India before the Raj
Indo-British interactions and stories before the age of conquest
Hello readers,
A few weeks back, we read about one of the decisive actors that brought about the subjugation of India- the infamous East India Company. The article got quite a lot of interest, so if you missed it, read it here.
The company’s ascension was marked by 2 major military victories- the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, which resulted in them gaining unprecedented political control over vast swathes of Bengal, and marked a significant turning point in India’s history.
The purpose of today’s article is not to examine their rise to power and the various mischiefs and connivances that enabled the same.
The plan today is to rewind the clock a bit, right back to the 17th Century, and understand how things were before the company rose to power and began to look and act like a colonial power.
What were the equations between the British and the Indians, the company and the various local rulers, and the visitors and the “visited” before the Company’s rise to power?
This is not a definitive or even a chronological attempt to describe the flow of events in the 1600-1765 era. That’d require me to read a hundred more history books before I can even begin to form a conception of what happened in that period.
It is rather a collection of stories and anecdotes that may reveal more about the period and the relations between the two peoples than any dry analysis possibly can.
The very first contact between the Brits and Indians began when Thomas Roe was sent by the company to Jehangir’s court in 1603. The agenda was simple and clear: to secure the right to establish a factory at Surat and get protection for this new business venture. We’ll come to the result of these solicitations in a minute.
In that period, Britain was a poor, agricultural economy and contributed hardly 2% to global economic output, while India’s contribution stood at an eyewatering 24%. These numbers went to 4% and 22% respectively in the 18th century, so you can imagine how vast the gap was, and how much westward plunder had to be achieved in the following centuries to arrive at the point where the 2 countries were in the 1900s.
Anyway, the low levels of prosperity and isolation from the European economy made Britain a sort of pariah, and they had no option but to sail outwards and look for new markets for their trade. News of the Dutch making a killing with 400% profits in their East Indian expeditions surely provided the much-needed inspiration for the Brits to embark on similar adventures in the East.
However, they were beaten repeatedly by the Dutch and had to abandon all plans of participating in the spice trade with the Indonesian islands.
Thus, the Anglo-Dutch conflicts resulted in them focusing on India.
Back to the first diplomats who came to India. It is known that Akbar considered these British officers and commanders ‘savages' and even made an attempt to civilize them, but later abandoned the project because it seemed like an impossible enterprise.
Jehangir called William Hawkins, the company’s first commander in India, a ‘semi-educated sea dog’ and totally lost interest in dealing with him. Not the best first impression for a bro to cast on potential clients, if you ask for my expert opinion.
Roe, on the other hand, was totally dazzled by Jehangir and the riches that he saw in Agra. The wealth and power of the nobles draped in shining silks and jewels has hence left its legacy in the word ‘mogul’, which you might nowadays see being used to refer to bad boys like Richard Branson. No wonder Mr. Roe came up with some solid tweets to describe the zeitgeist of those days, one of them being “Europe bleedeth to enrich Asia”. Such was the state of affairs a mere century before the company goons got to work.
India was the manufacturing powerhouse of the world in the 17th Century. It’s not for nothing that so many English words related to textiles/weaving are of Indian origin. Check it out: chintz, calico, taffetas, cummerbund (literally Kamar bandh), shawl, pajama, dungarees- all of these words have their roots in Indian languages.
So it was pretty obvious why the Brits were desperate to establish factories and trading outposts in the country. Roe made numerous attempts to persuade Jehangir to grant him the rights, but being the curious aesthete and intellectual he was, he scoffed at the idea of discussing such petty workday issues. Instead, he wanted to know more about these queer people, their customs, what kind of beer they drank, etc.
Talk of business was superseded by discussions about the finer things in life, as Jehangir couldn’t care less about signing cool, new biz deals. It took Roe all of 3 years to go back with the permission but he also cautioned the directors of the company that the use of violent means wasn’t an option. The Mughal war machine was far too mighty for such devious considerations.
Roe wrote fascinating accounts across numerous diary entries about Jehangir and his experience of the luxuries he saw. But Jehangir didn’t, for the lack of better phraseology, give a flying shit about Roe and his men. There was absolutely no mention of him in Jehangir’s diary, and the relations with the British were a low-priority item. Kinda reminiscent of the way I was treated by pretty girls back in school.
In the East, Kolkata became one of the richest and most expensive cities in Asia not only because it was one of the main trade ports but also because it offered safety to traders. Stories abound of how British and other European settlers came into the city to make it big and were frequently indebted (borrowing from local lenders) because of the insane cost of living in the city. That’s the exact opposite of what happens today- desis flocking to global cities, trying to somehow build a life for themselves.
As we can see, things were very, very different for India in the 17th and even late 18th Century. The company had very modest beginnings and its officials were often dismissed as uncouth, uninteresting men not worthy of attention.
It’s interesting to reflect upon this and realize that nothing was set in stone: European ‘cultural supremacy’, the subjugation of India by the British, or the building of a vast English empire all over the world. That’s the view many end up harbouring, because all they’ve read about is the sad conquest of the country and how far behind we are today with respect to the West. But going back only a few more centuries shows us a completely different image of India.
A vast sequence of events and countless accidental occurences tipped the scales gradually in favour of the Brits and resulted in their eventual rise.
Reading about Indo-British interactions a mere century before the rise of the company really makes one think that things could have played out very, very differently.
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