East India Company (EIC) Consolidation

• EIC-controlled armies stationed on other rulers’ territory

• EIC still one regional power among many

• creation of three “presidencies”: Bengal (centered on Calcutta), Madras, Bombay

• 1773-1785: Governor-General Warren Hastings

◦ accusations of corruption, misrule during 1770s famine in Bengal

• India Act of 1784: Gov-Gen of Bengal given control over all EIC holdings

• 1786 reform: higher salaries for EIC civil servants, to reduce corruption

• 1785-93: Governor-General Cornwallis

Permanent Settlement of 1793

• permanently fixed taxation assessment in Bengal at a certain level, initially very high

• created rights to land, so that it could be bought and sold

• many zamindars (revenue collectors) could not pay tax, lost land

• opportunities for new buyers who wanted to cast their lot with EIC to buy land

Resistance in Mysore

• Haider Ali and son Tipu Sultan posed perhaps last major threat to EIC control

• 1792-93: Cornwallis defeated Tipu’s army

• 1799: EIC captured Tipu’s capital, Seringaptam, and killed Tipu

Muslim Resentment

• 1803: British capture Delhi

• Muslim aristocrats and princes resent lost privileges, British racism

• many Muslims refuse to cooperate with EIC rule (vs. more positive Hindu attitudes)

Orientalism (Edward Said, 1978)

1) an academic field of study

2) a set of attitudes based on opposition of “Orient” and “Occident”

3) the impact of these attitudes on colonial administration

Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education (1835)

• “I have never found one [Orientalist] who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”

• “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.”

The Sikh Wars

• First Sikh War (1845-46): EIC conquers Lahore

• Second Sikh War (1848-49): EIC finally defeats Sikhs for good

• EIC now controls entire subcontinent, through direct rule and princely states

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