FROM TRADE TO TERRITORY

Introduction
• Aurangzeb was the last powerful Mughal ruler.
• He had control over a very large part of India.
• After his death many Mughal governors started
becoming powerful and established regional
kingdoms.
• As these kingdoms were very powerful
Delhi could not function as an effective
centre.
• By the second half of the 18th century,
a new power emerged in India who
controlled the politics of India-The
British
• They came as a trading company and
later became the masters of India.
 East India company comes East
• In 1600 The East India company acquired a
charter from Queen Elizabeth – the sole
right to trade with India.
• No other trading group could trade with
India or compete with the east India
company.
• With this charter the Company could
venture across the oceans, looking for new
lands from which it could buy goods at a
cheap price, and carry them back to
Europe to sell at higher prices.
• The Company did not have to
fear competition from other
English trading companies
• Mercantile trading companies in
those days made profit
primarily by excluding
competition, so that they could
buy cheap and sell at high price.
• The royal charter could not stop other Erropean powers
from entering the markets of the east.
• The Portuguese had already established their presence in
the western coast of India- They had their base in Goa.
• In 1498 Vascoda Gama A Portuguese explorer found a sea
route to India.
• By the early 17 the century the Dutch and the French
also reached India to explore the possibilities of trade.
• When all these powers reached India the
problem was that all wanted to buy the same
things.
• The fine qualities of cotton and silk produced
in India had a big market in Europe.
• Pepper, cloves, cardamom and cinnamon too
were in great demand.
• Competition amongst the European companies
pushed up the prices at which these goods
could be purchased, and this reduced the
profits that could be earned.
• In order to earn more profit each
of them wanted to eliminate the
other.
• This led to fierce battles between
the trading companies.
• They sank each others ships,
blocked the routes and prevented
rival ships from moving with
supplies of goods
• Each one of them tried to fortify their settlements
in India to carry out their trade.
• This led to intense conflict with local rulers.
• Therefore the English East India Company found it
difficult to separate trade and politics.
 Trade in Bengal- East India company
• The first English factory was set up on the banks
of the river Hugli in 1651.
• From here the factors or traders of the British
• Started operating trade.
• The factory had a warehouse and offices. The
company asked the merchants and traders to settle
near the factory.
• By 1696 they began to build a fort around the
settlement.(Calcutta)
• They asked Aurangzeb to grant a firman(royal
order)for a duty free trade.
• The company demanded for more
concessions and began to misuse the rights
given to them.
• Aurangzeb’s farman, , had granted only the
Company the right to trade duty free.
• But officials of the Company, who were
carrying on private trade on the side, were
expected to pay duty.
• They refused to pay, causing an enormous
loss of revenue for Bengal.
• This led to protest between the ruler of
Bengal and the British.
 Trade and battles
• By the early 18th century the conflict between
the company and the Nawab of Bengal
intensified.
• After the death of Aurangzeb ,the nawab of
Bengal declared independence.
• Murshid Ali Khan was the Nawab at that time
and he was followed by Aliwardi Khan.
• Then his son Siraj ud daulah became the nawab.
Both father and son were powerful rulers.
• They refused to give concessions to the
company, demaded largr tributes for the right
to trade, denied them right to mint coins. Also
stopped them from making fortifications.
• The rulers said that the company is not giving
revenue to the Bengal government and not giving
respect and authority of the nawab.
• The company was refusing to pay taxes and were
writing disrespectful letters to the nawab.
Through this they tried to insult officials and the
nawab.
• The company declared that the unjust demands
of the local officials is destroying their trade.
• They can improve only if revenue is removed. To
expand trade they have to enlarge their
settlements, buy up villages and rebuild forts.
• All these efforts of the British led to the Battle
of Plassey.
 The Battle of Plassey
• Siraj ud daulah became the nawab of Bengal after
the death of Alivar Di khan.
• The company was worried about the power of the
sultan and wanted to install a puppet nawab.
• They thought that from the puppet nawab they can
get trade concessions and other privileges.
• Siraj ud daulah asked the company to stop
interfering in the political affairs of his area a
• To stop fortification.
• To pay revenues.
• The British refused- Nawab sent 30,000 soldiers to
the English factory.
• The nawab along with the soldiers
captured the company officials, blocked
the warehouse , disarmed all Englishmen
and ships were blocked.
• Then he marched to capture Calcutta from
the British.
• The nawab captured calcutta from the
British by defeating them.
• On hearing the news of fall of calcutta ,
the company sent forces under the
command of Robert Clive. They sent a navy
for this purpose.
• In 1757 the nawab and the British under Robert
Clive met at the battle of Plassey and the nawab was
defeated .
• The British bribed the commander in chief of the
nawab, Mirjafar and he did not join the battle. This
was the reason for the defeat of the nawab.
• This battle became famous because it was the first
major victory of the East India company in India.
Siraj ud daulah and Robert Clive
• In the battle of Plassey Sirj ud daulah was
assassinated and his Commander –in-chief Mir
Jafar became the nawab of Bengal.
• The company was not willing to take up the
responsibility of administration as their objective
was to expand trade.
• Sometimes even the puppet rulers were unwilling to
obey the Company. The rulers felt that if they
need to get respect from people the rulers need to
maintain some level of dignity.
• The company found it very difficult when rulers
were not following their instructions.
• What did the company do?
• They deposed(removed) Mir Jafar and installed Mir
Qasim (son-in-law) of Mir Jafar as the next
nawab.
• When Mir Qasim complained about the company ,
he was defated by the British in the battle of
Buxar in 1764. (nawab of Awadh, Nawab of
Benagal and the mughal emporer- combined
force)
• Mir Jafar was reinstalled as the nawab again.
• He had to pay a huge amount of 5 lakh rupees to
the company. But the company started asking for
more to finance their wars and other tade
related expenses.
• By the time Mirjafar died and Clive declared that
they themselves will become nawabs.
• Finally, in 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the
Company as the Diwan of the provinces of Bengal.
The Diwani (right to collect taxes)allowed the
Company to use the vast revenue resources of
Bengal. This solved a major problem that the
Company had earlier faced.
• When Britain was buying goods from India they were
losing their gold and silver as they had no goods to
sell in India.
• This outflow of gold and silver has slowed down
after the battle of plassey and completely stopped
after the battle of Buxar after company received
the the Diwani right.
• These revenues were used for purchasing goods and
maintaining the army and other expenses.
 Company officials become “nabobs”
• After seeing the luxurious life of the nawabs, each
company official wanted to have a life of nawabs.
• After the battle of Plassey the nawabs of Bengal
were forced to give large sum of money to the
company officials.
• Robert Clive amassed huge wealth. He came to India
at the age of 18 in 1743 and left India in 1767
with a huge sum of money .
• When he was appointed, he was asked to remove
corruption in the company but later found that he
himself was very corrupted.
• The British parliament cross examined him in 1772
for his corrupted activities. He was acquitted by
the parliament but he committed suicide.
• All the company officials could not make
wealth like Clive. Many had a difficult life,
they suffered from diseases and had an
early death.
• All were not corrupt. They had an ambition
of earning from India and return to Britain
and wanted to live a comfortable life.
• Some of them earned well in India and led
a very luxurious life and were called as
nabobs. (anglicised version of nawab)
• They were ridiculed in cartoons and plays.
 Expansion of company rule
• When we go through the way company rule was
expanded in India from 1757 to 1857 we find
that they rarely used direct military attack.
• Instead it used a variety of political, economic
and diplomatic methods to extend its influence
before annexing an Indian kingdom.
• After the Battle of Buxar ,the company
appointed a special official in the Indian states-
Resident.
• They informed the company about the
happenings in the kingdom which helped the
company to serve their interest and plan their
further activities.
• Through the residents ,the company began to
interfere in the internal affairs of the states.
• The company started deciding the successors,
administrative officials etc. of the states.
Subsidiary Alliance
• According to the terms of this alliance, Indian
rulers were not allowed to have their independent
armed forces.
They were to be protected by the Company, but had to
pay for the “subsidiary forces” that the Company was
supposed to maintain for the purpose of this
protection.
If the Indian rulers failed to make the payment, then
part of their territory was taken away as penalty.
• For example, when Richard Wellesley was
Governor-
• General (1798-1805), the Nawab of Awadh
was forced to give over half of his
territory to the Company in 1801, as he
failed to pay for the “subsidiary forces”.
• Hyderabad was also forced to cede
territories on similar grounds.
”
Tipu Sultan – The “Tiger of
Mysore
• In the south Mysore had grown under the able and
powerful leadership of Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan.
• Mysore controlled the profitable trade of the
Malabar coast where the Company purchased
pepper and cardamom.
• Tipu Sultan stopped the export of
sandalwood ,pepper and cardamom through his ports
in the year 1785.
• He instructed the local merchants not to trade
with the company.
• He developed a close contact with the French and
modernised his army with the help of them.
• This move of Tipu & Hyder Ali enraged the
British and they saw him as ambitious, arrogant
and dangerous – rulers who had to be controlled
and crushed.
• Anglo Mysore war
(1767-69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799).
Tipu won the first three battles- only in the last
one the British could win (Battle of
Seringapattam)
• Tipu Sultan was killed defending his capital
Seringapatam,
• Mysore was placed under the former ruling
dynasty of the Wodeyars and a subsidiary
alliance was imposed on the state.
Anglo- Mysore war
 Tipu’s Toy Tiger

This is the picture of a big mechanical toy that Tipu possessed. You can see a
tiger mauling a European soldier. When its handle was turned the toy tiger
roared and the soldier shrieked. This toy- tiger is now kept in the Victoria and
Albert Museum in London. The British took it away when Tipu Sultan died
defending his capital Seringapatam on 4 May 1799.
 War with the Marathas
• Marathas were another powerful rulers,the
British had to face in India.
• With their defeat in the Third Battle of Panipat
in 1761,the Marathas’ dream of ruling from
Delhi was shattered.
• They were divided into many states under
differentchiefs (sardars) belonging to dynasties
such as Sindhia,Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle.
• These chiefs were held together in a
confederacy under a Peshwa (PrincipalMinister)
who became its effective military and
administrative head based in Pune.
• Mahadji Sindhia and Nana Phadnis were two
famous Maratha soldiers and statesmen of the
late eighteenth century.
 Anglo Maratha wars
• The first war that ended in 1782 with the
Treaty of Salbai, there was no clear victory.
• The Second Anglo- Maratha War (1803-05)
was fought on different fronts, resulting in
the British gaining Orissa and the territories
north of the Yamuna river including Agra and
Delhi.
• Finally, the Third Anglo-Maratha War of
1817-19 crushed Maratha power.
• The Peshwa was removed and sent away to
Bithur near Kanpur with a pension. The
Company now had complete control over the
territories south of the Vindhyas.
 The claim to paramountcy
• Under Lord Warren Hastings an aggressive policy of
expansion was undertaken.(1813-1823)
• Adopted a new policy of paramountcy. Now the
Company claimed that its authority was paramount or
supreme, hence its power was greater than that of
Indian states.
• He tried to annex almost all the kingdoms and
esablished British authority over them.
• This was not without problems. when the British
tried to annex the small state of Kitoor (in Karnataka
today), Rani Channamma took
to arms and led an anti-British resistance movement.
• She was arrested in 1824 and died in prison in 1829.
• Rayanna, a poor chowkidar of Sangoli in Kitoor
carried on the resistance. With popular support he
destroyed many British camps and records. He was
caught and hanged by the British in 1830.
• In the 1830s the British had fear that Russia will
enter India through the north –west.
• Inorder to protect themselves they entered into a
prolonged war with Afghanistan and established
company rule over there.
• Sindh was taken over in 1843.
• Punjab was a very powerful kingdom in India. Its
rule Maharaja Ranjith Singh was very strong and
did not allow the company to take over his kingdom.
• After the death of Ranjit Singh in 1849, Punjab was
annexed.
• The Doctrine of Lapse
• This policy was introduced by Lord Dalhousie (1848-
1856)
• The doctrine declared that if an Indian ruler died
• without a male heir his kingdom would “lapse”, that
is, become part of Company territory.
• Satara (1848), Sambalpur (1850), Udaipur (1852),
Nagpur (1853)and Jhansi (1854)- all these kingdoms
were annexed under this doctrine.
• In 1856, the Company also took over Awadh.They
said that this was done to save the people from the
misgovernment of Nawab.
 Setting up a New Administration
• One of the main persons who played a leading role in
the expansion of company power in India was
Warren Hastings.
• By his time the Company had acquired power not
only in Bengal, but also in Bombay and Madras.
British territories were broadly divided into
administrative units called Presidencies.
• The presidencies- Bengal, Madras and Bombay were
ruled by governors.
• The supreme head of the administration was the
Governor-General.
• Warren Hastings- The first Governor General.
• He introduced many administrative reforms.
• From 1772 a new system of justice was
established.
• Each district was to have two courts – a
criminal court (faujdari adalat ) and a civil
court (diwani adalat ).
• Maulvis and Hindu pandits interpreted
Indian laws for the European district
collectors who presided over civil courts.
The criminal courts were still under a qazi
and mufti but under the supervision of the
collectors.
 New terms
• Qazi – A judge

• Mufti – A jurist of the Muslim community

responsible for expounding the law that the qazi
would administer.

• Impeachment – A trial by the House of Lords in

England for charges of misconduct brought
against a person in the House of Commons.
 Trial of Warren Hastings

• When Warren Hastings went back to England in 1785,

Edmund Burke accused him of being personally
responsible for the misgovernment of Bengal. This led
to an impeachment proceeding in the British
Parliament that lasted seven years.
• In India there was no uniform law for all.
Brahmin pandits had their interpretation
of Dharmasastras.
• To bring uniform laws the British asked in
1775 eleven pandits were asked to compile
Hindu laws. This was then translated to
English.
• By 1778 a code of Muslim laws was also
compiled for the benefit of European
judges.
• Under the Regulating Act of 1773, a new
Supreme Court was established, while a court
of appeal – the Sadar Nizamat Adalat – was
also set up at Calcutta

• Head of the district- Collector- To collect

revenue and maintain law and order with the
help of judges, police officers and darogas.
The collectorate became the centre of power.
 The Company army
• The company’s power mainly rested with the
army.
• The Mughal army was mainly composed of
cavalry (sawars: trained soldiers on horseback)
and infantry, that is, paidal (foot) soldiers.
• They were given training in archery (teer-
andazi ) and the use of the sword. The cavalry
dominated the army and the Mughal state did
not feel the need to have a large professionally
trained infantry.
• The rural areas had a large number of armed
peasants and the local zamindars often supplied
the Mughals with paidal soldiers.
• Indian rulers earlier recruited peasants as soldiers.
• The East India Company adopted the same method
when it began recruitment for its own army, which
came to be known as the sepoy army (from the
Indian word sipahi, meaning soldier).
• As warfare technology changed from the 1820s,
the cavalry requirements of the Company’s army
declined.
• This is because the British empire was fighting in
• Burma, Afghanistan and Egypt where soldiers were
• armed with muskets and matchlocks. The soldiers
of the Company’s army had to keep pace with
changing military requirements and its infantry
regiments now became more important
•

•
• In the early nineteenth century the British began to
develop a uniform military culture. Soldiers were
increasingly subjected to European-style training, drill

and discipline that regulated their life far more than

before.
• This created problems since caste and community
feelings were ignored in building a force of
professional soldiers.
It was not easy for people to forget and ignore their
caste and religious feelings.
This feeling was one of the main causes of the Revolt of
1857.
 conclusion
We have seen that
•From a trading company the East India Company
transformed into a colonial power.
•Technology began to develop with the coming of the
British. Steam power has brought about a revolution
in many fields.
•Till then it would take anywhere between six and
eight months to travel to India by sea. Steamships
reduced the journey time to three weeks enabling
more Britishers and their families to come to a far-
off country like India.
•By 1857 almost 63% of the Indian territories were
under their control. Indirectly they began to control
almost the whole of the country and its population.
 Mention the year
• Vascoda Gama landed at Calicut.
• The Engliish East India company was established-
• Death of Aurangzeb-
• The First English factory was set up at Hugly-
• Starting of fortification-
• Siraj ud daulah became the nawab of Bengal-
• The Battle of Plassey-
• The Battle of Buxar
• Company became the diwan of Bengal-
• The Battle of Seringapatam-
• The treaty of Salbai-
• Punjab was annexed to the British empire-
• Jhansi was taken away by the British-
• Awadh became a part of the British empire- Regulating Act-
• Trial of Warren Hastings by the British Parliament-
• The Supreme Court was established at Calcutta-
• A new system of justice was established-
• The Third battle of Panipat.