11 August 2007

John Company


I am not panicking this morning, though financial matters of both tactical and strategic levels woke me early. I was comforted by the massive infusion of cash into the markets by the Federal Reserve. Still, being uncomfortably alert so long before breakfast, like Louis Carroll, I was prepared to believe at least three impossible things.

The round number that marks the independence of India and Pakistan is hard upon us. Both exercise a compelling interest on me, both for their past and futures. Buttering my toast, I thought that the notion that a thin veneer of proper English rule could endure for long over a society of hundreds of millions of people is absurd, but was a manifestation of the multifaceted nature of Indian society.

Hundreds of millions of Hindus were ruled by dozens of millions of Muslims, after all. The layers of conquest lay upon one another like an intricately made cake, and stretched north to the headwaters of the sacred Ganges.

The Moghul Emperors still ruled India from Punjab when the private traders of the East India Company arrived in eastern India. Babur, founder of the Moghul dynasty in India, brings the tradition of Timur the Great to the subcontinent, and the faith of Islam. Tamurlane, as he was known to apprehensive Europe, adored the memory of the Great Khan, and did his best to emulate the expansionist fervor of his people.

Babur's captured Kabul in1504 at the head of his first army. He was a writer and a bit of a mystic, and brought a vibrant social culture to the city, he was inspired by his heritage to bring more territory under his sway. Constrained by a powerful new Persian dynasty to the west and hostile Uzbeks to the north, his logical move was east and south, down through the mountain passes.

Babur viewed it as his right, derived from Tamurlane's capture of ancient Delhi in 1398. A series of increasingly daring raids made his claim real, and by 1565 his descendents are well established on the Peacock Throne in Delhi.

The continual warring across central Asia made the Silk Road from China and the Indies unreliable and expensive. By the sixteenth century, the superior navigational technology and skills of the Portuguese permitted Europeans to cut out land-bound intermediaries and reap the profits through direct sea navigation.

The Spanish and Portuguese had a monopoly on the spice trade until destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588. English Sea-dogs plundered the world ocean, but it was not until the conclusion of the Anglo-Spanish wars and the 1604 Treaty of London that freed the British and Dutch to send their ships far abroad in search of commercial profit.

There were technical problems, of course. Lack of reliable clocks made it impossible to accurately calculate longitude, and thus many ships were lost due to the inability to determine their location, or create accurate navigational charts. Navigation was largely a matter of secret notes from the first global mariners, and the risk of transit only increased the profits.

The British East India company had an exclusive charter originally signed by Elizabeth the First. The paper meant little to the pugnacious Dutch, who maintained a stranglehold on the fertile islands that bordered the South China Sea. The Dutch demonstrated their resolve in the Amboina Massacre in 1623, when they executed English, Japanese, and Portuguese traders. Previously, they had attempted to establish an exclusive arrangement with the Moghul Empire as well.

The newly formed Company's galleons defeated a numerically superior Portuguese flotilla in November of 1612, near the city of Surat, in Gujarat province. The Moghul Emperor was impressed, and granted the English trading concessions. The Portuguese had not endeared themselves to the Muslim Mughals, since they regularly harassed the faithful on the Haj to Mecca. The English were more pragmatic about religious matters, and settled down to a profitable trade in cotton, silk, spice, indigo, and saltpeter.

Over time, the company found it necessary to assemble its own Army and a bureaucracy of its own to administer its holdings and customers. The formal name was shortened, to simple "John Company." It's influence and power spread across the sub-continent in an elaborate web of relationships with hundreds of little kingdoms.

John Company became Great Power in his own right. A remarkable cast of expatriate characters labored in the service of the Company in the early days. Some were simply pragmatic, seeking their fortunes in the sweltering heat before returning home. Others took up the Indian lifestyle with relish, adopting the dress and marrying into local society.

The Company conquered Bengal with the victory of Robert Clive at Plassey in 1757 and the later Battle of Buxar 1764. The Permanent Settlement followed, and the commercial enterprise began to vigorously expand its area of control in India.

The unfettered power of the private concern was alarming to London, and was reigned in by Parliament over the years. The Regulating Act of 1773 and the India Act of 1784 were informed by the unpleasant results of the King's adventures in North America, and the Company's monopoly was terminated in 1813. By 1834, it worked as the government's agency, increasingly insular and out of touch with reality on the ground. Content in their cantonments, they were complacent and contempuous of the social ways of their subjects.

As the middle of the century approached, the aging Moghul Emperor Bahadur Shah II was a symbolic figure. He presided over an empire barely encompassing the territory beyond the gates of old Delhi. Though a Shia Muslim, he was considered the only indigenous figure with broad enough support to lead an India free of the British and their company.

The Mutiny in 1857 marked the beginning of the end, and was the seminal moment in the establishment of Indian nationhood. The rising against British rule was concentrated mostly in Punjab, though the horrors of what happened to some of the European communities galvanized a brutal response.

The siege of Delhi has all the elements of high drama and low comedy. The rescue column of British burned the only available barracks, condemning them to a monsoon season in tents. When it was done, the dashing Brigadier Nicholson was dead, and Bahadur Shah and three of his sons took refuge at the tomb of Humayan, the eldest son of Babur the Conquerer.

On September 20, a party under Captain William Hodson took the Emperor into custody with the promise of clemency, and detained his heirs the next day without it. The Captain personally executed the sons of the Bahadur Shah, and hung their bodies on a fountain in the Chandni-chok market.

Bahadur Shah became an object of curiosity, and spent his last time in exile in Rangoon.

That was the end of the Moghuls, and the locals refer to the Mutiny as the First War of Indian Independence. A remarkably civil plaque with words to that effect was later affixed to the gothic British memorial by the Indians after independence.

The Colonial Office took full control of domestic affairs, and the relations with the hundreds of Princely States. The Company ceased to exist in the 273rd year of its life.

HSH Dickie Mountbatten, Lord Louis to the masses, was born a quarter century later, precisely the right man for the ticklish job of extricating the British Emperor from his Indian realm.

I'll tell you more about that tomorrow, and I will keep this to the high road. I promise not to breath a word about the rumors about the wife of the last Viceroy, and her infidelity with the enemy.

History is really fun sometimes, despite the tiresome dates and minutia. It is all about people, after all. Considering the antics of our species, what could be more interesting than that?

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Close Window