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Peace, Poverty and Betrayal: A New History of British India
How can we explain the establishment and longevity of British rule in India without recourse to the clichés of 'imperial' versus 'nationalist' interpretations? In this new history, Roderick Matthews offers a more nuanced one of 'oblige and rule', the foundation of common purpose between colonisers and powerful Indians.Peace, Poverty and Betrayal argues that this was not a uniformly systematic approach, but rather a state of the British were never clear or consistent in their policies, and among British and Indians alike there were both progressive and conservative attitudes to the struggle over colonisation. Matthews' narrative also takes in the East India Company, which was manifestly incompetent as a ruler by 1770, yet after 1820 arguably became the world's first liberal government.Skilfully tying these ambiguities and complexities of British rule in India to the ultimate struggle for independence, Matthews illustrates that the very diversity of British- Indian relations was at the heart of the social changes that would lead to the Freedom Struggle of the twentieth century. Skewering the simplistic binaries that often dominate the debate, Peace, Poverty and Betrayal is a fresh and gracefully written narrative history of British India.
440 pages, Paperback
First published September 24, 2020
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About the author
Roderick Matthews
33 books10 followersRoderick Matthews is a freelance writer specializing in Indian history. He lives in London with his wife and two children. Born in 1956, he studied Modern History at Balliol College, Oxford, and has written for a number of British and Indian publications, including the Observer, the Literary Review, and the Times of India.
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October 2, 2021
Thomas Babington Macaulay, a British politician tasked to formulate an education policy for India in the 1830s, once disdainfully remarked that ‘the entire native literature of India is so meager as to occupy just one bookshelf in a contemporary European library’. Macaulay’s gaff suited the tastes of a conquering society who had just earned the ‘jewel in the empire’s crown’. After a century, the British left India and handed power back to Indians. India’s colonization and her struggle had been the subject of numerous books that they would now need not just a shelf, but an entire library – such was the prodigious output of creative energy! This book claims to be a new history of British India. It indeed is, in one aspect. Earlier, popular British authors simply imitated the official Indian perspective and criticized the colonial masters whenever they had a chance. This book is different in the sense that it does not uphold all Indian claims of victimhood and calls the Congress bluff that it represented the entire Indian society in the struggle for freedom. Roderick Matthews is a freelance writer specializing in Indian history and politics. He claims connection to India in that his great-grandfather tutored the young Nehru and one of his great-grandmothers cared for Gandhi when he fell ill in London in 1914.
Even though Britain is hailed as the mother of democracy, the reign of the East India Company and the rule of the Crown failed to develop any democratic institutions worth its name. The rulers kept the concept of electoral representation at arm’s length. This book makes a post-factual estimate of what had actually happened. British administrators used liberal principles to govern India without accepting liberal consultative mechanisms and deemed it good as long as the intentions of the government were good. The justification for delaying popular sovereign government was that good men were trying to do good things. Matthews accepts this paternalistic claim as an honest assessment of the situation.
The author argues that the real losing side in the 1857 Rebellion was the Indian reformers who had found some traditional Indian customs galling in the face of the little modernity ushered in as a result of interactions with British mores. Rammohan Roy’s reforms were revolutionary which did not suit the conservative palate. But still Roy found acceptance, even if grudgingly, from the traditionalists. Reformers thought that the English language, English social norms and even Christianity were the best ways forward for India. The reformers threw aside the caution of the respecters of Indian tradition. The English company came under increased pressure from the evangelical lobby after 1834 but it resisted adopting conversion as a policy. We read about many administrators who found the missionaries’ work a hindrance in the company’s path, especially the estrangement it produced among soldiers in its payroll.
1857 is the year which marks a distinct milestone of colonial rule in India. The rebellion against the British was eventually crushed at great cost, but it shook the empire to its core. Company rule was disbanded and the Crown took direct responsibility of India. Along with this, the priorities changed. Matthews finds that the lasting tragedy of 1857 was that Indians collectively lost the chance to make a modern India of their own design. With the Crown’s resolve not to intervene in religious matters of the native subjects, the reformers lost patronage which was never restored. What was then seen in its wake are revivalist movements or campaigns to go back to the roots. Here, the author fails to notice the advocated element of social change in these movements. What they strived for was not a blind imitation of the customs practiced a great many centuries ago. The British then halted modernization in the post-rebellion years. They had drafted the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 which needed only a few formalities to have effective penal force in the country. And then the rebellion broke out and the bill was kept in abeyance till the British left India for good. The bill for restriction of polygamy remained suspended until 1955. The government backed the landlords and tenants but not to the disadvantage of the other. Traditional social arrangements remained in place, but investments in public works increased.
This book contends that the colonial masters were always aware of the tenuousness of the rationale for ruling an alien land and its people. It sought legitimacy for the reign in the benevolent work they were performing on behalf of Indian people. Establishment of internal peace was one such point as the British had secured paramountcy over the native states and effectively disarmed local militias. However, they betrayed the newly educated, aspiring middle classes who could not find adequate reward for their skills or sufficient inclusion in the political life of the emerging India. It is hence not a coincidence that the freedom movement found its largest constituency in this group. The author also notes that before the electoral reforms in 1867 and 1884 in England that expanded voting rights to nearly half the adult male population, the two countries were run on a roughly similar pattern that in spite of no universal voting rights, the system accommodated diverse political interests indirectly.
Matthews lists out the events that led to the rise of a militant communal feeling that ended in the country’s partition into two states. Lord Ripon, then viceroy, introduced a package of reforming measures in local governments, which was designed to educate Indians in Western-style self-government. Municipal bodies had been appearing in Indian towns since the 1850s, but a system of elections was now introduced for membership which included separate electorates based on religious identity to ensure diversity of participation. This was then extended to rural boards outside the towns. Numbers now began to matter, especially for any self-identifying minority that perceived its own weakness (p.269-70). Gandhi exacerbated the issue with mass participation in protest movements. Until that time, political activity was limited to the elite or educated middle class, most of them lawyers. However, the book refrains from criticizing the Mahatma on this count. On other issues too, it even accepts his obviously make-believe excuses such as the one calling off non-cooperation upon the occurrence of the Chauri Chaura incident. The author meekly observes that ‘the Mahatma was distraught over the loss of life, and a combination of guilt and political instinct led him to call off the campaign’ (p.318).
The author produces a balance sheet of assets and liabilities of India on account of imperial rule that lasted nearly two centuries. Dadabhai Naoroji was the first to claim that Britain was robbing Indian financial wealth. This book refutes such claims with the argument that Indian anger against British loot of the nation is misdirected and inflated, being focused on trivialities like the Kohinoor. India’s wealth was primarily agricultural and it remained here for domestic consumption. There are speculative statistics with tall claims that India had 23 per cent of the world’s GDP in 1700, but this only proves that India was big. The country received internal disarmament and civil peace in return. The modern Indian state’s ideal of rule of law, religious liberty, legal equality, freedom of expression and protection of minorities were inherited from the British. Mass democracy was another legacy from the colonial stables, but ironically, it brought about partition. Matthews rebuts the claim that India funded the Industrial Revolution, which he remarks as a pleasing fantasy. Wealth transferred to Britain in the three decades after 1757 was spent on county houses and playing politics, rather than for funding power looms. After 1800, the profits in trade with India carried out by the East India Company were modest and the surplus came from its dealings with China. Positive balances in trade only grew substantially in the 1830s. Here the author forgets to mention that the largest export commodity to China was opium, which was produced in India. Direct drain of wealth from India was the Home charges, which are estimated at around 0.5 per cent of the GDP. Anyhow, India’s wealth was used in the imperial system for purposes that did not benefit India, such as military expenditure, preferential tariffs and the manipulation of foreign trade balances. He concludes that Naoroji was right about the concept, but wrong in estimating the numbers.
The book outlines the transition of the colonial government that was stern, kind and just in the initial stages to one that availed the first opportunity after the Second World War to cut losses and go back home. It catalogues the British viewpoint of the Indian colonial venture. The narrative is not very focused, but examines the career of high British Indian officials threadbare who ruled before the advent of Gandhi. After that, it goes in fast forward mode with only a superficial analysis of the flow of events.
The book is highly recommended.
Even though Britain is hailed as the mother of democracy, the reign of the East India Company and the rule of the Crown failed to develop any democratic institutions worth its name. The rulers kept the concept of electoral representation at arm’s length. This book makes a post-factual estimate of what had actually happened. British administrators used liberal principles to govern India without accepting liberal consultative mechanisms and deemed it good as long as the intentions of the government were good. The justification for delaying popular sovereign government was that good men were trying to do good things. Matthews accepts this paternalistic claim as an honest assessment of the situation.
The author argues that the real losing side in the 1857 Rebellion was the Indian reformers who had found some traditional Indian customs galling in the face of the little modernity ushered in as a result of interactions with British mores. Rammohan Roy’s reforms were revolutionary which did not suit the conservative palate. But still Roy found acceptance, even if grudgingly, from the traditionalists. Reformers thought that the English language, English social norms and even Christianity were the best ways forward for India. The reformers threw aside the caution of the respecters of Indian tradition. The English company came under increased pressure from the evangelical lobby after 1834 but it resisted adopting conversion as a policy. We read about many administrators who found the missionaries’ work a hindrance in the company’s path, especially the estrangement it produced among soldiers in its payroll.
1857 is the year which marks a distinct milestone of colonial rule in India. The rebellion against the British was eventually crushed at great cost, but it shook the empire to its core. Company rule was disbanded and the Crown took direct responsibility of India. Along with this, the priorities changed. Matthews finds that the lasting tragedy of 1857 was that Indians collectively lost the chance to make a modern India of their own design. With the Crown’s resolve not to intervene in religious matters of the native subjects, the reformers lost patronage which was never restored. What was then seen in its wake are revivalist movements or campaigns to go back to the roots. Here, the author fails to notice the advocated element of social change in these movements. What they strived for was not a blind imitation of the customs practiced a great many centuries ago. The British then halted modernization in the post-rebellion years. They had drafted the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856 which needed only a few formalities to have effective penal force in the country. And then the rebellion broke out and the bill was kept in abeyance till the British left India for good. The bill for restriction of polygamy remained suspended until 1955. The government backed the landlords and tenants but not to the disadvantage of the other. Traditional social arrangements remained in place, but investments in public works increased.
This book contends that the colonial masters were always aware of the tenuousness of the rationale for ruling an alien land and its people. It sought legitimacy for the reign in the benevolent work they were performing on behalf of Indian people. Establishment of internal peace was one such point as the British had secured paramountcy over the native states and effectively disarmed local militias. However, they betrayed the newly educated, aspiring middle classes who could not find adequate reward for their skills or sufficient inclusion in the political life of the emerging India. It is hence not a coincidence that the freedom movement found its largest constituency in this group. The author also notes that before the electoral reforms in 1867 and 1884 in England that expanded voting rights to nearly half the adult male population, the two countries were run on a roughly similar pattern that in spite of no universal voting rights, the system accommodated diverse political interests indirectly.
Matthews lists out the events that led to the rise of a militant communal feeling that ended in the country’s partition into two states. Lord Ripon, then viceroy, introduced a package of reforming measures in local governments, which was designed to educate Indians in Western-style self-government. Municipal bodies had been appearing in Indian towns since the 1850s, but a system of elections was now introduced for membership which included separate electorates based on religious identity to ensure diversity of participation. This was then extended to rural boards outside the towns. Numbers now began to matter, especially for any self-identifying minority that perceived its own weakness (p.269-70). Gandhi exacerbated the issue with mass participation in protest movements. Until that time, political activity was limited to the elite or educated middle class, most of them lawyers. However, the book refrains from criticizing the Mahatma on this count. On other issues too, it even accepts his obviously make-believe excuses such as the one calling off non-cooperation upon the occurrence of the Chauri Chaura incident. The author meekly observes that ‘the Mahatma was distraught over the loss of life, and a combination of guilt and political instinct led him to call off the campaign’ (p.318).
The author produces a balance sheet of assets and liabilities of India on account of imperial rule that lasted nearly two centuries. Dadabhai Naoroji was the first to claim that Britain was robbing Indian financial wealth. This book refutes such claims with the argument that Indian anger against British loot of the nation is misdirected and inflated, being focused on trivialities like the Kohinoor. India’s wealth was primarily agricultural and it remained here for domestic consumption. There are speculative statistics with tall claims that India had 23 per cent of the world’s GDP in 1700, but this only proves that India was big. The country received internal disarmament and civil peace in return. The modern Indian state’s ideal of rule of law, religious liberty, legal equality, freedom of expression and protection of minorities were inherited from the British. Mass democracy was another legacy from the colonial stables, but ironically, it brought about partition. Matthews rebuts the claim that India funded the Industrial Revolution, which he remarks as a pleasing fantasy. Wealth transferred to Britain in the three decades after 1757 was spent on county houses and playing politics, rather than for funding power looms. After 1800, the profits in trade with India carried out by the East India Company were modest and the surplus came from its dealings with China. Positive balances in trade only grew substantially in the 1830s. Here the author forgets to mention that the largest export commodity to China was opium, which was produced in India. Direct drain of wealth from India was the Home charges, which are estimated at around 0.5 per cent of the GDP. Anyhow, India’s wealth was used in the imperial system for purposes that did not benefit India, such as military expenditure, preferential tariffs and the manipulation of foreign trade balances. He concludes that Naoroji was right about the concept, but wrong in estimating the numbers.
The book outlines the transition of the colonial government that was stern, kind and just in the initial stages to one that availed the first opportunity after the Second World War to cut losses and go back home. It catalogues the British viewpoint of the Indian colonial venture. The narrative is not very focused, but examines the career of high British Indian officials threadbare who ruled before the advent of Gandhi. After that, it goes in fast forward mode with only a superficial analysis of the flow of events.
The book is highly recommended.
October 23, 2021
If freelance writer Roderick Matthews is to be believed, Indians complain too much about British (mis)rule of the sprawling landmass that was once the Indian empire. That the British ruled India for nearly two centuries (1765- 1947) proves it could not have been “irredeemably bad”; not a shot was fired in anger as the British packed up, showing “the story had a peaceful beginning and a peaceful end”. In any case, Indians as a body did not ‘nationally’ resist the British arrival nor did all Indians try to expel them in 1857. Matthews says Indians railing against the British as looters is misdirected and inflated anger, focused on trivialities like the Koh-i-noor diamond. He pooh-poohs the infamous “divide and rule” policy. According to him, the most relevant factor in the rise of communal identities, which led to the break-up of India, was electoral politics, not the colonial government per se. This is not a one-sided view of British Indian history. The author says the most significant thing the British stole from Indians was the opportunity to design their own future. Britain under stimulated the Indian economy, ignoring Indian interests. Colonial rule was heavily responsible for keeping India poor and backward. The British displayed public arrogance and titanic condescension in India. Many Indians will disagree with many assertions made in the book but it cannot be denied it is a scholarly and penetrating study.
-- M.R. Narayan Swamy
-- M.R. Narayan Swamy
April 2, 2022
Notes Pt1
Britain was seen as modernizing partner by progressive Indians, but great betrayal was afer 1857 Britain dumped the progressives and sided with the powerful landed conservatives seeking stability rather than modernity
Figuring out how to run India was the primary creation of knowledge that shaped British liberal politics and governance, ideas of Burke, Mill, Smith, Hume etc. Previously completed based on Locke, which was fine for small island but proved incapable of governing colonies and empire.
Warren Hastings only Governor General who was never raised to peerage. Burke took to him, and he made no friends in parliament, although King gave his support, and EIC rewarded his loyalty with all legal expenses and a pension.
Burke, though father of ‘modern conservatism’ (tradition, property, aristocracy, nation as mediator between citizen and state), had liberal Whig agendas of ‘saving Indians from themselves’, attacking excesses of British abroad.
Hastings’ tenure included Bombay/Madras presidencies coming under Bengal for first time, and they racked up huge debts meaning he had to raise funds through the autocratic measures that he would be later tried for.
Clive was a adventuring profiteer, wanting to become rich to chase honors back home. Hastings wanted to govern but keeping local tradition in place. Cornwallis embraced Britain’s manifest destiny of raising the Indians out of squalor. Richard Wellesley made most strides towards the idea of Empire, with both military and governmental expansion.
Arthur became more famous than brother Richard, despite having been in his shadow earlier. Learned from failed campaigns to always ‘see’ more, through reconnaissance and personal presence and positioned between enemy and own troops. Bucked the bias that a general who commanded in India and came to Europe was like an admiral who’d only sailed in Lake Geneva, with string of victories ending in Waterloo, earning military reputation equal to Napoleon.
Though they ended up paying more revenue to the British, the locals supported the new regime because taxation was regularized, not made excessive and cruel, and systematized, with the increase in revenue coming from reducing uncertainty and wastage.
South had no Zamindars, so British created the ryotwari system - direct collection from cultivators without middlemen landowners who are not incentivized to maximize production.
Malthus weighs in. James Mill, sitting on board of EIC, thought Britain could bring economic reform to corrupt locals. Dave Ricardo’s ideas greatly influenced his thinking on India.
Elphinstone: uncovers plot and shoots them from a cannon, refuses indemnity because either he’s right and needs no indemnity or he’s wrong and needs punishment. Rides camel into the desert, climbs unclimbable rocks. Sleeps on ground for months, upon resuming a bed when asked why he gave up on comforts, says because he was a fool. Refuses governor-general job multiple times.
Bengal had high enough population to support 4th estate. Bengali-language publications were all very non-controversial, but the British-run English presses were radical, Buckingham, editor of Calcutta Journal, sent home and strict press rules initiated.
By 1819 the EIC’s trade role was near-zero, only importing tea to Britain, so their natural interest turned to nation-building, revenue, education, law & order.
Heartbreaking - Charles Napier’s Peccavi never happened. The telegraph wasn’t even around until decades later.
4 high-handed governor generals - Ellenborough and Lytton who favored the upper classes. Curzon who favored the peasants (?), and Dalhousie who didn’t care about either.
Dalhousie dies at 48, never recovering health. Common theme, everyone seems to be dying prematurely of stroke or illness or overwork. Hellhole.
1857: Many warnings about rising sepoy discontent, mostly over pay. Also the forced international duty that made them ‘lose caste’. Pig-fat cartridge was only the spark, and even after cartridges were replaced sepoys refused to use them. Quickly became pan-North-India, but only rural. Big towns all supported English, especially the progressives, because the rebels’ published manifesto was only nihilistic, and nothing about building anything better or even knowing what that meant. Hence the great betrayal: the British didn’t reward the intellectuals and progressives for their support during 1857, and instead focused on the powerful landed to secure support for a regime based not on modernization but on law and order.
British mystified by the public disorder of riots across India for issues like cow slaughter. J.S.Mill ‘India not a candidate for self-government’, and general idea that it is Britain’s duty to rule, not privilege.
No British thought that could fill vacuum in Indian need for self-discovery and nationalism - turned to Japan, and Guiseppe Mazzini, architect of Italian unification (written about by Lala Lajpat Rai who liked the idea of moral regeneration through suffering/sacrifice, and VD.Savarkar / Aurobindo Ghosh who liked more radical ideas of armed rebellion through armies/secret societies.
A.O.Hume turned poacher from gamekeeper (British official to riling up Indians for self-determination), while Indian Congress leaders actively conceding Britain’s rule was fortuitous stroke of providence.
Clippings
in March 1927 he put together his ‘Delhi Proposals’, in which he offered to abandon separate electorates if the Congress was prepared to concede a fixed share of seats in the central legislature, along with some administrative changes that would give Muslims more majority provinces.The Congress eventually rejected this offer, a reflection of the confident view among the leadership that Jinnah was an irrelevant former party member whose opinions were unrepresentative, and with whom it was not necessary to do business.
Speaking of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1915 he wrote:‘We are solving things in a truly British way.We admit Indians to our councils and then relegate the councils to insignificance.’
Some considered this a poor deal, believing that Irwin had got what he wanted—Congress compliance—and Gandhi had not made progress on any of the main Congress demands about swaraj, military cutbacks, taxation and so forth. Gandhi considered it a triumph that he had been treated as an equal;Winston Churchill found this idea ‘nauseating’.
The inability of the Raj to consult the people even-handedly proved a weakness at least as crippling as its related inability to tax the people equitably.The late Raj spent very little on public works, and what it did spend represented a fraction of what it spent on the military.
Jinnah completely reorganized the party, closely copying the Congress’s constitution and regional organization. He also made a series of speeches warning that Islam was in danger, that ‘Hindu raj’ was coming, that Congress ‘atrocities’ were being committed against Muslims all over the country, and that Muslims could hope for nothing unless the League became the sole organ of Muslim opinion.
This autocratic temperament alienated virtually the whole Congress high command, and when he forced himself into the presidency again the next year, the Working Committee revolted. Bose, bitter and broken in health, complained that the ‘Rightists’ had conspired to bring him down. This was true, but Bose, who seems to have had a talent for misreading situations, seriously overestimated the strength of his support
Churchill remained convinced right up to Independence that the Congress was unrepresentative, led by a small, self-interested clique. His contempt for the Hindu elite joined easily with his conviction that the majority of ordinary Indians were Empire loyalists, as demonstrated by the two million or so who came forward for military service, eventually constituting the largest volunteer force in history.
The insurgency of that summer was compared by British officials to the events of 1857, and it was certainly the most widespread and violent challenge to British rule since that time. And it too failed, for roughly similar reasons. Again the objective was clear enough—the expulsion of alien rulers — but the movement had several familiar weaknesses: lack of resources, and an absence of central leadership.This time there were no mutinous sepoys to do the heavy fighting, so the best form of attack would have been to use organized labour to paralyse industry. But wartime circumstances had split the Indian left, with the official Communists backing the war effort as part of the Soviet struggle against fascism, after the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Moreover, it was not entirely obvious that the best hope of a brighter, socialist tomorrow was to bring down the Raj only to let in the Japanese. And with most of the senior Congress leaders interned, the movement could only hope for a guerrilla-style disruption of government, not a head-on confrontation.
Famine then came to Bengal, carrying off up to three million people.This was not the result of crop failure, but of a series of man-made circumstances. Requisitioning and hoarding drove up food prices, and incompetent and corrupt relief measures failed to ease the distress. Lord Wavell replaced Linlithgow as viceroy in October, and took vigorous measures to supply Bengal, rather to the annoyance of Churchill, who considered his actions as unhelpful to the war effort.
Churchill replied:‘I am quite satisfied with my views on India. I don’t want them disturbed by any bloody Indians.
Jinnah was not offered a fully sovereign Muslim state, nor did the Congress get a centralized, united India. The plan was for a complex, ‘three-tier’ structure. At the top would be a central authority responsible for foreign affairs, defence and communications. Below would come federated groups of provinces, and within the groups would be individual provinces, based on existing boundaries. This plan was rather more politically comprehensible than it was administratively workable.
Mountbatten did to Punjab and Bengal what Jinnah had proposed should be done to India; he partitioned them in order to protect the interests of a minority population.
Pakistan was obliged to finance its armed forces and administration based on only 17 per cent of the assets of imperial India.The British were convinced that this was not enough for a viable state, and Jinnah was repeatedly told this during the negotiations, but he refused to be deterred. Many senior Raj officials and Congress politicians considered that Pakistan would be back inside a federal Indian union within about a decade.
Mountbatten did not set out to partition India, a charge so commonly made by Indian writers that it would seem beyond argument. In reality, Mountbatten was under specific instructions to hand over power in three possible ways, ranked in order of desirability. He was instructed first to seek agreement to some version of the Cabinet Mission plan of May 1946; if this did not appear by October 1947, he was to implement any settlement that could be reached by agreement; then, if even this were not possible, the British would withdraw in June 1948, having handed power to whoever seemed most able to exercise it in the regions concerned.
Ferozepur. Originally destined for Pakistan, it went to India for a number of strategic reasons, including the provision of water to the state of Patiala (which had opted to join India) and the presence of a large military arsenal in the district. In this, as in several other elements of his viceroyalty, Mountbatten seems to have exhibited a distinct bias in favour of India.
At the time of his final departure, in June 1948, Mountbatten was massively popular with the Indian public, which was prepared, in quite unforced displays of affection, to cheer him and his wife to the echo as they left. It was a later generation of Indian writers that thought fit to assail his decisions and his integrity.
Critics have considered his punctiliousness about the Instrument of Accession to have been unnecessary, but in one important way it was vestiges of such formality that prevented full-scale war, because the Commanders-in-Chief of the two national armies were still British. Between the two of them and Mountbatten they agreed that the conflict should remain local. A great deal of the blame must also fall on Maharaja Hari Singh, who seemed incapable of making a decision no matter how much time he was given or how much advice he was offered. Here was a man who was still capable, in 1947, of wreaking havoc on a personal whim, which must count as the sourest legacy of the British decision to prop up autocratic princes. The Kashmir impasse can thus be accounted the most enduring result of 1857.
in late 1947 he still hoped to get Hyderabad through its autocratic ruler’s personal decision. Neither man found a good way forward. Jinnah resorted to armed intrusion, while Nehru propped up his position by allowing for a plebiscite—which was never held because of the military instability in the region.The deadlock has yet to be broken. India should have conceded Kashmir to Pakistan on the same logic as she took Hyderabad. But she took both, by force.
In the modern era it is now possible, though not easy, to search for subtler, unacknowledged influences. These might include the extended survival of the British hereditary ruling classes, who preserved themselves as ‘natural’ rulers, not of Britain, but of India. The Indian Empire was a source of marvellously flattering stories of aristocrats in action, ruling in ways they were no longer allowed to at home.
Between 1600 and 1757, wealth came back through the EIC, whose profits, in the good times, were conventional and legitimate.The plunder of Bengal after 1757 was different, but was largely a private matter, as was involvement with the debts of the Nawab of Arcot.The plunder of Bengal happened not because the Company was strong but because it was weak. And none of this ‘financed the Industrial Revolution’; the sums involved were too small and went to the wrong hands.The wealth transferred to Britain in the three decades after 1757 was spent on country houses and playing politics, not funding power looms. After 1800 the profits in trade with India earned by the EIC were modest, and its surplus came from its dealings in China.
Anyone who wishes to maintain that India somehow funded the Industrial Revolution in Britain will have to do three things: to show in what years the EIC made a profit or how much named nabobs brought home, how these sums relate to patterns of investment in machinery, and how the money could plausibly have got from EIC stockholders, or the nabobs, to factory owners in the north.
be.What if the revolt of 1857 had never happened? This last scenario represents the only likely way there ever was that the British might have readmitted Indians to self-government earlier than they did.Without the British reaction to the Uprising, the feudal class in India would not have taken hold of the country so securely, and profitability within the Indian economy might have risen sooner and faster than it did, driven by a search for profits away from agriculture.The most constructive partnership possible within India—between British technocrats and progressive Indian entrepreneurs—might have had a chance to flourish, nurtured by a government more dedicated to local growth.
British India was strongest, militarily, from 1842 to 1857, but soon afterwards the army began a long decline into inefficiency and obsolescence. From 1859 to 1885 the Raj was at its political zenith, but economically its best years were 1900–14, when the government was financially solid, the rupee was stable, the famines of the previous twenty-five years ended, and there was a boom in jute.The fact that these various peaks were not synchronized hints at the contingencies that lay beneath the assured exterior of British rule.
Britain was seen as modernizing partner by progressive Indians, but great betrayal was afer 1857 Britain dumped the progressives and sided with the powerful landed conservatives seeking stability rather than modernity
Figuring out how to run India was the primary creation of knowledge that shaped British liberal politics and governance, ideas of Burke, Mill, Smith, Hume etc. Previously completed based on Locke, which was fine for small island but proved incapable of governing colonies and empire.
Warren Hastings only Governor General who was never raised to peerage. Burke took to him, and he made no friends in parliament, although King gave his support, and EIC rewarded his loyalty with all legal expenses and a pension.
Burke, though father of ‘modern conservatism’ (tradition, property, aristocracy, nation as mediator between citizen and state), had liberal Whig agendas of ‘saving Indians from themselves’, attacking excesses of British abroad.
Hastings’ tenure included Bombay/Madras presidencies coming under Bengal for first time, and they racked up huge debts meaning he had to raise funds through the autocratic measures that he would be later tried for.
Clive was a adventuring profiteer, wanting to become rich to chase honors back home. Hastings wanted to govern but keeping local tradition in place. Cornwallis embraced Britain’s manifest destiny of raising the Indians out of squalor. Richard Wellesley made most strides towards the idea of Empire, with both military and governmental expansion.
Arthur became more famous than brother Richard, despite having been in his shadow earlier. Learned from failed campaigns to always ‘see’ more, through reconnaissance and personal presence and positioned between enemy and own troops. Bucked the bias that a general who commanded in India and came to Europe was like an admiral who’d only sailed in Lake Geneva, with string of victories ending in Waterloo, earning military reputation equal to Napoleon.
Though they ended up paying more revenue to the British, the locals supported the new regime because taxation was regularized, not made excessive and cruel, and systematized, with the increase in revenue coming from reducing uncertainty and wastage.
South had no Zamindars, so British created the ryotwari system - direct collection from cultivators without middlemen landowners who are not incentivized to maximize production.
Malthus weighs in. James Mill, sitting on board of EIC, thought Britain could bring economic reform to corrupt locals. Dave Ricardo’s ideas greatly influenced his thinking on India.
Elphinstone: uncovers plot and shoots them from a cannon, refuses indemnity because either he’s right and needs no indemnity or he’s wrong and needs punishment. Rides camel into the desert, climbs unclimbable rocks. Sleeps on ground for months, upon resuming a bed when asked why he gave up on comforts, says because he was a fool. Refuses governor-general job multiple times.
Bengal had high enough population to support 4th estate. Bengali-language publications were all very non-controversial, but the British-run English presses were radical, Buckingham, editor of Calcutta Journal, sent home and strict press rules initiated.
By 1819 the EIC’s trade role was near-zero, only importing tea to Britain, so their natural interest turned to nation-building, revenue, education, law & order.
Heartbreaking - Charles Napier’s Peccavi never happened. The telegraph wasn’t even around until decades later.
4 high-handed governor generals - Ellenborough and Lytton who favored the upper classes. Curzon who favored the peasants (?), and Dalhousie who didn’t care about either.
Dalhousie dies at 48, never recovering health. Common theme, everyone seems to be dying prematurely of stroke or illness or overwork. Hellhole.
1857: Many warnings about rising sepoy discontent, mostly over pay. Also the forced international duty that made them ‘lose caste’. Pig-fat cartridge was only the spark, and even after cartridges were replaced sepoys refused to use them. Quickly became pan-North-India, but only rural. Big towns all supported English, especially the progressives, because the rebels’ published manifesto was only nihilistic, and nothing about building anything better or even knowing what that meant. Hence the great betrayal: the British didn’t reward the intellectuals and progressives for their support during 1857, and instead focused on the powerful landed to secure support for a regime based not on modernization but on law and order.
British mystified by the public disorder of riots across India for issues like cow slaughter. J.S.Mill ‘India not a candidate for self-government’, and general idea that it is Britain’s duty to rule, not privilege.
No British thought that could fill vacuum in Indian need for self-discovery and nationalism - turned to Japan, and Guiseppe Mazzini, architect of Italian unification (written about by Lala Lajpat Rai who liked the idea of moral regeneration through suffering/sacrifice, and VD.Savarkar / Aurobindo Ghosh who liked more radical ideas of armed rebellion through armies/secret societies.
A.O.Hume turned poacher from gamekeeper (British official to riling up Indians for self-determination), while Indian Congress leaders actively conceding Britain’s rule was fortuitous stroke of providence.
Clippings
in March 1927 he put together his ‘Delhi Proposals’, in which he offered to abandon separate electorates if the Congress was prepared to concede a fixed share of seats in the central legislature, along with some administrative changes that would give Muslims more majority provinces.The Congress eventually rejected this offer, a reflection of the confident view among the leadership that Jinnah was an irrelevant former party member whose opinions were unrepresentative, and with whom it was not necessary to do business.
Speaking of the Viceroy’s Executive Council in 1915 he wrote:‘We are solving things in a truly British way.We admit Indians to our councils and then relegate the councils to insignificance.’
Some considered this a poor deal, believing that Irwin had got what he wanted—Congress compliance—and Gandhi had not made progress on any of the main Congress demands about swaraj, military cutbacks, taxation and so forth. Gandhi considered it a triumph that he had been treated as an equal;Winston Churchill found this idea ‘nauseating’.
The inability of the Raj to consult the people even-handedly proved a weakness at least as crippling as its related inability to tax the people equitably.The late Raj spent very little on public works, and what it did spend represented a fraction of what it spent on the military.
Jinnah completely reorganized the party, closely copying the Congress’s constitution and regional organization. He also made a series of speeches warning that Islam was in danger, that ‘Hindu raj’ was coming, that Congress ‘atrocities’ were being committed against Muslims all over the country, and that Muslims could hope for nothing unless the League became the sole organ of Muslim opinion.
This autocratic temperament alienated virtually the whole Congress high command, and when he forced himself into the presidency again the next year, the Working Committee revolted. Bose, bitter and broken in health, complained that the ‘Rightists’ had conspired to bring him down. This was true, but Bose, who seems to have had a talent for misreading situations, seriously overestimated the strength of his support
Churchill remained convinced right up to Independence that the Congress was unrepresentative, led by a small, self-interested clique. His contempt for the Hindu elite joined easily with his conviction that the majority of ordinary Indians were Empire loyalists, as demonstrated by the two million or so who came forward for military service, eventually constituting the largest volunteer force in history.
The insurgency of that summer was compared by British officials to the events of 1857, and it was certainly the most widespread and violent challenge to British rule since that time. And it too failed, for roughly similar reasons. Again the objective was clear enough—the expulsion of alien rulers — but the movement had several familiar weaknesses: lack of resources, and an absence of central leadership.This time there were no mutinous sepoys to do the heavy fighting, so the best form of attack would have been to use organized labour to paralyse industry. But wartime circumstances had split the Indian left, with the official Communists backing the war effort as part of the Soviet struggle against fascism, after the German invasion of Russia in 1941. Moreover, it was not entirely obvious that the best hope of a brighter, socialist tomorrow was to bring down the Raj only to let in the Japanese. And with most of the senior Congress leaders interned, the movement could only hope for a guerrilla-style disruption of government, not a head-on confrontation.
Famine then came to Bengal, carrying off up to three million people.This was not the result of crop failure, but of a series of man-made circumstances. Requisitioning and hoarding drove up food prices, and incompetent and corrupt relief measures failed to ease the distress. Lord Wavell replaced Linlithgow as viceroy in October, and took vigorous measures to supply Bengal, rather to the annoyance of Churchill, who considered his actions as unhelpful to the war effort.
Churchill replied:‘I am quite satisfied with my views on India. I don’t want them disturbed by any bloody Indians.
Jinnah was not offered a fully sovereign Muslim state, nor did the Congress get a centralized, united India. The plan was for a complex, ‘three-tier’ structure. At the top would be a central authority responsible for foreign affairs, defence and communications. Below would come federated groups of provinces, and within the groups would be individual provinces, based on existing boundaries. This plan was rather more politically comprehensible than it was administratively workable.
Mountbatten did to Punjab and Bengal what Jinnah had proposed should be done to India; he partitioned them in order to protect the interests of a minority population.
Pakistan was obliged to finance its armed forces and administration based on only 17 per cent of the assets of imperial India.The British were convinced that this was not enough for a viable state, and Jinnah was repeatedly told this during the negotiations, but he refused to be deterred. Many senior Raj officials and Congress politicians considered that Pakistan would be back inside a federal Indian union within about a decade.
Mountbatten did not set out to partition India, a charge so commonly made by Indian writers that it would seem beyond argument. In reality, Mountbatten was under specific instructions to hand over power in three possible ways, ranked in order of desirability. He was instructed first to seek agreement to some version of the Cabinet Mission plan of May 1946; if this did not appear by October 1947, he was to implement any settlement that could be reached by agreement; then, if even this were not possible, the British would withdraw in June 1948, having handed power to whoever seemed most able to exercise it in the regions concerned.
Ferozepur. Originally destined for Pakistan, it went to India for a number of strategic reasons, including the provision of water to the state of Patiala (which had opted to join India) and the presence of a large military arsenal in the district. In this, as in several other elements of his viceroyalty, Mountbatten seems to have exhibited a distinct bias in favour of India.
At the time of his final departure, in June 1948, Mountbatten was massively popular with the Indian public, which was prepared, in quite unforced displays of affection, to cheer him and his wife to the echo as they left. It was a later generation of Indian writers that thought fit to assail his decisions and his integrity.
Critics have considered his punctiliousness about the Instrument of Accession to have been unnecessary, but in one important way it was vestiges of such formality that prevented full-scale war, because the Commanders-in-Chief of the two national armies were still British. Between the two of them and Mountbatten they agreed that the conflict should remain local. A great deal of the blame must also fall on Maharaja Hari Singh, who seemed incapable of making a decision no matter how much time he was given or how much advice he was offered. Here was a man who was still capable, in 1947, of wreaking havoc on a personal whim, which must count as the sourest legacy of the British decision to prop up autocratic princes. The Kashmir impasse can thus be accounted the most enduring result of 1857.
in late 1947 he still hoped to get Hyderabad through its autocratic ruler’s personal decision. Neither man found a good way forward. Jinnah resorted to armed intrusion, while Nehru propped up his position by allowing for a plebiscite—which was never held because of the military instability in the region.The deadlock has yet to be broken. India should have conceded Kashmir to Pakistan on the same logic as she took Hyderabad. But she took both, by force.
In the modern era it is now possible, though not easy, to search for subtler, unacknowledged influences. These might include the extended survival of the British hereditary ruling classes, who preserved themselves as ‘natural’ rulers, not of Britain, but of India. The Indian Empire was a source of marvellously flattering stories of aristocrats in action, ruling in ways they were no longer allowed to at home.
Between 1600 and 1757, wealth came back through the EIC, whose profits, in the good times, were conventional and legitimate.The plunder of Bengal after 1757 was different, but was largely a private matter, as was involvement with the debts of the Nawab of Arcot.The plunder of Bengal happened not because the Company was strong but because it was weak. And none of this ‘financed the Industrial Revolution’; the sums involved were too small and went to the wrong hands.The wealth transferred to Britain in the three decades after 1757 was spent on country houses and playing politics, not funding power looms. After 1800 the profits in trade with India earned by the EIC were modest, and its surplus came from its dealings in China.
Anyone who wishes to maintain that India somehow funded the Industrial Revolution in Britain will have to do three things: to show in what years the EIC made a profit or how much named nabobs brought home, how these sums relate to patterns of investment in machinery, and how the money could plausibly have got from EIC stockholders, or the nabobs, to factory owners in the north.
be.What if the revolt of 1857 had never happened? This last scenario represents the only likely way there ever was that the British might have readmitted Indians to self-government earlier than they did.Without the British reaction to the Uprising, the feudal class in India would not have taken hold of the country so securely, and profitability within the Indian economy might have risen sooner and faster than it did, driven by a search for profits away from agriculture.The most constructive partnership possible within India—between British technocrats and progressive Indian entrepreneurs—might have had a chance to flourish, nurtured by a government more dedicated to local growth.
British India was strongest, militarily, from 1842 to 1857, but soon afterwards the army began a long decline into inefficiency and obsolescence. From 1859 to 1885 the Raj was at its political zenith, but economically its best years were 1900–14, when the government was financially solid, the rupee was stable, the famines of the previous twenty-five years ended, and there was a boom in jute.The fact that these various peaks were not synchronized hints at the contingencies that lay beneath the assured exterior of British rule.
September 24, 2021
RAJ APOLOGIST….JUSTIFYING RACISM AND COLONIALISM …British literally caused a genocide in Bengal…PATHETIC
NO WONDER RACISM IS INCREASING IN PRESENT DAY UK
NO WONDER RACISM IS INCREASING IN PRESENT DAY UK
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