British Empire
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘British Empire’
Before Siraj ud-Daulah became Nawab of Bengal in 1756, his grandfather begged him to keep the English sweet, and put no trust in Jafar Ali Khan. If he had only listened...
Robert Clive’s victory on June 23rd, 1757, over the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey near Murshidabad was vital to Britain’s successful defence of her colonies in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63) against Louis XV of France, and fixed the British East India Company as the Mughal Emperors’ chief European trade partner. For Hari Charan Das, it was also a judgment on the Nawab’s refusal to listen to his grandfather.
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.
When the young Aga Khan visited London in 1898 he was presented to Queen Victoria, and found her cultural sensitivity deeply touching.
In February 1898 the Aga Khan, then twenty, left Bombay for Europe. After some days enjoying life on the French Riviera he travelled on to Paris and London, and there in the glorious and bewitching Imperial capital he was presented at Windsor Castle to Queen Victoria herself. It was an intimate affair: only himself, his friend the Duke of Connaught and the Empress, now approaching her eightieth birthday.
Harry Paulet was going about his unlawful business when he spotted a French fleet slip quietly out of Brest and into the Atlantic.
Three years into the Seven Years’ War of 1756-63, the Kingdom of France was building up pressure on Britain’s beleaguered North American colonies. Despite a bruising setback at Lagos in August, the French still had hopes of an invasion of Scotland, and by November 14th a fleet was ready to sail; but the story goes that the tides of history were turned by Harry Paulet, a cross-Channel smuggler.
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.”
As Governor of Bengal, Robert Clive hoped to use his powers and his formidable reputation to make the East India Company mend its ways.
As Governor of Bengal in 1757-60 and 1765-66, Robert Clive strove to reform the East India Company’s wasteful, mercenary and supercilious bureaucracy. The Company responded in 1773 with a Parliamentary smear campaign so masterly that to this day, many regard Clive as a microcosm of all that was wrong with British colonialism, but it is hard to see that Clive in Sir John Malcolm’s account of him.