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The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India 1756-1773 Ahmad, Asma Sharif

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The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India 1756-1773 Ahmad, Asma Sharif The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India 1756-1773 Ahmad, Asma Sharif The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author For additional information about this publication click this link. http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/jspui/handle/123456789/1785 Information about this research object was correct at the time of download; we occasionally make corrections to records, please therefore check the published record when citing. For more information contact [email protected] The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India 1756-1773 Asma Sharif Ahmad Queen Mary, University of London Thesis Submitted for the PhD Degree 2005 The British Enlightenment and Ideas of Empire in India 1756-1773 Abstract This dissertation examines the relationship between Enlightenment political thought and the conduct of imperial affairs on the Indian subcontinent between 1756 and 1773. It is concerned with the ways in which Enlightenment ideas affected the response of politicians, thinkers, merchants and East India Company officials, to the Company's actions and conduct in Bengal. It seeks therefore to uncover the underlying political principles that informed debates regarding the future of Britain's connection with the acquired territories. At first, controversy raged between the Company and the British state over the question of property rights: in 1767 the British government tried to assert its right to the territorial revenues of Bengal that had been acquired by the Company in 1765. The government was not successful and the issue of ownership would remain unresolved in this period and beyond. However, as the Company began to appear incapable of managing and reforming its own affairs, the British government was forced to confront the question of what the best way of conducting policy in the east might be. This thesis makes use of an array of under-utilised printed sources - pamphlets, books and in tracts - as well as analysing contemporary parliamentary debate, to recover the ways which empire was both rationalised and theorised. The first part of the dissertation lays out the narrative of events, gives a brief sketch of ideologies of empire in Britain after 1690, and reviews the historiography on the East India Company's rise to power. It then proceeds, in part two, to set out the ways in which Enlightenment conceptions of a science of politics underpinned both the condemnation of the Company's government of Bengal and plans for its reform. In the third part of the thesis, particular attention is given to the thought of Sir James Steuart who was specifically approached by the Company to provide a solution to their monetary problems in Bengal. This was a brief that he fulfilled comprehensively, making use of the concept of self-interest, and revealing the rationale that he believed should inform the Company's commercial policy towards a British dependency. Throughout this work, the political ideas examined are situated in the broader context of debate regarding sociability, international trade, the nature and obligation of governments in general, and of the British constitution in particular. Acknowledgements My greatestdebt is to my supervisor Richard Bourke. I cannot enumerate everything he has done for me, but without his support and encouragement, I could not have reached this stage. In addition, I have greatly benefited from advice and guidance from Huw Bowen, particularly respecting chapter 4. He has also pointed me in the direction of crucial sources. Javed Majeed has answered my many queries, listened to my ideas and read chapters along the way. I am also grateful to Jon Wilson for finding time to read my work and offering me the benefit of his advice, and to David Wootton and Peter Marshall for their guidance. I would also like to thank Cornelia Cook for reading a complete draft of the thesis in such a short time and with such good cheer, as well as for many kindnessesover many years. Niall O'Flaherty also found time to read a portion closely for which I am especially grateful. Thanks are due also to Markman Ellis for answering all my administrative related questions with such efficiency and to Yogish, of Queen Mary Library, for his technical assistance.I am also indebted to the AHRB for funding two years of my research. My parents have of course supported me in every way they could. And my siblings, Adil, Sumayya and Usama, assistedme in a manner altogether their own. Contents Acknowledgements 3 5 List ofAbbreviations Introduction 6 Part I 1 Britain, the East India Company and Empire 16 2 The East India Company's Rise to Power 64 Part II 3 'A New and Monstrous Speciesof Despotism': Responsesto the East India Company'sRule of Bengal 94 4 Supervisors,Despotic Power and Checksand Balances:Plans for 131 the Reform of the East India Company Part III 5 Sir JamesSteuart (I): Bengaland the Drain of Wealth 165 6 Sir JamesSteuart (II): Conjectural History, Self-Interestand Reform 200 Conclusion 238 Appendix 247 Bibliography 253 Abbreviations Add MSS Additional Manuscripts, British Library BL British Library Eg. MSS Egerton Manuscripts, British Library FWIHC Fort William-India House Correspondenceand Other ContemporaryPapers Relating Thereto, 21 vols (New Delhi: Controller of Publications, Government of India for the National Archives of India, 1958-69) MSS Eur. European Manuscripts, Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library ODNB Oxford Dictionary ofNational Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) <http: //www. oxforddnb. com> OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections RCHC Reportsfrom the Committeesof the Houseof Commons,12 vols (1803-6) 5 Introduction In August 1765, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II conferred the grant of diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa on the East India Company. ' This did not mark the beginning of the Company's political power in the region, but it was a date that contemporaries came to recognise as having altered the whole tenor of Britain's presencein India. The Company's responsibilities had been transformed, in the words of the Annual Register,'from the management of a counting house to the government of an empire'. ' This dissertation is concerned with how that transformation was conceptualised and criticised by publicists and reformers. More precisely, it is concerned with the extent to which the wider currency of Enlightenment political ideas informed the terms in which criticism of the Company, and its relations with the British government, was deployed. To that extent, the pages that follow examine the relationship between Enlightenment political thought and the conduct of British imperial affairs in India. They explore the ways in which characteristically Enlightenment modes of argument affected the responseof politicians, thinkers, merchants and East India Company officials to the Company's activities in Bengal. In the process, I try to uncover the underlying principles that informed debate surrounding Britain's responsibilities vis-ä-vis the acquired territories. The controversy that the Company's affairs at this time raised in British politics, and the steps that were taken by the government to reform them have received treatment in the respective works of Lucy Sutherland and H. V. Bowen? Sutherland's work focused on the relationships between groups and individuals in parliament and the Company in London, while Bowen has looked more broadly at the status of the 'Indian problem' in British political debate. Both of these works inform the present study: they provide an essential part of the broader context in which the issuesI discussare located. The specific contribution which the argument set out here ' Diwani was the Mughal branch of government concerned with the collection of taxes. It is important to note however that despite the official documentation, Orissa did not come under Company control until 1803. Throughout this dissertation Bengal will be used as shorthand for Bengal and Bihar. 'Annual Register." or a Viewof theHistory, Politics,and Literatureof the Year,104 vols (London, 1795- 1863), no. 16 (1773), p. 66. 3 Sutherland, The East India Companyin Eighteenth-CenturyPolitics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952); Bowen, Revenueand Reform: the Indian Problemin British Politics 1757-1773(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 6 aims to provide is an historical understanding of the principles in terms of which the issues fundamental to the controversy were formulated. This work therefore builds on the existing historical literature, but it also develops an approach which has been under-employed in the historiography of eighteenth-century India. As a result, my significant points of departure from the works of Sutherland and Bowen include both the material examined and methodology employed in this study. In the first place, this thesis provides a detailed and systematic account of the most important contemporary political literature - primarily tracts, books and pamphlets - to recover reactions to the territorial acquisitions in the sub-continent ° This literature includes a range of commentators from Company servants,such as William Bolts (1739-1808),5 to politicians, such as George Johnstone (1730-1787),6 and philosophers such as Sir James Steuart (1712-1780)' This range of writing, though extensive in itself, was nonethelessonly one forum in which debatesabout the empire in India took place.
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