The Scottish Connection with India 1725–1833

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the Scottish elite, having taken advantage of opportunities provided by the 1707 Union with England, was then encouraged to spread eastwards, with the East India Company (EIC) as the vehicle. This progression was initiated in 1725 by a Westminster government headed by Walpole. He used the patronage provided by the monopoly to consolidate Whig political management of Scotland. Ministries, thereafter, also found this system very useful. This explains why there were so many Scots employed by the English EIC and its shipping for most of the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth. Their numbers were further boosted, from 1784, by the favours conferred, and the scheming, of Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville head of the new India Board. These Scots would play an extraordinary part in propagating the British Empire in India, the East Indies and China. An unlooked for, but very welcome additional benefit, concerns the riches these people brought back to Scotland. This wealth had a major impact on Scotland’s economic infrastructure. It is also argued that the East India patronage system helped dampen Jacobite and Scottish nationalist sentiments and that together with the bonds formed with the English elite and commercial classes—through wealth-seeking in the Indies—use of this patronage helped bring stability to the new concept of a “Great Britain”.