The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (33 page)

the Atlantic were too slow and small to allow the Habsburg imperial

state to supervise them directly. As a result, the Pizarrists were free to

turn the machinery of Inkan imperial rule to their own ends. Unhindered by metropolitan oversight, they were exceptionally brutal in

their search for plunder. But most empire builders would have done

Spanish

Peru 167

the same if given the opportunity, for when stripped to its essence,

empire is nothing more than the political embodiment of unchecked

avarice.

The conquistadors also began a new era of western empire building. While earlier imperial conquerors were self-servingly brutal,

they never pretended to be concerned with the salvation of their

subjects. The architects of the Arab caliphate used Islam to justify

their conquests, but they did not claim that their tribute demands

were uplifting or civilizing. The conquistadors, conversely, professed that godless New World peoples benefi ted from imperial

exploitation.

Foreshadowing the emergence of nineteenth-century biological

racism, Spanish ideologues linked imperial citizenship with blood.

Where select Britons, Iberians, and even preconquest Andeans had

the chance to escape subjecthood through assimilation and conversion, the New World Spaniards claimed that all indigenous Americans were so inherently different and inferior that they were destined

to be permanent subjects as “Indians.” As such, it was appropriate

and legitimate to exploit Andean labor through the
encomienda
and

mit’a
systems. Although the origins of this protoracism lay in the

Reconquista, Spanish notions of imperial exclusivity found fertile

ground in the substantial settler colonies that were another new feature of the early modern overseas empires in the Americas. While

Roman veterans’ colonies and Arab military camps introduced a colonial dimension into ancient and medieval empires, these relatively

small imperial settlements often merged with local subject communities. In contrast, Spaniards migrated to the New World in far greater

numbers and created a self-sustaining colonial aristocracy that used

early modern notions of blood and purity to justify their systematic

exploitation of Andean labor.

In South Asia, the rulers of the Mughal Empire similarly discovered that this new kind of empire was a global phenomenon in the

early modern era. Like the Sapa Inkas, the Mughal emperors paved the

way for aggressive European imperial speculators by creating effi cient

and co-optable imperial state systems. While the Mughal emperor

Shah Alam II never had to face a desperately ruthless warlord like

Francisco Pizzaro, he soon discovered that the clerks of the British

East India Company could be as dangerous as any conquistador.

N

AWADH

BIHAR

Calcutta

GUJARAT

A

S

IS

R

O

M

Bombay ARATHAS

GOA

Madras

0

200 mi

0

300 km

Mughal Empire, 1960

4

Private Empire Building

While the conquistadors stormed into the Andes, the British Empire

crept up on the
ryots
(peasant farmers) of the Mughal province of

Bengal. Historians tend to mark 1757, the date of the British East

India Company’s victory over Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula at the battle

of Plassey, as the beginning of direct British rule in eastern India.1

But this seemingly unremarkable clash between the forces of the

nawab
, the de facto independent ruler of one of the Mughal Empire’s

most wealthy provinces, and a privately owned European chartered

company probably did not make much of an immediate impression

on the vast majority of Bengalis. Those who were aware of Siraj-udDaula’s defeat at the hands of the barbarous but seemingly innocuous foreigners who fi rst came to the South Asian subcontinent to

buy hand-woven textiles and assorted spices well could have concluded that they had simply exchanged one set of imperial rulers for

another.

Along with the territories of Bihar and Orissa, Bengal lay on the

easternmost fl ank of the Mughal Empire in what is today northeastern India and Bangladesh. Under the British, the province of Bengal

fell within the larger Bengal Presidency, which included most of the

northeastern corner of the South Asian subcontinent. At the time of

Plassey, Bengal was essentially an autonomous kingdom under the

Mughal bureaucrats-turned-governors who exploited the declining

fortunes of the empire. Murshid Quli Khan, the fi rst of these
nawabs
,

or viceroys, was a Hindu ex-slave turned bureaucrat. His successors

governed through a diverse coalition of Muslim military elites and

169

170 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

Hindu bureaucrats who cooperated in the exploitation of the Bengali

peasantry.

The
nawabs
were the last of a centuries-long succession of Hindu

kings, Turkish and Afghan sultans, and Mughal imperial offi cials.

These autocratic but remote rulers had few connections to common

Bengalis, who had equally diverse origins. Some identifi ed themselves

as members of various Hindu castes, but some were converts to Islam.

Most made their living by tilling the soil, but Bengal’s villages also

supported well-developed handicraft industries that drew foreign

traders from Asia and Europe. Additionally, there were foraging and

nomadic pastoral communities in the large swaths of the region that

still consisted of forest and wasteland. Although religion, caste, and

occupation created ties between Bengalis, the village was the primary

polity, unit of economic production, and focus of social loyalty and

identity.

Bengal was worth fi ghting over because it had a sophisticated

market-based economy that linked these local economies to wider

networks of South Asian trade. More important, it supported an effi cient system of revenue collection developed over centuries of rule

by its diverse imperial masters. Unlike ancient Britons, medieval Iberians, and early modern Andeans, the vast majority of Bengalis paid

their tribute in currency rather than produce or goods. In most localities an elaborate hierarchy of elites siphoned off the rural surplus and

passed it on to their superiors after reserving a share for themselves.

These
zamindars
were not landed nobles in the conventional western sense; rather, they only had the hereditary right to collect wealth

from a specifi c allotment of territory. In return, they maintained local

irrigation systems and hired armed retainers to uphold law and order.

The
zamindars
themselves did not actually levy tribute but instead

relied on a class of petty bureaucrats to deal directly with local villages. Although the
zamindari
system was highly effi cient in delivering wealth to Bengal’s imperial masters, it also isolated these rulers

from the greater population.

The fact that Plassey made an alien European commercial enterprise the practical master of Bengal was probably of little concern

to most common Bengalis. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that the

United Company of Merchants of England Trading to the East Indies,

more commonly known as the East India Company (EIC), managed to

seize control of such an important Mughal province. Initially, the EIC

Company

India 171

was just one of nineteen chartered companies that mobilized capital

for risky foreign trading ventures in seventeenth-century England.

Established in 1600, its charter from Queen Elizabeth I granted it a

monopoly over all British trade with the East Indies and the implicit

authority to negotiate commercial treaties, establish settlements, and,

by implication, wage wars.

Although warfare seems an odd enterprise for a commercial

concern, the chartered companies often used armed force to open

Asian markets and defend themselves from European rivals. The

EIC focused its operations on the South Asian subcontinent because

the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-indische Compagnie, or VOC) drove it out of the Indonesian Spice Islands. Drawn by

India’s high-quality textiles and relatively open markets, EIC representatives joined competing companies in establishing coastal trading

stations throughout the subcontinent.

The Mughals were fully aware of the Europeans’ militarism but were

secure in their power in the seventeenth century. Rather than seeing the

foreigners as a threat, they considered them useful trading partners and,

after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, a lucrative source of New

World silver. The Bengali governors and
nawabs
shared these views and

allowed the Company to fortify its settlement on the Hugli River and

purchase the right to collect revenue in the surrounding communities.

In becoming a Bengali
zamindar
, the EIC also assumed judicial authority and an obligation to maintain law and order in the small enclave that

grew into Calcutta under their administration.

The East India Company fortifi ed this Bengali toehold to protect

its warehouses from local unrest and French and Dutch rivals. At

fi rst glance, its decision to diversify into revenue collection was curious because it made the EIC a Mughal vassal. But it was also a good

investment. The relatively small fee that it cost to buy the right to

collect tribute in the regions surrounding its factory brought substantial annual returns.2 These revenues subsidized the Company’s

less successful commercial operations and demonstrated that there

were fortunes to be made in Bengal through administration as well

as trade. The Mughals and their Bengali viceroys granted these kinds

of concessions to the European companies out of self-interest rather

than fear or intimidation. They clearly did not understand the dangers of giving potential empire builders intimate access to a politically

unstable but wealthy society riven by class, caste, and religion.

172 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

These risks became clearer as the East India Company pushed

deeper into Bengal to trade directly with weavers, spinners, and

farmers. Additionally, its employees also undermined the
nawabs
’

fi nances by using their commercial privileges to set up tax-exempt

private speculative ventures. Tensions came to a head in 1756 when

the Company defi ed Siraj-ud-Daula by fortifying its Calcutta base,

abusing its trading permits, and refusing to pay him the customary

presents that acknowledged his authority. In response, the
nawab

occupied Calcutta and locked more than one hundred Company

employees in an overcrowded jail cell. When hysterical British

reports claimed that 123 out of 146 of the prisoners smothered in

this “Black Hole of Calcutta,” the Company had a moral justifi cation

for deposing the
nawab
.

It fell to Robert Clive, a onetime Company clerk who had made

his reputation fi ghting the French in southern India, to reassert British infl uence in Bengal. Leading a mixed force of private European

troops and southern Indian soldiers, he retook Calcutta and forced

the
nawab
to pay compensation for his aggression. Clive initially

showed no inclination to exploit his victory by deposing the
nawab

and reaffi rmed the EIC’s vassal status by declaring to Siraj-ud-Daula:

“I esteem your Excellency in the place of my father and mother, and

myself as your son, and should think myself happy to lay down my

life for the preservation of yours.” The
nawab
was equally ready to

make amends and rather fantastically declared that, as a Muslim, he

preferred the Christian British
dhimmi
(people of the book) to his

“pagan” Hindu subjects.3

In reality, Siraj-ud-Daula had outlived his usefulness to the Bengali elites who controlled the provincial administration and economy.

The growth of Calcutta as a commercial center brought local merchants and bankers into the Company’s orbit, and the
nawab
’s loss

to Clive demonstrated his weakness to the military aristocrats who

underwrote his authority. Sensing an opportunity, Clive and other

ambitious Company employees conspired with Siraj-ud-Daula’s primary local fi nanciers to replace him with Mir Jafar, a common Arab

soldier who had risen through the ranks to command the
nawab
’s

army. This unimaginative Mughal general did not realize the consequences of such a Faustian bargain and promised the EIC one and a

quarter million pounds in return for bringing him to power. When

Clive’s troops met the
nawab
’s much larger army at the village of

Company

India 173

Plassey on June 23, 1757, Mir Jafar played his role in the conspiracy

by advising the
nawab
to withdraw. With their cannons destroyed by

more accurate British artillery and their cavalry mired in the mud,

the Bengali troops broke and ran during the retreat. As a result, Clive

found himself in possession of the battlefi eld.

Plassey was hardly a major military victory or a decisive imperial