Bismarck

I don't know about Pashto, but he could certainly speak several of the local languages. He published a sensational book in the early 1830's about his travels in Persia and the Hindu-Kush, which got him the job to Kabul in 1837, where he was killed in the power struggle between Dost Muhammed and Shah Shuja.

Gile na Gile

Bismarck, you are so agreeable on this matter I'd be inclined to suggest we have an unearthed a truth.

Bismarck

Nice of you to say so, but I'm not sure it deserves special mention.

Or is it that unusual?

Gile na Gile

Well, I think it's well enough known alright but most would be more hesitant in assigning an exact date. I would have said early 19th century on the basis of a few passages out of Lawrence James 'The British Raj' (+ other assorted readings) and they seem to makes it clear such social sanctions and dividing lines were already becoming more commonplace by the turn of the century. But when did these taboos first begin to emerge and from what quarters? Were they always present to some extent at least - despite what we have all been saying about the early efforts at integration?

I'd imagine historian_dave would be happy enough to help us out here a bit.

historian_dave

- Ha, you know just what to say to get me yabbing!



- That is a tricky one. Pinning down cultural, ideological, and physical trends such as these is indeed difficult, and I doubt we could ever be precise. But I think we can make some observations that will perhaps make the extreme ends more obvious and therefore sharpen the argument, because not all people believe the 'White Mughal' theory, while not all believe the 'Victorian Moralism' concept. My own research, for example, makes the whole argument even more complicated, but I won't go into that now!


Let us consider the beginning. The English came to India with their own distinct ideological and nationalist beliefs, such as individual liberty, the rights of sovereignty, and their definition of lockean natural rights. But they were also successful at legitimising their position and success because they were acceptable to Indian polities as both a local power and a trading partner. Their acceptability by Indian standards was their ability to assume customs and systems which Europeans had been adopting in India for a century, namely the Portuguese.


Indeed, the great British port cities which came to define imperial power and foreign dominion by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century were from an early period encouraged to be cosmopolitan centres, positively encouraged to accept Indian and non-English immigration on a massive scale. Philip Stern's latest work shows how tolerant the corporation of early Madras was, pulling in Portuguese, Jewish, Armenian, Parsi, and Indian peoples and immersing them thoroughly within the running of the officialdom of the city. The Directors themselves back in Leadenhall Street in London wrote time and again for Indian and non-British immigration to be encouraged and embraced as a way to make Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras as powerful and as wealthy as possible.


The Directors were again instrumental in their official sanction of their servants taking Indian wives instead of European women. Their main motive was cost, as they found it too expensive to 'import' British women, and thus actually ordered officials to look to their surroundings. It has been estimated that the ratio of men to women in eighteenth century Bengal remained at about 18:1. Every British man had an Indian wife, and 'natural' offspring, as they named their half-caste children. While most of these unions remained illegitimate, a sizeable proportion did marry their Indian wives in both Christian and 'native' ceremonies. The profoundly interesting project of Professor Margot Finn has revealed the wills of a sizeable portion of Madras officials during the eighteenth century, a majority of whom left much of their beglonings to their Indian wives and children. Francis Fowke, Resident at Benares in the 1770s, had a spring of illegitimate children, all of whom he sent back to Britain to be raised and educated, each returning to India to serve the Company. William Kirkpatrick, Resident at Hyderabad, sent his cohort of Indian children by his wife, a Muslim Princess, back to Britain to be raised in the Kentish countryside by his uncle. Even in the 1830s, Charles Metcalfe, Resident at Delhi, was raising his natural children amongst the nobility of that greatly diminished city.


Marrying local women of high status - and having relations with those who were not - and rearing half-caste children either in Britain or in India, was one mechanic of ingratiating with Indian society. Adopting Mughal titles (Glorious in War, Protector of the State, as Clive was known), assuming Mughal rewards (Jagirs, annuities) and operating within the imperial, legal framework of Mughal and post-Mughal political society (assuming the Diwan of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa) were other mechanics of operating within Indian society, as opposed to outside of it. When Clive placed Mir Jafar on the Bengali musnad, it was not seen as a gross, foreign invasion of Indian sovereignty, but a typical phase of post-Mughal struggle of successor states for legitimisation, power, and independence. The Company was part of these struggles as a contender and country power, not as a foreign, white devil of imperialism.


I've of course run out of time to talk about the period when this began to change. As the British began to expand up the Gangetic valley and across the Deccan, they looked to interpret Indian history as a way to legitimise their empire-building. This interpretation took the form of observing native legal systems, historical research, and religious study, to name but a few. Scholars such as Colebrooke, Jones, and even Hastings, interpreted Indian society and history in a way which viewed their subjects and Indian neighbours as oppressed, incapable of governing, and in need of enlightened despotism, the kind eighteenth century Europe believed it was projecting and sustaining. Officials on the frontline of British policy-making began to interpret surrounding Indian society differently from their predecessors. Instead of ingratiating themselves within a post-Mughal order, as heirs to the great house of Timur, their interpretation of Indian history and society allowed them to view colonial conquests as a positive effect.

'If policy suggests the protection of the Sikhs south of Sutlej from external violence', wrote Major-General David Ochterlony, Resident at Delhi in 1810, 'humanity and the honour of the British name no less imperiously call upon us to shield them from the more disastrous consequences of their own base passions, their universal rapacity and their internal discord'. Such concern for the viewed chaos of those states lying on the frontiers of the Honourable Company were constantly echoed by officials across India in the first half of the nineteenth century. 'The lack of efficient administration of justice', wrote the Resident of Nagpur in 1840 on the Raja's government, 'was the principal cause of popular grievances owing to which the revenues have materially fallen off, while the expenditure has increased'. Again the great Mountstuart Elphinstone, Resident at Poona, viewed his diplomatic charge with equal disdain: 'The great defect of the Peshwa's Government,' he wrote in 1815, 'is the little interest which they have in the prosperity of the country subject to their authority.' Traditional historiography has hitherto set utilitarian influence strictly within a post-annexationist context, but as we have seen above, officials and agents of imperialism were concerned with implementing British order and administration in the interest of the 'people' long before these states had been brought into the British fold: they were very much a contributing motive for expansion. Even Charles Metcalfe, Resident of Delhi and strong supporter of non-intervention, found it necessary to take up such a cause: 'It is impossible to live in this part of India, and to see the scenes which pass before our eyes', he wrote to the Governor-General in 1811. For Metcalfe, the disorder prevalent in Rajputana was too distressing and he urged a systematic extension of British power for 'the sake of the tranquillity of India, by a general call of the Inhabitants of Hindostan for its protection, that call may be said to be loud in all the peaceable states....down to the Ryots.' Such concerns for the welfare of Indians above their rulers as a motive for expansion was expressed not just by agents in the field, but by administrators in high office, as well as in the metropolis. John Stuart Mill, responsible for compiling despatches to India on behalf of the Directors at Leadenhall Street, and as such possessing great influence over Indian affairs, was a strong advocate of British expansion in all parts of India on squarely utilitarian grounds: the Maharaja of Mysore, he wrote in 1832 in a minute upon what he believed to be the seriously deteriorating state of that kingdom, 'seems to have no particular or prominent faults of character, except indeed that love of ease and pleasure...has rendered him remiss in the duties of government.' Such hostility to progress, Mill believed, disqualified the Maharaja from the privilege of ruling Mysore, something common across the sub-continent: 'These are defects', he continued, 'naturally generated by absolute power, more especially in a state of society like that of India.'

OK I definitely don't have time for anymore, but I'd love to explore this more so I'll have another go at it tomorrow, if you're not too bored!

Cheers,

Rosi

Yeah, that may have been it. After all the freedom fighters would have needed something to bring such a diverse people together.

Wow... that actually sounds James Bond-ish! Except for the got killed bit, of course.

Bismarck

He died an heroic death; he was the last one killed of his party, and figthing alone against a mob he killed at least six others before he was cut down. I think it was Shah Shuja who was responsible... or perhaps Dost? One of them had been deposed by the British and wanted their crown back.

historian_dave

Dost Mohammed was the Afghan ruler who had been deposed by the British and replaced with the British client Shah Shuja. But it was Dost's son, Akbar Khan, who led the uprising against Shuja and the British, as Dost Mohammed was, by this time, under arrest in British India.

There is a popular view, like that shown above, of Burnes. But if you read Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game, or Ben Macintire's Josiah the Great, you tend to find a more blundering, power-hungry, exploitative version of the usual narrative of his adventures. While Burns thought he had Dost Mohammed thoroughly under his thumb, for example, the Afghan ruler had actually been feeding him a string of misinformation for several years. He also supplied all of Burnes' prostitutes who reported everything back to Dost Mohammed that happened. He was also extremely adept at playing Burns off with the new Russian envoy, Vitkevitch.

Both the Afghans, and Burnes' own officials, blamed him for the breakdown in negotiations which led to the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839. But there is no denying he certainly acted Bondish! :P