Approaches to State-Building in Eighteenth Century British Bengal

Abstract

Since the early seventeenth century, English, and later British trade to South and South-East Asia was conducted by the English East India Company, a privately owned joint-stock trading corporation endowed with a royal charter. In the eighteenth century, the Company increasingly acted as a political and military player in India, which was characterised by power struggles within the framework of the Mughal Empire, following the gradual decline of the Emperor’s central authority. The beginning of British colonial rule in India is usually marked by the battle of Plassey in 1757, when the East India Company used the dynamics of an internal struggle to become the power behind the throne of the Nawab (“provincial governor”), the ruler of Bengal in the northeast of India. The Company defended its position as the dominant power in Bengal in the Battle of Buxar in 1764, beating the combined forces of the Nawab and the Mughal Emperor. This Emperor, Shah Alam II (1728–1806), who afterwards was in dire need of allies, acknowledged the Company’s position with the grant of the Diwani, the privilege entailing the collection of land-taxes and the civil jurisdiction over Bengal. The leading officers of the Company in Bengal, located at Fort William, the Company’s headquarters in Calcutta, tried to fulfil their new role by constructing a system of government, placed as they were between the directives of the Company’s Court of directors—and increasingly the British ministry in London—and the necessities faced on the spot (Marshall 1987a, 70–136, id. 2006, 487–507; Mann 2000, 33–93; Chaudhury 2000; Bowen 2006).