Patrick Tuck - The East India Company, 1600-1858, Volume 5: Warfare, Expansion and Resistance

Edited by Patrick Tuck

VOLUME I: ENGLANDS QUEST OF EASTERN TRADE

William Foster

VOLUME II: PROBLEMS OF EMPIRE

P. J. Marshall

VOLUME III: CONSIDERATIONS ON INDIA AFFAIRS

William Bolts

A VIEW OF THE RISE, PROGRESS AND PRESENT STATE OF THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT IN BENGAL

Harry Verelst

VOLUME IV: TRADE, FINANCE AND POWER

Edited by Patrick Tuck

VOLUME V: WARFARE, EXPANSION AND RESISTANCE

Edited by Patrick Tuck

VOLUME VI: THE EAST INDIA COMPANY 17841834

C. H. Philips

Early twentieth-century historical writing on the East India Company tended to offer primarily political explanations for its territorial expansion in the eighteenth century. Historians emphasised the fragmentation of Indian polity resulting from the collapse of the Mughal empire, and detailed the course and outcomes of the Anglo-French wars in terms of the establishment of British power by military means. Such accounts showed little interest in the Company as a commercial operation, or in the economic activities of English private traders and entrepreneurs. More recent studies have drawn attention to the relationship between commercial expansion in the earlier part of the century, and the political expansion which took place later on. Seen in the context of much modern research on the economics of imperialism, these treatments appeared to possess greater explanatory force than earlier interpretations, and the military and political dimensions of Company expansion tended to fade from view. In a wide-ranging reassessment, British expansion in India in the eighteenth century: a historical revision, Peter Marshall seeks to restore a measure of balance. Although he surveys the growth of British commercial interests, and suggests ways in which these interests motivated annexation, he argues that the availability of the means of achieving conquest are at least as important as economic motivation in explaining why expansion took place. He shows how in the first half of the eighteenth century the Company set its face against warfare, but sought to use political pressure naval blockade, the threat to withdraw trade and other forms of intimidation to advance commercial interests and obtain trade privileges and customs exemptions. What limited the Companys political scope was the power of local rulers, and its own relative lack of military capability. Only when attention is drawn to the stronger means of coercion that were put under its control in the second half of the eighteenth century as a result of warfare with the French, does the degree to which commercial and political expansion were related become clearer.

By stressing the importance of the Companys acquisition of the means of expansion, Marshall reverts to emphasising the significance of both the Mughal decline, and the build-up of British and French armies, as causes of a long-term shift in the balance of power. However, the initial breaching of Indian defences in the period from about 1750 to 1784 owed more to a sudden access of power by the British than to any sudden weakening by the Indian states. Many Indian states adapted readily to the new terms of warfare set by the British. Mysore and the Marathas added military technology, strategy and tactics to formidable cavalry, and British armies found them difficult to defeat. The British, however, continued to try and avoid acquisition of territory: progression from military ascendancy to domination of territory was neither an inevitable one nor one that was consciously willed either in London or Calcutta. Nonetheless, repeated demands backed by force gradually destroyed the fabric of the Indian states from which the British were extracting concessions: By 1784 Oudh and the Carnatic had been seriously undermined and Bengal had collapsed altogether. Their new military power not only enabled the British to break down obstacles to the Companys trade and to that of private individuals, but, Marshall argues, the cost of maintaining the new armies in itself became a reason for making fresh demands on Indian rulers. These demands began the general process by which the whole raison dtre of the Company shifted from trade to tax collection. Greatly expanded military forces could not be paid for out of trading profits, which were insufficiently elastic, and so their cost came to be imposed, increasingly, on subjugated or weak neighbouring Indian powers. When indigenous rulers were unable to pay the full costs, or defaulted on agreements, the Company increasingly succumbed to the temptation to take over their administration. The needs of the army created an incremental pattern of encroachment on Indian states. Hence a growing army the means of exerting British power supplied, by reason of its high cost, a motive for ongoing expansion. With the emphasis in recent historical research shifting towards study of the role of warfare in the Companys expansion, the articles contained in this volume have been selected to offer insights into a variety of issues related to the military dimension of the Companys activities.