| The Battle of Plassey |
The
east India Company’s turn to arms and overt militarization had an immediate
impact on Indian politics, although one marked by complexity and ambiguity.
Captain Robert Clive’s victories, especially that t Plassey, had been achieved
by the use of the new European techniques of infantry warfare. In the wake of
his victories, too, the company’s grip on commerce had greatly increased.
Seeing this, many of India’s new independent rulers paradoxically were drawn
closer. The company received a host of requests for officers to train infantry
divisions from sultans and kings, and even for contingents of company troops to
support royal armies.
With
hindsight, the fatal attraction of so many Indian regimes to the company in the
middle decades of the eighteenth century seems puzzling. Did the Muslim nawabs
and Hindu kings not appreciate the risks they were running in becoming the
company’s “allies” and clients? Part of the answer may lie in the extent
to which the company concealed its character and ambitions as they developed
behind a screen. It made no bid to establish itself as an independent source of
state sovereignty. It did not behave as a sultan or a king, with a display of
royal symbols; nor did it evince formal claims to territorial expansion. Rather
it continued to recognize the sovereignty of the Mughal emperor, and presented
itself merely as a supplier of a set of technical and commercial services for
hire. In such circumstances, Indian rulers were lulled into the belief that the
services they bought would be without threat to themselves, certainly not in
comparison to eachother, more immediate dangers on their doorsteps. Warfare
between regional rulers was intense, andd subsidiary alliances bought protection
against neighbourly invasion.
Yet
there were a few native rulers who did sense the way the wind could blow. In
Mysore, from the 1770s, Haider Ali and his son, Tipu Sultan set out o beat the
company at its own game; to this end Haider concentrated on acquiring and
independent army, free from company influence. Driving westwards, father and son
sought to capture the rich spice gardens of malabar, on which they planned to
build a mercantilist empire of their own. Haider even considered building a navy
with which to take the sea back from European grasp. Tipu dreamed on an even
grander scale…