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Brief Annals of Pillaging India

as a

Keep your religious shit out of this.


On topic:Why should the rest of world especially the West including Britian show this much of admiration towards India ,as an emerging nation?
This is not an emerging.This is Reemerging nation.
Eagerly awaits for grabbing that century old reputation World factory.

India and China were the powerhouse of World until 19 th century.

Emerging nation - > has cash, can buy our products thus must be kept under control not to over take our factories.
 
Brief Annals of pillaging India

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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.”

View attachment 177941


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



Great start scorp ji

Nice going.


My only complaint (not just this fine essay) against Indian historians (both local and foreign variety) is simple.

They all do fine job in stating the facts. But in the process they utterly destroy history by making it British centric.

While British won the big global reach in the end,

but the beginning was very very different.

dutch and Portuguese had beaten all other europeans and reached Asia BEFORE brits did.

So we must study history other than Brits to really understand the dynamics of trade and politics in India and beyond.

Why not talk about Portuguese influence and their inroads both on the Western India like Goa, and the Eastern side aka Bengal.

Why not discuss what happened between Shah Jehan and Portuguese settlers in Bengal.

Without this comprehensive treatment of european influence, Indian subcontinent history will be incomplete and thus lead us to making wrong conclusions.


Thank you and keep up the good work


p.s
Sorry I am one of those throwing stones on a fine essay instead of contributing a good one from my own. Will do sometimes. will do.
 
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At this point I must also mention that Robert clive after the battle of Plassey was welcomed with open arms by hindus in Bengal.Hindus became their biggest collaborators and were rewarded with jobs, positions of influence, money and at times zamindaris.

we Indians shot ourselves in the foot!!!

This is another story as well. Frequent coups and overthrowing an existing throne by replacing it with a subservient ruler were nothing extraordinary in Indian polity. But the peculiarity of Plassey coup was that first time an arrogant but clueless Indian mercantile class will plot to overthrow a regime by collaborating with a foreign power who were much more smarter, confident and ambitious about its long term objectives. If the traditional business class comprising figures like Jagat Seth and Amir Chands were rich and prosperous, they were equally unaccustomed with the European style of playing with political loyalties and treacheries. The fake treaty engineered by Clive which compelled Amir Chand, Mr.Five percent to commit suicide perfectly tells the story how the gap of political and tactical insight widened between East and the West.

Great start scorp ji

Nice going.


My only complaint (not just this fine essay) against Indian historians (both local and foreign variety) is simple.

They all do fine job in stating the facts. But in the process they utterly destroy history by making it British centric.

While British finally won the big global reach in the end,

but the beginning was very very different.

dutch and Portuguese had beaten all other europeans and reached Asia BEFORE brits did.

So we must study history other than Brits to really understand the dynamics of trade and politics in India and beyond.

Why not talk about Portuguese influence and their inroads both on the Western India like Goa, and the Eastern side aka Bengal.

Why not discuss what happened between Shah Jehan and Portuguese settlers in Bengal.

Without this comprehensive treatment of european influence, Indian subcontinent history will be incomplete and thus lead us to making wrong conclusions.


Thank you and keep up the good work


p.s
Sorry I am one of those throwing stones on a fine essay instead of contributing a good one from my own. Will do sometimes. will do.
Sir, I completely agree with your view that without the study of contemporary European commercial ventures in South and East Asia other than the British, understanding the history of transformation of world economy remains fairly inadequate. With the Ottoman occupation of Constantinople and the ability to control the Mediterranean, European trade in Asia became vulnerable to Turkish command over its access to spice market of the East. This predicament forced the Spanish to sail across Atlantic and the Portuguese South, along the coast of Africa. Thus started the maritime expeditions with which came commercial and later colonial interests.

It will be no less than crime if we choose to opt out the State run Portuguese mercantile expeditions, characterized by trade mixed with militant preaching of Catholicism and their subsequent annihilation by the protestant insurgence in Netherland. Readers might find it absolutely mindboggling that initial European trade interests revolved around Indonesian peninsula and not India. The British who are actually the centre point of our entire discussion were forced to look at the India only after being battered and outgunned by the Dutch, especially after being expelled from Bantam in 1682. Thereafter British resurgence surged skyrocketing; Capture of Hormuz, Bombay and company’s peace treaty with Portuguese gave them access to their ring of ports. As per Nick Robins, if Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was a commercial hare among the western trading companies, EIC was a tortoise, ultimately winning the war. The Dutch and English export from Asia in 1668-70 were 10.8 and 4.3 Million florin, which in 1778-80 will become 20.8 and 69.3 Million florin respectively.

Sir, if I start by a car from some miles north from Calcutta to its South, I will cross four European trade centres that fought vigorously with each other in the late 17th century. Serampore (Denmark), Chandan Nagar (France), Chinsura (Netherland) and Calcutta (English) were these centres of trade and commerce. Rest of the history, perhaps we all know about. How European conflicts left their shadows on their respective country’s commercial ventures in India is quite well researched and documented. The ‘Nabob making’ games became the new source of the French and the British trading companies and Indian economy slowly came under the grip of England.

Lastly, I keenly wait for the ‘stones’ you throw, Fauj bhai. Your criticism was absolutely apt at its place and other European ventures deserve to be discussed more thoroughly as well.

Post edit: painful and shameful spelling errors check (
 
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Great start scorp ji

Nice going.


My only complaint (not just this fine essay) against Indian historians (both local and foreign variety) is simple.

They all do fine job in stating the facts. But in the process they utterly destroy history by making it British centric.

While British finally won the big global reach in the end,

but the beginning was very very different.

dutch and Portuguese had beaten all other europeans and reached Asia BEFORE brits did.

So we must study history other than Brits to really understand the dynamics of trade and politics in India and beyond.

Why not talk about Portuguese influence and their inroads both on the Western India like Goa, and the Eastern side aka Bengal.

Why not discuss what happened between Shah Jehan and Portuguese settlers in Bengal.

Without this comprehensive treatment of european influence, Indian subcontinent history will be incomplete and thus lead us to making wrong conclusions.


Thank you and keep up the good work


p.s
Sorry I am one of those throwing stones on a fine essay instead of contributing a good one from my own. Will do sometimes. will do.

I think that @fauj Historian has made some very valid points. To be honest, he's also given me some very fruitful ideas for further work!
 
Thank you for your kind responses @Joe Shearer, @scorpionx

While we look at Europeans, I have also been wrestling with a simple question.

Why did Mogals (and other Indian kings) behave very similar to the kings of South Americas.

Why were they, and how did they become sitting ducks?

In the OP, we see that Indian subccontinent was dominating the world in GDP and art and industry. Then why did they not become part of the "craze" in 16 and 17 centuries.

But not in Kolkutta.

It is not that Mogals didn't have ships. Heck one of the most famous ship wreck (1702 AD) discovery to date is the one by Arthur C Clark.


Go to 1:10 to see them talk about Alamgir's sunken treasure of Mogal kings' "rupees" minted in silver.

......youtube.com/watch?v=AiIHvQovKkk

India - Surat Rupees - Treasure of the Great Basses Reef


I do not see any mention of trading ships, banks, and stock markets in our part from 16th century onwards that would finance Indian ventures and Mughal ships going to Europe and Americas , but all these institutions were so common in European capitals. Perhaps one of the main reason was our culture of hoarding wealth as individuals and not as corporations and trading companies. Individual wealth however large was still beholden to the dreams of individuals.

While Europeans successfully "democratized" wealth by spreading it in the form of banks and stock markets and this allowed mega-adventures and projects that were not possible in a society where only kings and few big name rajas held all the cash.

off course this is just "guess" work on my part, so any education in this line of thinking will be awesome.



Again I do not want to distract from the main theme of the OP by Scorp bhai.

But you two are so good in answering questions, that I wanted to add one more.

Thank you
 
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@FaujHistorian

Actually, there were equivalents to trading ships, banks and stock markets. The Indian Ocean, from the rise of Islam until roughly the eighteenth century, when the Europeans finally crushed it as a free market zone, was one of the most active hubs of commerce in the world.

Trading ships were there, in the form of very large ocean-going dhows, some of them larger than European sailing ships in capacity, many of which were built in Beypore, in Kerala, for owners throughout the Gulf, and down to the Aden-Socotra region. These ships were managed professionally and very well by native captains with detailed written instructions for navigation. It was an objective for European intruders to seize these documents from native captains, without flinching at torture and murder. The dhow was also far easier to manoeuvre due to its lateen sail rigging, against the European fore-and-aft rigs, which gave them difficulties in adverse winds; only gradually did the Europeans developing tacking on a fore-and-aft rigger to go against the wind.

Banks were there, in the form of the hawala or havala network, which is still, after years of suppression, a viable money transmitting network throughout the region. It started life as a viable banking system, which was sought to be crushed by the conventional banks of the Europeans, as it was uncomfortably efficient competition. But there was no lack of capital for those who needed it. On the contrary, the amount of specie contained in the region was the envy and object of desire of the Europeans, whose own reserves of cash were paltry compared to those in the two gigantic trading free markets of the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Finally, stock markets existed in equivalent forms and more than one differentiated form in these two markets. The Islamic concepts of financing a venture prevailed in the south; the Chinese managed venture capital differently, and I don't know too much about that.

The point is that one of the legitimate objects of revisionist history, rather than the glorification of the peculiar brand of Hinduism promoted by Hindutvavadis, would be to uncover gradually the details of the vigorous trading networks that made India and China between them the richest part of the known world at that time. Some work in these directions has already been done - casually, I could mention my head, Ashin Dasgupta, both a graduate, and after a stint at Oxford, head of department at his old college and mine, and another famous boy from that college, Sugata Bose. Both have written on this aspect of life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
 
While we look at Europeans, I have also been wrestling with a simple question.

Why did Mogals (and other Indian kings) behave very similar to the kings of South Americas.

Why were they, and how did they become sitting ducks?

few reasons :

1. Lack of vision.
2. Inability to get over internal factionalism.
3. Perpetual problems in the Deccan.
4. Complacency
 
This is another story as well. Frequent coups and overthrowing an existing thrown by replacing it with a subservient ruler were nothing extraordinary in Indian polity. But the peculiarity of Plassey coup was that first time an arrogant but clueless Indian mercantile class will plot to overthrow a regime by collaborating with a foreign power who were much more smarter, confident and ambitious about its long term objectives. If the traditional business class comprising figures like Jagat Seth and Amir Chands were rich and prosperous, they were equally unaccustomed with the European style of playing with political loyalties and treacheries. The fake treaty engineered by Clive which compelled Amir Chand, Mr.Five percent to commit suicide perfectly tells the story how the gap of political and tactical insight widened between East and the West.
.
The Britishers were not new to deceit and aggression. Some where in south Africa Cecil Rhodes had deceived a tribal chief and had staged a duplicitous raid to secure the diamond mines of Kimberley and gold fields of South Africa to Britishers colonial interests.
Interestingly the guy's name was Amir Singh alias Omi Chand.
 
I had no idea that India was an economic powerhouse in the 17th to 18th century.
Almost 25% of the world GDP!
:(

"India was super rich" - Heard this so many times that I tend to disbelieve it. In the ancient past, yes - the world empires were not yet there, colonies were not established...so India(with an ancient functioning civilization) had a good chance. But after the 16th century (Industrial Revolution) in Europe it seems unlikely that India remained in such a dominant position.

Can you refer me some books pls @Joe Shearer :)


Before Industrial revolution, GDP of India and China as fraction of total was historically very high.

History of world GDP.gif
 
Before Industrial revolution, GDP of India and China as fraction of total was historically very high.



I don't have exact figures.

But the world changed drastically after the industrial revolution.

productivity shot up so high that anyone sitting around with pre-industrial model was simply sitting at the bottom of the pile.

I mean there was no comparison.
 

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