Before he died on March 3, 1707, Aurangzeb wrote a will hoping
that his Mughal empire
would be divided between his three sons
with Mu'azzam governing in Kabul,
A'zam in Gujarat, and Muhammad
Kam Baksh in Bijapur;
but instead they followed his own example
and fought.
A'zam was supported by imperial vizier Asad Khan and
immediately
proclaimed himself and marched toward Agra.
Mu'azzam
was 1400 miles away; but he declared himself Bahadur Shah and
in June
arrived with his army at Agra, meeting his son Muhammad
Azim,
who had come from Bengal and secured the imperial treasure
of 240,000,000 rupees.
At Jajau, where Aurangzeb had defeated
Dara Shukoh 49 years before,
each side lost 10,000 men.
Bahadur
Shah won because A'zam Shah's army scattered;
he and his two sons
were killed.
In May 1707 A'zam let the detained Maratha prince Shahu leave.
He was Shambhuji's son and challenged the leadership
of the widow
Tara Bai and Rajaram's son Shivaji II.
Diwan Balaji Vishwanath
supported Shahu in the battle at Khed.
Tara Bai and her son fled
to Karnatak and settled in Kolhapur.
Shahu would remain chhatrapati
(king) of the Marathas until he died in 1749,
encouraging agriculture,
low taxes, and religious toleration but letting his peshwa
govern.
In 1710 Chandrasen Jadhav led the Tara Bai faction in
the Maratha civil war
that ravaged the southern provinces, but
they were defeated
by Balaji Vishwanath, whom Shahu appointed peshwa in 1713.
Because of Maratha rebellions, Bahadur Shah had difficulty
collecting taxes in the Deccan,
and revenues from the northern
provinces were also interrupted.
Ajit Singh of Marwar, Jai Singh
Kachhwaha of Amber,
and Rana Amar Singh Sisodia of Mewar formed
a confederacy in the Deccan to oppose Mughal rule.
Bahadur Shah
with his army occupied Amber in January 1708
and replaced Jai
Singh with his more loyal brother Vijai Singh.
Then his imperial
troops seized the Marwar capital at Jodhpur,
as Ajit Singh surrendered
and was restored to his previous rank.
A qazi and mufti
were appointed to enforce Islamic law, and imperial officers
were
ordered to destroy temples, rebuild mosques,
and collect the jiziya
tax on non-Muslims.
Kam Baksh had also crowned himself but remained
in the Deccan.
So in May 1708 Bahadur Shah marched south with
an army of 300,000,
though Ajit Singh and Jai Singh escaped to
Rajasthan.
Kam Bakhsh alienated supporters by his cruel suspicions
and confiscation of properties.
Negotiations failed, and near
Hyderabad the greatly outnumbered Kam Bakhsh
and his two sons
were also defeated and killed by Bahadur Shah's forces.
Rana of
Mewar helped Ajit Singh and Jai Singh regain their capitals,
and
together they besieged Ajmer.
Sikh Guru Gobind Singh supported Bahadur Shah and wanted him
to punish
Vazir Khan of Sirhind for having executed his two younger
sons.
After Gobind Singh was murdered by two agents sent by Vazir
Khan in 1708,
the Guru's loyal Banda Bahadur assembled angry Sikhs
into an army
and massacred Muslims in Punjab towns on their way
to Sirhind,
which they also plundered in 1710 after thousands
of peasants
overcame Vazir Khan's cavalry.
Banda proclaimed himself
the true padishah (sovereign) and issued Sikh coins.
His
army took over most of the Punjab, but thousands were killed on
both sides
in their failed attempt to take Lahore.
A Mughal army
besieged the Sikhs at Lohgarh, but Banda escaped to the Sarmar
hills.
He and the Sikhs came back to take Pathankot and Gurdaspur
in November 1711,
and by March 1712 they had recovered Sirhind
and Lohgarh.
Emperor Bahadur Shah came to Lahore to suppress the Sikhs.
He also stirred up protests of a hundred thousand Sunnis there,
because he added the name 'Ali to the Friday prayers.
While he
was dying in early 1712, Bahadur Shah kept his four sons near
him.
His second son Azim-ush-Shan had acquired the largest fortune
from Bengal and Bihar and thus had the largest army.
However,
Zulfiqar Khan had joined Bahadur's side and become viceroy of
the Deccan.
He formed a coalition of the other three princes with
the plan that Rafi-ush Khan
would rule at Kabul and Jahan Shah
in the Deccan under the oldest
Jahandar Shah in Sind with Zulfiqar
as vizier at Delhi.
Thus the most powerful prince Azim-ush-Shan
was defeated and fled, dying in quicksand.
Then Zulfiqar Khan
joined with Jahandar Shan to defeat and kill his other two brothers,
enthroning him near Lahore on March 29, 1712.
Zulfiqar Khan had the power and made Daud Khan Panni viceroy
of the Deccan
as Jahandar's foster brother Kokaltash Khan was
ignored.
Zulfiqar Khan imprisoned and confiscated the property
of dozens of nobles
who had supported the dead brothers, and two
emirs were publicly executed.
He made concessions to the Rajputs
and abolished the jiziya.
Ajit Singh and Jai Singh were
promoted, and Shivaji II was given a noble rank.
Emperor Jahandar
Shah was criticized for drinking and favoring his low-born wife
Lal Kunwar and her relatives with lavish expenses.
He began intriguing
with Kokaltash Khan.
Collecting revenue was difficult and became
more corrupt.
Zulfiqar Khan and his officials ignored laws and
were susceptible to bribes.
Jahandar's troops remained unpaid,
and inflation was rampant.
Most of the revenue came from Bengal,
where Azim-ush-shan's son Farrukh Siyar
was supported by the Sayyid
brothers Husain Ali and Abdullah Khan of the Baraha clan.
They
marched an army west and scattered a large army
led by Jahandar's
inexperienced son Azz-ud-din.
Having no money to pay soldiers,
Zulfiqar Khan passed out golden and silver vessels
and jewels
from the palace, raising 40,000 cavalry.
In January 1713 the Turani
contingents refused to fight,
and Zulfiqar Khan fled toward Delhi.
Farrukh Siyar claimed the throne and named Abdullah Khan vizier
and his brother Husain Ali chief military paymaster (bakhshi).
When Farrukh Siyar arrived, he had Zulfiqar Khan, Jahandar, Lal
Kunwar,
and several nobles executed.
Three Timurid princes, including
his own brother, were blinded and imprisoned.
For the next six
years the Mughal empire was torn by factions.
Jai Singh agreed
to govern Malwa, but Ajit Singh rejected Thatta (Sind).
Farrukh
Siyar sent Husain Ali to bring Ajit Singh to court but secretly
sent a message
that Ajit Singh would be rewarded for killing Husain
Ali.
Instead, Ajit Singh made a treaty with Husain Ali, agreeing
to govern Thatta.
The Emperor entitled Nizam-ul Mulk and made
him viceroy of the six Deccan provinces,
which he reformed by
using troops to keep away Maratha tax collectors and raiders.
At court Farrukh Siyar diverted funds for troops to attack the
Sayyid brothers.
In 1714 Abdullah and Husain Ali joined their
Baraha army in Delhi.
After negotiations, Farrukh Siyar agreed
to send Mir Jumla to govern Bihar;
Husain Ali became governor
of the Deccan;
and Abdullah Khan stayed in Delhi as vizier.
Nizam-ul
Mulk would not help Farrukh Siyar against the Sayyids and lost
his estates.
Mughal precedent fell as Husain Ali gained the authority
to appoint and dismiss all officials.
The Emperor ordered Daud
Khan Panni to kill Husain Ali;
but his cavalry were outnumbered,
and he was killed in the battle.
Suspicion was so great that Abdullah
was accompanied
in the streets by at least 3,000 cavalry.
Revenues
were leased to the highest bidders,
and Farrukh Siyar tried to
revive the jiziya, which provoked more Hindu opposition.
In 1714 Sirhind faujdar Zain ud-din Ahmad Khan attacked
7,000 Sikhs
near Rupar and sent a hundred of their heads to Delhi.
Yet Banda Bahadur led 14,000 Sikhs toward Sirhind.
Farrukh Siyar
sent Qamar-ud-din Khan with 20,000 troops from Delhi
and ordered
Kashmir governor Abdus Samad Khan
to besiege the Sikh fortress
at Gurudaspur in 1715.
Banda retreated into a fortress that could
only hold 1,250 men,
while the other Sikhs fled or were killed.
After eight months many had died of hunger;
others near death
were beheaded by the Mughals, who took some 200 prisoners.
On
the way to Delhi the imperial forces carried on their spears 2,000
Sikh heads
with long hair, and Zakariya Khan captured more to
make the number of prisoners 740.
At Delhi in March 1716 a hundred
Sikhs were beheaded each day for one week.
Banda and his 26 officials
were tortured for three months.
Then Banda was brutally killed,
and the others were beheaded.
Before he died, Banda said that
he was a scourge in the hands of God to punish the wicked;
but
he was now paying for his own crimes against the Almighty.
Banda
had practiced socialism by distributing all wealth
among his followers
and by abolishing the zamindari rent system.
He tolerated all
religions and had many followers who were poor Hindus and Muslims,
though he was greatly hated by many Muslims for his raiding.
He
also opposed the use of all drugs including wine, tobacco, and
bhang (marijuana).
Farrukh Siyar ordered that every Sikh found
must convert to Islam or be put to the sword,
and this order was
obeyed for a while in Sirhind, Lahore, and Jammu.
During this
persecution some Sikhs robbed, others shaved off their beards,
and some by hiding or being peaceful escaped punishment.
Mir Jumla could not raise enough money in Bihar to pay his
troops,
who revolted and followed him back to Delhi.
The angry
Emperor took away his titles,
but Abdullah Khan resolved the situation
by getting
Mir Jumla appointed as qazi (judge) of Lahore.
Abdullah also granted the English trading rights.
The Jats, who
had raided both armies during the civil war, continued to rebel.
The Emperor sent Jai Singh to besiege them at Thun in 1716;
but
vizier Abdullah Khan accepted a bribe and made a treaty with Jat
leader Churaman.
Husain Ali Khan was trying to control the Marathas
in the Deccan but found that
the Emperor's letters were encouraging
their leaders to attack him.
So in 1718 the Sayyid brothers made
a treaty recognizing the Maharashtra territory
of Shahu and the
Marathas in exchange for ten million rupees tribute
and 15,000
Maratha troops loyal to Husain Ali.
Farrukh Siyar refused to ratify
the agreement,
but Husain Ali ignored this and other imperial
orders.
Farrukh Siyar called on Ajit Singh from Gujarat, Nizam-ul Mulk
from Moradabad,
and Sarbuland Khan from Bihar, and they brought
70,000 troops to Delhi;
but after delays they left or joined the
vizier.
Mir Jumla returned from Lahore but also sided with Abdullah.
The Emperor had only Jai Singh and his 20,000 Rajputs.
Husain
Ali Khan marched north with 25,000 of his own forces
and 10,000
Maratha horsemen under his pay,
since Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath
had agreed to a treaty with the Sayyids.
In a complicated negotiation
Farrukh Siyar and the Sayyids agreed
to release each other's political
prisoners and dismiss their forces in February 1719;
but after
an angry meeting in the palace,
Farrukh Siyar retreated into his
harem while Abdullah Khan took over the fort.
After a bloody street
battle in which 1500 Marathas were killed,
the Sayyid brothers
chose Bahadur Shah's grandson Rafi-ud-darjat as the new emperor.
Farrukh Siyar was blinded immediately and strangled in prison
two months later.
Rafi-ud-darjat died in June of tuberculosis
and was replaced
by his older brother Rafi'-ud-daula as Shah Jahan
II;
but he was addicted to opium and also died of illness in September
1719.
The powerful Sayyid brothers made Shah Jahan's
18-year-old
son Emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1719-48).
They tried to conciliate
the factions; but they were Indian Muslims
and were resented by
the Irani nobles from Persia
and the Turani aristocrats from central
Asia.
Ajit Singh's widowed daughter, who had converted to Islam
to marry Farrukh Siyar,
was allowed to leave the harem and return
to her home and religion.
When the Sayyids tried to transfer Turani
emir Nizam-ul Mulk from his appointment
as governor of Malwa,
he marched on Delhi, appealing to other nobles.
Their army defeated
the Sayyid-Maratha coalition in August 1720 at Shakarkhedla.
After
Husain Ali Khan was assassinated, Muhammad Shah joined the opposition
that defeated and later executed Abdullah Khan.
For deserting
this Sayyid, Muhammad Khan Bangash was made the governor of Allahabad.
Jai Singh of Amber and Girdhar Bahadur
persuaded the new emperor
to abolish the jiziya tax.
Nizam-ul Mulk went back to govern
the Deccan and defeated resistance.
Various conflicts greatly weakened the Mughal empire,
and many
regions became independent.
Awadh (Oudh) had fifteen governors
in thirteen years before Muhammad Shah
appointed Sa'adat Khan
governor in 1722;
after defeating and killing Mohan Singh in 1723,
he acted independently.
Muhammad Shah dismissed Ajit Singh from
governing Gujarat and Ajmer;
but after Ajit's murder by his son
Bakht Singh in 1724,
he recognized his son Abhay Singh, who governed
Marwar until his death in 1748.
Nizam-ul Mulk returned to Delhi
as vizier in January 1722.
He tried to remove the corruption from
the court and reform the tax system;
but his attempt to reimpose
the jiziya tax was opposed by the Hindu nobles.
Disgusted
with court squabbles, Nizam-ul Mulk left Delhi again
in December
1723 to return to the Deccan.
His enemies persuaded the Emperor
to write secretly to urge Hyderabad
governor Mubariz Khan to attack
him; but Nizam-ul Mulk made an alliance
with the Marathas, and
in 1724 they defeated
and killed Mubariz Khan at Sakharkhanda
in Berar.
The next year Nizam-ul Mulk took over Hyderabad.
Thus
he became essentially independent and was later recognized by
the Mughal emperor.
After Nizam-ul Mulk supported the claim of
Shahu's Maratha rival Shambhuji,
Peshwa Baji Rao I (r. 1720-40)
avoided pitched battles and ravaged the country,
starving the
Nizam into accepting a 1728 treaty that
recognized the six territories
of Raja Shahu in the Deccan.
When Abdus Samad Khan was transferred to Multan in 1726,
his
son Zakariya Khan replaced him as Punjab governor and hunted down
Sikhs
until he suggested the Emperor give their leader a title
in 1733.
Kapur Singh was chosen nawab and was given a jagir
(tax income) of 1,000,000 rupees.
The army of the elder Sikhs
was called Budha Dal,
and the army of younger ones Taruna Dal.
The Sikhs continued to rebel against the Mughal government,
and
the jagir was confiscated in 1735.
After an imperial army
of 7,000 attacked Amritsar,
the Taruna Dal joined forces and defeated
the Mughal army.
In 1729 Bundelkhand's Chhatrasal asked Peshwa Baji Rao for
aid,
and the Marathas defeated Muhammad Khan Bangash,
taking more
control after Chhatrasal died two years later.
Shambhuji was defeated
in 1730 and agreed to recognize Shahu's sovereignty
for part of
Konkan and Karnatak, and together in 1731 they defeated and killed
Khande Rao's son Trimbak Rao in Gujarat.
Abhay Singh tried to
fight the Marathas but had to leave Gujarat in 1733.
Despite his
efforts and earlier ones by Nizam-ul Mulk and Sarbuland Khan,
Gujarat was overrun by the Marathas and was lost to the Mughals
by 1737.
Baji Rao invaded Malwa in 1732.
The Marathas captured
Hindaun and Sambhar,
and in 1735 the Emperor recognized Baji Rao
as the governor of Malwa.
After a revolution on the island of
Janjira in 1733,
the Maratha navy made the Sidi accept a treaty
in 1736 with dual government.
Under Baji Rao each Maratha jagir
district was jointly held by two Maratha chiefs.
Murshid Quli Jafar Khan had been administering and collecting
taxes
in Bengal and Orissa since 1701.
He was promoted in 1713
and governed until his death in 1727.
In 1714 he crushed the last
Hindu kingdom in Bengal.
In his last fifteen years he sent an
average of 10.5 million rupees annually to Delhi,
accumulating
six million rupees for himself.
The new Bengal capital Murshidabad
was named after him.
In 1727 his son-in-law Shuja-ud-din Muhammad
Khan, the deputy governor of Orissa,
succeeded in Bengal and Orissa
for the Mughal emperor.
After his death in 1739 his son Sarfaraz
Khan was defeated by Bihar deputy governor
'Alivardi Khan, and
in 1740 Emperor Muhammad Shah had to recognize
the virtually independent
'Alivardi Khan as governor of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.
Probably the most outstanding leader who remained loyal to
the Mughal emperor
was Jai Singh, who was appointed governor of
Surat in 1721 and Agra the next year.
Sent to suppress the Jats
for having supported the Sayyid brothers,
he captured their stronghold
at Thun.
Churaman committed suicide, and the Jats returned to
their farms.
Hoping to prevent their raiding, he gave the Jat
chief Badan Singh
the job of collecting duties on highways.
Jai
Singh served as an intermediary between Muhammad Shah and the
Rajput rulers.
He built up the new city of Jaipur and sponsored
learning with research centers there
and at Mathura, Banaras,
and Ujjain, patronizing influential scholars and literature.
He
supported inter-caste dining and tried to stop female infanticide
by trying to limit how much fathers spent on their daughters'
marriages.
Jai Singh of Amber governed Malwa 1729-37 except for
1730-32
when Muhammad Khan Bangash fought the Marathas.
Jai Singh
made peace with the Marathas by sharing with them
the money Delhi
sent for defending the province.
Sa'adat Khan complained that Jai Singh was ruining the empire.
After negotiations in which Maratha peshwa Baji Rao asked
for too many concessions
the Mughal emperor would not grant,
Baji
Rao marched his army toward Delhi but refrained from attacking
the capital.
Muhammad Shah called on Nizam-ul Mulk, whose army
of 35,000 was doubled
when he was joined by Sa'adat Khan's troops
and Rajput and Bundela forces.
However, the Peshwa's army of 80,000
invaded Malwa and surrounded them at Bhopal.
In January 1738 Nizam-ul
Mulk signed another treaty in which more tribute
and the rest
of Malwa were granted to the Marathas.
In 1737 the Marathas attacked
the Portuguese on the west coast.
Bassein capitulated in 1739
after each side suffered about 5,000 casualties.
In the 1740 treaty
the Portuguese ceded the northern province
except for the port
of Daman.
In 1739 Sa'adat Khan was succeeded in Awadh by his son-in-law
Safdar Jang,
who declared complete independence.
In December 1739
Baji Rao invaded the Deccan with 50,000 men;
but Nasir Jang's
army of 10,000 defeated them in a pitched battle,
and the Marathas
gave up their claims in the Deccan.
Peshwa Baji Rao I died in
1740 and was succeeded by his son Balaji Rao.
Because of the factions
at court, Jai Singh remained neutral
during the invasion by Nadir
Shah's Persians;
but after Delhi was plundered, the Mughal empire
had little authority beyond Agra and Delhi.
In 1722 Afghan rebels led by Mir Mahmud defeated the Safavid
dynasty of Persia
and ruled there until they were defeated in
1729 by Nadir Quli
Beg,
who became the Persian shah in 1732.
His army of 80,000 besieged
Qandahar in 1737.
Meeting little Mughal resistance, Nadir
Shah moved on in 1738
to capture Ghazni and Kabul.
After his envoy
was killed at Jalalabad, he sacked the town.
Nasir Khan tried
to stop the Persians in the Khyber Pass with 20,000 Afghans;
but Nadir Shah's veteran
army forced them back.
After occupying Peshawar, the Persians
began
plundering the country and crossed the Indus River.
Lahore
governor Zakariya Khan had no support from the Mughal emperor
and surrendered in January 1739;
after paying Nadir Shah two million
rupees, he was reinstated.
Nadir Shah sent
out 7,000 Kurdish cavalry as scouts from Sirhind.
The Mughals
assembled an army of about 75,000,
but Mughal arrows were no match
for Persian bullets.
After Sa'adat Khan returned from fighting
the pillaging Kurds, his baggage was plundered.
He went to fight
the Persians; but he was only supported by some 9,000 cavalry,
and after being wounded he was captured.
He advised Nadir
Shah to negotiate with Nizam-ul Mulk,
and they agreed on an indemnity
of five million rupees with no territorial acquisitions.
When
Muhammad Shah promoted Nizam-ul Mulk to mir bakhshi (military
pay-master),
Sa'adat Khan resented it and advised Nadir Shah
he
could get twenty million rupees and jewelry in Delhi.
Nadir
Shah took Nizam-ul Mulk and Muhammad Shah into custody
and made
them agree to escort the Persians into Delhi.
When threatened
with corporal punishment if they did not reveal the treasures,
the two agreed to commit suicide; Sa'adat Khan took poison,
but
Nizam-ul Mulk did not and escorted Nadir
Shah into Delhi.
Disturbances led to Persian casualties, and Nadir
Shah sent troops to quell the riots;
after a shot missed him but
killed an officer, he ordered a massacre in Delhi.
About 20,000
people were slaughtered,
and several hundred women committed suicide
to avoid being enslaved.
Treasure estimated from thirty to seventy
million rupees was taken from the capital,
including the famous
Peacock throne, Koh-i-nor diamond,
and an illustrated Persian
manuscript on Hindu music.
The Mughals ceded all territory west
of the Indus River,
and Nadir's army also took away 300 elephants,
10,000 horses, and 10,000 camels.
Before leaving, Nadir
Shah advised Muhammad Shah on government and warned him
that Nizam-ul
Mulk was too ambitious.
On their long march through the Punjab
the Persians' loot
was often plundered by Jat peasants and Sikhs.
After Nadir Shah's invasion, Jai Singh tried to govern Malwa;
but he ceded it to the Marathas in 1741.
That year Maratha peshwa
Balaji helped Nizam-ul Mulk
to suppress a rebellion by his second
son Nasir Jang in the Karnatak.
Nizam-ul Mulk took his son prisoner
but reinstated him two years later.
After the rebellion, Nizam-ul
Mulk used his army of 280,000 to pacify Karnatak.
He maintained
good relations with the Europeans trading on the Coromandel coast.
Like his father Baji Rao I, Balaji Rao (r. 1740-61) was only
about twenty years old
when he became the peshwa for Maratha
chhatrapati Shahu.
Disputes over the thrones in the Rajput
states at Jaipur, Jodhpur, Kota,
and Bundi called upon the Marathas
to intervene in 1740
and help destroy Mughal authority in Rajputana.
Yet in the confusion conflicts festered between Marathas.
In 1741
Balaji led the Maratha campaigns in Bihar and Bengal.
When he
drove Raghuji Bhonslé's Maratha forces out of Bihar in
1743,
Shahu ordered them to stay in separate regions.
Balaji was
given Malwa, Agra, Ajmer, Allahabad, and most of Bihar,
while
Raghuji was assigned Bengal, Orissa, Awadh, and part of Bihar.
Karnatak nawab Dost Ali tried to expand his realm.
His son Safdar
Ali and son-in-law Chanda Sahib took over Trichinopoly and Madura;
but the Marathas defeated them at Tanjore.
In 1741 Marathas from
the north killed Dost Ali, took over Trichinopoly,
and captured
Chanda Sahib, imprisoning him for seven years.
Safdar Ali succeeded
his father but in late 1742 was murdered by his cousin Martaza
Ali,
who was replaced by Anwar-ud-din Khan the next year.
After Persian Nadir
Shah took over Afghanistan and invaded India in 1739,
'Ali Muhammad
Rohilla (r. 1721-48) gathered a cavalry of about 40,000 Afghans
and expanded his territory to include Muradabad, Kumaun, and Bijnor.
In 1745 he dismantled fortifications at Bangarh to accept a Mughal
position;
but he declared his independence before he died in 1748.
Two of his sons were still hostages and had been moved to Abdali's
Qandahar,
and so he was succeeded by his third son, the dissolute
Sadullah.
Vizier Safdar Jang got Bangash chief Qaim Khan to attack
the Afghans,
but he was shot dead in the losing battle.
Dal Khalsa Sikhs were organized into eleven major communities,
each called a misl, which means equal or alike.
The largest
group was the Bhangi who liked that drug (cannabis).
In 1745 Zakariya
Khan was succeeded by his son Yahiya Khan,
who continued the persecution.
Lahore diwan Lakhpat Rai was sympathetic with the Sikhs
until his brother was killed; then he vowed to exterminate them.
In his 1746 campaign his forces killed about 7,000 Sikhs and took
3,000 prisoners,
executing them in Lahore.
The next year Shah
Nawaz Khan defeated his brother Yahiya in a civil war
and put
Lakhpat in prison.
Shah Nawaz chose the Sikh Kaura Mal as his diwan;
but when the Mughals considered him a usurper,
he
appealed to Afghanistan's Ahmad Shah Abdali.
After Nadir Shah was assassinated in 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani
of the Abdali clan
proclaimed himself king in Afghanistan, taking
control of Qandahar, Kabul, and Peshawar.
Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded
India with 12,000 veterans,
but after seizing Lahore in January
1748 he was defeated in March near Sirhind
by Mughal prince Ahmad
Shah and Muin-ul-mulk (Mir Mannu), who was named governor.
That
year the Sikhs ousted the Mughals from Amritsar and built the
fort Ram Rauni.
The aging Kapur Singh resigned, and Jassa Singh
Ahluwalia became the Sikh commander.
Muin-ul-mulk besieged the
Sikhs for three months
until Ahmad Shah Abdali invaded again in
December 1748.
When Abdali was recognized as ruling territory
west of the Indus, he agreed to depart.
Shah Nawaz Khan was appointed
governor of Multan
and challenged Muin-ul-mulk with an army of
15,000.
Kaura Mal mediated an alliance,
and the Sikhs were granted
a jagir (tax district) of twelve villages.
Ahmad Shah Abdali
returned to Lahore in 1751
and demanded tribute from Muin-ul-mulk.
Sikhs were on his side, but the Afghans defeated them
and conquered
the Punjab and Kashmir,
forcing Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah to cede
territory up to Sirhind.
After Madho Singh invaded Jaipur to collect
money for the Marathas,
the Rajputs rebelled and massacred his
troops in January 1751.
That year other Marathas drove the Rohillas
into the hills
and sacked their entire country, taking over half
the Bangash territory in the Doab.
In 1752 Ahmad Shah Abdali sent Abdullah Khan Ishaq Aqasi
with
15,000 Afghans into Kashmir, where Abul Qasim Khan had recently
replaced
the war hero Abu Barakat Khan; but Abul Qasim had ruled
so tyrannically
that appeals were made to Abdali.
The Afghans
defeated the Kashmiris in fifteen days as their commander defected.
Ishaq Aqasi ruthlessly extorted money and appointed his deputy
Khwaja Abdullah Khan;
but he was assassinated after four months.
The secretary Sukhjewanmal (r. 1753-62) became raja (king)
and was the first Hindu to rule Kashmir for four hundred years
and the only one
under the Pathan domination of Abdali and his
successors that lasted until 1819.
Ishaq Aqasi came back with
30,000 men,
but Kashmiris defending themselves defeated them.
Sukhjewanmal alienated Muslims by banning cow-slaughter,
and he
provoked Abdali by recognizing Mughal emperor Alamgir II;
but
he governed for nine years.
In 1766 Abdali sent Khurram Khan to
replace a tyrannical governor of Kashmir.
Nizam-ul Mulk and Emperor Muhammad Shah both died in 1748.
Ahmad Shah (r. 1748-54) was 22 years old when he succeeded his
father
as the last Mughal emperor with any real power;
but having
been brought up in a harem, he lacked education and experience.
He appointed the Irani Safdar Jang vizier but listened mostly
to the illiterate eunuch Javid Khan, who took control.
Nobles
were revolted by his corruption and usually kept their revenues;
pay for imperial employees fell behind by 14 months and more.
Zamindars usurped lands, and the Marathas took over more territory.
Safdar Jang as a Shi'a had much opposition at court;
after an
assassination attempt, he moved his tents outside of Delhi.
From
late 1749 to 1752 he spent much time away trying to subdue Rohilkhand.
The chief bakshi Salabat Khan came back from his Rajput
expedition in 1750
with 18,000 troops demanding pay.
Dismissed
and imprisoned by Javid, Salabat sold all his property to pay
what he could
and lived in poverty like a dervish.
Javid made
the Turanis Ghazi-ud-din chief bakshi and Intizam-ud-daula
in charge of Ajmer.
After making an alliance with the Jat leader Suraj Mal, Safdar
Jang was wounded
in the neck while fighting against Ahmad Khan's
Bangash,
who then besieged Allahabad and invaded Safdar's province
of Awadh in 1751
Safdar Jang dismissed his Maratha allies and
went back to Awadh;
its governor Naval Rai had been killed fighting
the Bangash Afghans.
After recovering, Safdar paid Marathas and
Jats to join him invading Rohilkand.
When Emperor Ahmad Shah asked
his vizier
to bring Marathas to fight off the next Afghan invasion,
he made a treaty in which Ahmad Khan Bangas promised
to pay the
debt Safdar Jang owed to the Marathas.
Safdar Jang made a defensive
treaty with Peshwa Balaji,
offering the Marathas one-fourth of
imperial revenues
in the Punjab, Sindh, Aurangabad, and Gujarat.
Safdar Jang arrived with 50,000 Marathas in April 1752;
the Marathas
foraged around Delhi until Javid Khan paid them to leave.
When
Javid would not let Safdar Jang punish Balaram (Balu) Jat
for
having plundered Sikandrabad, Safdar had Turkish soldiers murder
Javid.
Safdar antagonized nobles by taking over their tax revenues,
and he made the mistake of appointing young Imad-ul-mulk as chief bakshi.
Imad won over the Emperor, plotted with the queen
mother, and got Safdar Jang dismissed.
Salabat Khan urged Safdar
to fight a civil war that lasted six months.
Rohillas led by Najib
Khan made the difference;
Suraj Mal mediated a peace, and Safdar
Jang went back to Awadh in November 1753.
Pay for the imperial army of 80,000 was seven months in arrears,
and salaries of Mughal officials and servants were 32 months behind.
The Emperor paid paymaster Imad-ul-mulk 1,500,000 rupees,
but
he kept the money for himself.
Imad then sent Aqibat Mahmud to
arrest the Emperor and vizier
while the palace and crown lands
were plundered.
Imad's allied Marathas attacked the imperial camp
with 20,000 troops.
As soon as Ahmad Shah made Imad vizier in
June 1754, he was replaced and imprisoned;
Alamgir II was proclaimed
emperor.
Raghunath demanded money for the Marathas from the Delhi
government,
but they could not pay; starving soldiers rioted in
the streets and plundered the wealthy.
Jats and Gujars usurped
imperial lands south of Delhi.
Shahu died in 1749 and was succeeded by Tara Bai's grandson
Ram Raja
on the Maratha throne, but Peshwa Balaji defeated Tara
Bai and Damaji Gaikwar,
arresting the young monarch and keeping
him a prisoner in the palace.
In 1753 the Marathas tried to collect
tribute from the Rajputana states
but were defeated by the Jats
the next year.
They marched toward Delhi and helped Imad-ul-Mulk
(Ghazi-ud-din the younger)
in a six-month civil war to depose
the Mughal emperor Ahmad Shah Bahadur,
install 'Alamgir II, and
become his vizier.
Imad-ul-Mulk was also aided by Najib Khan and
the Rohillas,
and he got the Sunnis to turn against Shi'a Safdar
Jang by calling him a heretic.
The Marathas under Balaji Baji
Rao hired mercenaries, adopted western warfare methods,
and allowed
chiefs to use predatory warfare that ravaged Hindus as well as
Muslims.
The Marathas made a strategic error when they joined
with the British
to destroy the navy of Tulaji Angria in 1756,
and the next year they exacted tribute south of the Krishna River,
invading Bednore and Mysore.
Malhar Rao Holkar and Raghunath Rao
(Ragoba) led campaigns in the north
and won over the Jats and
the Doab.
Since 1753 Peshwa Balaji had been campaigning in Karnatak
to collect tribute and establish Maratha authority.
In 1760 Marathas
led by Sadashiv Rao Bhau invaded Udgir and defeated
the Nizam
forces by taking Burhanpur, Daulatabad, Ahmadnagar, and Bijapur.
In the Punjab Muin-ul-mulk went back to trying to suppress
the Sikhs in 1753,
but he died in November.
After his infant sons
were appointed and one died,
his widow Mughlam Begum took power
in May 1754.
The new emperor Alamgir II appointed Momin Khan governor
of Lahore.
Nobles, resenting Mughlam's eunuchs and paramours,
revolted.
She seized their leader and had him beat to death,
but
Khwajah Mirza Jan took over Lahore and put her in prison.
She
appealed to the Afghan Abdali, who sent a force led by Khwajah
Ubadullah Khan;
he restored her for three months before confining
her and ruling himself.
He plundered his subjects and was replaced
a few months later
by Momin Khan and Adina Beg in 1756.
Mughlam
Begum called on Abdali again, and Ubadullah Khan took control.
During this confusion Abdali was also invited back
by Emperor
Alamgir and Rohilla chief Najib Khan.
So Abdali entered India again, harassed by marauding Sikhs;
but this time the Afghans plundered Delhi in January 1757.
Punjab,
Kashmir, Sind, and Sirhind were ceded to him;
but after raiding
the Jat country south of Delhi, Abdali departed,
leaving Najib
Khan in Delhi and his son Timur Shah as viceroy at Lahore
with
his general Jahan Khan as vizier.
Sikhs rebelled, but Jahan Khan
defeated them at Amritsar and desecrated their shrine.
The Marathas
ousted Najib and made a treaty with Imad-ul-Mulk in June 1757
that doubled their share to half of all the revenues they collected
in Mughal dominions.
Marathas led by Raghunath Rao invaded Rajputana
and plundered old Delhi in August,
making peace with the Rohillas
the next month.
Then 50,000 Maratha troops entered the Punjab
in 1758,
driving the Afghans out of Sirhind and Lahore.
They appointed
Adina Beg Khan their viceroy;
but after they left, his death brought
chaos to the Punjab.
The Sikhs offered zamindars protection (rakhi)
for one-fifth of the rent.
The Afghan army attacked them at Kartarpur
and Amritsar,
but the Sikhs joined with Adina Beg in an army of
25,000
to defeat the Afghans near Mahilpur in December 1757.
Sikhs
allied with the Marathas and plundered Sirhind and Lahore.
Raghunath's
army left Lahore in May 1758;
Adina Beg tried to suppress the
Sikhs, but he died in September.
The Marathas appointed Dattaji Sindia, and in August 1759 he
sent Sabaji Sindia
to push back the Afghan invasion of Jahan Khan,
who came back two months later, forcing Sabaji to retreat from
Lahore
so that Dattaji could aid the peshwa in getting
money from Bengal.
Dattaji's attempt to build a bridge across
the Ganges was sabotaged by Najib-ud-daula,
who invited Abdali's
invasion and secretly organized Mughal nobles.
In 1758 Imad had
expelled crown prince Ali Gauhar from Delhi,
and he took refuge
in Awadh with Shuja ud-daula.
In November 1759, Imad-ul-Mulk sent
men who murdered Emperor Alamgir II
and former vizier Intizam.
Shah Jahan II was proclaimed emperor.
The next month Ali Gauhar
crowned himself Emperor Shah Alam II
and appointed Shuja ud-daula
his vizier; but his invasion of Bihar failed.
The assassination of Alamgir II motivated Abdali to advance
toward Delhi.
Dattaji tried to stop him but was killed in January
1760.
The Afghans plundered old Delhi, and Abdali campaigned against
Jats and Marathas.
Two months later near Sikandarbad the Afghan
general Jahan Khan
routed the Marathas led by Malhar Rao.
The
Marathas fled from the invading Afghans, who would not agree on
a peace treaty
because of Peshwa Balaji's exorbitant demands.
The ailing Peshwa gave command to the Udgir victor Sadashiv Rao
instead of Raghunath Rao.
In contrast to Shivaji's forces a century
before,
this Maratha army was accompanied by retinues, wives,
and luxurious tents.
The Marathas captured Delhi in August 1760;
but they lost the support of Suraj Mal
and his Jats when they
plundered palaces, tombs, and shrines
that the Persians and Afghans
had respected.
In October, Sadashiv Rao imprisoned the puppet
Shah Jahan III.
While the Marathas were taking and plundering
the fort at Kunjpura from 10,000 Rohillas,
Abdali's Afghan army
crossed the Jumna River to cut off Maratha supply lines.
In December,
20,000 foraging camp followers were slaughtered.
The climactic battle between the Marathas and the Afghans
took
place at Panipat in January 1761.
Half of the 60,000 on the Afghan
side were Rohillas, Bangash, and Mughals.
The Maratha army had
45,000 men,
but hundreds were dying every day of hunger and disease.
The starving Maratha army left their defenses to fight a desperate
battle.
The victorious Afghans enslaved women and children,
taking
50,000 horses, 200,000 cattle, 500 elephants, plus money and jewelry.
Only one-fourth of the Maratha army returned to the Deccan.
Peshwa
Balaji retreated to Puna, where he died in June 1761.
The Maratha
confederation was shattered as local chiefs regained control—
Mahadji
Sindia in Gwalior, Raghuji Bhonsle in Nagpur and Berar,
Malhar
Rao Holkar in Malwa, and Damaji Gaikwar in Gujarat.
Abdali named
'Alamgir II's son 'Ali Gauhar emperor in Delhi as Shah 'Alam
with
Imad as vizier and Najib-ud-daula as Mir Bakshi (military commander).
The Afghan troops were two years behind in their pay and insisted
that
Abdali leave India before the hot summer, and they refused
to go to Mathura,
where hundreds had died of cholera four years
before.
His retreating army was followed and plundered by the
Sikhs,
who were reported to have freed about 2200 Hindu women.
After the Marathas' disaster at Panipat, Nizam 'Ali invaded
Maharashtra
with about 60,000 troops, but he lost allies by destroying
Hindu temples at Toka
and was defeated near Puna in January 1762.
In a treaty the new Peshwa gave back half of what his father had
gained in the Deccan.
Nizam 'Ali took over the government at Bihar,
put Salabat Jang in prison,
and ruled the Mughal Deccan for the
next forty-one years.
In the south Haidar 'Ali rose to power in
Mysore
by defeating his rival Khande Rao in 1761.
Balaji Rao died
in June 1761, and his 17-year-old son Madhav Rao became peshwa,
his uncle Raghunath Rao (Ragoba) acting as regent.
Conflict led
to a civil war, and in November 1762 the Peshwa yielded to Raghunath,
who had to surrender the Daulatabad fort to Nizam 'Ali.
After
plundering each other's territories in 1763,
the Peshwa defeated
Nizam 'Ali's army and gained land.
That year Haidar 'Ali conquered
Bidnur and Sunda.
The Marathas led by the Peshwa defeated Haidar
the next year,
occupying Haveri and Dharwar and making peace in
1765.
The Marathas formed an alliance with Nizam 'Ali
so they
could fight Haidar and take more territory in another treaty in
1767.
That year Nizam 'Ali and British troops led by Joseph Smith
invaded Mysore,
but Nizam went over to Haidar's side.
Sikhs took over the Punjab, and about a third of the 30,000
Sikhs who fought to stop
Abdali's sixth invasion of India were
killed in February 1762.
Four months later Abdali's Afghans attacked
them at Amritsar,
and in October many of the 60,000 gathered were
massacred.
Abdali also annexed Kashmir before returning to Afghanistan
at the end of 1762.
In January 1764 Jassa Singh Ahluwalia led
40,000 Sikhs of the Dal Khalsa
in an attack on Sirhind that killed
Zain Khan,
and the next month they took over Lahore and plundered
the upper Doab.
They gathered at Amritsar and minted coins of
pure silver,
but they lost Lahore when Abdali invaded again in
October 1764.
Suraj Mal and the Jats retained strong forces by not participating
in the Panipat debacle,
and in June 1761 they captured the Agra
fort by bribery.
Najib-ud-daula had to collect the tribute from
India for the Afghan king,
and he suppressed rebellion in Hansi-Hussar.
After Suraj Mal attacked Baluch zamindars, Najib moved against
the Jats;
Suraj Mal was shot dead in December 1763
and was succeeded
by his rebellious son, Jawahir Singh.
He won the loyalty of the
Jat army of 30,000 by paying their salaries
that were two years
behind, and he hired 20,000 Marathas under Malhar Rao Holkar.
Najib did not invade the Jat kingdom, because he had to respond
to the Sikh invasion
of the upper Doab, enabling Jawahir Singh
to recover the middle Doab.
In January 1765 the Jats bombarded
Delhi as Jawahir paid 15,000 Sikh allies
to attack the city; but
the Rohillas defended Delhi.
Najib negotiated a peace as Sikhs,
learning that Abdali was approaching Lahore, left.
Frustrated
Jawahir turned against his own officers and extorted money
from
rich Jats to pay for his losses;
Balaram and another Jat grandee
felt so disgraced that they cut their own throats in prison.
Najib
showed his power to tax by massacring his villages of Buana and
Bhiwani in 1765.
The growing power of the Sikhs was manifested
when an army of 120,000 gathered at Amritsar in the spring of
1767.
The next year Najib retired with riches only surpassed in
India by the Jat king.
He passed his office to his deputy Zabita
Khan.
Sikhs abandoned Lahore again in 1767 to the Afghans on Abdali's
eighth invasion.
In 1769 Ahmad Shah Abdali got as far as Peshawar
but retreated
because his unpaid soldiers mutinied; he died three
years later.
Shah Waliullah (1703-62) was born in Delhi and became an influential
Islamic theologian.
He memorized the Qur'an
as a child and in 1732 went on a pilgrimage to Mecca,
where
he studied with eminent theologians.
He believed in independent
thinking and tried to harmonize Islamic law
with mysticism and
the four traditional schools of jurisprudence.
He translated the Qur'an into
Persian and wrote a commentary,
and two of his sons translated
it into Hindivi.
In social morality he argued that justice is
the highest principle and that it manifests
in personal behavior
as courtesy, in finances as economy, in community as civil liberty,
in politics as order, and as the social good of fellowship.
He
believed that society is corrupted when the pursuit of wealth
and the satisfaction
of desires for luxury and dissipation became
the primary goals in life.
Then the rich find ways to oppress
the peasants, traders, and artisans;
the economy becomes perverted
by luxury goods while the lower classes are impoverished.
His
remedy was to abolish the entire system and establish justice
and harmony.
However, his method of bringing about these reforms
was to turn to powerful
Muslim leaders such as Najib-ud-daula,
Nizam-ul Mulk, and Ahmad Shah Abdali.
Waliullah's son Shah Abdul
Aziz (d. 1823) educated thousands of Muslims
over sixty years
at his Madrasa-i-Rahimiya in Delhi.
In 1744 Raghuji's vizier Bhaskar Ram invaded Bengal through
Orissa.
Bengal nawab Alivardi lured Bhaskar and Maratha
generals to the plain of Mankara,
where they were treacherously
massacred by the Afghan generals.
When Alivardi broke his promise
to make his general Ghulam Mustafa Khan
governor of Bihar for
having murdered Bhaskar,
Mustafa Khan rebelled and assaulted Patna,
inviting Raghuji to invade.
In 1745 Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah
promised to pay Shahu tribute for Bengal and Bihar.
Raghuji invaded
Bengal six times until he made a treaty with 'Alivardi Khan in
1751.
The Marathas were to be given revenues from Orissa by Alivardi's
deputy Mir Habib,
and they promised not to invade Bengal anymore.
Habib did not allow extortion and peculation,
and he and his assistants
were murdered by Maratha soldiers in 1752.
Orissa became a Maratha
province.
The annual Maratha raids in the 1740s had plundered
Bengal,
devastated its inland economy, and caused many people
to flee to the east,
where some took refuge in the English settlement
at Calcutta.
Joseph Dupleix had increased French trade in Bengal in the
1730s, surpassing the Dutch,
and in 1742 he was appointed governor
at Pondicherry.
When a European war began in 1744 that opposed
England against France,
Dupleix proposed local neutrality agreements;
but the English East India Company believed they could wipe out
their French rivals.
In 1745 Commodore Barnett captured French
ships with Chinese goods in which
Dupleix had an interest, and
the latter called upon a French squadron that
Governor La Bourdonnais
was fitting out at Mauritius.
After an indecisive battle, Captain
Edward Peyton took the English ships back to Bengal.
Dupleix goaded
the French fleet into capturing Madras with a thousand men in
1746.
Over Dupleix's objection, La Bourdonnais promised
to give
Madras back to the English for a ransom.
When La Bourdonnais departed,
Dupleix renounced the treaty and defended Madras
from an attack
led by Mahfuz Khan, son of Karnatak nawab Anwar-ud-din.
Improved
artillery and infantry armed with muskets and bayonets demonstrated
European superiority over slow-firing Indian guns.
The next year
Dupleix tried to take Fort St. David,
but the English (including
young Clive) were able to defend it
with the help of Nawab Anwar-ud-din's
son Muhammad 'Ali and his 2,500 men.
Capable Major Stringer Lawrence
took command at Fort St. David in January 1748
and repelled Dupleix's
third attempt.
Admiral Boscawen's attempt to besiege the French
at Pondicherry failed
and lost more than a thousand men.
In the
1748 treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle prisoners were exchanged,
and England
got Madras back in exchange for Cape Breton Island in North America.
Mughal vizier Safdar Jang did not like Nizam-ul Mulk's son
Nasir Jang
and urged his nephew Muzaffar Jang and Chanda Sahib
to claim the Deccan;
they invaded Karnatak with 14,000 cavalry
and 15,000 infantry
and were supported by 420 French soldiers
from Pondicherry.
In 1749 they defeated and killed Anwar-ud-din
at Ambur,
and his son Muhammad 'Ali fled to Trichinopoly.
Nasir
had 70,000 men on horses and 100,000 on foot with artillery
and
also hired Marathas; he was joined by Muhammad 'Ali and 300 English.
They won the battle and captured Muzaffar
because unpaid French
officers refused to fight.
However, Bussy's French troops captured
the strong fortress at Jinji (Gingee).
Nasir was shot dead during
an attack on his camp
ordered by France's Dupleix in December
1750.
Dupleix recognized the freed Muzaffar as viceroy of the
Deccan
and Chanda Sahib as Karnatak nawab;
but Muzaffar was killed
the next month and was replaced by Salabat Jang,
who had persuaded
France's Bussy to support him.
Bussy got Salabat Jang to give
the French a lease in the Deccan.
While Dupleix negotiated, the new Madras governor Thomas Saunders
sent a British force to defend Muhammad 'Ali.
Dupleix countered
by sending a French army under Jean Law.
The English led by Robert
Clive captured Arcot in 1751
and defended it against a force brought
by Chanda Sahib.
The French siege of Trichinopoly failed,
and
their ally Chanda Sahib surrendered to a Maratha commander.
He
turned him over to the confederate chiefs,
who had Sahib beheaded
to please Muhammad 'Ali.
Law fled to the island of Srirangam but
in June 1752
had to surrender 800 French soldiers, 2,000 sepoys,
and 31 guns to Lawrence and Clive.
The latter captured more forts,
and by the end of 1752
Muhammad 'Ali possessed most of the Karnatak
except Jinji.
Nizam-ul Mulk's oldest son Ghazi-ud-din was assigned the Deccan
by the Mughal emperor in 1752 and had a Maratha escort.
Bussy
promised Maratha peshwa Balaji the Deccan province of Khandesh
if he would support Salabat Jang, who was forced by the Marathas
in November 1752
to give them much of Khandesh and Berar.
In 1753
French Directors decided to recall Dupleix for having pursued
territorial expansion.
His replacement Robert Godeheu made a truce
with the English,
agreeing their companies would not interfere
in Indian disputes.
Soon after he arrived at Aurangabad,
Ghazi-ud-din
was poisoned by Nizam-ul Mulk's widow, the mother of Nizam 'Ali.
Salabat Jang relied on Shah Nawaz Khan for financial administration
of the Deccan,
and in 1754 Nawaz made Raghuji Nagpur pay 500,000
rupees.
Nawaz sent the Nizam army into Mysore and raised ten times
that the next year;
but the French were demanding 2,900,000 rupees
a year for their troops.
After Salabat Jang dismissed the French,
Bussy seized Hyderabad.
Nawaz was dismissed during an uprising,
and Nizam 'Ali gained power.
Marathas led by the Peshwa's son
Vishvas Ras invaded
and gained 2,500,000 rupees worth of Deccan
territory in the treaty of January 1758.
Bussy's manager Haidar
Jang had Nawaz Shah and Salabat Jang arrested;
but Nizam 'Ali
avoided that fate by murdering Haidar Jang.
During a riot Nawaz
was murdered in prison by a French officer.
Bussy was recalled
to Madras, and Nizam 'Ali returned to Hyderabad.
Without French
assistance, the Nizam army was easily defeated by the Marathas.
In 1756 war broke out again in Europe between France and England.
Comte de Lally led the French attack that destroyed Fort St. David,
but his invasion of Tanjore to get money failed.
Lally besieged
Madras in December 1758 but was defeated the next month
trying
to regain Arcot, as Bussy was captured.
Eyre Coote arrived with
a British fleet and defeated Lally in January 1760.
Pondicherry
was blockaded, and Lally surrendered a year later,
ending French
power in India.
The 1763 treaty of Paris let them keep Pondicherry
but without fortifications.
During the siege of Pondicherry, Muhammad 'Ali met all the
expenses in order to
receive the captured stores; but the Company
took them and merely promised him credit.
Muhammad 'Ali lived
extravagantly in a palace outside of Madras and continually
borrowed
money at about 40% interest,
enabling the English to acquire fortunes
giving him loans.
George Pigot demanded that Muhammad 'Ali
pay
five million rupees annually to the Company on his debt.
He tried
to get tribute from the fertile Tanjore,
but Pigot arranged for
this to go to the Company also.
Nizam 'Ali offered the Company
the Circars for military assistance against the Marathas.
Together
they planned an attack on Haidar 'Ali's fort at Bangalore;
but
the clever Mysore leader paid off the Marathas with 3,500,000
rupees
and secretly plotted with Nizam 'Ali to attack the English.
Muhammad 'Ali learned of it, and Col. Joseph Smith retreated in
1767.
Near Trinomalee his army was attacked by the combined forces
of Haidar and Nizam 'Ali
but inflicted heavy casualties upon them.
Haidar's son Tipu led a raid on the outskirts of Madras, frightening
Council members.
When Nizam 'Ali learned another English force was coming from
Bengal,
he made a treaty with the English in 1768 and became known
as their faithful ally.
After failing to supply him before, now
the Madras Council
sent two deputies to make money supplying Smith's
troops.
Smith was recalled and replaced by the corrupt Col. Wood.
Haidar 'Ali respected and avoided Col. Smith
but was glad to attack
Wood at every opportunity.
By the end of 1768 the Madras Council
recalled Wood and put him under arrest.
His charges were later
dismissed because he was a relative of the powerful
Company director
Laurence Sulivan.
Haidar asked to negotiate with Dupré,
the most honest member of the Madras Council,
and he agreed to
a treaty in 1769 with the Company
restoring all conquered territories
under a mutual defense agreement.
Bengal nawab Alivardi died in 1756 and was succeeded by his
grandson Siraj-ud-daula.
Army commander Mir Jafar and the English
conspired against him.
When the Nawab ordered the English and
French
to dismantle their forts, the English refused.
Siraj attacked
Calcutta with a reported 50,000 men
and captured Fort William
in June 1756.
English prisoners were confined in a small room
called the "Black Hole" overnight.
According to magistrate
John Z. Holwell, of the 146 imprisoned
he was one of only 23 who
survived the suffocation;
but many have questioned the accuracy
of his account,
and recent Indian studies found the number imprisoned
was 64.
Siraj was not blamed for the guards' incompetence.
Clive
arrived with an army that took over Calcutta and Hughli in January
1757;
a treaty restored the East India Company's trading rights
and factories.
At war with France, the English attacked Chandernagar.
Siraj complained but could do little except ask the French to
leave Bengal.
Clive accused the Nawab of violating the treaty
and wrote he was asking for arbitration,
but he occupied the fort
at Katwa.
When the Punjabi merchant Aminchand tried to blackmail
Clive,
threatening to warn Siraj, Clive fooled him with a forged
agreement and never paid him.
During the battle of Plassey in
June 1757
Mir Jafar betrayed Siraj by going over to the winning
English side.
Clive joined Mir Jafar and his troops in Murshidabad.
Siraj fled, was captured, and executed at the behest of Mir Jafar.
Clive presided over the installation of Mir Jafar as nawab,
and for the first time the English were given land with zamindari
rights.
Mir Jafar promised to pay some twenty million rupees in
compensation
and gave Clive a present of 160,000 pounds.
Later
when he was criticized for accepting this, Clive replied that
he was astonished
at his own moderation, noting that Murshidabad
was as populous and rich as London.
Clive managed to get Mir Jafar
recognized by the Mughal emperor,
and Maratha peshwa Balaji
kept getting the tribute agreed upon with Alivardi.
The dastaks
(passes) that Mir Jafar granted to Company servants exempted them
from duties on private trade and gave them a competitive advantage
over Indians.
Some agents used the British name to extort even
more money in the countryside.
The Calcutta Council elected Clive governor of Bengal in 1758.
Clive sent Coote after the French led by Law,
and the strict Coote
had reluctant soldiers flogged.
Facing a revolt in Bihar backed
by the Awadh nawab, Mir Jafar asked Clive for help,
because his
mutinous army refused to march.
Mughal prince 'Ali Gauhar, who
later became Shah Alam II,
invaded Bihar with 40,000 men.
Clive
pushed forward a battalion against him but then sent him 500 gold
coins
and persuaded him to withdraw.
Clive stationed a garrison
at Patna, and in gratitude Mir Jafar gave Clive a local tax district.
Clive sent Francis Forde to help a raja who had taken over Vizagapatam.
Forde's forces defeated the French,
and Salabat Jang ceded territory to the English in May 1759.
In July seven Dutch ships carrying
soldiers tried to go up the Hughli to Chinsura.
Mir Jafar ordered
them to turn back but did nothing.
Though England was not yet
at war with Holland,
Clive decided to enforce the Nawab's order
after Hastings warned him
the Nawab was conniving with the Dutch.
Clive sent Forde with 300 Europeans, 800 sepoys,
and four field
guns that made the difference,
killing and capturing 450 European
soldiers near Badarah on the road to Chinsura.
Six Dutch vessels
surrendered to three larger English ships,
and the other one fled.
The Dutch had to admit they provoked the violence and pay a million
rupees damages.
The Dutch would not challenge the English in Bengal
again.
Holwell replaced Clive as governor at Fort William for five
months in 1760
and persuaded his successor Vansittart that Nawab
Mir Jafar should be deposed.
Vansittart secretly made a treaty
with Mir Jafar's son-in-law Mir Qasim,
making him diwani
and giving him more authority than the Nawab.
When Mir Jafar objected,
the Governor and Mir Qasim
besieged his palace in October 1760.
After Mir Jafar abdicated, he was allowed to live in Calcutta.
The new Nawab soon came into conflict with the
English chief Ellis
at Patna over duties on inland trade.
Mir Qasim demanded that
the Company's private trade be abolished,
but Vansittart proposed
paying nine percent duties on inland trade.
Although Indian merchants
paid forty percent,
the Calcutta Council reduced the duty
for
company merchants to 2.5%, and it was only on salt.
The Nawab's
ordering that regulations be enforced provoked violence.
He was
also disliked for raising taxes more than they had been in the
previous two centuries.
Then in March 1763 he ordered a remission
on all duties on inland trade for two years,
hoping that letting
Indians compete fairly would ruin English trade.
Mir Qasim sent
troops to Patna in June, but Ellis took over the factory city.
Mir Qasim's forces captured Patna and killed the English envoy
Amyatt,
shocking the English who lost nearly 3,000 men.
The Calcutta
Council declared war on Mir Qasim.
The English army of Bengal
marched into Murshidabad and reinstated Mir Jafar.
After Mir Qasim's
army was defeated in June 1763, he killed his commander,
some
associates, and nearly two hundred English prisoners.
Then he
fled to Awadh.
In 1762 Shah Alam II and Shuja-ud-daula of Awadh had invaded
Bundelkhand.
The next year they marched toward Delhi hoping to
unite Muslims;
but the Sunni Afghans came into conflict with Shuja's
Shi'a troops and departed.
Shah Alam and Shuja gave refuge to
Mir Qasim in Awadh.
The Calcutta Council sent forces led by Major
Carnac into Awadh.
Negotiation with Shuja-ud-daula failed,
because
both he and Mir Jafar wanted Bihar.
When Carnac refused to fight
in the rainy season,
he was replaced by Major Munro, who court
martialed
a few mutinous officers and executed them with cannons.
When Mir Qasim ran out of money for Awadh's war, he was imprisoned.
In October 1764 the English army of about 7,200
defeated Shuja's
army of 30,000 at the battle of Buxar.
Shah Alam surrendered and
was allowed to govern only
Allahabad and Korah for the next six
years.
In addition to these annual revenues of 2,800,000 rupees,
he would receive tribute of 2,600,000 rupees from Bengal.
As Subah
of Bengal he bestowed on the Company the powerful office of Diwan.
Shuja was defeated again the next year,
but he promised to pay
the Company five million rupees and was reinstated.
These arrangements
were made by Clive
when he returned for a second term as governor
in 1765.
The new Nawab was still head of revenue collection and the
judiciary,
but the army was controlled by the Company.
Clive called
this "dual government."
Mir Jafar died and was succeeded
by his grandson Najm-ud-daula.
When Clive allowed the new Nawab
an annual salary of 5,300,000 rupees,
his character was revealed
by his reply
"Thank God! I shall now have as many dancing
girls as I please."1
Directors had ordered Clive to reform
the system by limiting presents
and checking the abuses of private
trade.
Presents over 4,000 rupees were forbidden,
and those over
1,000 required official approval.
Yet the Council had accepted
presents totaling
nearly 140,000 pounds from the new Nawab.
Clive
tried to increase salaries to reduce corruption,
but the Directors
balked at the cost and instituted commissions on revenues.
He
converted a gift from Mir Jafar into a fund for wounded and sick
veterans.
Clive reduced the corrupt allowances military officers
had been receiving for years.
Angry officers in the Monghyr brigade
resigned their commissions,
and the troops were near mutiny; but
Clive used the sepoys (Indian troops)
to force them to cooperate.
Clive made the officers at Patna sign a three-year agreement
with
capital punishment for disobedience.
He court martialed the "ringleaders"
and deported them.
Opposition to his reforms subsided, and Clive
left India in February 1767.
He predicted that the Company would
make an annual profit of two million pounds
and that the people
of Bengal would be benefited,
but the results of his efforts were
quite different.
Peshwa Madhav Rao and his uncle Raghunath met in 1767,
but
the latter lost a second civil war the next year and was imprisoned
at Puna.
Bombay sent Thomas Mostyn to Puna to keep the Marathas
from joining
Mysore's Haidar 'Ali and the Deccan's Nizam 'Ali,
and the next year the English attacked Haidar's fleet on the west
coast.
Nizam made a treaty with Madras in 1768,
but Haidar's victories
the next year made Madras promise to defend him
from Maratha attack,
which they failed to do.
Madhav Rao wanted to subjugate the Karnatak
and in 1770 occupied several posts
and two strong forts; he put
Trimbak Rao in charge with a large army.
In March 1771 Trimbak
defeated Mysore's army,
as Haidar fled to his capital in a disguise.
Ill and out of money, the Peshwa told Trimbak Rao to make peace
in 1772;
Haidar 'Ali agreed to pay 3,100,000 rupees and surrendered
some territory
south of the Tungabhadra.
When the Marathas invaded Mysore, Haidar 'Ali asked for English
assistance
in accordance with their 1769 treaty; but Muhammad
'Ali was hostile to Haidar,
and the Marathas asked for English
help also.
The Madras Council procrastinated, and Haidar resented
this breach of the treaty.
Madras governor Dupré wisely
refrained from supporting Muhammad 'Ali's scheme
to invade Tanjore,
because it would provoke the Marathas.
In late 1771 he approved
a siege by General Joseph Smith,
but Muhammad 'Ali changed his
mind on being offered five million rupees by the Tanjore raja.
Two years later the Madras Council, dominated by Paul Benfield,
sent Smith to seize Tanjore for Muhammad 'Ali;
but in 1775 the
Company directors removed the Madras governor and ordered the
Council
to restore the raja.
The Court of Proprietors appointed
George Pigot governor,
and he came into conflict with the Madras
Council and Nawab Muhammad 'Ali.
Pigot ordered Robert Fletcher
arrested, but instead the Council put Pigot in prison,
where he
died in May 1777.
Peshwa Madhav Rao died of disease in November 1772
and was
succeeded by his brother Narayan Rao.
Raghunath Rao (Ragoba) organized
a conspiracy
and had his nephew murdered in August 1773, becoming peshwa.
He made a treaty with Haidar 'Ali, trading territory
for money.
The late Peshwa's widow Ganga Bai gave birth to a son,
and Nana Fadnavis led an effort to govern as regents for him.
Raghunath appealed to Bombay and gained an English alliance in
a 1775 treaty,
ceding Salsette and Bassein.
The Calcutta Council
condemned the Bombay treaty and sent Col. Upton to Puna
to annul
it and make a new one with the regency that renounced Raghunath,
who was promised a pension.
The Bombay government rejected this
and gave refuge to Raghunath.
In 1777 Nana Fadnavis violated his
treaty by granting the French a port on the west coast.
Bombay
reacted by sending a force toward Puna,
but in January 1779 the
British troops were defeated by a large Maratha army.
In the convention
at Wadgaon, Bombay had to relinquish all territory acquired since
1775.
Bengal disavowed this, and an army led by Col. Goddard marched
across India
to take over Ahmadabad in February 1780 and Bassein
in December.
Haidar 'Ali formed a triple alliance with the Deccan's Nizam
'Ali and the Marathas
against the English, and they defeated the
British advance on Puna.
Haidar and his son Tipu trapped a British
force of 3,800 led by Baillie,
capturing all that had not been
killed;
about 200 Europeans were imprisoned for several years.
Some of the prisoners were put to death, and others were converted
to Islam.
The Maratha-Mysore alliance took Arcot after a long
siege,
but Hastings and the Bengal council won Nizam back over
by assuring him that his tribute
would be paid and that Guntur
would be restored to Basalat Jang.
Another Bengal detachment led
by Captain Popham helped the Rana of Gohad
capture Gwalior in
August 1780.
Hastings sent more forces, and in 1781 Eyre Coote
defeated Haidar at Porto Novo.
General Camac also defeated Mahadji
Sindia at Sipri.
After these English victories, Sindia proposed
a new treaty between Puna and the English,
recognizing young Madhava
Rao Narayan and giving Raghunath a pension.
This treaty of Salbai
was signed in May 1782 and ratified eight months later
by Nana
Fadnavis; it called for the Peshwa to make Haidar 'Ali relinquish
his conquests
and prisoners within six months of ratification.
Haidar 'Ali was elderly and had died of cancer in December 1782;
but his son Tipu continued the war.
Bombay brigadier Mathews and
his men captured Bednore and Mangalore in 1783
but surrendered
to Tipu after he withdrew troops from the Karnatak.
Lord Macartney
at Madras recalled Col. Fullarton,
and the 1784 treaty of Mangalore
restored conquests and liberated prisoners.
The English East India Company's dividend was raised in 1766
from six to ten percent
and to 12.5% the following year.
The House
of Commons appointed a committee to inquire into the Company's
extraordinary money-making and reduced the dividend back to ten
percent.
Three Supervisors were sent out to reform the Company
in September 1769,
but the ship was lost at sea.
Commodore John
Lindsay had been made the King's Minister Plenipotentiary
secretly
after the Company's directors had opposed this.
The English used the dual Mughal revenue system in Bengal,
but Clive's strict reforms provided little improvement.
The English
enriched themselves with bribes and by fixing prices.
Crop failures
led to a disastrous famine and pestilence in 1770
during which
about ten million people died,
a third of the Bengal and Bihar
population.
The English Company spent only 9,000 pounds on famine
relief
that helped about 400,000 people.
Officials monopolized
all grain and even forced ryots (peasants) to sell their seeds
for the next harvest, compounding the misery.
Revenues were still
demanded and even increased, further decreasing cultivation.
The
justice system was corrupt, as judges were appointed by official
favor,
and not having salaries they depended on fines and perquisites.
The Company's servants participated in inland trade without duties
and drove most of the Indian merchants out of business.
Verelst
had failed even though he seemed to realize that acting as mere
merchants,
making immense revenues the only goal without protecting
the people, was inhumane.
He was replaced by Cartier in 1770.
The Directors continued to pay the dividends even though the Company
had to borrow from the Bank of England to do so.
In 1771 the Directors appointed the experienced Warren Hastings
as governor of Bengal.
Hastings wanted to cultivate peace and
establish justice, reduce Company expenses,
and limit remote wars.
He had served in India since 1750 and spoke Bengali, Hindustani
(Urdu),
and some Persian, the official language of the Mughals.
He believed that most Indians are gentle, kind,
faithful in service,
submissive to laws, and abhorred bloodshed.
Hastings was secretly
ordered to arrest the Nawab's chief minister
Muhammad Reza Khan for fraud and embezzlement.
However, the charges could not be
proved, because the one accusing him
was his ambitious assistant,
the notorious Nandakumar, who had asked the English
for a bribe
to betray Siraj-ud-daula and the French when the English were
planning
to attack Chandernagore in 1757.
Hastings took over the
Nawab's authority but still used mostly Indian officials,
believing
their traditional corruption was not as bad as the greedy Englishmen.
He paid thirty Company servants salaries
in six Provincial Councils
to oversee the Indian officials.
He established criminal and civil
courts of appeal in Calcutta and appointed Muslim
and other law
officers approved by the Nawab.
Use of the dastak passes
was abolished,
and a uniform tariff of 2.5% was set on all internal
trade.
The British Government loaned the Company 1.5 million pounds
and ended their obligation to pay the Government 400,000 pounds
annually.
The Regulating Act of 1773 gave authority in Bengal
to four councilors
headed by the governor-general, who could break
a tie.
The other councilors, Philip Francis, General Clavering,
and Colonel Monson,
began investigating Hastings, who became governor-general
in 1774.
That year Clive committed suicide in England.
When Awadh
nawab Shuja-ud-daula died and was succeeded by his son Asaf-ud-daula,
the Council insisted on a new treaty and gained concessions, causing
his troops to mutiny
for lack of pay and his zamindars to hold
back revenue.
Francis with a letter from Nandakumar accused Hastings
of accepting 350,000 rupees
in presents from the young Nawab's
guardian Mani Begum.
Nandakumar was charged with forgery, which
the British had made a capital crime,
and after a trial Nandakumar
was hanged.
He was a Brahmin, and Indians were shocked by this
extreme punishment.
Monson died and was replaced by Richard Barwell.
An attempt to remove Hastings and Barwell was blocked by the Court
of Proprietors,
who could not be bribed and did not want the King's
friend Clavering to end
the Company's power in India.
Clavering
died in August 1777, and the Directors extended Hastings' term
past 1779.
News that France had declared war on England arrived in August
1778,
and within a few months the English seized Chandernagore
and Pondicherry.
Hastings set up the Amini Commission to determine
the real value of land
by examining past revenues.
Eyre Coote
joined the Council in 1779.
When Hastings believed that Francis
had violated their agreement by blocking
a military decision,
their quarrel escalated to a duel in which Francis was wounded.
Francis objected to Bengal being governed by foreign traders
and
wanted the British monarch to have authority.
During the Mysore
war Hastings asked Benares raja Chait Singh to contribute
an extra
500,000 rupees and two thousand cavalry.
After he provided only
200,000 rupees, Hastings had him arrested.
Chait Singh's armed
retainers freed him, killing most of the sepoys,
who for some
unknown reason had no ammunition.
Severed heads of English officers
were paraded in villages.
The Company sent more troops and deposed
Chait Singh, who fled with his treasure.
They installed his young
nephew and nearly doubled
the annual revenue payment to 4,000,000
rupees.
The treasure was eventually captured but was divided
among
the troops to Hastings' consternation.
His treatment of Chait
Singh later became the most serious charge
in the famous Hastings
impeachment trial.
Hastings replaced the provincial councils with a revenue administration
and local Indian diwans, but this made it difficult
to
find positions for young Englishmen in India.
Francis promoted
investigation of Hastings in the House of Commons,
and in 1782
Hastings was censored;
but the Court of Proprietors rescinded
the Directors' recall order.
Lack of rain caused famine in northern
India.
Hastings visited Lucknow (Lakhnau), where the Awadh nawab
lived in luxury in a palace tended by 4,000 gardeners.
He managed
to collect half the debt the opium-eating Asaf-ud-daula owed
by
sending troops to take it by force from the rich Begams.
Hastings
lamented the encroaching spirit of the English that allowed
and
even protected licentious individuals.
Hicky's Gazette
began publishing sensational news, sarcasm, gossip, and scandals
in 1780;
but after it exposed Hastings' private life, he had Hicky
arrested and deported.
He welcomed orientalist William Jones and
wrote
an introduction to Wilkins' translation of the Bhagavad-gita.
They founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
After his council
supporter Wheler died, Hastings handed his office over to Macpherson
and left India in February 1785.
His impeachment trial by Parliament
began in 1788,
but he was not acquitted on all charges until 1795.
Even his detractor, the historian Macaulay, admitted that
Hastings
had been the most popular governor of India.
In England clause 34 of Pitt's India Act of 1784 enjoined the
Company
not to intervene in Indian politics, and Macpherson refused
to join the Maratha alliance
against Mysore unless the French
were attacking them.
To fight Tipu, Nana Fadnavis made an alliance
with Nizam 'Ali and granted Garha-Mandla
to Mudhoji Bhosle in
exchange for 15,000 cavalry and 3,200,000 rupees;
but he had to
give Holkar a million rupees to pay his army.
The Maratha army
led by Hari Pant Fadke invaded Mysore in 1786.
Tipu was in a strong
position but feared British involvement and negotiated
a treaty
in March 1787, agreeing to pay six million rupees.
Lord Cornwallis was the Company's governor-general 1786-93
and was obligated to follow Pitt's India Act.
Muhammad 'Ali was
living in luxury in Madras,
and the Company was paying his extravagant
debts.
Cornwallis made a treaty with him, promising to defend
the whole Karnatak for a fee.
Nizam 'Ali was supposed to give
Guntur to the English when Basalat Jang died in 1782.
Cornwallis
finally got Guntur from Nizam 'Ali in 1788,
and the next year
he promised him two battalions of sepoys provided
they were not
used against the Company's allies, which did not include Mysore.
Five months later Tipu attacked a line of defenses in Travancore
that had been originally built by the Portuguese, captured by
the Dutch in 1662,
and sold to the Travancore raja.
Cornwallis
considered this a violation and arranged a triple alliance against
Mysore.
The Company's Charles Malet formalized it with Nana's
Marathas at Puna,
and John Kennaway did so with the Nizam at Hyderabad;
each promised 10,000 cavalry.
Tipu had a disciplined army of about
100,000, and they were much more mobile
than the English, whose
officers traveled with furniture.
Bombay governor Major-General Medows replaced the unprepared
Madras governor
Hollond and led 15,000 men, taking Coimbatore
in July 1790.
Tipu's large army forced Col. Floyd to retreat and
ravaged the Karnatak;
but outnumbered Col. Hartley defeated a
Mysore army near Calicut on the west coast,
and Bombay governor
General Abercromby with a larger force landed
and took over the
Malabar province.
Cornwallis joined Medows, and their combined
army of 19,000
captured Bangalore in March 1791.
Tipu retreated
to his capital at Seringapatam while Cornwallis found his army
bogged down by rain and starving bullocks;
military stores and
heavy guns had to be destroyed.
Two Maratha armies brought supplies
they sold,
and eventually 28,000 bullocks were sent from the Karnatak.
A Maratha army went off to plunder Bednor.
Tipur still had 50,000
men but negotiated a surrender in March 1792.
He ceded half his
territory and promised to pay 33 million rupees;
Cornwallis took
two of his sons as hostages for two years until the indemnity
was paid.
The Nizam and the Peshwa split northern Mysore,
and
the English got Malabar with its spices for the Bombay presidency.
The British restored the Karnatak to Muhammad 'Ali.
Upon hearing
news that England was at war with revolutionary France,
Cornwallis
took artillery to help Madras capture Pondicherry
and then left
for England in October 1793.
William Pitt's India Act of 1784 established a Board of Control
that nullified
the Company's Court of Proprietors but worked with
the Directors to set policy.
Pitt hoped this would guide politics
in India with as little corrupt influence as possible.
Both Macartney
and Cornwallis refused to be governor-general
unless they could
control the council.
Macpherson held the position for twenty months
until Cornwallis was made commander-in-chief as well.
Macpherson
was criticized for making money for himself and his friends,
but
he managed to clear off military pay arrears.
He offered the Nizam
and the Marathas three battalions from Bombay
to fight Tipu, but
Cornwallis retracted that.
Pitt and Control Board chairman Henry Dundas wanted Cornwallis
to institute reforms,
and in his first three years peace allowed
him to do so.
Cornwallis suspended the Board of Trade
and dismissed
most of its members for irregularities.
He stopped the selling
of offices and enforced the ban on private trade
by public servants
by sending offenders home.
He abolished sinecures and dismissed
high officials, and he got the Company to reduce
commissions and
increase salaries so that honesty became practical.
He did not
trust Indians and confined them to inferior positions only.
He
cut back corruption in Awadh by reducing the seven million rupees
paid for the troops
to five million and stopped exempting Company
servants
from duties by making a commercial treaty with Awadh.
The British had been using the zamindari system in Bengal since
1765.
Zamindars collected taxes in their districts, traditionally
a third of the gross produce,
keeping one-tenth of what they collected.
Failure to pay the assessment was usually punished
by fines, imprisonment,
or flogging, not by confiscating.
John Shore had been in charge
of revenue for the last four years under Hastings,
and his research
was used for the ten-year settlement Cornwallis made in 1789.
He persuaded Dundas to make the settlement permanent in 1793.
Zamindars were considered landowners and still had to pay 90%
of what they collected,
and the cultivators were protected by
the British collectors over them.
Many of the new assessments
were too high,
and some zamindars had to sell to men with money
in Calcutta.
Personal connections between the zamindars and the
peasants were often broken,
and many landlords were absent.
As
improvements were made, the fixed settlement resulted in the zamindars
becoming wealthy; but the peasants' status remained low,
and they
could be evicted for not paying their rent.
The Board of Revenue
was reorganized, reducing the districts from 35 to 23.
Each collector
had two European assistants,
and his salary was increased from
1,200 rupees per month to 1,500
with a commission of one percent
on revenue collected.
This Permanent Settlement fixed land revenues;
as time went on, some believed that
the Bengal and Bihar governments
suffered from inadequate revenues.
Cornwallis reformed civil law by instituting the English legal
system for all but minor suits.
By abolishing legal fees everyone
could have access to the courts;
but this resulted in a backlog,
and it took many years to bring a case.
Muslim law was modified
to replace mutilation with fines
and to abolish distinctions made
between believers and infidels.
In 1790 Cornwallis removed Muhammad
Reza Khan so that the governor-general
and his council had supreme
authority with the advice of a qazi (chief judge)
and two
muftis on Islamic law.
Initial appeals were made to provincial
courts at Calcutta, Murshidabad, Dacca, and Patna.
Zamindars had
to give up their private police forces.
Being a district police
chief (darogha) was one powerful position an Indian could
fill.
The complete revision of the legal system became known as
the Cornwallis Code in May 1793.
Perhaps most important was that
he applied the rule of law
to the governors as well as the governed.
Cornwallis wrote,
The collectors of revenue and their officers, and indeed all the officers of Government,
shall be amenable to the courts for acts done in their official capacities,
and Government itself, in cases in which it may be a party with its subjects
in matters of property shall submit its rights to be tried in these courts
under the existing laws and regulations.2
In regard to the debts of nawabs such as Muhammad 'Ali, the
Board of Control
overruled the Directors and declared all debts
were due;
they were influenced by Benfield and others in Parliament
who benefited from this.
Thus Madras continued to drain wealth
from the Company at Bengal.
Slave trafficking in India was abolished by proclamation in
1789;
but rural slavery of peasant serfs continued in much of
India,
and the households of landlords often had domestic slaves
in areas
where Islamic law still prevailed.
In the early 19th
century Buchanan reported that the price of adult slaves varied
between fifteen and twenty rupees while children cost
an average
of one rupee for each year of their age.
Many men sold their children
into slavery for bread during famines.
John Shore succeeded Cornwallis in 1793.
He was a devoted Christian
but also promoted the study of Indian culture
as the third president
of the Asiatic Society.
Resident Jonathan Duncan established a
Sanskrit College at Benares in 1792
and began a campaign to end
infanticide.
Baptist missionary William Carey came to Calcutta
in 1793, set up schools,
and translated the Bible into Bengali.
William Duane began publishing Indian World in 1794,
but
he was arrested and deported the next year.
During this European
war Madras forces attacked
Dutch settlements in Sri Lanka and
the Spice Islands.
Shore declined to defend Nizam 'Ali in a conflict
with the Maratha confederacy
that formed after Mahadji Sindia
was succeeded by his nephew Daulat Rao Sindia.
After a battle
at Kharda with less than 200 casualties in March 1795,
the Nizam's
army dispersed; he ceded territory and agreed
to pay the Marathas
thirty million rupees.
Nizam dismissed two battalions of the Company's
sepoys but found he needed their aid
when his son 'Ali Jah rebelled
against him.
Muhammad 'Ali died in 1795; but his son Umdut-ul-Umara
would not modify the treaty, and the corruption continued.
However,
Alexander Read and Thomas Munro established a revenue administration
in Madras that became the model for British India.
After Peshwa
Madhu Rao fell off a terrace and died in October 1795,
the Marathas
were divided over the succession of Raghunath's son Baji Rao II.
The conflict enabled Nizam 'Ali to regain territory he lost at
Kharda,
but by December 1796 Baji Rao was recognized as the peshwa
with Nana Fadnavis as chief minister.
For a while Daulat Rao Sindia's
father-in-law Sarza Rao Ghatge gained control
at the Puna court
and extorted wealth, arresting prominent persons.
Mahadji's three
widows protested but were defeated in 1798.
Company officers were upset about their poor pay and limited
promotion opportunities
compared to the King's officers; but Abercromby
suggested modifying
Shore's new regulations, and mutiny was averted.
In 1797 Awadh nawab Asaf-ud-daula invited Shore to visit Lucknow.
Shore hinted at a collective guilt when he commented on the succession
struggle
in Rohilkhand in which Ghulam Muhammad had killed the
heir
and then was defeated by his son.
No one can calculate the consequences of the violation of a moral principle;
and there is some justice in your suspicion that the inveteracy of the Rohillas
may be traced to the injustice of 1774.3
The Afghan Zaman Shah had recently invaded as far as Lahore,
and Shore wanted concessions from the frightened Awadh nawab.
Asaf-ud-daula agreed to pay more and replace a corrupt minister;
when the threat faded, he declined to turn over the fortress of
Allahabad.
Asaf-ud-daula died six months later, and Shore replaced
Vazir 'Ali,
who was claiming to be the Nawab's son, with his brother
Sa'adat 'Ali.
The new Nawab then ceded Allahabad to the Company
and raised
the annual payment for its troops to 76 million rupees.
Zaman Shah occupied Lahore again in 1798; but he returned to Afghanistan
when he learned that his brother Shah Mahmud had invited the Persian
shah to invade.
Shore objected to the aggressive methods of Madras
governor Hobart
and annulled a treaty he made with the intimidated
Tanjore raja.
Hobart wrote to Dundas threatening to resign if
Shore was not replaced;
but the Directors recalled Hobart for
having coerced the Karnatak nawab.
Richard Wellesley was not quite 38 years old
when he became
governor-general at Calcutta in May 1798.
He believed in British
imperialism and thought that Shore had been a weak governor.
Because
of the European war he exaggerated the threat of the French in
India.
In June he learned that the French governor Malartic of
Mauritius was raising volunteers
to fight for Tipu Sultan against
the English.
Only a hundred recruits joined him, but Wellesley
used it as an excuse to bully Tipu.
His brother Arthur Wellesley
advised him to be patient and let Tipu explain.
Richard Wellesley
goaded Madras into preparing for war and got Nizam 'Ali
to dismiss
his French officers and support the English Company.
In February
1799 the combined army of the Company had 40,000 men
with more
than 100,000 camp followers.
Tipu had only about 37,000 men and
used his mobility and a scorched-earth strategy.
After being defeated
on March 27 by Company commander George Harris,
Tipu retreated
to Seringapatam.
General Baird, who had suffered 44 months imprisonment
in a Seringapatam dungeon,
wanted revenge and led the attack that
stormed and plundered the Mysore capital.
Tipu was killed, and
Arthur Wellesley had to use flogging and hanging to restore order.
More than half of the two million pounds of booty was claimed
by the officers
as prize money, Harris getting 143,000.
Richard
Wellesley was offered 100,000, which he declined.
Governor-General Wellesley had 14,000 European troops
but declared
31,000 were needed.
The Company reluctantly agreed to 21,000,
but the number only reached about 18,000.
Wellesley installed
a five-year-old Hindu prince in the small traditional kingdom
of Mysore.
By a treaty in 1800 Nizam 'Ali gave up the Mysore territories
he had gained in both wars
to the Company for protection and an
end to his paying an annual subsidy.
His many troops were disbanded
and caused local disorders for several years.
The Company gained
control of Tanjore when the raja Serfogi they had installed
accepted
a 40,000-pound annual pension in October 1799.
Five months later
Wellesley ordered the Company to take over the port of Surat
as
its nawab was given a pension.
Wellesley believed that the English
could govern better.
After Muhammad 'Ali's son Umdat-ul-Umara
died,
the regents for his son rejected a pension agreement.
So
Wellesley offered one to Umdat-ul-Umara's nephew,
and the Company
took over the Karnatak in July 1801.
The Directors approved the
new treaty, because they believed the family
of Muhammad 'Ali
had forfeited its previous treaty rights
by treasonable correspondence
with Tipu.
More complicated machinations were used in regard to Awadh
(Oudh).
Vazir 'Ali resented having to live in Calcutta, escaped,
and with several thousand armed men killed the Benares resident
Cherry
and other Englishmen in 1799.
After Zaman Shah invaded
from Afghanistan to Lahore again in the fall of 1798,
Bombay governor
Duncan and Wellesley sent envoys with gifts
to urge the Persian
shah to destabilize Afghanistan and oppose the French.
In 1800
Zaman Shah was imprisoned and blinded by his half-brother Shah
Mahmud.
In 1799 Awadh's Sa'adat 'Ali had written to Wellesley
that he would abdicate;
but when he learned he could not choose
his successor, he changed his mind.
Wellesley ordered more troops
into Awadh
and told the Nawab he would have to pay for them.
Sa'adat
'Ali objected that this violated the treaty; but in February 1800
he agreed to pay the Company and disband his own forces.
The next
year Wellesley demanded that the Awadh nawab cede at least half
his territory
to the Company, and the threat of force made him
agree in November 1801.
The ceded land of Rohilkhand and the Lower
Doab bordering Bihar was most fertile.
Sa'adat 'Ali was required
to "act in conformity to the counsel
of the officers of the
Honourable Company."
Wellesley named his brother Henry as
president of the board of commissioners
and lieutenant-governor
of Awadh.
This military and administrative control by the Company
in exchange for subsidies
in the name of a defensive alliance
was called the "subsidiary alliance system."
In 1799 Richard Wellesley decreed that no newspaper could be
published
unless it had been previously inspected by the Government's
Secretary,
and the penalty for failure was deportation.
He founded
the College of Fort William in Calcutta to educate civil servants.
The uninformed Directors objected, but they were overruled
by
Castlereagh on the Board of Control.
In 1806 the Directors established
Haileyburg College in England and reduced
Fort William College
to teaching Indian languages to Bengali civilians.
Wellesley believed
in free trade and arranged for 3,000 tons of shipping
for private
British traders so that they could compete with foreign merchants.
Believing that the British could provide superior government,
Wellesley made plans to improve drainage and roads in Calcutta
and proposed experimental agriculture at Barrackpur.
He encouraged
missionaries, and the Bible was translated into Indian languages.
He prohibited the sacrifice of children at Saugor Point by the
Hughli River
and tried to reduce the number of Hindu widows burned
in sati.
Tukoji Holkar died in August 1797, and his sons fought over
Malwa.
Jaswant Rao Holkar emerged as regent and defended the Holkar
House
against the Maratha empire of Daulat Rao Sindia,
who had
40,000 disciplined men under the French general Perron in his
northern armies.
The latter had Nana Fadnavis arrested on the
last day of 1797,
and Daulat's father-in-law Sarza Rao Ghatge
terrorized Puna for three months to raise money.
Nana was released
in July 1798.
That month the Company made a treaty with the Peshwa,
who agreed to exclude the French from his army and pay the force
from Bombay.
This secret treaty was renewed annually three times.
Meanwhile Lakhwa Dada led the war of Mahadji's widows against
the tyranny
of Daulat Rao Sindia that lasted four years.
Young
Peshwa Baji Rao II defeated the Kolhapur raja in 1799.
Nana Fadnavis
died in March 1800, and Daulat Rao became the Peshwa's chief minister.
The civil war in Daulat's family ended when Lakhwa Dada and the
widows
were driven out of Seondha in May 1801.
In the north Marathas led by Malhar Rao Holkar and Mahadji
Sindia
gradually fought back from the devastation of the Panipat
disaster.
After Ahmad Shah Abdali went back to Afghanistan, in
December 1767
the Bhangi Sikhs crossed the Jamuna and invaded
the Doab.
They defeated Najib-ud-daula in March 1768 and again
in December.
Jawahir Singh was assassinated in June,
and his brother
Ratan Singh hired the Europeans Rene Madec and Walter Reinhard.
When Ratan Singh was murdered by his Brahmin priest in 1769,
Jat
commander Dan Shah became regent for Ratan's son Kesari Singh;
civil war weakened the Jats.
The Peshwa sent more troops, and
30,000 Marathas ravaged Jat territory in 1770.
The Sikhs plundered
Panipat and reached Delhi in January 1770,
followed by Najib's
son Zabita Khan.
Negotiations failed, and Zabita Khan retired
to his Rohilla estate,
enabling the Sikhs to enter the Doab.
A
Jat army pursued the Sikhs and defeated them in February.
Hari
Singh Bhangi died and was succeeded by Jhanda Singh,
who made
the Jammu and the Pathans of Kasur pay tribute.
Jhanda also captured
the citadel at Multan.
Learning that Zabita Khan had succeeded
his father Najib,
the Sikhs plundered Panipat again.
Zabita Khan was defeated by the Marathas as Mahadji Sindia
and Visaji Krishna occupied Delhi.
They invited Shah 'Alam II
to come from Allahabad.
The Marathas defeated the Rohillas and
captured Zabita Khan,
causing other Rohilla chiefs to make a treaty
with Awadh's Shuja-ud-daula in 1772.
The Marathas controlled Emperor
Shah 'Alam II
and made him grant them Kora and Allahabad;
Zabita
Khan joined their side, and they wanted him appointed Mir Bakhshi.
Emperor Shah Alam objected, but the Marathas defeated his imperial
forces.
Sirhind governor Mughal Ali Khan crossed the Jamuna
but
was attacked and defeated by Sikhs,
who invaded the Doab again
a year later.
In 1773 the English and Awadh defended Rohilkhand
from a Maratha attack
and in a treaty Awadh nawab Shuja received
Kora and Allahabad in exchang
for paying five million rupees
for a British garrison.
In 1774 Shuja-ud-daula and the English
invaded Rohilkhand,
driving out 20,000 Rohillas and annexing most
of that province to Awadh.
In Delhi the Persian adventurer Mirza
Najaf Khan commanded the Mughal army
for the Emperor from 1772
until he died in 1782, repelling the Sikhs,
suppressing the Jats,
recovering Agra, and holding off the Marathas.
In the Punjab the Sikhs could usually govern themselves and
had much less violence,
though in 1774 Jai Singh Kanhaya got Jhanda
Singh assassinated
and joined with Jassa Singh Ahluwalia to expel
the carpenter Jassa Singh.
When Afghanistan's Ahmad Shah Abdali
died in 1772,
his son Timur Shah was governing Herat.
He rushed
to Qandahar and was elected by the Durrani chiefs.
Shah Vali Khan
had tried to raise an army and was executed for treason.
For two
years Timur Shah was busy suppressing disorders in his kingdom,
but his army crossed the Indus in January 1775 and defeated some
Sikhs.
Realizing he needed more men, he withdrew to Peshawar,
where Faizullah Khan organized an assassination plot;
but Timur
hid in the tower until his guards were aroused and caused Faizullah
to flee.
In fury Timur ordered a massacre of about a third of
the 6,000 men in Peshawar.
He promised to forgive Faizullah; but
when he surrendered, he was beheaded.
Timur Shah invaded India
again in 1779 and tried to get Multan back with diplomacy,
but
the Sikhs shot his envoy dead.
Timur sent 18,000 men under Zangi
Khan Durrani,
and they killed several thousand Sikhs in the battle
of Rohtas.
After losing 2,000 more casualties at Shujabad,
7,000
Sikhs retreated into the fort at Multan;
but they surrendered
and were allowed to depart in February 1780.
Timur Shah had forts
built but returned to Afghanistan before the hot weather.
In October
1780 Timur Shah invaded Bahawalpur;
but when 20,000 Sikh horsemen
attacked Multan, he asked for peace.
In 1774 the Sikhs ravaged the Doab, approached Delhi,
and were
bought off by the Emperor, who offered them
the district of Shahbazpur
for the service of 10,000 horsemen.
In 1775 Zabita Khan incited
the Sikhs to plunder imperial lands;
but in July he was defeated
by Najaf Khan, and the Sikhs went home.
In March 1776 Zabita Khan
and his Rohillas attacked
and killed Mughal commander Abul Qasim,
and in May the Sikhs led by Gajpat Singh defeated
and killed Mulla
Rahimdad Khan, gaining seven villages.
Zabita Khan and the Sikhs
went to Delhi the next month and were pardoned
by the Emperor;
but in the fall about 60,000 Sikhs plundered Delhi's neighbors.
Zabita Khan and the Sikhs fought Najaf Khan's imperial army in
1777.
When Zabita Khan was defeated, he fled to the Sikhs and
converted to their religion.
In 1778 they raided the Doab and
stayed in Delhi for a month.
The next year Abdul Ahad led the
imperial army but had to retreat in October.
The Sikhs did not
attempt to win political power in the region
but were intent on
gaining plunder.
The Emperor's grand-nephew Mirza Shafi led several campaigns
against the Sikhs and even recruited dissident Sikhs into his
army.
He imprisoned Gajpat Singh and three other Sikh chiefs
and
in 1781 took Sadhaura from the Sikhs.
Despite the conflicts among
the Sikhs, the Mughals were not able to defeat them
because Najaf
Khan could not provide Shafi's army with enough supplies.
Najaf
Khan tried to get Zabita Khan to help Shafi but could not pay
his troops.
The Sikhs used guerrilla warfare and ravaged the Doab.
In June 1781 Zabita Khan mediated an agreement giving the Sikhs
the right
to collect taxes (rakhi) in the upper Doab,
and
the Sikhs promised to stop raiding imperial territory.
Yet the
Sikhs continued to ravage imperial lands.
A week before he died
in April 1782,
Najaf Khan sent Shafi with 10,000 troops against
the Sikhs.
Najaf's slaves Afrasiyab Khan and Najaf Quli Khan struggled
for power
with Shafi Khan and Mughal officer Muhammad Beg Hamdani,
but the Maratha chief Mahadji Sindia took power in Delhi.
Lack
of rain caused a devastating famine that
destroyed about a third
of the population in 1783.
Many Sikhs moved from the Setluj territory
to the upper Ganga Doab.
After raiding as far as the Ganges, Baghel Singh and Jassa
Singh Ahluwalia
led the Sikh army of 60,000 that plundered Delhi
in March 1783.
Reinhard's widow Begam Samru was invited to negotiate, and it was agreed
that Baghel Singh would remain in the capital
with 4,000 troops to keep order.
Shafi was Mughal regent and with
Afrasiyab tried to suppress the revolt of Hamdani,
who assassinated
Shafi in September.
Afrasiyab became regent until he was murdered
by Shafi's brother Zain-ul-Abidin Khan in November 1784.
During
this period of weakness Mahadji Sindia met with Emperor Shah Alam
and represented the Marathas' Peshwa.
In December 1784 the Sikhs
plundered the suburbs of Delhi, alarming the English.
Early in
1785 about 30,000 Sikhs, led by Baghel Singh, Gurdit Singh,
and
Jassa Singh Ramgarhia, crossed the Jamuna and ravaged the upper
Doab.
A subsidiary British force led by Awadh diwan Raja
Jagan Nath skirmished with the Sikhs.
Najaf Quli invited the Sikhs
to approach Delhi, and they did so collecting tribute.
Mahadji
Sindia sent Ambaji Ingle to win over the Sikhs,
and in March they
agreed on a provisional treaty.
The Sikh chiefs tried to form
an alliance with the English by making a false accusation
against
Sindia but then concluded a treaty with him in May
in which they
would receive a million rupees income for 5,000 cavalry.
The Sikhs
quickly broke the treaty by collecting extra revenue in the Doab,
and Dhar Rao Sindia led 10,000 troops to expel them.
He was joined
by Gajpat Singh and demanded money from Ghulam Qadir,
who had
succeeded his father Zabita Khan in January.
Jai Singh Kanhaya was paramount in the Punjab until about 1785
when
Mahan Singh and Jassa Singh Ramgarhia defeated the Kanhayas.
Mahan Singh was the most powerful Sikh in the Punjab until he
died in 1792.
In 1783 Murtaza Khan and Zaman Khan complained to
Timur Shah
that their brother Azad Khan had expelled them from
Kashmir.
The Afghan king gave them 30,000 troops, and at the Kishanganga
River
they killed 2,000 Kashmiris; but Azad Khan's cousin Pahalwan
Khan
rallied their troops and defeated the imperial army.
At Srinagar
the Afghan army was defeated again.
Angered Timur Shah sent a
larger force from Peshawar.
Azad Khan fled, was imprisoned, and
killed himself.
On learning that Shah Murad of Balkh was preparing
to invade Afghanistan,
Timur Shah returned to Kabul in May 1786.
On Timur Shah's fifth campaign into India he led an army of 120,000
and massacred the inhabitants of Bahawalpur in January 1789.
He
demanded four million rupees and 3,000 camel loads of water bags
from the raja of Jodhpur; but Rae Dhanje promised Mahadji Sindia
he would starve the Afghans in Kachh Bhuj.
So Timur Shah went
into Sind and collected six million rupees in tribute.
News of
disturbances by Shah Murad of Turan persuaded Timur to retreat
again.
For the next three years rumors abounded that Timur Shah
was planning to capture Delhi,
but he died at Kabul in 1793 and
was succeeded by his son Shah Zaman.
The Sikhs continued their raiding, and in 1787
they plundered
the territory of Ghulam Qadir and others.
Ghulam Qadir joined
forces with Ambaji for a while.
Meanwhile Mahadji Sindia was defeating
the Rajputs of Jaipur;
Hamdani was killed, and the raja
promised to pay 6,300,000 rupees.
When Ambaji joined Sindia in
Jaipur,
Ghulam Qadir got Sikhs to join him in challenging the
Marathas.
In September 1785 Ghulam Qadir took power in Delhi
while
his ally Isma'il Beg occupied Agra.
Begam Samru's battalions reached
Delhi three days later.
The Emperor named Ghulam regent, and he
secured the fortress of Aligarh
and took control of the Doab.
Emperor Shah Alam II demanded tribute from Najaf Quli Khan;
but
the imperial forces were slaughtered by the Sikhs,
and Begam Samru
mediated a reconciliation.
The Sikhs plundered the territory of
Ghulam Qadir
while he was fighting the Marathas and Jats near
Bharatpur.
Ghulam returned to Delhi in July 1788.
His Rohillas
stripped and raped princesses and ladies,
letting many die of
starvation while they searched for treasures,
which his wife later
estimated at 250 million rupees.
When Shah Alam could not disclose
more secrets, Ghulam Qadir blinded him.
The Marathas attacked
Delhi; Ghulam fled and was captured in December.
Sindia had his
body mutilated before putting him to death.
Mahadji Sindia put 'Ali Bahadur in charge, tried to conciliate
Tukoji Holkar
by giving him a million rupees worth of land, and
went to Mathura in 1788.
He granted the Sikhs feudal tenures in
1789, allowing a thousand Sikhs to collect taxes
with Maratha
officers; but the Sikhs plundered the Doab again in 1790.
They
captured the British commander Robert Stuart and held him at Thanesar
for nearly ten months in 1791 before the English agreed
to pay
Bhanga Singh a ransom of six million rupees that was transferred
by Begam Samru.
Mahadji Sindia got Comte de Boigne to train his
troops with European discipline,
and by 1792 Sindia established
Maratha supremacy over the Rajputs and Jats;
but he had conflicts
with 'Ali Bahadur and Holkar.
In 1793 De Boigne's infantry attacked
Holkar's troops near Ajmer.
Mahadji Sindia died of illness in
1794;
he was succeeded by his nephew's son Daulat Rao Sindia,
who was only 14 and inept.
He appointed the Shenvi Brahmin Lakhba
Dada to govern northern India,
which was ravaged so badly that
land was hardly cultivated.
The artillery of Begam's regiment
forced the Sikhs to retreat to their own territory in 1794.
An
attempt to collect revenue in Karnal provoked a war with the Sikhs
in 1795,
and they invaded the upper Doab.
The Sikhs were also
torn apart by civil war,
though Rae Singh Bhangi persuaded Gurdit
Singh to leave the Maratha camp.
Maratha chief Nana Rao entered
Thanesar and was enticed to march toward Patiala
to secure money;
but fierce fighting by the Sikhs persuaded him to return to Delhi.
In 1796 the Sikhs massacred and plundered pilgrims at Hardwar.
Afghanistan's Shah Zaman invaded India in 1794, plundering
and burning Jhelum.
He demanded revenue payments from chiefs of
Bhakar, Multan, Sind, and Kashmir
before returning to Peshawar,
where he blinded his rebellious brother Humayun.
Shah Zaman invaded
again and captured Rohtas in November 1795;
but an insurrection
by Mahmud at Herat and an invasion by Persian shah
Agha Muhammad
Khan Qajar forced his quick return.
He left Ahmad Khan Shahanchibashi
in Rohtas and Bahadur Khan with 12,000 cavalry
to conquer Gujrat,
but the latter was defeated and killed by Sikhs led by Sahib Singh.
Ranjit Singh got to Rohtas before Sahib and claimed it as Shahanchibashi
fled to Peshawar.
In 1796 Shah Zaman tried to negotiate a safe passage through
the Punjab.
Some Sikhs agreed, but Ranjit Singh promised a battle.
Shah Zaman divided his army under seven commanders with 12,000
men each.
Ranjit Singh forced Pind Dadan Khan's men back at the
Jhelum River.
Shah Zaman ordered his men at Rohtas not to seize
property or wrong people
and to pay for grass and fuel.
Sher Muhammad
Khan Vazir entered Lahore on the last day of 1796,
and Shahanchibashi
proclaimed security of life and property in Kotwal.
Shah Zaman
even ordered the noses cut off of any Durranis who oppressed the
people.
When houses and shops were not illuminated,
Shah Zaman
ordered Hindus to pay a poll tax; but Muslims were exempted.
Sikhs
gathered 50,000 men at Amritsar and defeated the Afghan army on
January 12, 1797,
and 35,000 were reported killed in this battle.
Shah Zaman retreated to Lahore, repaired the fort, and manufactured
arms.
The Taruna Dal Sikhs were defending their homeland,
but
the Budha Dal and Phulkian Sikhs across the Setluj River did not
participate.
Once again Shah Zaman returned to quell disturbances
by his brother Mahmud at Herat.
Before they left, troops collected
2,200,000 rupees from Lahore.
Sind governor Shahanchibashi was
killed by Sikhs
fighting to recover their territory, and the Durranis
fled.
Shah Zaman still had his own governors in Kashmir, Peshawar,
Derajat, Multan, and Sind.
On his fourth invasion he left Peshawar
in October 1798 and defeated Sikhs at Attock.
The Afghan shah
appointed Wafadar Khan chief commander,
but this was resented
by vizier Sher Muhammad Khan,
whose letters warning Sikh chiefs
were found.
The Sikhs were not united either and withdrew as the
Afghan army advanced.
Ranjit Singh gathered some men at Amritsar,
and Shah Zaman sent 10,000 troops that battled 2,500 Sikhs, killing
500 on each side.
As Shah Zaman entered Lahore,
various bands
of Sikhs cut off supplies from the Durrani army.
Some Sikhs even
surrendered to Shah Zaman by coming at night.
When 4,000 Sikhs
gathered by the Beas River, the Shah sent 24,000 troops,
causing
the Sikhs to disperse.
Shah Zaman tried to negotiate, and early
in 1799 some settlements were made.
Meanwhile Bombay governor
Duncan had sent Mehdi Ali Khan to urge
the Persian Shah to invade
Khurasan, while Mahmud was incited to revolt again.
Zaman Shah
decided to return to Kabul,
and Ranjit Singh persuaded the Sikhs
not to molest the retreating army.
This was the last Afghan invasion
of India.
The Irish George Thomas fell in love with Begam Samru
and then
married the slave girl Marie.
In 1789 he had prevented the Emperor
from being taken prisoner
by helping to defeat Najaf Quli's attack
on the imperial army.
After Le Vaisseau married Begam, his intrigues
caused Thomas to revolt in 1792.
Thomas surrendered and was released.
He served the Maratha chief Apa Khande Rao, and in 1795 he expelled
Sikh raiders.
When Begam Samru was imprisoned by Zafaryab Khan
at Sardhana,
Thomas defeated and imprisoned Zafaryab, restoring
Begam to her position.
When Comte de Boigne left India in 1796,
he was succeeded by French general Perron.
In 1798 Thomas led
a Maratha attack on rebellious Sikhs
in a bloody battle that killed
1500,
but a peace treaty allowed the Sikhs to evacuate the place.
Almas Beg let Thomas use Hansi as his headquarters,
and for a
while he governed and collected taxes from 253 villages.
When
Sikhs raided his territory, he pursued them to Patiala.
The Sikhs
fought in alliance with Shambu Nath against Ashraf Beg,
who was
aided by Perron.
Using local Muslims, Perron invaded Karnal and
signed a peace treaty with the Sikhs
at Thanesar in March 1799
before being joined by Begam's four battalions.
Perron led the
Marathas, and he ordered Louis Bourquien with his 2,000 men
to
join 6,000 Sikhs against 5,000 men led by Thomas at Georgegarh
in 1801.
Each side lost 2,000 in battle, and then Thomas was besieged.
Reduced to 700 men and lacking supplies,
Thomas surrendered and
was allowed to go to British territory.
Ranjit Singh was born November 13, 1780.
His father died in
1792, and five years later he became chief of the Sikh misl Sukarchakia.
At that time between the Indus and Setluj rivers were
27 Hindu states, 25 Muslim states, and 16 Sikh states.
Ranjit Singh made political alliances by marrying
a Kanahya princess in 1796 and a Nakai princess in 1798.
The next year the citizens of Lahore invited Ranjit Singh to occupy their city,
and Shah Zaman authorized him to govern it for the Afghans,
enabling Ranjit Singh to take over Lahore with little resistance.
In 1800 Governor-general Wellesley sent Yusaf Ali to persuade Ranjit Sing
not to form an alliance with Shah Zaman.
However, Shah Zaman was deposed and blinded by his brother Mahmud,
who was overthrown by Shah Shuja in 1803.
Jesuit missionaries had visited Tibet in the 17th century,
and Capuchin fathers came in 1707 for four years.
The Jesuit scholar
Ippolito Desideri was at Lhasa 1716-21, learned Tibetan,
and tried
to refute their Buddhist teachings.
The Capuchin mission left
Lhasa in 1733, returning again in 1741;
their proselytizing efforts
failed, and their mission was abandoned in 1745.
Chinese emperor Kangxi
(r. 1662-1722) collected tribute from Tibet.
Lhazang Khan (r.
1705-17) used the military to try to conquer Bhutan in 1714,
but
the Tibetans were defeated.
Dzungar Mongols invaded Tibet in 1717;
they stormed the capital at Lhasa, killed Lhazang,
deposed the
Dali Lama he had appointed,
and gained popularity by making a
Tibetan prime minister (Desi).
However, Kangxi
got control of the child the Tibetans respected as the Dalai Lama,
and the Dzungars were resented for persecuting the Nyingmapa lamas
and attacking their monasteries, the Tibetans resisting this looting
of their holy places.
The Dzungars destroyed most of the first
force sent by the Manchus
before they reached Lhasa in 1718, and
so the Emperor sent a larger force in 1720
that drove the Dzungars
out of Tibet and installed the new Dalai Lama.
The Manchu dynasty
of China would dominate Tibet
for nearly two centuries until their
fall in 1911.
Khangchennas was appointed chairman of the council
and governed western Tibet.
However, a Manchu military governor
with a garrison of 2,000 troops was established.
When Yong Zheng (r. 1722-36) became emperor of China,
he withdrew
the unpopular Manchu troops in 1723
but left the military governor
as an advisor.
Pholhanas became a council minister in 1723 and
was opposed by Khangchennas,
Ngabo, and Lumpa for advocating an
alliance with the Manchus.
In 1726 Emperor Yong Zheng ordered
the Nyingmapa sect persecuted,
and Khangchennas began implementing
that policy.
Pholhanas offered his resignation, which was refused, and went home to Tsang.
Ngabo, Lumpa, and Jaranas assassinated
Khangchennas with knives.
His two wives, secretary, and steward
were also murdered
along with two governors of northern Tibet
who were friends of Khangchennas and Pholhanas.
Pholhanas gathered
troops in Tsang and there battled the invading force of
Ngabo,
Lumpa, and Jaranas, gaining the name Miwang Pholha.
The Panchen
Lama and a representative of the Dalai Lama mediated a truce in
April 1728;
but after some Tsang people were killed, Pholhanas
marched 12,000 troops to Lhasa.
The three ministers and fourteen
supporters were tried and executed.
The young Dalai Lama Kesang
Gyatso and his father, who had provoked the civil war,
were sent
to Kham for seven years.
Pholhanas gained the support of the Manchus,
who re-installed a garrison
with two Manchu officials called Ambans
to represent the Emperor
and report on events in Lhasa.
Also in
1728 the Chinese promoted the leadership of the second Panchen
Lama
of the Gelugpa sect and gave him sovereignty in northern
and western Tibet,
though the Panchen Lama is supposed to remain
in meditation and be above worldly concerns.
Pholhanas restored peace and governed in Lhasa so well that
in 1740
he was proclaimed king of Tibet.
That year the Bhutanese
attacked Sikkim,
and Pholhanas sent an administrator to help the
minor ruler in Sikkim.
Pholhanas died in 1747 and was succeeded
by his younger son Gyumey Namgyal.
He came into conflict with
his older brother Gyumey Tseten,
who had been governing western
Tibet since 1729.
Gyumey Tseten died mysteriously in 1750,
the
year Gyumey Namgyal persuaded the Emperor to reduce
the Manchu
garrison at Lhasa to one hundred men.
Gyumey Namgyal secretly
prepared to form an army and contacted the Dzungar Mongols.
The
two Ambans complained and killed Gyumey Namgyal and his attendants.
Tibetans besieged the residence of the Ambans and killed them
along with more than a hundred Chinese soldiers and civilians,
burning the building.
About two hundred Chinese took refuge in
the Potala
and were protected from the mob by the Dalai Lama.
Despite posters calling for an end to violence,
some continued
to riot before fleeing toward Dzungaria.
They were pursued, caught,
and put on trial;
thirteen were executed, and the rest were imprisoned.
In 1751 the seventh Dalai Lama Kesang Gyatso was put in charge
of the government
with a council (Kashag) of four which operated
by consensus.
The Kashag took over the army
and required each
landowning family to provide one soldier.
The province of U had
1,000 troops, and Tsang had 2,000.
Meanwhile Chien Long had sent
another military force,
and the Dalai Lama negotiated the withdrawal
of all but a garrison of 1,500.
The Dalai Lama also mediated a
dispute between local lords on the border with Nepal.
Upon his
death in 1757 the Drepung monk Jampel Delek was appointed regent
during the minority of the new Dalai Lama,
and this tradition
continued for more than a century.
In 1762 Palden Yeshe (1738-80),
the third Panchen Lama,
gave the name Jampal Gyatso to the four-year-old
eighth Dalai Lama.
Narbhupal Shah (r. 1716-42) was the tenth ruler of the Gurkhas
west of the Nepal valley.
He gathered a large force and attacked
Nayakot in 1736,
but he was defeated and retreated.
His son Prithvi
Narayan Shah succeeded him at the age of twelve.
He attacked Nayakot
in 1748, but the Kathmandu army of Jai Prakash Malla
killed many
of the Gurkhas.
Prithvi Narayan escaped, and the Gurkha army withdrew
from the valley again.
However, in 1767 Prithvi Narayan led the
siege of Kirtipur that exterminated the garrison;
but the Gurkhas
had to go defend Tarai in the south
from the British expedition
led by Captain Kinloch.
In September 1768 the Gurkhas conquered
Kathmandu,
and Malla's army fled to Bhatgaon.
There Prithvi Narayan
knew the old king Ranjit Malla,
who agreed to let the Gurkha king
take over his kingdom as he retired to Benares.
Thus in 1769 the
Gurkhas replaced the Newari rulers and united the kingdom of Nepal.
Three years later the Gurkhas had thousands killed fighting Tanbu,
which was brought under their power.
In 1772 the Bhutanese led by Desi Shidariva invaded Cooch Bihar
and took their raja prisoner.
Bengal governor Warren Hastings
sent an Indian force to drive them back into the foothills,
and
the third Panchen Lama mediated a friendship and commerce treaty
between Bhutan and the British East India Company.
In 1774 Hastings
sent George Bogle, who reached Tashilhunpo the next year
and married
the Panchen Lama's sister.
Lhasa would not let Bogle visit, but
he secured the trade agreement with Bhutan
and helped the Panchen
Lama found a Buddhist temple at Calcutta.
The regent Jampel Delek
died in 1777;
but the Dalai Lama declined to assume responsibility
because he had not yet completed his training.
Ngawang Tsultrim
was appointed the second regent.
The Panchen Lama traveled to
visit the Manchu emperor,
but he died of smallpox at Beijing in
1780.
That year the Regent sent troops that took two years
to
suppress leaders in Kham trying to expand their territory.
In
1781 the eighth Dalai Lama began governing,
and he gave the name
Tenpai Nyima to the fourth Panchen Lama.
Captain Samuel Turner
went to Tashilhunpo in 1783 but could not get to Lhasa either,
and little could be accomplished with the infant Panchen Lama.
Tibetans informed Prithvi Narayan that the Nepalese silver coins
had been debased with copper since 1751.
Prithvi Narayan died
in 1774 and was succeeded by his oldest son Singh Pratap Shah.
His brother Bahadur Shah was imprisoned and then sent into exile.
The Bhutanese incited the Gurkhas to invade Sikkim in 1775,
and
Singh Pratap waged war against the raja of Morung.
Tibetans offered
the Sikkimese aid, but they accepted only food;
a treaty was made,
but the Gurkhas resented the Tibetan intervention.
When Singh
Pratap died in 1778, Bahadur Shah returned
and became regent for
his infant nephew Ran Bahadur Shah;
but after coming into conflict
with his widowed sister-in-law,
Bahadur Shah was forced into exile
again.
The young prince's mother, Rajendar Lakshmi, ruled until
she died in 1786.
Bahadur Shah returned again and called himself
Fateh Bahadur.
He appointed Swarup Singh commander of the army
that invaded the Chaubisi principalities.
Two of the third Panchen Lama's brothers, Drungpa Trulku and Shamar
Trulku,
were claiming disputed property, and they urged the Gurkhas
to invade Tibet on their behalf.
The king of Nepal informed a
Tibetan that their new silver coins meant that
the old debased
ones were devalued and that traded salt should not have any impurities.
If these conditions were not accepted,
Nepal would annex Nyanang,
Rongshar, and Kyirong.
Shamar Trulku was held hostage, and he
asked the Dalai Lama to ransom him.
The Tibetan Kashag would only
agree to a slight reduction in the old coins' value,
and they
were not concerned about Shamar Trulku.
A large Gurkha army invaded
the three districts, defeating local Tibetan resistance.
Then
in 1788 they marched on Dzongka and Shekar.
A Tibetan army occupied
the fort at Shekar and drove out the Gurkhas.
While Manchu forces
were on their way from China,
the Gurkhas attacked the winter
palace in western Sikkim.
Tibetans brought gunpowder, and the
pillaging Gurkhas left Sikkim.
Shamar Trulku proposed negotiation,
and the Chinese generals persuaded
the reluctant Tibetans to accept
and pay the Nepalese an annual tribute of 50,000 rupees.
Nepal
agreed to withdraw from the four districts.
The Garhwal ruler
Pradhyuman Shah also agreed
to pay Nepal an annual tribute of
25,000 rupees.
After one payment, the Dalai Lama had the districts investigated
and requested a reduction in the tribute.
He and the Kashag recalled the regent Ngawang Tsultrim from Beijing.
The Regent criticized the Kashag for accepting the treaty,
demoted the general who surrendered Dzongka, and sent some officials into exile.
The Regent became angry at the delays in the negotiations
but died of a heart attack in 1791.
That year the Gurkhas abducted some Tibetan officials
and killed others in fighting at the Nyanang fort.
The Panchen Lama fled to Lhasa, and the Gurkhas captured and pillaged Shigatse
until an epidemic forced them to retreat to Shekar and Dzongka.
In 1792 while the Tibetans were driving the Gurkhas back,
13,000 imperial troops arrived under a Manchu general.
He and the Tibetan generals told the Sikkimese ruler
they could keep territory they captured.
The Tibetan and Manchu armies defeated the Gurkhas and invaded Nepal.
The Gurkhas appealed to the British,
but Cornwallis did not want to fight their Chinese trading partner.
Shamar Trulku poisoned himself.
The Gurkhas were forced to return their loot
and promised to send an envoy to China every five years.
Emperor Qianlong promoted the Ambans to provincial governors,
and the tax system and administrative organization of Tibet were reformed.
In 1792 Col. Kirkpatrick negotiated a trade treaty for the East India Company
with Nepal, but it was not implemented.
Raja Ran Bahadur Shah ruled so badly that he was denounced by the people
and fled to Benares in 1800.
He asked the Governor-General to loan him ten battalions,
but instead the English signed a friendship treaty with Nepal in 1801.
Narendrasimha (r. 1707-39) was the last Sinhalese king of Sri
Lanka.
The economic policies of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)
compelled the Kandyans to sell their products at fixed prices
well below their market value,
and the VOC had a monopoly on imported
cloth.
Narendrasimha tried to retaliate by ordering roads from
Kandy closed in 1716,
but the Dutch would not open their ports.
The Dutch governor administered the Colombo Commandery
and relied
on two other commandants at Jaffna and Galle.
The Dutch were more
efficient than the Portuguese;
but many accepted bribes to allow
illegal trading.
Charges were brought against Governor Becker
(1707-16) after he left Sri Lanka.
Corruption spread into the
judiciary, and under Petrus Vuyst (1726-29)
even Dutch settlers
and officials were accused falsely and executed.
The Dutch were
Calvinists and forbade Catholicism as well as Buddhist and Hindu
worship;
but such regulations could not be enforced.
Missionary
schools were set up, and those not attending could be fined.
The
frontier gates of the kingdom were closed again in 1732 for two
years.
Discontent with the economic exploitation turned into unrest.
While Domburg was governor 1734-36
the salagama caste that
did the cinnamon peeling revolted.
Van Imhoff (1736-40) instituted reforms
that increased efficiency
and regained some respect.
Sri Lanka got its first printing press
in 1737
and soon began publishing Christian books in Sinhalese
and Tamil.
The Dutch helped bring the bridal party from India
for the new Nayakkar ruler Sri Vijaya Rajasimha in 1739, and he
opened the roads.
Yet the salagamas continued to resist,
and in 1743 Kandyans raided Siyana Korale.
Two efforts to provide
Dutch ships for Buddhist missions to Burma and Siam
failed before
success was achieved on a journey from 1750 to 1753.
Standards
for monks had become lower in Sri Lanka,
and few were celibate
or full-time monks.
The Siamese monks restored the upasampada
ordination and revived Buddhist education.
Valivita Saranankara
(1698-1778) was not ordained,
but he founded the Pious Brotherhood (Silvat Samagama) to improve
the knowledge, discipline,
and practice of the Buddhist order (sangha).
A doubling of the price of cinnamon stimulated the Dutch to
make their land policy
even more restrictive in the 1750s, and
peelers revolted in 1757.
Governor Schreuder (1757-62) especially
tried to extract
as much production as possible from the peasants,
and he ordered peasant gardens destroyed if they had no legal
title.
Kandyans supported the rebellion in 1760, and two years
later
the Dutch were alarmed that English envoy John Pybus from
Madras
had come to the Kandyan royal court; but the British offered
no military aid.
The Dutch invaded Kandy and failed,
but they
came back in 1765 with a larger force that ravaged the capital.
Kirti Sri Rajasimha (r. 1747-82) had to accept a harsh treaty
in 1766
that gave the Dutch all the coastlines and the right to
peel cinnamon in Kandyan territory.
The Kandyans refused to cooperate
on demarcating the boundary lines
and resented the Dutch unilateral
efforts to do so in 1773.
Kirti Sri Rajasimha reinforced the caste
system by only allowing goyigamas
(about half the population)
to be ordained Buddhist monks.
While at war with the French and Dutch, the English seized
the port of Trincomalee
in January 1782 but were forced out seven
months later by the French.
The new Kandyan ruler Rajadhi Rajasimha
(r. 1782-98)
decided not to accept English intervention.
Dutch
governor Falck (1765-85) had been experimenting
with growing cinnamon
on plantations, and this successful cultivation
took the pressure
off the peeling in the Kandyan jungles
and allowed the land policy
to be more liberal.
Falck gave the salagamas concessions
not granted to other castes.
The VOC only allowed one-fifth of
the cinnamon sold in the lucrative European markets
to be sold
in Asia to keep the price high
so that others would not buy in
Asia to sell in Europe.
Most of their profits went to those in
the Netherlands.
In Sri Lanka the death penalty was imposed for
unauthorized peeling or the private trading of cinnamon.
Governor
de Graaf (1785-93) also pushed to boost
production and provoked
a rebellion in 1789.
De Graaf extended control by the Dutch company
over small chiefdoms in the Vanni.
When the Batavian government
told him he could not invade Kandy, he resigned.
In 1795 the Dutch Stadholder fled from the French invasion
of Holland to England,
where from the Kew palace he issued a letter
that governors in the Dutch colonies
should turn over their installations
to the British temporarily.
The English took seven months to occupy
the Dutch possessions
in Sri Lanka by February 1796.
At first
Hobart offered Kandyans one trade outlet on the coast,
but they
demanded more.
When the English learned of the 1766 Dutch treaty,
they also refused to grant any trade outlets.
The English East
India Company and the Crown had dual control over Sri Lanka
from
1798 until it became the British crown colony of Ceylon in 1802.
The Company relaxed the Dutch restrictions on Muslims,
because
they were good traders; but Buddhists and Hindus
were not given
licenses to erect temples or establish schools.
The increased
land taxes and a new tax on coconut palms along with the replacement
of headmen by south Indian revenue collectors caused a rebellion
that broke out in December 1796 and was not quelled until early
1798
when the traditional system was restored.
A committee investigated
the territories taken over from the VOC
and decided to restore
the headmen of the goyigama and vellala castes.
When Rajadhi Rajasimha died of illness in 1798 with no heir, the leading minister
Pilima Talauve enthroned 18-year-old Konnasami as Sri Vikrama Rajasimha.
The late king's brother-in-law Muttusami also claimed the throne of Kandy,
but Pilima Talauve arrested him and his sisters.
Pilima Talauve was close to the British but could not control Vikrama Rajasimha.
1. Quoted in The British Conquest and Dominion of India
by Penderel Moon, p. 123.
2. Cornwallis Correspondence, Volume 2, p. 558, quoted
in
The Oxford History of India, p. 537.
3. Quoted in The British Conquest and Dominion of India
by Penderel Moon, p. 271.
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