Trying to Rule India without Indians, 1793–1831

Abstract

Although singularly unsuccessful in his relentless prosecution of Warren Hastings between 1786 and 1795, Edmund Burke nevertheless helped establish several core themes in British colonial governance over the next four decades. First of all, through focusing so intently on Hastings, Burke played a major role in turning the question of British colonialism’s morality into a management problem, whereby the conduct and character of those Britons charged with the responsibility of ruling (and how it appeared to Indians as well as fellow Britons back home) mattered much more than the imperial venture’s morality itself. As part of this larger theme, Burke also forcefully and continually urged fellow members of the British political elite during the 1780s and 1790s to make a greater imperial commitment to India. As he argued in 1783, the Company needed to send out “men sanguine, warm, and even impassioned in the cause” of governing in their Indian subjects’ best interests rather than “English boys full grown in fortune before they are ripe in principle.”3 Burke also feared the corrupt tendencies of Indians he labeled as “Banyans”—crucial intermediaries in British colonial administration as they knew the country, its laws, and its languages whereas most Britons did not.