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Neil Benjamin Edmonstone and the First Indian Imperialists, 1780-1820 Marla Karen Chancey

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Neil Benjamin Edmonstone and the First Indian Imperialists, 1780-1820 Marla Karen Chancey Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 In the Company's Secret Service: Neil Benjamin Edmonstone and the First Indian Imperialists, 1780-1820 Marla Karen Chancey Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY HISTORY DEPARTMENT IN THE COMPANY'S SECRET SERVICE: NEIL BENJAMIN EDMONSTONE AND THE FIRST INDIAN IMPERIALISTS, 1780-1820 by MARLA KAREN CHANCEY A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2003 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Marla Karen Chancey, defended on August 26, 2003. Bawa Satinder Singh Professor Directing Dissertation Patrick M. O'Sullivan Outside Committee Member Peter P. Garretson Committee Member Winston Lo Committee Member Richard L. Greaves Committee Member Approved: Neil Jumonville, Chair, Department of History Donald Foss, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iv INTRODUCTION 1 1. ORIGINS, 1765-1783 4 2. SOCIETY AND IMPERIALISM IN OLD CALCUTTA: 1783-1788 17 3. "THE SPLENDOR AND MAJESTY": A SEASON IN HYDERABAD, 1788-1790 36 4. ASAF-UD-DAULA AND THE BRITISH, 1790-1794 56 5. POWER POLITICS IN AWADH, 1794-1797 73 6. THE DENOUEMENT, 1797-1799 89 7. WILD AMBITION: THE MASSACRES OF 1799 105 8. WAR IN MASQUERADE, 1799-1801 126 9. THE POMP AND THE POWER, 1802-1803 145 10. THE MARATHA WARS, 1803-1805 161 11. THE BARLOW YEARS: DETERMINATION AND DISCORD, 1805-1807 183 12. CONSOLIDATION AND CONQUEST: MINTO AND MOIRA, 1808-1818 205 CONCLUSION 225 APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY OF TERMS 240 APPENDIX B: NOTES 243 BIBLIOGRAPHY 347 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 363 iii ABSTRACT Neil Benjamin Edmonstone held many important positions in the East India Company's Indian service during a career spanning 34 years, from 1783 to 1818. He was at various times Persian Translator to Government, Chief Secretary to Government, Secretary of the Secret Foreign and Political Department, Vice President of the Supreme Council at Calcutta and acting governor-general on two occasions. He served as the Company's chief intelligence officer for more than twenty years, taking on espionage occasionally himself, but more frequently directing the activities of others. He was thereafter a member of the Company's chief governing body, the Court of Directors, from 1820 until his death in 1841. In addition to providing the first biographical study of Edmonstone, this work includes a discussion of the lives of important civil servants of his generation, many of which have never received scholarly attention. The essential thesis of the work is that Edmonstone, and the group of civil servants around him, formed the first deliberately expansionist government in the Company's history. They combined all of the requirements for imperial success--a passionately held ideology, a sound plan for achieving their aims, and more expertise on the sub-continent than any previous generation had attained. iv INTRODUCTION And many strokes though with little axe, Hew down and fell the hardest timbered oak.—Shakespeare, King Henry VI In June 1841, a British newspaper in Calcutta noted the passing of a man whom it equated with Warren Hastings (governor-general of the East India Company from 1773- 1784) and Richard Wellesley (governor-general from 1798-1805) as one of the "originators and first workers-out of the very policy which has won for us the empire we now enjoy."1 Comparing an individual with two of the greatest names in early British India might seem merely the flattering rhetoric common to obituaries, but in this case the paper told the simple truth. A few years earlier, Wellesley had commented that this individual "was constantly in my unreserved confidence . He was my advisor and intimate counselor in all political transactions. After a long and general experience I cannot justly place any name above his, either for integrity, judgment, diligence, knowledge, ability, discretion, or temper."2 The nineteenth-century historian, Sir John Kaye, called him "the great political foreman of a succession of Governors-General," and believed that "among the many eminent public servants who helped to build up the great Raj of the Company, he had not a superior and scarcely an equal."3 However, Kaye gave no evidence to substantiate his claims, and therefore few have taken notice of them. More recently, David Kopf characterized him as "a key official in the Diplomatic Office,"4 and C.A. Bayly identified him as "the dominant figure in the Persian and Political Departments for nearly twenty years," but gave few details of his life and career.5 Indeed, so little has been written about him that many historians have never heard the name Neil Benjamin Edmonstone, much less the story of the important, perhaps unique, role he played in the affairs of the East India Company. This work will demonstrate that Edmonstone was the confidant and political advisor to every governor-general from Sir John Shore (1792-98) to Francis Rawdon Hastings, Lord Moira (1813-1823), the "spy master" who originated a number of their policies and made possible many of their successes, and the jack-of-all-trades who left an indelible mark on the Company's government. More than a discussion of the accomplishments of one man, however, this work provides portraits of many of the most influential civil and military officials with whom he worked--the "lost generation" in Indian history, as most have received little previous attention in scholarship. Yet theirs was one of the most critical eras for the British in India. It can be argued that 1783, the year Edmonstone joined the Company's service, was the real beginning of British imperialism on the sub-continent: the end of the American war turned British eyes towards India as a substitute for the empire they had lost; Warren Hastings' actions as governor-general publicized the affairs of the Company to a degree unknown before and led to furious debates over the proper role of the British in India; and William Pitt's East India Act was being formulated, which would culminate the next 1 year in the British government attaining a significant amount of control over the Company's affairs. Edmonstone's generation served the Company as it changed from a mercantile association based in North India and a few coastal stations to an empire spanning the sub-continent. Eighteen-eighteen, the year Edmonstone left India, witnessed the Company's final victory over the Marathas, the last great, independent Indian power. During his career, the mercantilists in the Company's service became functionaries of the new empire: diplomats, administrators, statesmen and spies replaced in importance the bookkeepers and accountants of the previous age. There was no precedent for what they were called upon to do, and no guidelines on how to build an infrastructure capable of ruling a land far larger and more diverse than Britain. Although few of them had prior training for the task, they built a workable system that endured under the Company's rule until 1858, and became the basis for every subsequent Indian government. There were certainly imperialists in the Company's service prior to Edmonstone's generation, but this work will argue that he and his colleagues formed the first organized, deliberately expansionist government in the Company's history. They combined for the first time all of the requirements for imperial success--a passionately held ideology, a sound plan for achieving their aims, and more expertise on the sub-continent than any previous generation had attained. Theirs was not the haphazard or primarily self-seeking aggrandizement of the mercantile age, but a carefully ordered design intended to found an empire. The work is divided into four parts. The first gives an in-depth look into the life of young men in the Company's service, focusing on the forces--cultural, ideological, economic and political--that combined to push them towards a strong imperialist stance. It discusses the imperial evolution of the Company in Edmonstone's early life and career- -in Europe, internally within its Indian possessions, and externally in its dealings with the Indian states. A further theme is the considerable expertise on Indian politics, culture and diplomacy that Edmonstone and many of his generation acquired, information that would make possible the conquest of a continent. The second part deals with the period of Sir John Shore’s governor-generalship (1792- 1798), a time traditionally viewed as the calm before the storm of the Wellesley era in which little of significance occurred. It will be argued here that the opposite was actually the case: Shore's period in office saw significant change take place in Europe and India that would make difficult anything other than an imperial stance for the Company. The focus of this section is the first significant political action influenced by Edmonstone's generation--the "Revolution at Lucknow," as he termed it--which, although a relatively minor affair in itself, had significant and long-lasting ramifications. The change of authority in Awadh in 1798 instigated by Shore, and, it is argued, prompted by his young, imperialist advisors, provided a useful example and a dangerous weapon to Wellesley in the form of an expanded and retooled subsidiary alliance system. The third part examines the close relationship between Edmonstone and Richard Wellesley. Iris Butler, Wellesley's modern biographer, noted that no one has attempted an in-depth political discourse about his Indian career, a fact she ascribes to his voluminous surviving papers.6 A better reason may be that his actions are difficult to explain without an understanding of the attitudes and influences of the men who made up 2 his government, especially Neil Edmonstone.
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