No More Learning

. Et sa majesté Très Chré-
tienne renonce à toute pretention aux acquisitions qu'elle avait faite sur la
côte de Coromandel et d'Orixa depuis le dit commencement de l'année 1749. . . .
Elle s'engage de plus à ne point ériger des fortifications et à ne point entretenir
des troupes dans aucune partie des états du soubah de Bengale. . . .
It is clearly implied that the English enjoyed a special position in
Bengal by the limitations which the French engaged to observe; but
neither then nor till long after was the least attempt made to define
the position by the use of any of the political terms employed in
Europe. The article in the Treaty of Versailles of 1783 even more
obviously evades the matter. After providing for the restoration of
the French factories in Bengal, it continues :
Et sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à prendre les mesures qui seront en
son pouvoir pour assurer aux sujets de la France dans cette partie de l'Inde,
comme sur la côte de Coromandel, et de Malabar, un commerce sûr, libre et
indépendant. . . .
In 1786-7, when troubles with the French in Bengal produced
renewed discussions in Europe, leading to the convention of 1787,
the most inconsistent language was used, showing that the English
still had not been able to make up their minds as to their position
in India. Thus the Committee of Secrecy writes to the Governor-
General in Council, 19 July, 1786, stating that the French could
hardly expect the benevolent intervention of the Company so long
as they assumed a position of independence and did not "acquiesce
in the general controuling power existing in the English Companv


## p. 596 (#624) ############################################

596
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
as Dewan of the provinces". 1 But in Paris, on 6 February, 1787, Eden,
who was negotiating the convention, took up a very different position
in an explication confidentielle which he delivered to Montmorin.
His proposals, he said, were intended,
sans rien faire qui soit censé déroger à la souverainté possessoire et exclusive
dont l'Angleterre jouit dans l'Inde, de donner à la France toutes les facilités
praticables, dans la vue de former un traité de commerce. . . . C'est un fait
incontestable que l'Anglettere possède tous les droits substantiels de la souve-
rainté dans les provinces de Bengale, Bahar, et Orixa. . . . C'est en supposant
cette qualité effective de la souverainté que les deux cours ont formés l'article
11 de traité de Paris et l'article 13 de celui de Versailles. . . . ?
The French, however, did not accept this doctrine, which can hardly
be read into the treaties mentioned without vigorous interpolation.
The position is clearly summed up in an unpublished letter of Corn-
wallis to the Committee of Secrecy, dated 16 November, 1786. "From
this complicated system”, he says, "founded on grants conferred and
powers assumed, of sovereignty exercised though not avowed, many
difficulties arise in all negotiations with foreign nations. ” 3
The Treaty of Amiens only dealt with India under a general
article, but the Treaty of Paris of 1814, and the convention with the
Netherlands of the same year, both place the position of the English
Government in India beyond question internationally. Both refer
specifically to the British sovereignty in India, which was then for
the first time acknowledged by the French and the Dutch. In this
connection, and as displaying the contrast which this treaty displays
with previous diplomatic language, a sentence from Article 12 of the
Treaty of Paris may be quoted :
Sa Majesté Britannique s'engage à faire jouir les sujets de sa Majesté Très
Chrétienne relativement au commerce et à la sûreté de leurs personnes et pro-
priétés dans les limites de la souverainté britannique sur le continent des
Indes, des mêmes facilités, privilèges et protection, qui sont à présent ou seront
accordés aux nations les plus favorisées.
Thus the claim put forward by the legislation of 1813 was in the
following year formally announced to the diplomatic world of Europe
and recognised by the two powers principally interested in the East.
We must now turn to see how in India itself the position of the
East India Company gradually developed. The obvious point of
departure is the Treaty of Allahabad, by which Clive secured for the
Company a grant of the diwanni, agreeing in return to pay to the
emperor twenty-six lakhs of rupees a year besides giving him posses-
sion of Allahabad and the revenues of the neighbouring country.
The emperor at the time when he made the grant was a fugitive from
his capital, without money, without troops, dependent on the English
for his daily bread. His grant gave them nothing which they could
1 India. Office, French in India, vol XII.
Idem.
8. Idem.


## p. 597 (#625) ############################################

THE BENGAL TRIBUTE
597
1
> 3
not very well have taken for themselves had they been so minded,
and Clive's reason for his generosity, as has been pointed out above,
referred not to the position of affairs in India but to the Company's
relations with the crown and the French. The grant was, Hastings
said, “a presumptuous gift of what was not his to give", and
The sword which gave us the dominion of Bengal must be the instrument of
its preservation; and if. . . it shall ever cease to be ours, the next proprietor
will derive his right and possession from the same natural charter. 2
Holding these views Hastings was inevitably opposed to Clive's
settlement so far as it concerned the action of the governments in
India. Indeed, he had hardly taken over the government in Bengal
in 1772 before an opportunity arose for him to give effect to his ideas.
The emperor, Shah Alam, having quitted English protection at
Allahabad for Maratha protection at Delhi, Hastings decided to stop
payment of the Bengal tribute. “I think I may promise", he wrote,
“that no more payments will be made while he is in the hands of
the Mahrattas, nor, if I can prevent it, ever more. " 3 The refusal was
diplomatically placed to the account of the Bengal famine of 1769-70.
There followed an unceasing stream of letters from Delhi, in which
the emperor or one of his ministers called upon the English to
withdraw from their position, or at the least to lend the emperor
troops who might be paid out of the arrears. Hastings at last wrote,
“I must plainly declare that until the safety and welfare of these
provinces will admit of it, I cannot consent that a single rupee be
sent out of them which it is in my power to retain”. 4 The payment of
tribute was the one really crucial element in the relations between the
emperor and the rulers of the provinces. A governor might strike
coin and have Friday prayers read in the emperor's name; he
might pay handsomely to obtain the imperial confirmation of his
succession, and offer large sums for the continuance of his predecessor's
titles; but these things meant little except when they were accom-
panied by the regular remittance of the annual tribute, which alone
signified a real, living allegiance to the imperial power. Hastings's
refusal of tribute was in effect a declaration of the practical inde-
pendence of Bengal.
It was accompanied by another act which in its way was equally
significant. The districts of Kora and Allahabad were ceded to the
nawab of Oudh. Clive's arrangement by which they had been given
to the emperor might conceivably have been represented as obedience
to the monarch's commands. Not so the decision which dispossessed
the imperial revenue-officers and transferred the districts back to the
nawab of Oudh in return for fifty lakhs paid into the Company's
1 Minute, ap. Bengal Select Committee, 4 October, 1773.
2 Minute, loc. cit. 12 October, 1772.
3 Hastings to Purling, 22 March, 1772 (Monckton Jones, op. cit. p. 147).
+ Ilastings to Shah 'Alam, 13 September, 1773 (Forrest, op. cit. 1, 58).


## p. 598 (#626) ############################################

598
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
treasury. As if in order to make the position clearer still, Hastings
declined the title which the emperor offered him. In another way,
too, Hastings aimed at introducing English sovereignty, though
circumstances did not allow him to carry it into execution.
He
advocated the replacement of alliances between Indian princes and
the Company by alliances between them and the crown. The first
occasion on which he placed these ideas on paper seems to have been
in a letter to North of 26 February, 1775; 2 but from a later letter to
Elliot of 12 January, 1777, it appears that the subject must have been
discussed between him and Shuja-ud-daula when he visited Benares
in 1773. He states that the nawab was desirous of alliance with
George III and even offered to coin money in the name of the English
monarch. Hastings was still in favour of this project in 1777, and
thought it might be applied not only to Oudh but also to Berar.
Had this policy been carried into effect, it would have led to a formal
assertion of English paramountcy in India. But the directors, had it
even been proposed to them, would have objected to it as lessening
their importance, while the ministry of the time had no clear-cut
conception of its own purposes. The plan thus came to nothing, and
survives only as a project, foiled, like so many of Hastings's plans, ov
the opposition or the inertia of others.
While Hastings was thus bent on repudiating the emperor's
authority over Bengal, he was equally active in reducing even the
ostensible part played by that phantom the nawab in its internal
management-implanting, as he said, the authority of the Company
and the sovereignty of Great Britain in the constitution.
“The truth is”, he wrote to the Secret Committee on 1 September, 1772,
"that the affairs of the Company stand at present on a footing which can neither
last as it is nor be maintained on the rigid principles of private justice. You
must establish your own power, or you must hold it dependent on a superior,
which I deem to be impossible. " 4
In these ideas he was encouraged by the Company's decision
"to stand forth as diwan”. One of the guiding principles which
inspired the reforms of the period 1772-4 was to make Calcutta
the visible capital of the province. Thither was moved the chief
revenue-office, and thither went the appeals from the courts which
he established. "In a word", he claimed in 1773, "the sovereign
authority of the Company is firmly rooted in every branch of the
state. " 5
But in this he had out-run the intentions of his masters, the
directors, and their masters, the parliament and crown. Lawyers like
Thurlow might with brutal directness declare that in India existed no
1 Hastings to Shah 'Alam, 1 August, 1773 (Calendar of Persian Correspond-
ence, IV, 77).
2 Gleig, op. cit. I, 508.
3 Idem, u, 136.
4 Idem, I, 254.
5 Idem, p. 332.


## p. 599 (#627) ############################################

HASTINGS AND THE COUNCIL
599
powers or rights but force, and that it was "a country with no public
moral or faith". 1 But no one in England was yet ready to accept the
idea of filling with British sovereignty the void created by the disso-
lution of the Moghul Power. The vagueness of the Regulating Act
corresponded in its own way with the vagueness of the directors'
orders. They might resolve directly to administer the Bengal revenues
on reports that their Indian deputy was playing them false; but
though they enjoyed the powers they were not prepared to assume
the position of the masters of Bengal. When they received complaints,
for instance, that the French were refusing to obey the orders issued
in the nawab's name, they replied :
We direct that you afford the Country Government all necessary assistance
in the execution of such equitable laws as are or may be framed for the pro-
tection of the natives. . . . If the French persist in their contempt of the Nabob,
it is our order that you decline as much as possible entering into a discussion
of such of their complaints as shall be cognizable by the Nazim of the province,
for so long as the English pay attention to His Excellency, it cannot be expected
that other Europeans should be allowed to disregard him. . . .
So when Clavering and his followers arrived in India, and found that
Hastings had adopted a different policy, and above all when they
found the Supreme Court taking the same line, calling the nawab
"a man of straw", and demanding that the majority should make
oath that he was a sovereign independent prince, conducting his
own affairs independently of their government and capable of making
war and peace with Calcutta, though they were unable to make the
required affidavits they were strongly inclined to adopt, support, and
enforce the Company's views, reviving the phantom which Clive had
summoned up. Not impossibly the latter had urged this course on
Francis in some of those meetings which took place at Walcot shortly
before the majority sailed from England and which were full of evil
cmen for the relations between the governor-general and his new
colleagues. Hence their endeavour to maintain the fiction of the dual
government and to hide the authority of the East India Company.
Accordingly they insisted on re-establishing Muhammad Riza Khan
as deputy nazim and supported their decision by taunting Hastings
with neglect of the Company's intentions.
"The Governor roundly insists”, we read, "on the futility of attempting to
maintain a country government. . . . An old servant of the Company might at
least have treated their deliberate and invariable opinion with greater respect.
With regard to us, if our ideas on this subject had not entirely concurred with
theirs, and if we had not been convinced that in their circumstances it was the
only rational system they could pursue, we should still have thought it our
duty. . . to have adopted their doctrines. "
1 Thurlow's Opinion on Clive's Jagir Case.
2 Company to Bengal, 3 March, 1775, paras. 59 sqq.
: Bengal Secret Consultations, 29 February, 1776.


## p. 600 (#628) ############################################

600
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Besides these thin and hollow declarations should be placed Hastings's
vigorous and (in this case) accurate language.
All the arts of policy cannot conceal the power by which these provinces
are ruled, nor can all the arts of sophistry avail to transfer the responsibility
of ihem to the Nabob, when it is as visible as the light of the sun that they
originate from our own government, that the Nabob is a mere pageant without
so much as the shadow of authority, and even his most consequential agents
receive their appointment from the recommendation of the Company and the
express nomination of their servants. 1
Absolute as the opposition appears, it is nevertheless deceptive.
The majority were ready to use any stick to beat Hastings with, even
if it was not one of their own growing; and although under the stress
of controversy they found themselves committed to the views set
down above, they had not always considered the dual system of
government that best adapted to the situation of Bengal. In a letter
written early in 1775 Francis had pointed out that under the system
which in the next year the majority advocated so heartily, the people
of Bengal had either two sovereigns or none, and that the only course
to follow was to declare the sovereignty of the king of Great Britain
over the whole of the provinces; and at this time his criticisms of
Hastings's conduct seem confined to the fact that in abolishing the
Moghul sovereignty he had not formally declared the British. ?
Francis had recorded similar sentiments in a minute of 8 March, 1775.
After this it is odd to find him, in a private, unpublished letter to
Lord North, declaring that the English should set about giving or
restoring an active constitution to the Moghul Empire. “The autho-
rity of the Emperor should be in a considerable degree restored and
means given him to support it. ” 3 The revival of the empire would
have been wholly inconsistent with English authority in Bengal.
It is worth noting that in this respect the policies of the English
and the French had been, and continued to be, diametrically opposed.
Dupleix and Bussy had consistently acted within the theory of the
empire. They had based their claims in Southern India on the
authority of Salabat Jang, as legitimate subahdar of the Deccan.
Even in the Seven Years' War, when matters were going ill for the
French, Bussy advocated summoning the subahdar's brother, Basalat
Jang, into the Carnatic, on the ground that the authority of his name
and connection with the subahdar would enable the French to collect
revenues where without him they could not raise a rupee. All
their intrigues of a later date included schemes to secure the influence
of the imperial name, as if that could give them a man more in
the field or a rupee more in the treasury. Down to the time of
Wellesley they continued to dream of reviving the empire in order
1 Hastings's Minute, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 7 December, 1775.
2 Francis to. North, February, 1775 (Parkes and Merivale, I, 27).
3 Same to same, 21 November, 1775 (Public Record Office, T 49-8).


## p. 601 (#629) ############################################

BROWNE'S MISSION
601
2
3
thereby to establish their own supremacy; and so obsessed were they
with this idea that some of them even attributed it to their English
rivals. 1
But Jean Law, the coolest head among them, saw better and more
clearly into the heart of things. In a mémoire composed in 1777 he
pointed out with incisive force that English security depended on the
existence of many independent princes, certain to be divided among
themselves, and so incapable of a unit-d attack on the foreigner;
but, if the government of Calcutta set to work to increase its power
under cover of re-establishing the Moghul Empire, it would be
following the only policy which would give every prince of India an
urgent motive for attacking it. ? The ideas with which Francis dallied
had occurred to many Englishmen before him—to Clive, who had
resolutely put them aside; to Vansittart; who had been willing to put
them into action but luckily had been prevented by circumstances.
Here the Company was in complete agreement with its servants'
actual policy. An attempt to restore the emperor at Delhi, the Com-
pany had written, "might bring on the total ruin of our affairs; and
we add that, should you be persuaded into so rash and dangerous
a measure, we shall deem you responsible for all the consequences”. ?
Hastings, however, was never adverse to modifying his policy, if
it seemed desirable, with all that freedom from the shackles of a
formal consistency which is the peculiar privilege of the despot. Not
that he ever weakened on the point of English sovereignty in Bengal,
but in 1782 he thought it desirable to re-enter into relations with
Delhi, and with that object had appointed Major James Browne to
be his agent at that place. Browne was first to visit the nawab of
Oudh and ascertain his views, since Hastings desired "to second and
assist his views [rather] than to be the principal or leader in any plan
that may be undertaken”. Aware that the emperor might take
advantage of the agent's appearance to raise once more the old
question of the tribute and Allahabad, Hastings instructed him to
avoid if possible the discussion of such unpleasant topics, "since it is
not in my power to grant either one or the other". The purpose of the
mission was rather to secure information than anything else. “Hitherto
we have known nothing of the political state of the court but from
foreign and suspected channels. Your first care must be to collect
the materials for a more complete and authentic knowledge,
only of Shah 'Alam's court but also of “the independent chiefs and
states whose territories border on his”. 4 This was then no revival of
the schemes of Vansittart, merely an extension of political relations to
1 Cf. Modave's Memorandum of 1774, ap. Barbé, Madec, p. 65.
2 Law, État politique de l'Inde en 1777, pp. 76-7.
8 Company to Bengal, 16 March, 1768.
4 Hastings to Browne, 20 August, 1782, ap. Bengal Secret Consultations, 10
September, 1783. A collection of papers bearing on the British relations with
Delhi forms Home Miscellaneous volume no. 336 at the India Office.


## p. 602 (#630) ############################################

602
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
a prince of exalted dignity and pretensions but of definitely circum-
scribed territorial power, and whose sovereignty, as Hastings observed
on a later occasion, “is universally acknowledged though the sub-
stance of it no longer exists".
Browne's mission led to no action of any kind; but on the occasion
of Hastings's final visit to Benares in 1784, he was brought into contact
with a fugitive prince, Mirza Jiwan Bakht, who had fled from Delhi
and was anxious for English or any other intervention to procure his
return. At this time Hastings was regarding with a speculative eyc
the rise of the Sikh power in Northern India, whence he predicted
the emergence of new dangers to the Company's possessions "if this
people is permitted to grow into maturity without interruption”.
He seems to have contemplated the possibility of affording assistance
to the prince with a view to checking the advances of the Sikhs; buć
preferred that Mahadaji Rao Sindhia should be committed to this
enterprise; indeed very shortly after this, on the occasion of the
murder of Afrasiab Khan, Sindhia did assume control of affairs at
Delhi; and this was the position of affairs when Hastings quitted
India early in 1785.
The degree in which the decay of the Moghul Empire was appa-
rent to and recognised by the people of India, and the aspect under
which the rising power of the East India Company appeared to them,
must have varied widely according to the class and the interests of the
observer. Princes such as the nawab of Oudh or the Nizam of
Hyderabad still made haste on their accession to obtain a formal
confirmation in their offices and the grant of titles; and for these they
were willing to pay in hard cash. They still struck coin in the em-
peror's name; in his name were still read the prayers in the mosques;
and the seals which they used to authenticate their public documents
still declared them the humble servants of the emperor. But, in strong
contrast to the observance of these forms, none thought of obeying
his orders, of remitting to him the surplus revenues of the provinces,
of mustering troops for his support. Shah 'Alam himself with his
immediate courtiers doubtless regarded them all as rebels whom he
would duly chastise had he the power; but in view of his complete
impotence he could only acquiesce. To the common people these
affairs were too remote to concern them in any way. They had
suffered in silence the establishment of Muslim rule; they had
watched with unconcern one Muslim dynasty replace another; and
how they watched unmoved the last of these falling into decay and
dishonour, while they paid their taxes to whatever power appeared
with armed force to demand them, whether it were Muslim, Marathn,
or European.
Among the princes of India two policies emerged as alternatives
to that policy of drift to which most of them were inclined. One was
to declare their independence of the empire, as Tipu did when he


## p. 603 (#631) ############################################

CORNWALLIS
603
2
proclaimed himself padshah in his own right;" the other was to espouse
the imperial cause and extend a personal dominion under the shadow
of the imperial name, as Mahadaji Rao Sindhia sought to do. Of
these the first was generally reprobated by Muslims, to whom even
the later Moghul emperors, as in an earlier century even the later
Abbasid Khalifs, symbolised religious as well as political sentiments,
though no longer capable of transforming them into effective action;
while the second of the two could only commend itself to able and
ambitious individuals, like Sindhia, who perhaps dreamed of ulti-
mately transforming the empire from Muslim to Hindu.
When matters were in this state of flux, Cornwallis arrived in India
and a new period begins in the development of the East India
Company's position.
Cornwallis and the later governors-general
could not be expected to and in fact did not display that sympathy
ith Indian ideas which made the Company's servants not unwilling
to perpetuate traditional forms even though they might obscure the
essential facts of the situation. To Cornwallis the customary diplo-
matic language was a "pompous, unmeaning jargon”. The tone of
the Calcutta government rises.
"I expect”, writes Cornwallis, “that all the princes of the country except
those of the royal family shall habituate themselves to consider the English
residents at their respective courts as the representatives of a government at
least equal in power and dignity to their own. " 3
When Shah 'Alam fell into the hands of the cruel Rohilla Ghulam
Kadir Khan, Cornwallis, though horrified at the torture inflicted on
him, could see no political reason for interference. "If we should
now free him," he said, "unless we could give him an army or a
permanent fund for the payment of it, he would immediately again
become the slave and perhaps the prisoner of some other tyrant. ” 4
Casual interference would thus be useless; and practical statesmen
could not be expected to employ their resources in restoring a
vanished empire.
"I have received several melancholy [letters] from the King”, Cornwallis
writes to Shore, "calling on me in the most pressing terms for assistance and
support. This morning I wrote him a letter, perfectly civil and respectful, but
without all that jargon of allegiance and obedience, in which I stated most
explicitly the impossibility of our interference. ” 5
This was not Cornwallis's only assertion of the Company's inde-
pendence. In 1790 the Bombay Government proposed that advantage
should be taken of the death of the nawab of Surat to obtain a farman
from Shah 'Alam for the country in the Company's name. Cornwallis
rejected the proposal. For one thing the nawab had left a son whose
claims should not be overlooked; and for another, "I am. . . unwilling
1 Wilks, Historical Sketches, ed. 1867, 8, 110.
2 Cornwallis Correspondence, I, 418.
4 Idem, p. 352.
3 Idem, p. 558.
5 Idem, p. 295.


## p. 604 (#632) ############################################

604
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
to lay much stress on a sannud from the King, as a formal acknow-
ledgment of its validity might be turned to the disadvantage of the
Company upon some other occasion". Accordingly the nawab's
son was recognised as his successor by the Company, and there the
matter was left. The same procedure was adopted in 1793 when
Nasir-ul-mulk was recognised as nawab of Bengal. Sindhia in the
name of Shah 'Alam protested; but his protests were disregarded.
Similarly too when Sindhia indirectly sought to revive the demand
for Bengal tribute in 1792. Sindhia was at once informed that any
such claim would be warmly resented, on which he hastened to assure
Cornwallis that he regarded the British as supreme within their own
territories.
The government of Shore displays no change in the Company's
position; and, indeed, if circumstances had demanded of him any
important decision, he would hardly have borne the Company's
banner so high. He was much more careless of the political deductions
that might be drawn from a compliance with forms, and actually
submitted to be invested with a khilat or dress of honour by the
princes whom he visited at Benares in 1797. 2 But when in the
following year he was succeeded by Mornington as governor-general,
a change of tone rapidly became apparent. In the course of the war
with Sindhia, Lake defeated the enemy before Delhi in 1803, and
the capital and the person of the emperor fell into English hands.
This was an object which, on account of French intrigues, Morning-
ton, now become Lord Wellesley, had much at heart. A French
paper, written by one of Decaen's officers, had fallen into his hands,
stating that Shah 'Alam
ought to be the undisputed sovereign of the Moghul empire. . . . The English
Company by its ignominious treatment of the Great Moghul, has forfeited its
rights as dewan and treasurer of the empire. . . ; thus the Emperor of Delhi has
a real and indisputable right to transmit to whomsoever he may please to
select, the sovereignty of his dominions, as well as the arrears due to him from
the English.
Wellesley concluded that the English interests demanded the removal
of Shah Alam from the reach of such dangerous suggestions. The
emperor might confer on the French an independent sovereignty in
the French possessions and factories, and that, in a time of peace in
Europe, might produce most embarrassing consequences. Accordingly
when Sindhia's troops fled from Delhi, the person of the emperor
was reckoned among the most precious spoils of victory. In Maratha
hands the imperial name and prestige had not counted for much, as
was demonstrated clearly enough by the events of this same war, for,
though Sindhia was as deputy wakil-i-mutlak master of all the
resources of the empire, and on the outbreak of war had caused the
emperor to declare that he had erected his conquering standards and
1 Cornwallis Correspondence, II, 22. ? Teignmouth, Life of Shore, 1, 404,
3 Wellesley Despatches, IV, 652 sqq.
3


## p. 605 (#633) ############################################

WELLESLEY AND SHAH ALAM
605
entered his tents in order to settle the points at issue, it is certain that
Sindhia neither strengthened himself nor weakened the Company by
his use of the imperial name. But it might have been very different
if a French army had taken the field, or if French diplomatists in
Europe could have fortified their pretensions with imperial grants.
The situation created by Wellesley's occupation of Delhi can
hardly be expressed by the technical language of the West, which
carries with it too sharply defined ideas to be appropriate to such
vague relations as were established. The facts were these : Shah
Alam blandly acquiesced in the defeat of his lieutenant. He received
Lake in his palace, conferred on him a khilat and a title; and shortly
after it was decided to continue the jagirs assigned by the Marathas
for his maintenance, but they were to be administered by the Com-
pany's Resident at Delhi who was also in charge of the administration
of the city; these functions were to be discharged under orders from
Calcutta in the emperor's name, and the only area in which the
imperial orders were really effective was the palace and its precincts.
No written engagements of any sort were given; no grants of any kind
were requested; everything that was done was done by the authority
of the Company's government at Calcutta; but it was intimated that
the latter did not intend “to interdict or oppose any of those outward
fcrms of sovereignty to which His Majesty has been accustomed. His
Excellency is desirous of leaving His Majesty in the unmolested
exercise of all his usual privileges and prerogatives”, and the Resident
was directed to use all the forms of respect
"considered to be due to
the emperors of Hindustan”. 1 Wellesley's view of the matter was
that the emperor had passed under the protection of the British
Government. The palace view possibly was that the Company had
returned to its obedience; but in the eyes of India the fortune of war
had transferred Shah 'Alam from the custody of Sindhia into that of
the Company.
Down to this time the British assertion of sovereignty within the
Company's possessions had been spasmodic and incomplete. But
from the arrival of Lord Moira in 1813 it was definite and full. The
date corresponds with the statutory assertion of the king's sovereignty
and only precedes by a year the diplomatic acknowledgment of the
claim by France and Holland. Moira was persuaded of "the
“
expedience (and indeed necessity) of extinguishing the fiction of the
Mogul government”. ? His seal, therefore, no longer bore the phrase
proclaiming the governor-general the servant of the emperor. The
nazars-gifts offered by an inferior to his lord—were no longer
presented in the name of the governor-general. 3 Akbar II, who had
succeeded his father Shah 'Alam in 1806, desired an interview with
Moira, but the latter declined unless the other waived all ceremonial
2
1 Idem, pp. 153, 237, 542 and 553.
? Hastings's Private Journal, 1, 78.
3 Idem, p. 323.


## p. 606 (#634) ############################################

606
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
>
a
implying supremacy over the Company's dominions. "Nothing",
Moira wrote in his journal, “has kept up the floating notion of a duty
owed to the imperial family but our gratuitous and persevering
exhibition of their pretensions. " He encouraged the nawab of Oudh
10 assume the title of king, and declared the expediency of granting
titles of honour. And while he thus refused to acknowledge any
supremacy but that of his own master, he established the Company's
power on a new and broader basis by his decisive overthrow of the
Marathas and the network of protective alliances which he cast over
Northern India.
Probably these developments had their share in deciding Akbar
II to receive his successor, Amherst, in 1827, without that ceremonial
to which Hastings had objected. The two entered the Diwan-i-khas
at Delhi from opposite sides at the same moment; they met in front
of the throne, exchanged embraces, and then took their seats, the
cmperor on his throne, the governor-general on a state-chair placed
on the right; no nazar was offered; and on Amherst's departure, the
emperor presented him with a string of pearls and emeralds. Amherst
also modified the style of letters addressed to the emperor, using forms
which recognised the other's superiority but excluded allegiance or
vassalage on the part of the British Government. " In 1835 the coinage,
which ever since 1778 had pł:rported to have been issued in the
nineteenth regnal year of Shah 'Alam, was replaced by the Company's
rupee bearing the English monarch's image and superscription.
With this change the absolute disappearance of the old style and
titular dignity came in sight. Ellenborough, an enthusiast for the
direct government of India by the crown, cherished a scheme for
inducing the Delhi family to quit the palace that had been built by
Shah Jahan, and to resign the title which was, by voluntary request
of the chiefs, to be offered to the queen, despite the oddity—had his
ideas been carried into effect-of her figuring as Padshah Ghazi, the
imperial champion of Islam, which would have made a queer pendant
to the Fidei defensor. Dalhousie shared Ellenborough's dislike of such
survivals of the past world of India. Under his reformatory rule the
titles of nawab of the Carnatic and raja of Tanjore were allowed to
lapse along with the pension which had been granted to the Peshwa
on his surrender in 1818. He proposed that with the death of the
existing emperor, Bahadur Shah II, the imperial dignity too should
be allowed to lapse. In this matter the Court of Directors was strongly
opposed to him, and though the president of the Board, Sir John
Hobhouse, obliged it to sign a dispatch formally sanctioning such
action, he also wrote to the governor-general, informing him that
there was strong feeling against his plan, and hinting that it would
3
2 Idem, p. 343 sqq.
1 Selections from the Panjab Records, I, 337.
3 Colebrooke, Elphinstone, II, 266.
4 Durand, Life of Sir H. Durand, I, 84.


## p. 607 (#635) ############################################

END OF THE MOGHUL EMPIRE
607
be well to reconsider matters, while the chairman of the Court,
General Sir A. Galloway, strongly urged the impolicy of any mea-
sures that had not the assent of the heir to the title. In these circum-
stances Dalhousie decided not to carry out the original plan, but to
negotiate. Prince Fakr-ud-din was therefore approached with propo-
sals offering recognition as emperor on his father's death, provided he
would consent to meet the governor-general at all times on equal
terms, and to remove the imperial family from the palace in Delhi to
the Kutb, some miles to the southward of the modern city. To these
terms the prince assented, so that it seemed that the principal purpose
which had inspired all these manæuvres, securing possession of the
palace not only as a symbol of sovereignty but also as the ideal
site for the principal military depot in Upper India, would be
accomplished within a few years. This, it may be noted, explains
how it came to pass that the vigorous Dalhousie took no action
regarding the famous magazine at Delhi beyond removing the
powder magazine to a point outside the city walls.
But on the death of Fakr-ud-din in 1856 the question was raised
once more. Bahadur Shah urged that another son, Jiwan Bakht,
should be recognised as heir, but Canning, who had by then replaced
Dalhousie, was more obstinately determined than had been his pre-
decessor on the abolition of the dignity. In this decision he seems to
have been supported by all the Company's servants in a position to
be consulted--the Resident at Delhi, the lieutenant-governor of the
North-West Provinces, and the members of the governor-general's
council; the court of directors either changed its mind or was over-
ruled; and nine months before the outbreak of the Mutiny it was
decided that the imperial rank should no longer be recognised after
the death of Bahadur Shah. .
But at last circumstances precipitated the crisis. After the fall
of Delhi the old emperor was tried for complicity in the Mutiny,
and ended his days in exile in Rangoon, while the direct government
of the Company's possessions by the British crown was at last estao-
lished. That the course of events, the gradual stripping of the imperiai
house of all the emblems of royalty, and the final resolve to terminate
its honours, created a furious resentment within the walls of the
palace, and was represented as a blow at their faith by the more
fanatical Muslims in India, may be accepted as certain. But to
regard it as the main, or one of the main, causes of the outbreak
involves the absurdity of attempting to explain a complex movement
by viewing it from one only of its many aspects. The hostility of
the Moghul court had been a constant factor from the day, eighty
odd years ea:'lier, when Warren Hastings had refused to continue the
tribute due from Bengal as a Moghul province; it had inspired
>
1 Lee-Warner. Dalhousie. II. 135 sqq. Selections from the Panjab Records, 1,
2 Idem, p. 456 sqq.
405 599


## p. 608 (#636) ############################################

608
DEVELOPMENT OF SOVEREIGNTY
Akbar II when he saw the Company's government assuming the marks
of eastern sovereignty; and it was in itself no more formidable in
1857 than it had been any time in the previous eighty years.
If this shadow-king had had influence enough to make the Com-
pany's sepoy forces mutiny, he would have used it many years before.
Finally, it should be noted that such survivals of vanished power
were by no means uncharacteristic of eastern history. The khalif of
Baghdad was visited by embassies bearing gifts and seeking titles
long after the provinces of the Abbasid Empire had become inde-
pendent, and ceased to send their tribute to the imperial treasury.
A nearer parallel may be found in India itself. When the Peshwas
founded their power at Poona, they did not overthrow the Maratha
monarchy. The descendants of Sivaji continued to reign at Satara
while for a century their ministers ruled from Poona, and each
Peshwa solemnly sought investiture from the king, although the king
could only do as he was directed. At Mysore Hydar and Tipu
preserved the old Hindu kingly family, and showed its representative
periodically to the people; and at Nagpur the Bhonsles preserved a
Gondh prince, to whom they left the title of raja and in whose name
they issued their orders. The relations between the East India Com-
pany and the Moghul, the one exercising and the other claiming the
attributes of sovereignty, the one possessed of material power and
the other of mystic superiority, the one obeyed and the other revered,
were by no means extraordinary. The peculiar factor in this case
was not the separation of right and power, but the fact that the East
India Company was not a purely Indian body, that it represented
the sovereign of Great Britain and brought with it a European
impatience of pretensions that had ceased to have a basis in fact.


## p. 609 (#637) ############################################

BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER
I
THE PORTUGUESE IN INDIA
A. ORIGINAL MATERIALS
(1) PORTUGUESE SOURCES
MANUSCRIPT
The official records are contained in the Archivo da Torre do Tombo and
the Bibliotheca Nacional at Lisbon, and in the archives at Goa. The records in
the Torre do Tombo are described in P. A. de Azevedo and A. Baiao, O Archivo
da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, 1905; A Mesquita de Figueiredo, Archivo Nacional
da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon, 1922; and F. C. Danvers, Report on the Portuguese
Records, 1892.
In this country the India Office Records include an important series of
transcripts and translations from the Lisbon records made under the direction
of F. C. Danvers. They are drawn chiefly from the Livros das Monçoes, the
Corpo chronologico, the Gavetas Antigas, and the Conselho Ultramarino. A full
list is printed in the India Office List of General Records.
A number of Goa Records were purchased by William Marsden. Part of these
were presented to the British Museum (Add. MSS, 9390-9397, and 9852-9861)
during Marsden's lifetime, the remainder were presented to King's College in
1835 and transferred to the School of Oriental Studies with the whole of Mars-
den's Library in 1917. The MSS of Almeida, Storia de Etiopia a alta, were in
Marsden's possession; one of these, which was used by Beccari for his printed
edition, is now in the British Museum (Add. MS, 9861); the other, which seems
to bear the corrections of Almeida himself, is in the School of Oriental Studies.
(See Bulletin School of Oriental Studies, II, 513-38. )
The British Museum possesses a large collection of official documents relat-
ing to the Portuguese possessions in India ranging from 1518 to 1754 (Add.
MSS, 20861-20913), also the Resende MS (Sloane, 197).
Notes on the Goa archives will be found in Surendranath Sen, Historical
Records at Goa, Calcutta, 1925, and A Preliminary report on the historical re-
cords at Goa, Calcutta, 1925.
PRINTED
Periodicals
O Oriente Portugues. Revista da Commissao Archeologica da India Portuguesa.
Nova Goa, 1904
Archivo Historico Portuguez. Vols. II and III. Lisbon, 1904-5.
Boletim da Sociedade de Geographia de Lisboa. Lisbon, 1875, etc.
Royal Asiatic Society. Journals of the Ceylon Branch. Colombo.
Chronicles and contemporary documents
ALBUQUERQUE. Cartas de Affonso de Albuquerque. (Collecçao de Monumentos
ineditos para a historia das conquistas dos Porcuguezes em Aſrica, Asia, e
America. Tom. X-XVI. Lisbon, 1884-1315. )
Commentarios do Grande Afonso d'Albuquerque. 4 vols. Lisbon, 1774.
The commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboque que. Translated from the
Portuguese by Walter de Gray Birch. (Hakluyt Society. ) 1875-7.
Alguns documentos do archivo nacional da Torre do Tombo acerca das nave-
gaçoes e conquistas portuguezas. Lisbon, 1902.
39


## p. 610 (#638) ############################################

610
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARBOSA, DUARTE. Libro dell' Indie Orientali. Sommario di tutti i regni, città,
e populi dell' Indie Orientali. (Ap. Ramusio. )
-The book of Duarte Barbosa. Translated by M. Longworth Dames. (Hakluyt
Society. ) 1918-21.
BARROS, JOAO DE. Decadas da Asia. Lisbon and Madrid, 1563-1615.
BIKER, J. F. Collecçao de tratados. 14 vols. Lisbon, 1881-7.
BOCARRO, ANTONIO. Decadas 13 da historia da India. (Academia Real das
Sciencias. ) Lisbon, 1876.
BOTELHO, SIMAO. O Tombo do estado da India feito em 1554; Cartas de Simao
Botelho; Lembranças das cousas da India em 1525. (Academia Real das
Sciencias. ) Lisbon, 1868.