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Lord Clive v. Edmund Burke: Two Perspectives On British Involvement in India
Lord Clive v. Edmund Burke: Two Perspectives On British Involvement in India
Lord Clive v. Edmund Burke: Two Perspectives On British Involvement in India
Vocabulary:
Augean Stable: A reference to the myth of Hercules. For his fifth labor, Hercules was
required to clean the stables of King Augeas, which held a great number of cattle.
Cleaning the Augean Stable would be a metaphor for a very unpleasant task of cleaning
up a great deal of filth, or in this case, corruption.
Duanee/Diwani: A right granted to a Nawab, allowing him to collect revenue for his lord
in exchange for a percentage of the collection.
Mir Jafar: Nawab established in Bengal following Plassey in 1757. He had little or no
authority and he was mostly a puppet Nawab for the East India Company.
Select Committee: Small group of men, including Clive, who managed issues in Bengal
from Calcutta. A smaller group in the Secret committee handled sensitive political and
trade items.
Court of Directors: Head of the East India Company, based in London, wielding
ultimate authority over the Select Committee.
Famine of 1769-70: It is estimated that a third of the rural population of Bengal
perished. Both the loss of Company income and accusations of hoarded rice stocks
helped to prompt Parliaments investigation of the EICs affairs.
Henry Vansittart: Clives successor as Governor-General of Bengal in 1760.
New Covenants: The rules and regulations Clive produced while in his second term as
Governor-General of Bengal which were supposed to help create a more stable and less
corrupt administration.
Writer: A clerk or secretary.
Indostan = India
Nabob = Nawab
Questions:
1. What was Clive accused of and how did he respond to these accusations?
2. In what ways do Burke and Clive present different arguments about what the
conquest of Bengal means to the British nation?
3. How does each author appeal to what they perceive to be the sympathies of their
audiencelook for specific phrases and page numbers.
4. What are Burkes motivations? Why do you think his viewpoints were less
popular in the late eighteenth century?
5. How should a historian approach a primary source such as this? What are the
problems and opportunities they pose?