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Revisiting the East India Company's 1767 1 ‘Neither the Hills nor Rivers will Obstruct’: Revisiting the East India Company’s 1767 Expedition to Nepal. Samuel Mark Ellis Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of History September 2019 2 Statement of Academic Integrity The candidate confirms that the work submitted is their own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Sam Ellis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by Sam Ellis in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors Andrea Major and Kevin Linch, my examiners Elisabeth Leake and Jon Wilson, my partner Olivia Reilly, my friends and family, and my study companion Brontë the dog. 4 Abstract This thesis challenges existing nationalist and colonialist interpretations of the 1767 expedition to Nepal on behalf of the British East India Company, and those encounters that followed before the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. The thesis then posits an alternative interpretation that explores the agency and influence of previously neglected, marginalized figures, by drawing upon the works and criticisms of postcolonial/decolonial approaches and Subaltern Studies, and new interpretative frameworks pioneered by borderlands studies.1 Marginalized historical agents played a significant role within the events of 1767, determining the expedition’s outcome and influencing subsequent approaches. There is furthermore a wider pattern of influential marginalized historical agency in Anglo-Himalayan encounters. Therefore, the inclusion of such marginalized experiences, agencies and agendas in our analysis of encounters proves critical to existing and emerging debates around who pulled the strings of EIC eighteenth-century colonialism. 1 Postcolonial and Decolonial are historiographical approaches for which the parameters of each, and relation between the two, are not widely agreed upon. For the purpose of this thesis, the former incorporates the critique of colonial discourse, and the latter; a specific development from that critique that aims to bypass the colonial lens or pursue alternative readings within it. 5 Contents ‘Neither the Hills nor Rivers will Obstruct’: Revisiting the East India Company’s 1767 Expedition to Nepal.......................................................................................................................... 1 Statement of Academic Integrity .................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 8 Chapter I - Limitations of Colonialist and Nationalist Accounts of 1767 .............................. 11 Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 11 I:1 Forgetting Kinloch ............................................................................................................... 11 I:2 Remembering Shah ............................................................................................................... 16 I:3 Existing Challenges and their Shortcomings in Nepalese History Writing .................. 23 I:4 Conclusions............................................................................................................................ 28 Chapter II – Navigating an Approach from the Margins: Historiographical, Methodological and Source-based Considerations. ................................................................................................ 30 Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 30 II:1 Critiquing Orientalist and Nationalist Discourse ........................................................... 30 II:2 Navigating Terminologies and the Subalternist Approach ........................................... 38 II:3 Contributions from Borderlands Studies ......................................................................... 44 II:4 Source Critique I: Kinloch’s Journal................................................................................. 51 II:5 Source Critique II: The Colonial Archive ........................................................................ 55 II:6 Source Critique III: Nepalese Sources ............................................................................. 59 II:7 Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 62 Chapter III - The Root and the Rocks: Gorkha, Nepal, the EIC, and the Road to War in 1767 ............................................................................................................................................................ 64 Summary ...................................................................................................................................... 64 III:1 Re-interpreting Gorkhali Expansion, 1743-1767 .......................................................... 64 III:2 Accounting for the Malla Request for Intervention ..................................................... 72 III:3 The EIC at Patna and the Formation of Colonial Himalayan Knowledge. .............. 76 III:4 The Decision to Intervene ............................................................................................... 82 III:5 Plans and Preparations ...................................................................................................... 87 III:6 The Expedition’s Components ........................................................................................ 90 III:7 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 100 Chapter IV – ‘This Day Set Out’: Marginalized Agency within the 1767 Expedition ........ 102 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 102 IV:1 Flood Management and Flooding in Bihar .................................................................. 102 6 IV:2 Feeding the Expedition: The Supply and Withholding of Grain ............................. 109 IV:3 ‘What Was I Now To Do?’: Rural Communities and EIC Military Occupation ... 114 IV:4 Into the Hills: Encountering New Landscapes and Localities .................................. 120 IV:5 Sindhuli Gadhi and the Role of Gorkhali Martial Strength ....................................... 124 IV:6 Messengers and Guides: The Breakdown of Communications ................................ 127 IV:7 The Sepoys: Fight or Flight? .......................................................................................... 132 IV:8 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 136 Chapter V – ‘Those Whose Interest Is Against You’: The Aftermath of 1767 and Further EIC Expeditions to Nepal Before 1795..................................................................................... 138 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 138 V:1 Immediate Ramifications of 1767 and Marginalized Agency in Plans for the Return to Kathmandu ........................................................................................................................... 138 V:2 The Withdrawal from Hostilities in a Wider Context .................................................. 143 V:3 Logan’s Activities in Nepal .............................................................................................. 149 V:4 ‘Plan Of Attack of a Mountainous Country’: Further Plans for Nepal and the Morang Intervention ................................................................................................................ 152 V:5 Regional Officials, the Capuchins, and Foxcroft’s Expedition to Nepal, 1783 ....... 158 V:6 The Sino-Nepalese War and Kirkpatrick’s Expedition, 1793 ..................................... 160 V:7 The Appointment of a South Asian Emissary: Kadir Khan’s Expedition, 1795 ..... 171 V:8 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................ 174 Chapter VI –Marginalized Agency in Wider Himalayan Ventures and Early Nineteenth- Century Expeditions to Nepal ..................................................................................................... 176 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 176 VI:1 – The Sannyasi Uprising and Rennell’s Cartography.................................................. 176 VI:2 ‘I Can Depend On His Exerting Himself For
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