Robert Clive’s Vision for India
TO the natives he wished to leave the internal trade, confining the English to the foreign import and export trade, as formerly he was anxious that the natives should have the entire management of their own concerns, undisturbed as far as possible by the intrusion of Europeans, whose misconduct, which in many instances had been carried to a grievous excess, there was at that time no judicial or political machinery for keeping in order. He concluded with perfect truth, “that the attempt to introduce the English laws throughout our possessions in India would be absurd and impracticable.”
He foresaw, from the spirit of the times, that expense was the rock on which the Government was likely to split, and used every means in his power to raise barriers against it. It was partly this which made him recommend that we should confine ourselves to a rich but limited territory, a small army, and few but well-paid English servants, and not plunge into the wide sea of Indian politics.*
abridged
Clive’s recommendations were met with indignation; indeed in 1773, with the Company’s finances in growing disarray and amid rising criticism over the bungling of the Great Bengal Famine of 1769, the Directors suddenly remembered how shocked they had been when Clive was showered with £234,000 (nearly £30m today) by his Indian allies following The Battle of Plassey in 1757, and demanded that “restitution of this sum should be made to the Company and the sufferers”. No mention was made of the Company restoring the government, lands and income of Bengal to the heirs of the defeated Nawab, Siraj ud-Daulah. “I was in the House all this day,” wrote one eyewitness “and had the mortification to hear the transactions in India, for these last sixteen years, treated, without distinction, as a disgrace to this nation; but without the smallest idea of restoring to the injured natives of India the territories and revenues said to have been so unjustly acquired.” A Parliamentary Inquiry largely exonerated Clive and even passed a motion of thanks for his services, but the affair broke his health and mind, and he died in mysterious circumstances on November 22nd, 1774.