The British conquest of India cannot be said to be a product of a single policy. John Willson says it best in The Chaos of Empire. “In India, the British Empire was never a project or system. It was something far more anxious and chaotic. From beginning to end, it was ruled by individual self-interest, by a desire for glory and a mood of fear, by deeply ingrained habits of command and rarely any grand public reason.” The situation was too complicated to be controlled by London government officials or the shareholders of the East India Company, many of whom would have been the same person, due to the long distances. Before steamships and the Suez canal travel to India took anywhere between 6 and 10 months by ship, where accidents, sickness, or piracy could strike down a traveler long before they reached India. The kind of men that would risk the journey, as well as the dangers in India itself were not ideal employees. They soon gained a reputation in India for being quarrelsome and foul dealers, and they well deserved it. These men were out to make a fortune that would let them live the rest of their lives in comfort and wealth once they returned to England.
Robert Clive is a great example of this. He was sent to India in 1744 by his family to stop him from being an idle ruffian and get him to make something of his life. He craved the glory of a military career, and once he saw his chance during the Carnatic Wars between the French and British East India companies fought in India. These wars were triggered by the war of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War fought in Europe, and lead to the introduction of professional European troops to India, where before it has just been company troops. When the Mughal governor of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daula took Calcutta from the British in 1756, Clive convinced Admiral Charles Watson to drop operations against the French, and support an operation in Bengal. At the battle of Kassey, Clive made a name for himself as a great conquerer, and made himself rich, getting a total of £234,000 in gifts from the East India Companies puppet in Bengal alone, plus his share of the plunder, and whatever he could skim off of the taxes of Bengal, which the East India Company was collecting. He returned to England one of the richest men in Europe.
Other ambitious leaders that such as Richard Wellesley would follow Clive, and fight war after war in India that might have been necessary for the company, but was certainly good for themselves. Wars are expensive and risky, two words that do not make shareholders happy. While the company never failed to pay it’s soldiers it did have to apply for a loan in 1772 of £1 million, and its stock fell drastically. The government passed the Regulating Act cut the East India Companies independence, but it was the India Act of 1784 passed by William Pitt, great-grandson of one of the first governors of Madras, that turned the Company into a quasi department in regards to control over territory. The company could still make conduct its commercial activities, but the Governor-Generals, an office that was a recent innovation to control the efforts of the three presidencies, were appointed by the British government. This did not change the basic facts on the ground. Wellesley was a government appointee that fought expensive wars with Mysore and the Mahratha’s, and company employees continued to look to war for personal gain. The situation would not fully calm down till after the 1857 Indian mutiny when the government took complete control, and developments such as the Suez Canal, steamships, and the telegram made it possible to communicate and enforce policy. At that time the Raj was about at its largest extent.
James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013.
Keay, John. India: A History. New York: Grove Atlantic, 2011.
———. The Honourable Company, 2017.
Wilson, Jon E. The Chaos of Empire: The British Raj and the Conquest of India. First edition. New York: PublicAffairs, 2016.