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Two former soldiers in India find British bureaucracy cramps their style, so they set off to become kings of their own land.
It is the days of the British Raj, and the editor of a newspaper in Lahore has done a favour for fellow freemasons ‘Peachey’ Carnehan and his inseparable companion Daniel Dravot. Now the two ex-army men have crammed themselves into the paper’s tiny, stuffy office to share with him a resolution. “We have decided” said Carnehan “that India isn’t big enough for such as us.”
Posted April 2 2021
20
After its prime minister signed the Maratha Confederacy over to the East India Company, the member states rose up in a body.
… but Baji Rao exacted spectacular retribution by signing the whole Maratha territory over to the East India Company …
In 1796, Baji Rao II became Peshwa (prime Minister) of the Maratha Confederacy. When Holkar, Maharajah of Indore, one of the Confederacy’s four kingdoms, learnt that Baji Rao was behind the murder of a relative, he thrashed him at the Battle of Poona in 1802; but Baji Rao exacted spectacular retribution by signing the whole Maratha territory over to the East India Company. Holkar did not leave it there.
Posted February 5 2022
21
The fort at Budge Budge near Calcutta proved stubborn against the massed artillery of the East India Company, but a tipsy seaman took it all by himself.
In 1756, colonial rivalry between France and Britain sparked the Seven Years’ War. In India, France’s ally Siraj ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal, drove the British from Calcutta; they in turn, smarting from the infamous ‘Black Hole’ incident, sailed gunships up to the Nawab’s fort at Budge Budge, which guarded the River Hooghly. The small hours of December 30th found them snatching a little sleep prior to a dawn assault.
Posted May 24 2021
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Twenty-five-year-old Robert Clive’s extraordinary daring helped to prevent India falling into the hands of the French King.
… In 1751, France, Holland and Britain were all vying for the friendship of India’s ruling princes …
In 1751, France, Holland and Britain were all vying for the friendship of India’s ruling princes. Chunda Sahib, Nawab of Arcot, backed by the French, had Britain’s ally Mohammed Ali pinned down in Trichinopoly; so Robert Clive persuaded his superiors to let him capture Arcot itself. Immediately, Chunda’s son Rajah brought ten thousand men to relieve it.
Posted March 13 2015
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After two punishing years rising to the top of the East India Company’s armed forces in India, Robert Clive could not spare the time to go courting.
… Before the middle of the last century, Mr Maskelyne, brother of Dr Nevil Maskelyne, the Astronomer-Royal, went as a cadet to India … Do you think that girl would be induced to come to India … Maskelyne wrote home, and so recommended Clive’s suit that the lady acquiesced, went to India …
By the end of March 1752, Robert Clive was lonely and exhausted. He had almost single-handedly relieved the fortress at Arcot from a French siege, and then captured two French forts at the head of a band of five hundred raw recruits no other officer would agree to command. As he listened to his friend Edmund Maskelyne reading snatches of his letters from home, a resolution formed in his breast.
Posted March 25 2021
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The British encountered no stouter resistance in India than Mysore’s gifted commmander Hyder Ali and his son, Tipu.
… In 1778, King Louis Xvi of France declared war on Britain, and London responded by driving the colonial French out of the port of Mahé in Mysore, a kingdom in southwest India dating back to the turn of the fifteenth century … Purniya was as gifted in peacetime as Tipu had been in war, and Mysore flourished thereafter as one of British India’s most progressive …
The Princely State of Mysore was for many years one of the most prosperous and pro-British kingdoms of the Raj, but in the late eighteenth century it was briefly dominated by two of Britain’s most bitter and successful opponents, Hyder Ali (?1722-1782) and his son Tipu (1750-1799).
Posted April 7 2017