March 2, 2017
Midterm
John Seeley, a prominent 19th century English historian, once wrote that Britain conquered India in “a fit of absence of mind.” Do you agree or disagree?
Nineteenth century historian John Seeley’s assessment that the British conquered India in “a fit of absence of mind” is true about the way that British India began, but not about how it progressed. While the British did not enter India with a plan of completely controlling India, they ended up moving towards dominance in a strategic fashion that repressed the Indian way of life and introduced Western knowledge and culture. At first, the British wanted to generate a profit. Next, they were motivated by the opportunity to upset their rivals. This was followed by the development of a double government, which appeared to keep local leadership in place but in reality installed a British leader as the most powerful ruler in India. This led to the introduction of Western knowledge and culture into Indian society. What began as an economically driven attempt to pump goods out of India resulted in a concerted effort to westernize the Indian way of life, while suppressing them enough to ensure that the British would remain dominant.
When the British entered India, they asserted authority over the Indians as a means to achieving their economic goals. Queen Elizabeth I had granted the East India Company the power to acquire and govern territory, coin money, raise arms and build fortresses, form foreign alliances, declare war, pass laws, and try and punish criminals in the Royal Charter in 1600. After the Battle of Plassey in 1757, when the British East India Company became the leading power in India under the direction of Robert Clive, the Company was granted power to administer courts and collect taxes in Bengal, marking the beginning of Great Britain’s formal conquest of India. When a company rules a colony, as is the case in India beginning in the middle of the eighteenth century, it does not work to serve the occupants of the colonized land, but rather to prove to shareholders that they have made a productive investment that will turn out a profit. In Spiridione Roma’s oil painting “The East Offering Its Riches to Brittania,” commissioned by the East India Company itself, there is a sentiment that the British are solely in India to trade its exotic goods and protect its people. India offering its goods to the British willingly and peacefully, an idea that the British wanted to be portrayed in this piece of art, suggests that the British were forming a narrative for how they wanted their actions to be viewed.
The British became more aggressive in their role in India after seeing a European competitor thrive. With the rivalry between France and England to colonize more land growing, and the French succeeding in colonizing Algeria, the British felt pressure to keep up in India: “Britain was committed to securing its Indian interests at all costs. Control of the seas, in an era in which export trade brought the greatest profit, gave Britain an edge over all rivals” (Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, A Concise History of Modern India, page 55). They worked with local merchants, landowners, governments, gentry, and more to build relationships with those who had something from which the British could gain power. The Battle of Plassey in 1757 was a major demonstration of authority over the French, who had control of the nearby city of Changernager. The British were able to intimidate the Nawab of Bengal, who ignored the French in peril, a sign of British dominance and French failure within India.
“India” was an area defined by the British that previously held no larger national identity. Regions within India were made up of smaller societies that had each built their own traditions and ways of life. The regionalized fragmentation of local Indian communities and lack of a central government meant there was no chief power that represented every area being overtaken by the British to speak on their collective behalf. By leaving the smaller, local governments in place, the British gave the appearance that little was changing by their emergence in India, and that life would continue on as normal. The East India Company were even able to recruit mercenary Indian soldiers willing to fight on their behalf not only because they needed the money, but also because they were often fighting groups from different regions than themselves, and potentially even rivals of their own localities. This created the impression that these mercenaries were fighting a common enemy on behalf of the British. As Bal Gangadhar Tilak said, “We are clerks and willing instruments of our own oppression in the hands of an alien government, and that government is ruling over us not by its innate strength but by keeping us in ignorance and blindness to the perception of this fact” (Ed. Stephen Hay, Sources of Indian Tradition, page 145).
In 1772, Governor-General Warren Hastings became the first British political officer to be in charge of an administration that would govern every British territory within India. The Regulating Acts were the method by which the East India Company would pass India off to the British government. Hastings believed the best way to rule was to “adapt our Regulations to the Manners and Understandings of the People, and the Exigencies of the Country, adhering as closely as we are able to their ancient uses and Institutions” (Metcalf, page 57). Once again, the British were thoroughly contemplating how best to rule Indians in a way that would best suit Indian culture while also continuing to reap benefits for the British Empire. There is no absence of mind in learning a language completely different from one’s own in order to best communicate a new system of laws and governance. As Bernard Cohn argues, a conquest of India was a conquest of knowledge. Having the knowledge of local language allowed the British to precisely communicate with and demonstrate order over Indians. As ways of knowing are directly linked to ways of ruling, the British ruled the Indians by imparting upon them a knowledge that would develop a Westernized Indian population. A central idea of Liberalism is that everyone can be made to be equal through a successful trade economy, rule of law and proper education. However, the British did not intend for the Indians to truly be equal, as they did not give them equal access to government jobs. They wanted the Indians to have the façade of making gains through the British without ever attaining true power.
While historian John Seeley was right in the fact that the British did not go into India with a plan of complete domination over the territory, their progress led them to calculate their actions. Their motives were initially economic, using powers granted by Queen Elizabeth I’s Charter, then competitive, as demonstrated through the British rivalry with French colonization. However, their deceptive nature in approaching leadership and ultimate introduction of Western ways into Indian culture – as well as their attempts to learn Indian languages – proves that the British implemented strategic practices to conquer India.