Brief Annals of pillaging India
On 5th of May, 1789 just few months before the fall of Bastille, Edmund Burke, political philosopher and orator said in the British parliament, “An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” What prompted Burke to utter those words had nothing to do any event related to Europe but to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India. The four days long speech, however absurd and unfair to Hastings it may seem, the impeachment perfectly epitomize how the acute instability was imposed upon a society by completely ruining its organic economic foundation.
Paradise of nations
The Indian subcontinent in the beginning of the 18th century was the workshop of the world, producing almost a quarter of the global manufacturing output, compared to just about 2% for Britain. Bengal in the subcontinent was the “Paradise of Nations” and was the richest suba in the Mughal Empire, for its proximity to good raw materials, vast stretches of fertile land which grew high quality cottons, rice from the days lost in antiquity drawing merchants from all over the world. Roman historian Pliny and the cotton weavers in Britain had one thing in common; both complained about golds being drained for the high import of Indian cotton fabrics whose commercial monopoly was invincible due to combination of low price and high quality. Bengal was also known for its profound diversity with almost 150 names for its textiles viz. Muslins, silk or calicoes. Dhaka was renowned for the transparency and delicacy of its fine Muslins. A pound of its fine cotton could provide 250 miles of Muslin thread. The phutti cotton on the bank of Meghna would be termed by the British resident as the “Finest cotton in the world”. From 12% in 1668-1670, Bengal’s share of total company’s import jumped to 42% in 1690 making it largest single source of supply. But things were about to change in post-Aurangzeb India when the Mughals started losing its control over the territories due to gradual drain of the treasury for the more than necessary stretched South India policy of Aurangzeb and the repeated assaults from North West and as well as from the Marathas.
Bengal revolution; Commencement of an ending
Political treachery, masked disloyalty and subsequent tossing of the thrown were nothing new in Indian history but the significance of the defeat and killing of Siraj Ud Daula in 1757 rests on the fact that it started an era, from where the British, once appeared as humble traders whose commercial interests depended upon the firmans of Nawabs, would now regulate not only their own fate and business prospects but the political atmosphere of subcontinent by slowly outmanoeuvring the Dutch, Portuguese and the French.
In 18th century, Inland trade of the country was strictly controlled and monitored by a strong regulating administration. Transit of goods through inland roads and rivers were subjected to inland duties. East India company received a firman in 1650 to export goods from its port on Hoogli river duty free in return of an annual payment of Rs.3000/-. But in 1717, the company president in Calcutta managed to receive a firman from Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar which enabled him to issue dastaks which would exempt shipments from paying duties. As soon as the firman was decreed, the company president started exempting its executives encouraging them to have duty free private trades. In 1756, Siraj Ud Daula would accuse the company of defrauding Mughal exchequer of Rs.15 Million since 1717 through by abusing the power of Dastaks granted to it but with the successive dispersion of the Mughal authority, its ability to control the growing British commercial might reinforced by modernized artillery with a much more disciplined infantry, though smaller in size cataclysmically reduced. After the battle of Buxar, all stretches of Bengal came under company’s mercy. As a result, the country trade ruined, Mughal revenues will drastically reduce making the company virtually master of their own fate.
Clive’s successor Henry Vansittart in 1760 would write down about the growing apathy, “With respect to trade, no new privileges were asked of Meer Jaffer; none indeed were wanted by the Company, who were contented with the terms granted them in 1716, and only wished to be relieved from the impositions to which they had been exposed from the arbitrary power of the Nabob. However, our influence over the country was no sooner felt than many innovations were practised by some of the Company’s servants or the people employees under their authority. They began to trade in the articles which were before prohibited, and to interfere in the affairs of the country.”
Till the middle of the 18th century, Bengal weavers worked as a collective body, constituting their own terms and conditions and enjoyed better financial security and living standard as well than their British counterpart. Traditional commercial policies of Mughal India always supported them against any kind of foreign mercantile manoeuvre. The strong demand for Indian cotton products enhanced their bargaining capacity and Indian weavers enjoyed the Golden age of high price and low costs.
Path to disaster:
The departure of Mughal prowess from Bengal quickly ensured virtual trade monopoly for the company. Instead of paying them more, the Company forced the manufacturer to work for them and sell their products at a pathetically under price. As prices started felling, weavers found it increasingly difficult to compensate the cost of production and consequently failed to pay back the advances they received from the Company. Hameeda Hossain writes,” it was the corporate buyer, who had provided the weaver with his working capital and access to the market[that] became the root cause of his pauperisation and alienation from his occupation.” By the year 1770, the Company’s gomasthas wre able to pay 15% and in some cases 40% less than the weaver would receive in the public bazaar. A slow but quite systematic plunder of the cultivators of Bengal ruined the fundamental economic balance of one of the richest province of not just India, but in the world within a span of thirty years.
In the words of H.H Wilson, “The British manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle the competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms.” Industrial revolution brought the power loom in European textile industry which virtually annihilated the slightest chance of Indian textile industry which was dependent on traditional rural techniques for thousands of years. When power looms came to India in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the excise duty imposed on the cotton fabrics Indian manufacturers were outplayed by their Chinese and Japanese counterparts in International market.
When a farmer in England paid 5 to 20% of the rental during the first hundred years before 1798, Indian peasants had to pay between 80-90% land taxes between the period of 1798-1822. In 1764 when the last native ruler of Bengal collected land revenue of £817,553, within thirty years the British will collect £268, 0000 in the same province; however the land revenue policy was not much different from their native predecessors but the British were much more brutal in realising the land revenues. If the land revenue in the provinces taken away from the declining Maratha prowess in 1817 was £800,000, within three years it would be £150, 0000 under the British rule. Col.Briggs in 1830 will write, “ A land tax like that which now exists in India, professing to absorb the whole of the land lord’s rent, was never known under any government in Europe or Asia.”
When East India House was demolished in 1861, a complete reversal of the trade balance had been taken place. From the above chart, it becomes evident how the bullion had changed their destination within a span of less than three hundred years.
The Offering:
In 1778, visitors in the East India House were very much impressed by a ten feet across and over eight feet high, Spiridione Roma’s extravagant masterpiece The East offering Her riches to Britannia which was fixed on the ceiling of company’s revenue committee room. In this magnificent depiction of British commercial domination and perhaps general European arrogance as well, the fair Britannia in her fine Muslin accepts the crown, rubies and pearls from a keeling India and porcelain and tea from China. The classical God of commerce, stern Mercury is directing westwards a convoy of labourers carrying clothes with camels and elephants. An African Lion, the national emblem of British racial pride and power sits at the feet of Britannia, as does old father Thames, insignia of uninterrupted flow of riches to London.
If the British occupation of the subcontinent brought peace and tranquillity after centuries long civil wars within the small principalities and indefatigable conflicts between the Marathas, Sikhs or the Mughals giving India a definite political shape, it brought with it rigid and ruthless industrial and agricultural policies which transformed India from a self dependent and self feeding agrarian economy to a country of famines and semi starved people known to the ‘modern’ first world by their undernourished physiques for the coming centuries.
Few days back there was a debate organized by Indo-British heritage trust on the subject named, ‘British Raj did more harm than good in the subcontinent’. Perhaps, the remark by an enlightenment period English man would have been quite precise to find a solution in the complexity of the argument which is, “The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality; but such a thing as government of one people by another does not, and cannot exist. One people may keep another for its own use, a place to make money in, a human cattle firm to be worked for the profits of its own inhabitants”.
References:
1. The Economic History of India under early British rule by Ramesh Chandra Dutta
2. The Corporation that changed the world by Nick Robins
On 5th of May, 1789 just few months before the fall of Bastille, Edmund Burke, political philosopher and orator said in the British parliament, “An event has happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.” What prompted Burke to utter those words had nothing to do any event related to Europe but to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of India. The four days long speech, however absurd and unfair to Hastings it may seem, the impeachment perfectly epitomize how the acute instability was imposed upon a society by completely ruining its organic economic foundation.
Paradise of nations
The Indian subcontinent in the beginning of the 18th century was the workshop of the world, producing almost a quarter of the global manufacturing output, compared to just about 2% for Britain. Bengal in the subcontinent was the “Paradise of Nations” and was the richest suba in the Mughal Empire, for its proximity to good raw materials, vast stretches of fertile land which grew high quality cottons, rice from the days lost in antiquity drawing merchants from all over the world. Roman historian Pliny and the cotton weavers in Britain had one thing in common; both complained about golds being drained for the high import of Indian cotton fabrics whose commercial monopoly was invincible due to combination of low price and high quality. Bengal was also known for its profound diversity with almost 150 names for its textiles viz. Muslins, silk or calicoes. Dhaka was renowned for the transparency and delicacy of its fine Muslins. A pound of its fine cotton could provide 250 miles of Muslin thread. The phutti cotton on the bank of Meghna would be termed by the British resident as the “Finest cotton in the world”. From 12% in 1668-1670, Bengal’s share of total company’s import jumped to 42% in 1690 making it largest single source of supply. But things were about to change in post-Aurangzeb India when the Mughals started losing its control over the territories due to gradual drain of the treasury for the more than necessary stretched South India policy of Aurangzeb and the repeated assaults from North West and as well as from the Marathas.
Bengal revolution; Commencement of an ending
Political treachery, masked disloyalty and subsequent tossing of the thrown were nothing new in Indian history but the significance of the defeat and killing of Siraj Ud Daula in 1757 rests on the fact that it started an era, from where the British, once appeared as humble traders whose commercial interests depended upon the firmans of Nawabs, would now regulate not only their own fate and business prospects but the political atmosphere of subcontinent by slowly outmanoeuvring the Dutch, Portuguese and the French.
In 18th century, Inland trade of the country was strictly controlled and monitored by a strong regulating administration. Transit of goods through inland roads and rivers were subjected to inland duties. East India company received a firman in 1650 to export goods from its port on Hoogli river duty free in return of an annual payment of Rs.3000/-. But in 1717, the company president in Calcutta managed to receive a firman from Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar which enabled him to issue dastaks which would exempt shipments from paying duties. As soon as the firman was decreed, the company president started exempting its executives encouraging them to have duty free private trades. In 1756, Siraj Ud Daula would accuse the company of defrauding Mughal exchequer of Rs.15 Million since 1717 through by abusing the power of Dastaks granted to it but with the successive dispersion of the Mughal authority, its ability to control the growing British commercial might reinforced by modernized artillery with a much more disciplined infantry, though smaller in size cataclysmically reduced. After the battle of Buxar, all stretches of Bengal came under company’s mercy. As a result, the country trade ruined, Mughal revenues will drastically reduce making the company virtually master of their own fate.
Clive’s successor Henry Vansittart in 1760 would write down about the growing apathy, “With respect to trade, no new privileges were asked of Meer Jaffer; none indeed were wanted by the Company, who were contented with the terms granted them in 1716, and only wished to be relieved from the impositions to which they had been exposed from the arbitrary power of the Nabob. However, our influence over the country was no sooner felt than many innovations were practised by some of the Company’s servants or the people employees under their authority. They began to trade in the articles which were before prohibited, and to interfere in the affairs of the country.”
Till the middle of the 18th century, Bengal weavers worked as a collective body, constituting their own terms and conditions and enjoyed better financial security and living standard as well than their British counterpart. Traditional commercial policies of Mughal India always supported them against any kind of foreign mercantile manoeuvre. The strong demand for Indian cotton products enhanced their bargaining capacity and Indian weavers enjoyed the Golden age of high price and low costs.
Path to disaster:
The departure of Mughal prowess from Bengal quickly ensured virtual trade monopoly for the company. Instead of paying them more, the Company forced the manufacturer to work for them and sell their products at a pathetically under price. As prices started felling, weavers found it increasingly difficult to compensate the cost of production and consequently failed to pay back the advances they received from the Company. Hameeda Hossain writes,” it was the corporate buyer, who had provided the weaver with his working capital and access to the market[that] became the root cause of his pauperisation and alienation from his occupation.” By the year 1770, the Company’s gomasthas wre able to pay 15% and in some cases 40% less than the weaver would receive in the public bazaar. A slow but quite systematic plunder of the cultivators of Bengal ruined the fundamental economic balance of one of the richest province of not just India, but in the world within a span of thirty years.
In the words of H.H Wilson, “The British manufacturer employed the arm of political injustice to keep down and ultimately strangle the competitor with whom he could not have contended on equal terms.” Industrial revolution brought the power loom in European textile industry which virtually annihilated the slightest chance of Indian textile industry which was dependent on traditional rural techniques for thousands of years. When power looms came to India in the middle of the nineteenth century, by the excise duty imposed on the cotton fabrics Indian manufacturers were outplayed by their Chinese and Japanese counterparts in International market.
When a farmer in England paid 5 to 20% of the rental during the first hundred years before 1798, Indian peasants had to pay between 80-90% land taxes between the period of 1798-1822. In 1764 when the last native ruler of Bengal collected land revenue of £817,553, within thirty years the British will collect £268, 0000 in the same province; however the land revenue policy was not much different from their native predecessors but the British were much more brutal in realising the land revenues. If the land revenue in the provinces taken away from the declining Maratha prowess in 1817 was £800,000, within three years it would be £150, 0000 under the British rule. Col.Briggs in 1830 will write, “ A land tax like that which now exists in India, professing to absorb the whole of the land lord’s rent, was never known under any government in Europe or Asia.”
When East India House was demolished in 1861, a complete reversal of the trade balance had been taken place. From the above chart, it becomes evident how the bullion had changed their destination within a span of less than three hundred years.
The Offering:
In 1778, visitors in the East India House were very much impressed by a ten feet across and over eight feet high, Spiridione Roma’s extravagant masterpiece The East offering Her riches to Britannia which was fixed on the ceiling of company’s revenue committee room. In this magnificent depiction of British commercial domination and perhaps general European arrogance as well, the fair Britannia in her fine Muslin accepts the crown, rubies and pearls from a keeling India and porcelain and tea from China. The classical God of commerce, stern Mercury is directing westwards a convoy of labourers carrying clothes with camels and elephants. An African Lion, the national emblem of British racial pride and power sits at the feet of Britannia, as does old father Thames, insignia of uninterrupted flow of riches to London.
If the British occupation of the subcontinent brought peace and tranquillity after centuries long civil wars within the small principalities and indefatigable conflicts between the Marathas, Sikhs or the Mughals giving India a definite political shape, it brought with it rigid and ruthless industrial and agricultural policies which transformed India from a self dependent and self feeding agrarian economy to a country of famines and semi starved people known to the ‘modern’ first world by their undernourished physiques for the coming centuries.
Few days back there was a debate organized by Indo-British heritage trust on the subject named, ‘British Raj did more harm than good in the subcontinent’. Perhaps, the remark by an enlightenment period English man would have been quite precise to find a solution in the complexity of the argument which is, “The government of a people by itself has a meaning and a reality; but such a thing as government of one people by another does not, and cannot exist. One people may keep another for its own use, a place to make money in, a human cattle firm to be worked for the profits of its own inhabitants”.
References:
1. The Economic History of India under early British rule by Ramesh Chandra Dutta
2. The Corporation that changed the world by Nick Robins
