Sirajuddaullah and the East India Company 1756–1757: Background to the Foundation of British Power in India

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The short-lived nawabship of Sirajud daullah in Bengal constitutes a critical period in Anglo-Indian relations. The English victory over Sirajuddaullah had consequences which were permanent and pro- found in their nature. The nawab's defeat broke up the Indian government of Bengal and prepared the way for territorial expansion of the East India Company on the Indian sub-continent. It also changed the pattern of Anglo-Indian commercial relations. Prior to 1757 Bengal was the sink into which foreign bullion disappeared; after Plassey it became the mine from which vast amounts of wealth were drained without any return.

The purpose of this monograph is to examine the background, the causes, the nature and the consequences of the conflict between the English company and the nawab of Bengal. Over half a century ago S. C. Hill treated this subject in a long introduction of 212 pages prefixed to the three volume collection Bengal in 1756-57. Two writers dealing with the same historical period are bound to relate many of the same events, but I have avoided, as far as possible, any duplication of factual narrative. My approach to the subject has been considerably different from Hill's. He narrates events well, but he has made an inadequate analysis of the commercial relations between the Bengali government and the East India Company, which lay at the basis of the conflict. He has failed to interpret how a commercial corporation came to acquire political power in Bengal. Hill's historical curiosity has been greatly satisfied by relating the causes of the conflict to the avaricious and cruel nature of the nawab. In pursuit of this thesis he has, at times, suppressed evidence to the contrary, and on some other occasions has accepted the opinions of un- reliable secondary sources in place of primary witnesses. Hill's view fails to take into account the vast changes in the political and economic climate of India, the changes in the status of the Company itself, which, in the mid-eighteenth century made the English and Bengali interests quite irreconcilable.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages