Читать книгу British Rule in India - Harriet Martineau - Страница 12

“Give me a seat, and I will make myself room to lie down.” Spanish Proverb .

The first century of British residence in India affords as good an illustration as could easily be found of the wise conclusion—“Man proposes; God disposes.” Nothing could well be more unlike what men designed and anticipated than the issues of the early schemes of the East India Company. The members themselves, their supporters and their opponents, were alike surprised at finding, from period to period, that they accomplished scarcely anything they designed, and that all manner of unlooked-for things came to pass—as if the whole affair was some mighty sport, in which grave and earnest men were made the agents of some transcendent levity, or were bewildered pupils in some new school which they had entered unawares. The merchants, who began the whole business, meant to trade, and obtain large profits, and, above all else, to avoid everything but trade. With the magnificent shows of life in India they had no concern whatever, beyond valuing, buying and selling the commodities in use before their eyes. They knew nothing, and cared nothing, about politics—Mogul or Mahratta; and, as for war, it was only too fearful even to witness it. All they desired was to be let alone to make their fortunes, without any thought of law, government, negotiation, or war, except as far as any of these might affect their commerce—a handful of strangers as they were, on a foreign coast. No men could be more sincere than these men were; and yet, in the course of the next century, a mocking destiny seemed to make teetotums of them, their plans, and their fortunes.

Their commerce was never very successful. With every desire to make the best of it, they could never present a statement of their condition which was not highly stimulating and amusing to private speculators, who followed them into the field, and beat them at all points. They could not satisfy their own supporters, or restrain their enemies from competition. By some evil chance, they were always infested with rivals, supplanted by the Dutch, and tricked by the Portuguese. They were the occasion of alarming collisions between the two Houses of Parliament; and if they won what they desired from one sovereign, the next came down upon them for money, while their balance-sheet satisfied their enemies better than their friends. They exchanged commodities, no doubt, and made profits; but their concerns were puny in comparison with their pretensions, and did not expand at all in proportion to their scope. It will be enough to say that their reports for the three years preceding 1683 show that they sent out in those years respectively ten ships, eleven, and seventeen; and that the total cargoes were worth 461,700l., 596,000l., and 740,000l. While their direct object succeeded no better than this, they found themselves passing laws, ruling settlements, and making war and negotiating treaties, in alliance or opposition, with the princes of the country. They found themselves touching many points of Indian territory and Indian polity, and fastening wherever they touched, till the necessity was ripe which made them a great administrative and military power. It would take a volume to exhibit their history during the seventeenth century. But it may be possible to fill up by a rapid sketch the interval between the opening of the first warehouse at Surat and their establishment as a substantive power in India, when the last great Mogul Emperor had gone down to his grave. On the rivalships of competing companies in England, and the difficulties with individual adventurers in the East, I cannot even touch. In the history of the East India Company, no part is perhaps more interesting; but my object is to follow the progress of the British occupation of India; and I must—whenever it is possible—confine myself to the Asiatic scene of action, during the century which decided our fortunes there.

Sir Thomas Roe, we have seen, strongly condemned the setting up of forts to protect the warehouses. There must be some fighting at sea with European rivals, but none in India, where the inhabitants gave us no difficulty. But there was a third party to be guarded against—the Company’s own servants. Besides the sprinkling of thieves and scamps, always attracted to remote scenes of speculation, there was an ambitious, or headstrong, or tyrannical man turning up now and then to make mischief, offending neighbours, or defying his masters. The masters applied to the King in 1624 for authority to punish their servants in India by civil and martial law; and the authority was given, without hesitation, even to the ultimate point, of inflicting capital punishment. The King did not consult Parliament, nor express any doubt of the necessity of the case; and there is no evidence that the petitioners had any notion of what was comprehended in their request. No preparation had been made for establishing law and justice in the new settlements; and now the commercial adventurers found themselves able to punish at discretion, without any principles or rules of law to go by. Their function as legislators and executive rulers was thus already indicated for them; and on this account the year 1624 is regarded as constituting an era in their history. The wisest men among them, during the reigns of the Stuarts, seem to have entertained a truly royal contempt for constitutional law, and a great relish for freedom of will and hand in executive matters. In the early history of the Company there are no greater names than those of the brothers Sir Josiah and Sir John Child. These gentlemen were full of sense, information, vigour, and commercial prudence; yet Sir Josiah has left us an account of his notions which reads strangely in our day. A Mr. Vaux, who in 1686 entered upon the office of manager, with professions of a desire to act justly and uprightly, and with a constant regard to the laws of his country, was thus rebuked by his patron. Sir Josiah Child “told Mr. Vaux roundly that he expected his orders were to be his rules, and not the laws of England, which were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a few ignorant country gentlemen, who hardly knew how to make laws for the good government of their own private families, much less for the regulating of companies and foreign commerce.” Such was the view of an old man who had seen the whole procession of the statesmen of the Commonwealth pass before his eyes.

Meantime, the wars of the princes of India had much of the same effect on society as the wars of the Roses in England. The commercial classes grew and throve while the nobles fought over their heads, so that when, in the English case, a mere group was left to assemble in the Peers’ House, a town was found to have grown up at the mouth of every river, and shipping to have found its way into many a new harbour. Thus it was in India during the final process of the subjugation of the Deccan by the Mogul sovereigns. Not only the indefatigable Dutch, and the Portuguese, who were first in the field, but the English, and presently the French, began to alight and make themselves at home on distant coasts of the peninsula. Piece goods, then in great demand—the delicate muslins and soft cottons of the Deccan—were to be had more easily on the Coromandel coast than on the western, and the Company attempted to set up several factories or depôts there. We read of four, besides the Madras establishment; but European rivals were hardy, and native governments were harsh, and one after another was given up, or transferred to some safer place—to be again removed. Under these difficulties, men began to talk again of forts. It might be true that garrisons would absorb all the profits of trade; but it was clear that trade could not go on without garrisons. No help was to be had from home. During the civil war there, nobody had any attention to spare for India; and the Company’s agents must take care of themselves; so, in 1640, they obtained leave from the native government to build the fort at Madras—Fort St. George; and the new institution was fairly established which annulled the purely pacific character of British settlements in India. The forts were a humble enough affair; and the native soldiers who were hired to hold them were armed with anything which came to hand, from bows and arrows to damaged muskets; but the Company had now a military front to show, and was pretty sure to be soon called on for evidences of its military quality.

It was the King himself, Charles I., who had brought the Company round to the conviction that they must have forts. In 1635 he had granted a license to a rival company, alleging, among other reasons for the act, that the existing company had fallen short of their duty in neglecting to establish fortified factories, or seats of trade, to which the King’s subjects could resort with safety. The charter was supposed to be forfeited by the King’s death, as it was a royal and not a parliamentary boon: but the Company exerted themselves to found a claim to better support whenever the kingdom should be once more brought under a settled government. They turned, therefore, to the rich basin of the Ganges, to see if they could not effect a lodgment there, where produce of the most varied kind abounded. We hear of them as having some sort of settlement at Hooghly in 1640; but it brought them more trouble than profit for some years, in consequence of a mistake of their own in seizing a junk on the Ganges, which involved them in a dispute—not only with the Nabob of Bengal, but with the Mogul government. They had not capital wherewith to extend their operations; and their affairs languished in Bengal; but it was a substantial fact that they had fastened their lines at remote points of the territory—in the Gulfs of Cambay and Bengal, and on the Coromandel coast; and the outer threads of the great net were laid. By an accident which presently brought into play the abilities of one of their servants their commercial fortunes were advanced, and “a stake in the country” was fairly appointed to them.

The medical officers of the English ships were eagerly consulted by the rich Mohammedans of Surat, and other places in the neighbourhood of our factories, and the reputation of their skill had reached the Mogul sovereigns. When Shah Jehán, the father of Aurungzebe, was waging war in the Deccan, one of his daughters was severely burnt. An express was despatched to Surat for an English surgeon. Mr. Gabriel Boughton was sent from the factory; and his success in restoring the princess gave him great influence with her father. He used his power in obtaining freedom of commerce for his countrymen. When he was in the service of the Governor of Bengal soon after, privileges of high importance were obtained and practically enjoyed; but it required nearly thirty years, and a large expenditure in bribes, to get the license perpetuated and consolidated in a firman. This was done in Aurungzebe’s time, in 1680. The terms were that the Company should pay 3,000 rupees (350l.) in return for perfect freedom of trade throughout the rich territory of Bengal. Cromwell was strongly disposed to extend this freedom to the whole of Indian commerce by abolishing the monopoly of the Company; and he thereby excited as much alarm in Holland as among the Directors in London; but he was prevailed with to renew the charter in 1657. As Parliament did not ratify that charter then, nor on its renewal by Charles II., in 1661, there were no means of preventing as much private adventure as individual speculators might choose to hazard, and the trade began to show in India what might be done under the natural laws of commerce, however damaging the results of competition were to the Company at home. If their income was suffering from this cause, and from our hostilities with the Dutch, their power and dignity were eminently advanced by the new charter, which permitted them to make peace or war with any power or people “not of the Christian religion;” to establish fortifications, garrisons, and colonies, to export ammunition and stores to their settlements duty-free; to arrest and send home any traders they found encroaching on their commerce; and to exercise civil and criminal jurisdiction in India, according to the laws of England.

These provisions for defence were necessitated by the wars of Indian potentates, in the midst of which unguarded factories could have had no security whatever: but it is a remarkable fact that the “Adventurers” who were so determined at first, and for as long as possible, to have none but commercial relations with India should find themselves at the end of sixty years in possession of forts and a soldiery, of courts of justice, and a power of life and death; and likely to enter into political alliances, as a substantive power. So early as 1653, Fort St. George was erected into a Presidency, because it was unsafe for the English residents to be dependent on a seat of government so remote as Bantam while the native potentates on the Coromandel coast were perpetually at war, and the European settlers pretty much at their mercy. When secure of their new powers, the Company made Surat and Fort St. George their centres of government, subordinating a few other settlements to them, and breaking up some, in outlying places, which were too insecure or expensive to be worth retaining.

The use which they made of their power to send home interlopers presently caused a collision between the two Houses of Parliament, which, however serious, should find its place in a constitutional history of England, rather than in a sketch of our relations with India. “The Skinner case” perplexed all England, and caused the King to adjourn Parliament seven times before he could restore any appearance of peace; but the mischief lay rather in the King and the Lords acting without the constitutional participation of the Commons than in any discovery that the powers of the Company in India were too extensive. One natural consequence, however, was that the Company were more fully recognised at home as a power than they had ever been before.

Their first military reputation grew out of an accident, happening (as was henceforth to be the rule) through the hostility of native potentates. Aurungzebe, the last great Mogul ruler, was governing in the place of his deposed father in 1664, when the first great Mahratta Chief, Sivajee, marched against him, choosing Surat for his point of attack. The Governor of Surat shut himself up in the castle, the inhabitants fled; but the English stood their ground. They refused to capitulate, defended their factory, with the aid of some ships’ crews, and cleared the neighbourhood of the enemy, affording substantial protection to the residents. The residents thanked and blessed them, and Aurungzebe remitted on their behalf a part of the Customs’ duties at Surat, and all transit charges whatever. At that time, when Aurungzebe was at the height of his renown, and finally subjugating the Deccan, martial qualities were highly valued; and there is no doubt of the effect on the people of India of the gallant conduct of the British at Surat. They could make no such parade as the Mogul Emperor, with his 200,000 horse, his countless host of infantry, his long lines of elephants, and his glitter of arms, from the one horizon to the other; but the simple readiness and dauntless bearing of the little company of English, within their small enclosure, made an ineffaceable impression on a people who may be able to admire contrasts as much as other races of men. It might have been well if, during recent years, a little more attention had been paid to this first military success in India by those who insist that the natives of India can be impressed only by outward show, imitated from barbaric times and rulers. From point to point of our Indian history there are evidences that the inhabitants of our Asiatic territories are just as human in their admiration of great personal qualities, apart from external grandeur, as the men of Europe and America.

The reign of Charles II. was remarkable in the history of British India for several reasons. The extension of powers by the Charter of 1661 was one. The introduction of tea is another. Early in 1668, the Company’s agent at Bantam was desired to send home 100 lbs. of tea, “the best he could get:” and thus began the Company’s trade in a commodity to which it owes its existence at this day. It would be an interesting speculation—what our relations with India would now be if tea had not been introduced into Europe, and so relished as to afford an adequate support to the East India Company till its commercial phase was past.

Lastly, it was through Charles II. that the Company acquired Bombay. The island of Bombay was a part of the marriage portion of Catherine of Portugal, the Queen of Charles II. It was more expensive than profitable to the Crown, and it suited the convenience of all parties that it should be transferred to the Company. The conditions of the transfer were remarkable. After a provision that Bombay should not pass out of British possession, it was permitted to the Company to legislate for the settlement, and to wage war on behalf of it. Their laws were to be “consonant to reason,” and “as near as might be” to English methods: but legislative and military powers were fully and freely conferred. One of the first consequences was that the western Presidency was removed from Surat to Bombay. It was in 1668 that the Company acquired Bombay; and from that time till 1698 there were two Presidencies, with the Bengal settlement in a state of dependency on them. Till 1692 the Bengal establishment was at Hooghly, thirty miles above Calcutta. In that year it was removed to Calcutta, and in six years more Calcutta itself with two adjoining villages, was granted to the Company by a grandson of Aurungzebe, who permitted the erection of fortifications and full judiciary powers over the inhabitants. The new fortifications were naturally named after the reigning king, William III., and the agency at Fort William was soon converted into a third Presidency.

Thus were the British in India transformed, in the course of one century, from a handful of “adventurers,” landing a cargo of goods, in a tentative way, at the mouth of the Taptee, and glad to sell their commodities and buy others on the residents’ own terms, to a body of colonists, much considered for their extensive transactions, and the powers, legislative, executive, and military, which they wielded. Whence these powers were derived, who these English were, and why they came, might be more than Aurungzebe himself could distinctly explain; and to this day, the relation of our Indian empire to the British seems to be a puzzle to the inhabitants, being really anomalous in English eyes as well. But there we were, acting from three centres of authority and power, and exercising whatever influence commerce put into our hands. It was not for want of enterprise that the British had as yet no territorial power. Sir Josiah Child believed the possession of more or less territory to be necessary to the security of our commerce; and in 1686 an attempt was made to obtain a footing in Bengal by force of arms. It not only failed, but would have resulted in the expulsion of every Englishman from the Mogul’s dominions, but for the importance of our commerce to Aurungzebe’s treasury. Our reputation suffered by this unsuccessful prank of ambition and cupidity; but not the less did the last of the great Moguls go to his grave, knowing that he left the English established in his dominions beyond the possibility of dislodgment. They were neither subjects, nor rulers in India; but such a man as Aurungzebe must have been well aware that if they were really irremoveable they must sooner or later become the one or the other.