would render it.

Hitherto the Company had everywhere professed to be the humble servants of the princes of the East; but when they fell out with the Nawab of Bengal, a new scene opened. They ventured to question whether disguise had not been worn long enough, and whether the policy they had found so successful with their own countrymen and with the Dutch, might not answer also with the native powers. Accordingly, in 1685, they fitted out their first invading expedition, and sent it forth with orders to seize 1 Mill, book I. chap. v.

A 'FOOTHOLD NEAR THE SEA. 15

CHttagong, and to do such further violence as might be practicable to those amongst whom they had hitherto dwelt in peace. This premature attempt at open aggression failed ; had it succeeded it might have opened the eyes of the Governments generally in Hindustan to the danger and folly of temporising conduct. But it was fated otherwise ; and after seizing the island of JujeUee and burning the town of Balasore, the raiders suffered a severe reverse ; and the loss of their factories at Patna and Cosimbuzar reduced them to seek for terms of accommodation.^

From that day the designs of the Company were changed from the mere pursuit of commerce to those of territorial acquisition. In the instructions sent out, from England in 1689, we find the foUowing significant expressions : — " The increase of our revenue is the subject of our care as much as our trade : it is that must maintain our force, when twenty accidents may interrupt our trade ; it is that must mahe us a nation in India ; without that we are a great number of interlopers united by charter, fit only to trade where nobody thinks it their interest to prevent us." And undeviatingly were these instructions followed by successive generations of " Company's servants," as they were styled. Thenceforth trade was valued less for its own sake than as a diplomatic agent, or a weU-appointed pioneer to prepare the way for dominion. The experience which had been lost upon the Padisha,h in their recent conflict with him was not thrown away on them. In 1699 they persuaded him to grant them liberty to found several new factories, and to erect forts beside them. " This, however," says their historian, "they began cautiously, so as not to alarm the native Governments."

The closing days of the century were spent by the

^ MOl, book I. chap. v.

Company's servants at the mouths of the Hooghly in establishing themselves in three villages, Chuttanatti, Calcutta, and Grovindpur, which had been granted them as a jaghire on the customary terms of fealty and tribute by Azim-sh^h, when Soubahdar of Bengal. A rich present had induced the grandson of Aurungzebe to make them this concession ; an^, with or without his leave, they lost no time in erecting works, to which, in compliment to their sovereign at home, they gave the name of Fort William.

Since the wolf's cub leaped over the mud wall on the banks of Tiber, nothing so pregnant with consequences had happened in the history of empire-building ; yet few things attracted less of notice among the Whig politicians of St James's, or the Tory politicians of St Germain ; — so little, indeed, that the date is erroneously given in many popular histories, the matter not having been thought apparently worth accurately searching out. The Mogul, living far inland at Delhi, probably heard no more for some time of his new tenants-in-fee, who had come over the dark waters, and humbly craved his permission to squat near the seashore. If he was told of their planting stockades, and putting a sort of fortification there, why should he trouble himself regarding it ? Likely enough his native subjects around them were jealous and disposed to be quarrelsome. Why should not Feringhees defend themselves as best they might ? Poor people ! they had come a long way, and seemed to work hard — ^he would not interfere.

Chapter III. Beginnings Of Aggression

1701—1756.

" A new scene is now to open in the history of the East India Company. Before this period they had maintained the character of mere traders, and by humility and submission endeavoured to preserve a footing in that distant country, under the native powers. We shall now behold them entering the lists' of war, and mixing with eagerness in the contests of princes."

— James Mill.^

A T the beginning of tlie eighteenth century, the ties ■^ which had held together the dominions of Aurungzebe were visibly beginning to decay. As in the dependencies of Spaia under PhUip II., the infatuation of proselytism had tended only to work the disintegration of the scattered realm. In Bengal especially this species of impolicy had served to shake the loyalty of the people. The poorer and more ignorant sort yielded to the harsh dictates of their masters, and to some extent conformed to the Mohammedan faith. The more subtle iateUects of the Brahmins resorted to evasion, and the wealthier classes were able to purchase the luxury of keeping a conscience, and of transmitting to their children the traditions of Vishnu. Elsewhere the bulk of the population adhered to the rites and tenets of their fathers; but throughout Southern India, the sUent process of alienation had set in.