Th e Black Hole of Empire Th e Black Hole of Empire History of a Global Practice of Power Partha Chatterjee Princeton University Press Princeton and Oxford Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chatterjee, Partha, 1947- Th e black hole of empire : history of a global practice of power / Partha Chatterjee. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-15200-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-691-15201-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bengal (India)—Colonization—History—18th century. 2. Black Hole Incident, Calcutta, India, 1756. 3. East India Company—History—18th century. 4. Imperialism—History. 5. Europe—Colonies—History. I. Title. DS465.C53 2011 954'.14029—dc23 2011028355 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Th is book has been composed in Adobe Caslon Pro Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To the amazing surgeons and physicians who have kept me alive and working This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Illustrations ix Preface xi Chapter One Outrage in Calcutta 1 Th e Travels of a Monument—Old Fort William—A New Nawab—Th e Fall of Calcutta—Th e Aftermath of Defeat—Th e “Genuine” Narrative— Reconquest and More—Whose Revolution? Chapter Two A Secret Veil 33 Th e Conquest in History—Th e Age of Plunder—Early Histories of Conquest—Th e Modern State and Modern Empires—Th e Nabobs Come Home—Th e Critique of Conquest Chapter Three Tipu’s Tiger 67 A Bengali in Britain—Contemporary Indian Histories—Th e Early Modern in South Asia—Th e Early Modern as a Category of Transition—Nīti versus Dharma—An Early Modern History of Bengal—Tipu as an Early Modern Absolute Monarch—Th e Tiger of Mysore—Th e Mysore Family in Calcutta Chapter Four Liberty of the Subject 104 Th e New Fort William—Th e Early Press in Calcutta—Th e Strength of Constitution—Th e Making of Early Modern Citizens—Other Early Modern Institutions Chapter Five Equality of Subjects 134 Th e Falsehood of All Religions—Th e Colonization of Barbarous Countries— Citizens of Character and Capital—Th e Unsung End of Early Modernity Chapter Six For the Happiness of Mankind 159 Th e Founding of a Myth—Th e Utility of Empire—Th e Morality of Empire— Th e Myth Refurbished viii • Contents Chapter Seven Th e Pedagogy of Violence 185 Th e Law of Nations in the East—Dalhousie and Paramountcy—Awadh under British Protection—Th e Road to Annexation—Awadh Annexed— Imperialism: Liberal and Antiliberal—A Chimerical Lucknow Chapter Eight Th e Pedagogy of Culture 222 Th e Contradictions of Colonial Modernity—Th e City and the Public—Th e New Bengali Th eater—Shedding a Tear for Siraj—On the Poetic and Historical Imaginations—Siraj and the National-Popular—Th e Dramatic Form of the National-Popular—Surveillance and Proscription Chapter Nine Bombs, Sovereignty, and Football 264 Th e New Memorial—Th e Scramble for Empire —Th e Normalization of the Nation-State—Violence and the Motherland—Early Actions—Strategies and Tactics—Igniting the Imagination—Football as a Manly Sport—Football and Nationalism—Offi cial Responses—Th e Later Phase Chapter Ten Th e Death and Everlasting Life of Empire 311 A Gigantic Hoax—We Are Kings of the Country, and the Rest Are Slaves— Siraj, Once More on Stage—Endgames of Empire—Empire Today— Afterword Notes 347 References 387 Index 409 Illustrations Figures 1 Th e Holwell Monument at St. John’s Church 3 2 Holwell’s plan for his monument and inscription 5 3 Fort William in the Kingdom of Bengal, engraving by Jan Van Ryne, 1754 7 4 Section of map of Old Fort William and the town of Calcutta, 1756–57 8 5 Siraj-ud-daulah, from a contemporary portrait 16 6 John Zephania Holwell, platinotype print from painting, probably by Johan Zoff any, 1760 27 7 A View of the Writers’ Building from the Monument at the West End, aquatint by James Baillie Fraser 65 8 Tipu’s Tiger, carved wooden effi gy containing an organ, captured 1799 94 9 Lord and Lady Curzon after a Hunt, photograph by Deen Dayal, 1902 100 10 Plan of Fort William and the Black Town, by Lafi tte de Brassier, 1779 109 11 Copy of Samācār candrikā, 1831 131 12 Rammohun Roy, oil on canvas, by Rembrandt Peale, 1833 142 13 Government House before 1870, photograph 186 14 An area of European habitation in South Calcutta, 1825, from a map by J. A. Schalch 226 15 A section of North Calcutta inhabited by Indians, from a map by the Survey of India, 1887–94 227 16 Nabinchandra Sen, photograph 233 17 Akshaykumar Maitreya, photograph 243 18 Surendranath (Dani) Ghosh in title role in Sirajaddaula, 1905, photograph 251 19 Snuff box belonging to Warren Hastings with portrait of Mrs. Carey 265 20 Site of Black Hole 267 21 Arrival of Lord Hardinge as viceroy in Dalhousie Square, November 1910 268 22 Th e Hanging of Khudiram, chromolithograph, c. 1940 288 23 Advertisement for football 294 x • Illustrations 24 Cartoon on the 1911 IFA Shield fi nal by unknown artist 297 25 Spectators at 1928 IFA Shield fi nal between Calcutta Football Club and Dalhousie, photograph 301 26 Spectators with periscopes outside Mohammedan Sporting grounds 321 27 Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq, photograph 332 28 Garbage dump at former paved site of Black Hole 345 Preface Th is book braids two histories: a little history, and a grand one. Th e little history is local, tracing the career of the English East India Company’s fortifi ed settle- ment in Bengal from the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, Fort William and the city of Calcutta that surrounds it became the capital of the British Empire in India. In the twentieth century, Calcutta also became a major place where nationalist modernity was fashioned and mass politics was orga- nized. Th e conspiracies, ambitions, alliances, resistances, and confrontations that mark this local history of Fort William and its environs constitute one strand within this book. Th e grand history, on the other hand, is about the global phe- nomenon of modern empire from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Th is history, I claim, was fundamentally shaped by the unprecedented problems posed by the fact of modern European states ruling over Asiatic and African peoples, shaping in turn the norms and practices of the modern state itself. Modern empire was not an aberrant supplement to the history of modernity but rather its constituent part. It will continue to thrive as long as the practices of the modern state-form remain unchanged. Th e continuing global history of the norms and practices of empire constitutes the second strand of the narrative. Th e two histories come together in this book in the story of the Black Hole of Calcutta, the site of the alleged death by suff ocation of 123 Europeans taken prisoner by Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah of Bengal in 1756. Th ere was a time not too long ago when this account was widely known in many parts of the world. Indeed, the phrase “the black hole of Calcutta” was once commonly used to refer to any dark and suff ocating place. Yet from 1758, the time of its fi rst tell- ing, the story has gone through many transformations, with each new version drawing a diff erent moral conclusion. Th e sequence of retellings of the Black Hole story in the last two and a half centuries provides the narrative spine of this book. Around this, I have built a history of the British Empire in India and the nationalist resistance to it as well as a history of the global practices of em- pire as they have unfolded in the course of the frequently troubled relationship between metropolis and colony, and the changing demands of economic inter- est, political power, and moral legitimacy. Needless to say, the history of empire is densely entangled with the modern history of political theory, political econ- omy, and international law. Th ese entanglements work through abstract theo- retical concepts and normative judgments. My narrative commitment serves as a constant reminder that empire was not just about power politics, the logic of capital, or the civilizing mission but instead was something that had to be practiced, as a normal everyday business xii • Preface as well as at moments of extraordinary crisis, by real people in real time. Th e braiding of the two histories around a story line allows me not only to elucidate and refl ect on the theories and ideologies of empire since the mid-eighteenth century; I also present rich narratives of numerous events and characters that make up the real history of empire. A historiography driven solely by debates in political theory, economics, or sociology inevitably leads to harnessing evi- dence of one’s sources into a history that is nothing more than the ineluctable passage of the past into the necessary forms of the present. My attention to actual practices of empire as engaged in by real people in real time calls atten- tion to the irreducible contingency of historical events that can never be fully encompassed by conceptual abstractions, just as it also points toward the sig- nifi cance of historical tendencies that never fructifi ed, or developments that were arrested or suppressed.