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Company rule in India
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- For usage, see British Empire in India
Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj, "raj," lit. "rule" in Hindi) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal surrendered his dominions to the Company, in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar, or in 1772, when the Company established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance.
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Encyclopedia
- For usage, see British Empire in India
Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj, "raj," lit. "rule" in Hindi) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal surrendered his dominions to the Company, in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar, or in 1772, when the Company established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The rule lasted until 1858, when, consequent to the Government of India Act 1858, the British government assumed the task of directly administering India.
Expansion and territory
The English East India Company (hereafter, the Company) was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies. It gained footing in India in 1612, after Mughal emperor Jahangir granted it the rights to establish a factory (a trading post) in Surat. In 1640, consequent to receiving similar permission from the local Vijayanagara ruler, a second factory was established in Madras. Soon, in 1668, the Company leased Bombay island, a former Portuguese outpost recently gifted to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza for her marriage to Charles II. Thereafter, in 1687, the company moved its headquarters from Surat to Bombay. Next, in 1690, a Company settlement was established in Calcutta, again after receiving such rights from of the Mughal emperor, and the Company now began its lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent. During this time, other companies, established by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish, were similarly expanding in the region.
Although the British had earlier ruled in the factory areas, the beginning of British rule is often dated from the 1757 Battle of Plassey. Robert Clive's victory was consolidated in 1764 at the Battle of Buxar (in Bihar), where the emperor, Shah Alam II, was defeated. As a result, Shah Alam was coerced to appoint the company to be the diwan for the areas of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (this pretense of Mughal control was abandoned in 1827). The company thus became the supreme, but not the titular, power in much of the lower Gangetic plain. The Company also expanded from their bases at Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore Wars of 1766 to 1799 and the Anglo-Maratha Wars of 1772 to 1818 placed the Company dominant over much India south of the Sutlej River.
The company's dominance of India took two major forms. The first was the use of subsidiary alliances between the company and the local rulers; these agreements were essentially feudal in nature and under them the local rulers gave up much of their control on foreign affairs to the Company and in return had their independence guaranteed. This development created the Native States, or Princely States, of the Hindu maharaja and the Muslim nawabs. The second and less favoured method of control was the outright governance of areas; it is these parts of the subcontinent that are more properly called "British India."
At the turn of the 19th century, Governor General Wellesley, began what became two decades of accelerated expansion of Company territories. Prominent among the princely states were: Cochin (1791), Jaipur (1794), Travancore (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Cis-Sutlej Hill States (1815), Central India Agency (1819), Kutch and Gujarat Gaikwad territories (1819), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur (1833). The annexed regions included the Northwest Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab) (1801), Delhi (1803), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir, were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849; however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra Dynasty of Jammu, and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later.
The East India Company also signed treaties with Afghan rulers and with Ranjit Singh to counterbalance Russian support of Persian plans in western Afghanistan. In 1839 the Company's actions brought about the First Afghan War (1839-42). However, as the British expanded their territory in India, so did Russia in Central Asia, with the taking of Bukhara and Samarkand in 1863 and 1868 respectively, thereby setting the stage for the Great Game of Central Asia.
The Governors-General
(The Governors-General (locum tenens) are not included in this table unless a major event occurred during their tenure.)
| Governor-General | Period of Tenure | Events |
|---|
| Warren Hastings | 20 October 1773–1 February 1785 | Bengal famine of 1770 (1769–1773)
Rohilla War (1773–1774)
First Anglo-Maratha War (1777–1783)
Chalisa famine (1783–84)
Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780–1784) | | Charles Cornwallis | 12 September 1786–28 October 1793 | Permanent Settlement
Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789–1792)
Doji bara famine (1791–92) | | John Shore | 28 October 1793–March 1798 | East India Company Army reorganized and down-sized. | | Richard Wellesley | 18 May 1798–30 July 1805 | Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–1799)
Nawab of Oudh cedes Gorakhpur and Rohilkhand divisions; Allahabad, Fatehpur, Cawnpore, Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah districts; part of Mirzapur; and terai of Kumaun (Ceded Provinces, 1801)
Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803 - 1805)
Remainder of Doab and Agra division, parts of Bundelkhand annexed from Maratha Empire (1805).
Ceded and Conquered Provinces established (1805) | | Charles Cornwallis (second term) | 30 July 1805–5 October 1805 | Financial strain in East India Company after costly campaigns.
Cornwallis reappointed to bring peace, but dies in Ghazipur. | | George Hilario Barlow (locum tenens) | 10 October 1805–31 July 1807 | Vellore Mutiny (July 10, 1806) | | Lord Minto | 31 July 1807–4 October 1813 | Invasion of Java
Occupation of Mauritius | | Marquess of Hastings | 4 October 1813–9 January 1823 | Anglo-Nepal War of 1814
Annexation of Kumaon, Garhwal, and east Sikkim.
Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–1818)
States of Rajputana accept British suzerainty (1817). | | Lord Amherst | 1 August 1823–13 March 1828 | First Anglo–Burmese War (1823–1826)
Annexation of Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and Tenasserim from Burma | | William Bentinck | 4 July 1828–20 March 1835 | Abolition of Sati (1829)
Suppression of Thuggee (1826–1835)
Mysore State goes under British administration (1831–1881)
Coorg annexed (1834) | | Lord Auckland | 4 March 1836–28 February 1842 | North-Western Provinces established (1836)
Agra famine of 1837–38
First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)
Massacre of Elphinstone's army (1842) | | Lord Ellenborough | 28 February 1842–June 1844 | First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842)
Annexation of Sindh (1843)
Abolition of slavery in British India (1843) | | Henry Hardinge | 23 July 1844–12 January 1848 | First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–1846)
Sikhs cede Jullundur Doab, Hazara, and Kashmir to the British under Treaty of Lahore (1846)
Sale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu under Treaty of Amritsar (1846) | | Marquess of Dalhousie | 12 January 1848–28 February 1856 | Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849)
Annexation of Punjab and NWFP (1849)
Construction begins on Indian Railways (1850)
First telegraph line laid in India (1851)
Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–1853)
Annexation of Lower Burma
Great Ganges Canal opened (1854)
Annexation of Satara, Nagpur, and Jhansi under Doctrine of Lapse
Annexation of Berar and Awadh | | Charles Canning | 28 February 1856–1 November 1858 | Hindu Widows Remarriage Act (July 25, 1856)
First Indian universities founded (January–September 1857)
Indian Rebellion of 1857 (10 May 1857–20 June 1858) largely in North-Western Provinces and Oudh
Liquidation of the English East India Company under Government of India Act 1858 |
Regulation of Company rule
Until Clive's victory at Plassey, the East India Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable—town councils, all composed of merchants. The councils barely had enough powers for the effective management of their local affairs, and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall Company operations in India, led to some grave abuses by Company officers or their allies. Clive's victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. The Company's money management practices came to be questioned, especially as it began to post net losses even as some Company servants, the "Nabobs," returned to Britain with large fortunes, which—according to rumors then current—were acquired unscrupulously. By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, and there was fear in London that the Company's corrupt practices could soon seep into British business and public life. The rights and duties of the British government with regards the Company's new territories also came to be examined. The British parliament then held several inquiries and in 1773, during the premiership of Lord North, enacted the Regulating Act, "for the better management of the affairs of the East India Company as well in India as in Europe."
Although Lord North himself wanted the Company's territories to be taken over by the British state, he faced determined political opposition from many quarters, including some in the City of London and the British parliament. The result was a compromise in which the Regulating Act—although implying the ultimate sovereignty of the British Crown over these new territories—asserted that the Company could act as a sovereign power on behalf of the Crown. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament. The Court of Directors of the Company were required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government. For the governance of the Indian territories, the act asserted the supremacy of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal) over those of Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay. It also nominated a Governor-General (Warren Hastings) and four councilors for administering the Bengal presidency (and for overseeing the Company's operations in India). "The subordinate Presidencies were forbidden to wage war or make treaties without the previous consent of the Governor-General of Bengal in Council, except in case of imminent necessity. The Governors of these Presidencies were directed in general terms to obey the orders of the Governor-General-in-Council, and to transmit to him intelligence of all important matters." However, the imprecise wording of the Act, left it open to be variously interpreted; consequently, the administration in India continued to be hobbled by disunity between the provincial governors, between members of the Council, and between the Governor-General himself and his Council. The Regulating Act also attempted to address the prevalent corruption in India: Company servants were henceforth forbidden to engage in private trade in India or to receive "presents" from Indian nationals.
William Pitt's India Act of 1784 established a Board of Control in England both to supervise the East India Company's affairs and to prevent the Company's shareholders from interfering in the governance of India. The Board of Control consisted of six members, which included one Secretary of State from the British cabinet, as well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Around this time, there was also extensive debate in the British parliament on the issue of landed rights in Bengal, with a consensus developing in support of the view advocated by Philip Francis, a member of the Bengal council and political adversary of Warren Hastings, that all lands in Bengal should be considered the "estate and inheritance of native land-holders and families ..."
Mindful of the reports of abuse and corruption in Bengal by Company servants, the India Act itself noted numerous complaints that "'divers Rajahs, Zemindars, Polygars, Talookdars, and landholders"' had been unjustly deprived of 'their lands, jurisdictions, rights, and privileges'." At the same time the Company's directors, were now leaning towards, Francis's view that the land-tax in Bengal should be made fixed and permanent, setting the stage for the Permanent Settlement (see section Revenue settlements under the Company below). The India Act also created in each of the three presidencies a number of administrative and military posts, which included: a Governor and three Councilors, one of which was the Commander in Chief of the Presidency army. Although the supervisory powers of the Governor-General-in-Council in Bengal (over Madras and Bombay) were extended—as they were again in the Charter Act of 1793—the subordinate presidencies continued to exercise some autonomy until both the extension of British possessions into becoming contiguous and the advent of faster communications in the next century.
Still, the new Governor-General appointed in 1786, Lord Cornwallis, not only had more power than Hastings, but also had the support of a powerful British cabinet minister, Henry Dundas, who, as Secretary of state for the Home Office, was in charge of the overall India policy. From 1784 onwards, the British government had the final word on all major appointments in India; a candidate's suitability for a senior position was often decided by the strength of his political connections rather than that of his administrative ability. Although this practice resulted in many Governor-General nominees being chosen from Britain's conservative landed gentry, there were some liberals as well, such as Lord William Bentinck and Lord Dalhousie.
British political opinion was also shaped by the attempted impeachment of Warren Hastings; the trial, whose proceedings began in 1788, ended, with Hastings' acquittal, in 1795. Although the effort was chiefly coordinated by Edmund Burke, it also drew support from within the British government. Burke, accused Hastings not only of corruption, but—appealing to universal standards of justice—also of acting solely upon his own discretion and without concern for law and of willfully causing distress to others in India; in response, Hastings' defenders asserted that his actions were in concert with Indian customs and traditions. Although Burke's speeches at the trial drew applause and focused attention on India, Hastings was eventually acquitted, due, in part, to the revival of nationalism in Britain in the wake of the French Revolution; nonetheless, Burke's effort had the effect of creating a sense of responsibility in British public life for the Company's dominion in India.
Soon rumblings began to appear among merchants in London that the monopoly granted to the East India Company in 1600 to facilitate it to better organize against Dutch and French competition in a distant region, was no longer needed. In response, in the Charter Act of 1813, the British parliament renewed the Company's charter but terminated its monopoly except with regard to tea and trade with China, opening India both to private investment and missionaries. With increased British power in India supervision of Indian affairs by the British Crown and parliament increased as well; by the 1820s British nationals could transact business or engage in missionary work under the protection of the Crown in the three presidencies. Finally, in Charter Act of 1833, the British parliament revoked the Company's trade license altogether, making the Company a part of British governance, although the administration of British India remained the province of Company officers. The Charter Act of 1833 also charged the Governor-General-in-Council (to whose title was now added "of India") with the supervision of civil and military administration of the totality of India, as well the exclusive power of legislation. Since the British territories in north India had now extended up to Delhi, the Act also sanctioned the creation of a Presidency of Agra, later constituted, in 1936, as the Lieutenant-Governorship of the North-Western Provinces (current-day western Uttar Pradesh). With the annexation of Oudh in 1856, this territory was extended, and eventually became the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. In addition, in 1854, a Lieutenant-Governor was appointed for the region of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, leaving the Governor-General to concentrate on the governance of India.
Revenue collection
In the remnant of the Mughal revenue system existing in pre-1765 Bengal, zamindars, or "land holders," collected revenue on behalf of the Mughal emperor, whose representative, or diwan supervised their activities. In this system, the assortment of rights associated with land were not possessed by a "land owner," but rather shared by the several parties with stake in the land, including the peasant cultivator, the zamindar, and the state. The zamindar served as an intermediary who procured economic rent from the cultivator, and after withholding a percentage for his own expenses, made available the rest, as revenue to the state. Under the Mughal system, the land itself belonged to the state and not to the zamindar, who could transfer only his right to collect rent. On being awarded the diwani or overlordship of Bengal following the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the East India Company found itself short of trained administrators, especially those familiar with local custom and law; tax collection was consequently farmed out. This uncertain foray into land taxation by the Company, may have gravely worsened the impact of a famine that struck Bengal in 1769-70 in which between seven and ten million people—or between a quarter and third of the presidency's population—may have died. However, the company provided little relief either through reduced taxation or by relief efforts, and the economic and cultural impact of the famine was felt decades later, even becoming, a century later, the subject of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's novel Anandamath.
In 1772, under Warren Hastings, the East India Company took over revenue collection directly in the Bengal Presidency (then Bengal and Bihar), establishing a Board of Revenue with offices in Calcutta and Patna, and moving the pre-existing Mughal revenue records from Murshidabad to Calcutta.
In 1773, after Oudh ceded the tributary state of Benaras, the revenue collection system was extended to the territory with a Company Resident in charge. The following year—with a view to preventing corruption—Company district collectors, who were then responsible for revenue collection for an entire district, were replaced with provincial councils at Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta, and with Indian collectors working within each district. The title, "collector," reflected "the centrality of land revenue collection to government in India: it was the government's primary function and it moulded the institutions and patterns of administration."
The Company inherited a revenue collection system from the Mughals in which the heaviest proportion of the tax burden fell on the cultivators, with one-third of the production reserved for imperial entitlement; this pre-colonial system became the Company revenue policy's baseline. However, there was vast variation across India in the methods by which the revenues were collected; with this complication in mind, a Committee of Circuit toured the districts of expanded Bengal presidency in order to make a five-year settlement, consisting of five-yearly inspections and temporary tax farming. In their overall approach to revenue policy, Company officials were guided by two goals: first, preserving as much as possible the balance of rights and obligations that were traditionally claimed by the farmers who cultivated the land and the various intermediaries who collected tax on the state's behalf and who reserved a cut for themselves; and second, identifying those sectors of the rural economy that would maximize both revenue and security. Although their first revenue settlement turned out to be essentially the same as the more informal pre-existing Mughal one, the Company had created a foundation for the growth of both information and bureaucracy.
In 1793, the new Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, promulgated the permanent settlement of land revenues in the presidency, the first socio-economic regulation in colonial India. It was named permanent because it fixed the land tax in perpetuity in return for landed property rights for zamindars; it simultaneously defined the nature of land ownership in the presidency, and gave individuals and families separate property rights in occupied land. Since the revenue was fixed in perpetuity, it was fixed at a high level, which in Bengal amounted to £3 million at 1789-90 prices. According to one estimate, this was 20% higher than the revenue demand before 1757. Over the next century, partly as a result of land surveys, court rulings, and property sales, the change was given practical dimension. An influence on the development of this revenue policy were the economic theories then current, which regarded agriculture as the engine of economic development, and consequently stressed the fixing of revenue demands in order to encourage growth. The expectation behind the permanent settlement was that knowledge of a fixed government demand would encourage the zamindars to increase both their average outcrop and the land under cultivation, since they would be able to retain the profits from the increased output; in addition, it was envisaged that land itself would become a marketable form of property that could be purchased, sold, or mortgaged. A feature of this economic rationale was the additional expectation that the zamindars, recognizing their own best interest, would not make unreasonable demands on the peasantry.
However, these expectations were not realized in practice, and in many regions of Bengal, the peasants bore the brunt of the increased demand, there being little protection for their traditional rights in the new legislation. Forced labor of the peasants by the zamindars became more prevalent as cash crops were cultivated to meet the Company revenue demands. Although commercialized cultivation was not new to the region, it had now penetrated deeper into village society and made it more vulnerable to market forces. The zamindars themselves were often unable to meet the increased demands that the Company had placed on them; consequently, many defaulted, and by one estimate, up to one-third of their lands were auctioned during the first three decades following the permanent settlement. The new owners were often Brahmin and Kayastha employees of the Company who had a good grasp of the new system, and, in many cases, had prospered under it.
Since the zamindars were never able to undertake costly improvements to the land envisaged under the Permanent Settlement, some of which required the removal of the existing farmers, they soon became rentiers who lived off the rent from their tenant farmers. In many areas, especially northern Bengal, they had to increasingly share the revenue with intermediate tenure holders, called jotedars, who supervised farming in the villages. Consequently, unlike the contemporaneous Enclosure movement in Britain, agriculture in Bengal remained the province of the subsistence farming of innumerable small paddy fields.
The zamindari system was one of two principal revenue settlements undertaken by the Company in India. In southern India, Thomas Munro, who would later become Governor of Madras, promoted the ryotwari system, in which the government settled land-revenue directly with the peasant farmers, or ryots. This was, in part, a consequence of the turmoil of the Anglo-Mysore Wars, which had prevented the emergence of a class of large landowners; in addition, Munro and others felt that ryotwari was closer to traditional practice in the region and ideologically more progressive, allowing the benefits of Company rule to reach the lowest levels of rural society. At the heart of the ryotwari system was a particular theory of economic rent—and based on David Ricardo's Law of Rent—promoted by utilitarian James Mill who formulated the Indian revenue policy between 1819 and 1830. "He believed that the government was the ultimate lord of the soil and should not renounce its right to 'rent', i.e. the profit left over on richer soil when wages and other working expenses had been settled." Another keystone of the new system of temporary settlements was the classification of agricultural fields according to soil type and produce, with average rent rates fixed for the period of the settlement. According to Mill, taxation of land rent would promote efficient agriculture and simultaneously prevent the emergence of a "parasitic landlord class." Mill advocated ryotwari settlements which consisted of government measurement and assessment of each plot (valid for 20 or 30 years) and subsequent taxation which was dependent on the fertility of the soil. The taxed amount was nine-tenths of the "rent" in the early nineteenth century and gradually fell afterwards. However, in spite of the appeal of the ryotwari system's abstract principles, class hierarchies in southern Indian villages had not entirely disappeared—for example village headmen continued to hold sway—and peasant cultivators sometimes came to experience revenue demands they could not meet. In the 1850s, a scandal erupted when it was discovered that some Indian revenue agents of the Company were using torture to meet the Company's revenue demands.
Land revenue settlements constituted a major administrative activity of the various governments in India under Company rule. In all areas other than the Bengal Presidency, land settlement work involved a continually repetitive process of surveying and measuring plots, assessing their quality, and recording landed rights, and constituted a large proportion of the work of Indian Civil Service officers working for the government. After the Company lost its trading rights, it became the single most important source of government revenue, roughly half of overall revenue in the middle of the 19th century; even so, between the years 1814 and 1859, the government of India ran debts in 33 years. With expanded dominion, even during non-deficit years, there was just enough money to pay the salaries of a threadbare administration, a skeleton police force, and the army.
Subsidiary alliances
Since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule. The most important such support came from the subsidiary alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for one-third of India. When an Indian ruler, who was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects. In return, the Company undertook the "defense of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor."
Army and Civil Service
In 1772, when Warren Hastings was appointed the first Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William with capital in Calcutta, one of his first undertakings was the rapid expansion of the Presidency's army. Since the available soldiers, or Sepoys, from Bengal—many of whom had fought against the British in the Battle of Plassey—were now suspect in British eyes, Hastings recruited farther west from the "major breeding ground of India's infantry in eastern Awadh and the lands around Benaras." The high caste rural Hindu Rajputs and Brahmins of this region (known as purabias (Hindi, lit. "easterners")) had been recruited by Mughal armies for two hundred years; the East India Company continued this practice for the next 75 years, with these soldiers comprising up to eighty per cent of the Bengal army. However, in order to avoid any friction within the ranks, the Company also took pains to adapt its military practices to their religious requirements. Consequently, these soldiers dined in separate facilities; in addition, overseas service, considered polluting to their caste, was not required of them, and the army soon came to recognize Hindu festivals officially. "This encouragement of high caste ritual status, however, left the government vulnerable to protest, even mutiny, whenever the sepoys detected infringement of their prerogatives."
| British troops | Indian troops |
|---|
| | Bengal Presidency | Madras Presidency | Bombay Presidency |
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| | 24,000 | 24,000 | 9,000 | | 13,000 | Total Indian troops: 57,000 |
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| Grand total, British and Indian troops: 70,000 |
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The Bengal army was used in military campaigns in other parts of India and abroad: to provide crucial support to a weak Madras army in the Third Anglo-Mysore War in 1791, and also in Java and Ceylon. In contrast to the soldiers in the armies of Indian rulers, the Bengal sepoys not only received high pay, but also received it reliably, thanks in great measure to the Company's access to the vast land-revenue reserves of Bengal. Soon, bolstered both by the new musket technology and naval support, the Bengal army came to be widely regarded. The well-disciplined sepoys attired in red-coats and their British officers began to arouse "a kind of awe in their adversaries. In Maharashtra and in Java, the sepoys were regarded as the embodiment of demonic forces, sometimes of antique warrior heroes. Indian rulers adopted red serge jackets for their own forces and retainers as if to capture their magical qualities."
In 1796, under pressure from the Company's Board of Directors in London, the Indian troops were reorganized and reduced during the tenure of John Shore as Governor-General. However, the closing years of the 18th century saw, with Wellesley's campaigns, a new increase in the army strength. Thus in 1806, at the time of the Vellore Mutiny, the combined strength of the three presidencies' armies stood at 154,500, making them one of the largest standing armies in the world.
Vellore Mutiny of 1806| Presidencies | British troops | Indian troops | Total |
|---|
| Bengal | 7,000 | 57,000 | 64,000 | | Madras | 11,000 | 53,000 | 64,000 | | Bombay | 6,500 | 20,000 | 26,500 | | Total | 24,500 | 130,000 | 154,500 | > | |
As the East India Company expanded its territories, it added irregular "local corps," which were not as well trained as the army. In 1846, after the Second Anglo-Sikh War, a frontier brigade was raised in the Cis-Sutlej Hill States mainly for police work; in addition, in 1849, the "Punjab Irregular Force" was added on the frontier. Two years later, this force consisted of "3 light field batteries, 5 regiments of cavalry, and 5 of infantry." The following year, "a garrison company was added, ... a sixth infantry regiment (formed from the Sind Camel Corps) in 1853, and one mountain battery in 1856." Similarly, a local force was raised after the annexation of Nagpur in 1854, and the "Oudh Irregular Force" was added after Oudh was annexed in 1856. Earlier, as a result of the treaty of 1800, the Nizam of Hyderabad had begun to maintain a contingent force of 9,000 horse and 6,000 foot which was commanded by Company officers; in 1853, after a new treaty was negotiated, this force was assigned to Berar and stopped being a part of the Nizam's army.
Indian rebellion of 1857| Presidencies | British troops | Indian troops |
|---|
| | Cavalry | Artillery | Infantry | Total | Cavalry | Artillery | Sappers
&
Miners | Infantry | Total |
|---|
| Bengal | 1,366 | 3,063 | 17,003 | 21,432 | 19,288 | 4,734 | 1,497 | 112,052 | 137,571 | | Madras | 639 | 2,128 | 5,941 | 8,708 | 3,202 | 2,407 | 1,270 | 42,373 | 49,252 | | Bombay | 681 | 1,578 | 7,101 | 9,360 | 8,433 | 1,997 | 637 | 33,861 | 44,928 | Local forces
&
contingents | | | | | 6,796 | 2,118 | | 23,640 | 32,554 | " "
(unclassified) | | | | | | | | | 7,756 | | Military police | | | | | | | | | 38,977 | | Total | 2,686 | 6,769 | 30,045 | 39,500 | 37,719 | 11,256 | 3,404 | 211,926 | 311,038 | | Grand Total, British and Indian troops | 350,538 |
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In the Indian Rebellion of 1857 almost the entire Bengal army, both regular and irregular, revolted. It has been suggested that after the annexation of Oudh by the East India Company in 1856, many sepoys were disquieted both from losing their perquisites, as landed gentry, in the Oudh courts and from the anticipation of any increased land-revenue payments that the annexation might augur. With British victories in wars or with annexation, as the extent of British jurisdiction expanded, the soldiers were now not only expected to serve in less familiar regions (such as in Burma in the Anglo-Burmese Wars in 1856), but also make do without the "foreign service," remuneration that had previously been their due, and this caused resentment in the ranks. The Bombay and Madras armies, and the Hyderabad contingent, however, remained loyal. The Punjab Irregular Force not only didn't revolt, it played an active role in suppressing the mutiny. The rebellion led to a complete reorganization of the Indian army in 1858 in the new British Raj.
Trade
After gaining the right to collect revenue in Bengal in 1765, the Company largely ceased importing gold and silver, which it had hitherto used to pay for goods shipped back to Britain. In addition, as under Mughal rule, land revenue collected in the Bengal Presidency helped finance the Company's wars in other part of India. Consequently, in the period 1760-1800, Bengal's money supply was greatly diminished; furthermore, the closing of some local mints and close supervision of the rest, the fixing of exchange rates, and the standardization of coinage, paradoxically, added to the economic downturn. During the period, 1780-1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods. More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports. Also, from the late 18th century British cotton mill industry began to lobby the government to both tax Indian imports and allow them access to markets in India. Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896. The American Civil War too would have a major impact on India's cotton economy: with the outbreak of the war, American cotton was no longer available to British manufacturers; consequently, demand for Indian cotton soared, and the prices soon quadrupled. This led many farmers in India to switch to cultivating cotton as a quick cash crop; however, with the end of the war in 1865, the demand plummeted again, creating another downturn in the agricultural economy.
At this time, the East India Company's trade with China began to grow as well. In the early 1800s demand for Chinese tea had greatly increased in Britain; since the money supply in India was restricted and the Company was indisposed to shipping bullion from Britain, it decided upon opium, which had a large underground market in China and which was grown in many parts of India, as the most profitable form of payment. However, since the Chinese authorities had banned the importation and consumption of opium, the Company engaged them in the First Opium War, and at its conclusion, under the Treaty of Nanjing, gained access to five Chinese ports, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo; in addition, Hong Kong was ceded to the British Crown. Towards the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, opium export constituted 40% of India's exports.
Another major, though erratic, export item was indigo dye, which was extracted from natural indigo, and which came to be grown in Bengal and northern Bihar. In late 17th and early 18th century Europe, blue apparel was favored as a fashion, and blue uniforms were common in the military; consequently, the demand for the dye was high. In 1788, the East India Company offered advances to ten British planters to grow indigo; however, since the new (landed) property rights defined in the Permanent Settlement, didn't allow them, as Europeans, to buy agricultural land, they had to in turn offer cash advances to local peasants, and sometimes coerce them, to grow the crop. The European demand for the dye, however, proved to be unstable, and both creditors and cultivators bore the risk of the market crashes in 1827 and 1847. The peasant discontent in Bengal eventually led to the Indigo rebellion in 1859-60 and to the end of indigo production there. In Bihar, however, indigo production continued well into the 20th century; the centre of indigo production there, Champaran district, became the staging ground, in 1917, for Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's first experiment in non-violent resistance against the British Raj.
Justice system
Until the British gained control of Bengal in the mid-eighteenth century, the system of justice there was presided over by the Nawab of Bengal himself, who, as the chief law officer, Nawab Nazim, attended to cases qualifying for capital punishment in his head-quarters, Murshidabad. His deputy, the Naib Nazim, attended to the slightly less important cases. The ordinary lawsuits belonged to the jurisdiction of a hierarchy of court officials consisting of faujdars, muhtasils, and kotwals. In the rural areas, or the Mofussil, the zamindars—the rural overlords with the hereditary right to collect rent from peasant farmers—also had the power to administer justice. This they did with little routine oversight, being required to report only their judgments in capital punishment cases to the Nawab.
By the mid-eighteength century, the British too had completed a century and a half in India, and had a burgeoning presence in the three presidency towns of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. During this time the successive Royal Charters had gradually given the East India Company more power to administer justice in these towns. In the charter granted by Charles II in 1683, the Company was given the power to establish "courts of judicature" in locations of its choice, each court consisting of a lawyer and two merchants. This right was renewed in the subsequent charters granted by James II and William III in 1686 and 1698 respectively. In 1726, however, the Court of Directors of the Company felt that more customary justice was necessary for European residents in the presidency towns, and petitioned the King to establish Mayor's Courts. The petition was approved and Mayor's courts, each consisting of a Mayor and nine aldermen, and each having the jurisdiction in lawsuits between Europeans, were created in Fort William (Calcutta), Madras, and Bombay. Judgments handed down by a Mayor's Court could be disputed with an appeal to the respective Presidency government and, when the amount disputed was greater than Rs. 4,000, with a further appeal to the King-in-Council. In 1753, the Mayor's courts were renewed under a revised letters patent; in addition, Courts of Requests for lawsuits involving amounts less than Rs. 20 were introduced. Both types of courts were regulated by the Court of Directors of the East India Company.
After its victory in the Battle of Buxar, the Company obtained in 1765 the Diwani of Bengal, the right not only to collect revenue, but also to administer civil justice in Bengal. The administration of criminal justice, the Nizamat or Faujdari, however, remained with the Nawab, and for criminal cases the prevailing Islamic law remained in place. However, the Company's new duties associated with the Diwani were leased out to the Indian officials who had formerly performed them. This makeshift arrangement continued—with much accompanying disarray—until 1771, when the Court of Directors of the Company decided to obtain for the Company the jurisdiction of both criminal and civil cases.
Soon afterwards Warren Hastings arrived in Calcutta as the first Governor-General of the Company's Indian dominions and resolved to overhaul the Company's organization and in particular its judicial affairs. In the interior, or Mofussil, diwani adalats, or a civil courts of first instance, were constituted in each district; these courts were presided over by European Zila judges employed by the Company, who were assisted in the interpretation of customary Indian law by Hindu pandits and Muslim qazis. For small claims, however, Registrars and Indian commissioners, known as Sadr Amins and Munsifs, were appointed. These in their turn were supervised by provincial civil courts of appeal constituted for such purpose, each consisting of four British judges. All these were under the authority of the Sadr Diwani Adalat, or the Chief Civil Court of Appeals, consisting of the Governor of the Presidency and his Council, assisted by Indian officers.
Similarly for criminal cases, Mofussil nizamat adalats, or Provincial courts of criminal judicature, were created in the interior; these again consisted of Indian court officers (pandits and qazis), who were supervised by officials of the Company. Also constituted were Courts of circuit with appellate jurisdiction in criminal cases, which were usually presided over by the judges of the civil appellate courts. All these too were under a Sadr Nizamat Adalat or a Chief Court of Criminal Appeal.
Around this time the business affairs of the East India Company began to draw increased scrutiny in the House of Commons. After receiving a report by a committee, which condemned the Mayor's Courts, the Crown issued a charter for a new judicial system in the Bengal Presidency. The British Parliament consequently enacted the Regulating Act of 1773 under which the King-in-Council created a Supreme Court in the Presidency town, i.e. Fort William. The tribunal consisted of one Chief Justice and three puisne judges; all four judges were to be chosen from barristers. The Supreme Court supplanted the Mayor's Court; however, it left the Court of Requests in place. Under the charter, the Supreme Court, moreover, had the authority to exercise all types of jurisdiction in the region of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, with the only caveat that in situations where the disputed amount was in excess of Rs. 4,000, their judgment could be appealed to the Privy Council. Both the Act and the charter said nothing about the relation between the judiciary (Supreme Court) and the executive branch (Governor-General); equally, they were silent on the Adalats (both Diwani and Nizamat) created by Warren Hastings just the year before. In the new Supreme Court, the civil and criminal cases alike were intepreted and prosecuted accorded to English law; in the Sadr Adalats, however, the judges and law-officers had no knowledge of English law, and were required only, by the Governor-General's order, "to proceed according to equity, justice, and good conscience, unless Hindu or Muhammadan law was in point, or some Regulation expressly applied."
There was a good likelihood, therefore, that the Supreme Court and the Sadr Adalats would act in opposition to each other and, predictably, many disputes resulted. Hastings' premature attempt to appoint the Chief Justice, Sir Elijah Impey, an old schoolmate from Winchester, to the bench of the Sadr Diwani Adalat, only complicated the situation further. The appointment had to be annulled in 1781 by a parliamentary intervention with the enactment of the Declaration Act. The Act exempted the Executive Branch from the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. It recognized the independent existence of the Sadr Adalats and all subsidiary courts of the Company.
Furthermore, it headed off future legal turf wars by prohibiting the Supreme Court any jurisdiction in matters of revenue (Diwani) or Regulations of the Government enacted by the British Parliament. This state of affairs continued until 1797, when a new Act extended the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court to to the province of Benares (which had since been added to the Company's dominions) and "all places for the time being included in Bengal." With the constituting of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces in 1805, the jurisdiction would extend as far west as Delhi.
In the other two presidencies, Madras and Bombay, a similar course of legal changes unfolded; there, however, the Mayor's Courts were first strengthened to Recorder's Courts by adding a legal president to the bench. The Supreme Courts in Madras and Bombay were finally established in 1801 and 1823, respectively. Madras Presidency was also unusual in being the first to rely on village headmen and panchayats for cases involving small claims. This judicial system in the three presidencies was to survive the Company's rule, the next major change coming only in 1861.
Education
Education of Indians had become a topic of interest among East India Company officials from the outset of the Company's rule in Bengal. In the last two decades of the eighteenth century and the first decade of the nineteenth, Company officials pursued a policy of conciliation towards the native culture of its new dominion, especially in relation to education policy. The policy was pursued in the aid of three goals: "to sponsor Indians in their own culture, to advance knowledge of India, and to employ that knowledge in government."
The first goal was supported by some administrators, such as Warren Hastings, who envisaged the Company as the successor of a great Empire, and saw the support of vernacular learning as only befitting that role. In 1781, Hastings founded the Madrasa 'Aliya, an institution in Calcutta for the study of Arabic and Persian languages, and Islamic Law. A few decades later a related perspective appeared among the governed population, one that was expressed by the conservative Bengali reformer Radhakanta Deb as the "duty of the Rulers of Countries to preserve and Customs and the religions of their subjects."
The second goal was motivated in part by concern among some Company officials about being seen as foreign rulers. They argued that the Company should try to win over its subjects by outdoing the region's previous rulers in the support of indigenous learning. Guided by this belief, the Benares Sanskrit College was founded in Varanasi in 1791 during the administration of Lord Cornwallis. The promotion of knowledge of Asia had attracted scholars as well to the Company's service. Earlier, in 1784, the Asiatick Society had been founded in Calcutta by William Jones, a puisne judge in the newly established Supreme Court of Bengal. Soon, Jones was to advance his famous thesis on the common origin of Indo-European languages.
The third related goal grew out of the philosophy then current among some Company officials that they would themselves become better administrators if they were better versed in the languages and cultures of India. It led in 1800 to the founding of the College of Fort William, in Calcutta by Lord Wellesley, the then Governor-General. The College was later to play an important role both in the development of modern Indian languages and in the Bengal Renaissance. Advocates of these related goals were termed, "Orientalists." Many leading Company officials, such as Thomas Munro and Montstuart Elphinstone, were influenced by the Orientalist ethos and felt that the Company's government in India should be responsive to Indian expectations. The Orientalist ethos would prevail in education policy well into the 1820s, and was reflected in the founding of the Poona Sanskrit College in Pune in 1821 and the Calcutta Sanskrit College in 1824.
The Orientalists were, however, soon opposed by advocates of an approach that has been termed Anglicist. The Anglicists supported instruction in the English language in order to impart to Indians what they considered modern Western knowledge. Prominent among them were evangelicals who, after 1813—when the Company's territories were opened to Christian missionaries—were interested in spreading Christian belief; they also believed in using theology to promote liberal social reform, such as the abolition of slavery. Among them was Charles Grant, the Chairman of the East India Company. Grant supported state-sponsored education in India 20 years before a similar system was set up in Britain. Among Grant's close evangelical friends were William Wilberforce, a prominent abolitionist and member of the British Parliament, and Sir John Shore, the Governor-General of India from 1793 to 1797. During this period, many Scottish Presbyterian missionaries also supported the British rulers in their efforts to spread English education and established many reputed colleges like Scottish Church College (1830), Wilson College (1832), Madras Christian College (1837) and Elphinstone College (1856).
However, the Anglicists also included utilitarians, led by James Mill, who had begun to play an important role in fashioning Company policy. The utilitarians believed in the moral worth of an education that aided the good of society and promoted instruction in useful knowledge. Such useful instruction to Indians had the added consequence of making them more suitable for the Company's burgeoning bureaucracy. By the early 1830s, the Anglicists had the upper hand in devising education policy in India. Many utilitarian ideas were employed in Thomas Babbington Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education of 1835. The Minute, which later aroused great controversy, was to influence education policy in India well into the next century.
Since English was increasingly being employed as the language of instruction, Persian was abolished as the official language of the Company's administration and courts by 1837. However, bilingual educations was proving to be popular as well, and some institutions such as the Poona Sanskrit College commenced teaching both Sanskrit and English. Charles Grant's son, Sir Robert Grant, who in 1834 was appointed Governor of the Bombay Presidency, played an influential role in the planning of the first medical college in Bombay, which after his unexpected death was named Grant Medical College when it was established in 1845. During 1852–1853 some citizens of Bombay sent petitions to the British Parliament in support of both establishing and adequately funding university education in India. The petitions resulted in the Education Dispatch of July 1854 sent by Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control of the East India Company, the chief official on Indian affairs in the British government, to Lord Dalhousie, the then Governor-General of India. The dispatch outlined a broad plan of state-sponsored education for India, which included:
- Establishing a Department of Public Instruction in each presidency or province of British India.
- Establishing universities modeled on the University of London (as primarily examining institutions for students studying in affiliated colleges) in each of the
Presidency towns (i.e. Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta)Establishing teachers-training schools for all levels of instructionMaintaining existing Government colleges and high-schools and increasing their number when necessary.Vastly increasing vernacular schools for elementary education.Introducing a system of grants-in-aid for private schools.
The Department of Public Instruction was in place by 1855. In January 1857, the University of Calcutta was established, followed by the University of Bombay in June, 1857, and the University of Madras in September 1857. The University of Bombay, for example, consisted of three affiliated institutions: the Elphinstone Institution, the Grant Medical College, and the Poona Sanskrit College. The Company's administration also founded high-schools en masse in the different provinces and presidencies, and the policy was continued during Crown rule which commenced in 1858. By 1861, 230,000 students were attending public educational institutions in the four provinces (the three Presidencies and North-Western Provinces), of whom 200,000 were in primary schools. Over 5,000 primary schools and 142 secondary schools had been established in these provinces. Earlier, during the Indian rebellion of 1857, some civilian leaders, such as Khan Bhadur Khan of Bareilly, had stressed the threat posed to the populace's religions by the new education programs begun by the Company; however, historical statistics have shown that this was not generally the case. For example, in Etawah district in the then North-Western Provinces (present-day Uttar Pradesh), where during the period 1855–57, nearly 200 primary, middle-, and high-schools had been opened by the Company and tax levied on the population, relative calm prevailed and the schools remained open during the rebellion.
Social Reform
The company's education policies in the 1830s tended to reinforce existing lines of socioeconomic division in society rather than bringing general liberation from ignorance and superstition. Whereas the Hindu English-educated minority spearheaded many social and religious reforms either in direct response to government policies or in reaction to them, Muslims as a group initially failed to do so, a position they endeavored to reverse. Western-educated Hindu elites sought to rid Hinduism of its much criticized social evils: the caste system, child marriage, and sati. Religious and social activist Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), who founded the Brahmo Samaj (Society of Brahma) in 1828, displayed a readiness to synthesize themes taken from Christianity, Deism, and Indian monism, while other individuals in Bombay and Madras initiated literary and debating societies that gave them a forum for open discourse. The exemplary educational attainments and skillful use of the press by these early reformers enhanced the possibility of effecting broad reforms without compromising societal values or religious practices.
Post and Telegraph
Before 1837, the East India Company's dominions in India had no universal public postal service, one that was shared by all regions. Although courier services did exist connecting the more important towns with their respective seats of provincial government (i.e. the Presidency towns of Fort William (Calcutta), Fort St. George (Madras), and Bombay), private individuals were only sparingly allowed their use upon payment. That situation, however, changed in 1837, when, by Act XVII of that year, a public post, run by the Company's Government, was established in the Company's territory in India. Post offices were established in the principal towns and postmasters appointed. The postmasters of the Presidency towns oversaw a few Provincial post offices in addition to being responsible for the main postal services between the Provinces, whereas the District collectors (the revenue officials) directed the District post offices, including their local postal services. Postal services required payment in cash, to be made in advance, with the amount charged usually varying with weight and distance. For example, the charge of sending a letter from Calcutta to Bombay was one rupee; however, that from Calcutta to Agra was 12 annas (or three-quarter of a rupee) for each tola (three-eighths of an ounce).
Pursuant to the report of a commission appointed in 1850 to evaluate the Indian postal system, Act XVII of 1837 was superseded by the Indian Postal Act of 1854. Under its provisions, the entire postal department was headed by a Director-General, and the duties of a Postmaster-General was set apart from those of a Presidency Postmaster. Postmasters-General administered the postal system of the larger provinces (such as the Bombay Presidency or the North-Western Provinces), whereas Deputy Postmasters-General attended to the less important Provinces (such as Ajmer-Merwara and the major Political Agencies (such as Rajputana). At this time, postage stamps were introduced, and the postal rates were fixed by weight, no longer dependent also on the distance traveled in the delivery. The lowest inland letter rate was half anna for 1/4 tola, followed by one anna for 1/2 tola, and 2 annas for a tola, a great reduction from the rates of 17 years before. The Indian Post Office delivered letters, newspapers, postcards, book packets, and parcels. These deliveries grew steadily in number; by 1861 (three years after the end of Company rule), a total of 889 post offices had been opened, and almost 43 million letters and over four and a half million newspapers were being delivered annually.
Before the advent of electric telegraphy, the word "telegraph" had been used for semaphore signalling. During the period 1820–30, the East India Company's Government in India seriously considered constructing signalling towers ("telegraph" towers), each a hundred feet high and separated from the next by eight miles, along the entire distance from Calcutta to Bombay. Although such towers were built in Bengal and Bihar, the India-wide semaphore network never took off; by mid-century, electric telegraphy had become viable.
Dr. W. B. O'Shaughnessy, a Professor of Chemistry in the Calcutta Medical College, received permission in 1851 to undertake a trial run for a telegraph service from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour along the river Hooghly. During that year, four telegraph offices were also opened along the river mainly for shipping-related business. The telegraph receiver used in the trial was a galvanoscope of Dr. O'Shaughnessy's design and manufactured in India. When the experiment was deemed to be a success a year later, the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, sought permission from the Court of Directors of the Company for the construction of telegraph lines from "Calcutta to Agra, Agra to Bombay, Agra to Peshawar, and Bombay to Madras, extending in all over 3,050 miles and including forty-one offices." The permission was granted and by February 1855 all the proposed telegraph lines and been constructed and were being used to send paid messages. Dr. O'Shaughnessy's instrument was used all over India until early 1857, when it was supplanted by the Morse instrument. By 1857, the telegraph network had expanded to 4,555 miles of lines and sixty two offices, and had reached as far as the hill station of Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills and the port of Calicut on the southwest coast of India. During the Indian rebellion of 1857 over seven hundred miles of telegraph lines were destroyed by the rebel forces, mainly in the North-Western Provinces. The East India Company was nevertheless able to use the remaining intact lines to warn many outposts of impending disturbances. The political value of the new technology was, thus, driven home to the Company, and, in the following year, not only were the destroyed lines rebuilt, but the network was expanded further by 2,000 miles.
Dr. O'Shaughnessy's experimental set-up of 1851–52 consisted of both overhead and underground lines, the latter including some sections which crossed two rivers, the Hooghly and the Haldi. The overhead line was constructed by welding uninsulated iron rods, 13 1/2 feet long and 3/8 inch wide, end to end. These lines, which weighed 1,250 pounds per mile, were held aloft by fifteen-foot lengths of bamboo, planted into the ground at equal intervals—200 to the mile—and covered with a layer each of coal tar and pitch for insulation. The bamboo supports were also strengthened by teak or sal posts at approximate intervals of a furlong (one-eighths of a mile); the conducting iron rods were attached to the posts by secure iron clamps. The underground line, which was laid in Calcutta and its suburbs, used conducting rods that were similar to the overhead line, but these were now wrapped in two layers of Madras cloth that had been saturated with melted tar and pitch. The insulated line obtained in such manner was then pressed into a row of curved roofing tiles that, in turn, had been filled with melted sand and resin. The underwater cables had been manufactured in England and consisted of copper wire covered
with gutta-percha. Furthermore, in order to protect the cables from dragging ship anchors, the cables were attached to the links of a 7/8 inch thick chain cable. An underwater cable of length 2,070 yards was laid across the Hooghly river at Diamond Harbour, and another, 1,400 yards long, was laid across the Haldi at Kedgeree.
Work on the long lines from Calcutta to Peshawar (through Agra), Agra to Bombay, and Bombay to Madras began in 1853. The conducting material chosen for these lines was now lighter, and the support stronger. The wood used for the latter consisted of teak, sal, fir, ironwood, or blackwood (Terminalia elata), and was either fashioned into whole posts, or used in attachments to iron screw-piles or masonry columns.
Some lengths of line had uniformly strong support; one such was a 322-mile stretch of the Bombay-Madras line, which was supported by granite obelisks, each 16 feet high. Other sections had less secure support, consisting, in some cases of sections of toddy palm, insulated with pieces of sal wood fastened to their tops. Some of the conducting wires or rods were insulated, the insulating material being either manufactured in India or England; other sections were uninsulated. By 1856, iron tubes had begun to be employed to provide support, and would see increased use in the second half of the 19th century all over India.
The first Telegraph Act for India was the British Parliament's Act XXXIV of 1854. When the public telegram service was first set up in 1855, the charge was fixed at one rupee for every sixteen words (including the address) for every 400 miles of transmission. The charges were doubled for telegrams sent between 6PM and 6AM. These rates would remain fixed until 1882. In the year 1860–61, two years after the end of Company rule, India had 11,093 miles of telegraph lines and 145 telegraph offices. That year telegrams totaling Rs. 5 lakh in value were sent by the public, the working expense of the Indian Telegraph Department was Rs. 14 lakh, and the capital expenditure until the end of the year totaled Rs. 65 lakh.
Railways
The first inter-city railway service in England, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, had been established in 1830; in the following decade other inter-city railways were rapidly constructed in the British Isles. In 1845, the Court of Directors of the East India Company, forwarded to the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, a number of applications they had received from private contractors in England for the construction of a wide ranging railway network in India, and requested a feasibility report. They added that, in their view, the enterprise would be profitable only if large sums of money could be raised for the construction. The Court was concerned that in addition to the usual difficulties encountered in the construction of this new form of transportation, India might present some unique problems, among which they counted floods, tropical storms in coastal areas, damage by "insects and luxuriant tropical vegetation," and the difficulty of finding qualified technicians at a reasonable cost. It was suggested, therefore, that three experimental lines be constructed and their performance evaluated.
Contracts were awarded in 1849 to the East Indian Railway Company to construct a 120-mile railway from Howrah-Calcutta to Raniganj; to the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company for a service from Bombay to Kalyan, thirty miles away; and to the Madras Railway Company for a line from Madras city to Arkonam, a distance of some thirty nine miles. Although construction began first, in 1849, on the East Indian Railways line, with an outlay of £1 million, it was the first-leg of the Bombay-Kalyan line—a 21-mile stretch from Bombay to Thane—that, in 1853, was the first to be completed (see picture below).
The feasibility of a train network in India was comprehensively discussed by Lord Dalhousie in his Railway minute of 1853. The Governor-General vigorously advocated the quick and widespread introduction of railways in India, pointing to their political, social, and economic advantages. He recommended that a network of trunk lines be first constructed connecting the inland regions of each presidency with its chief port as well as each presidency with several others. His recommended trunk lines included the following ones: (i) from Calcutta, in the Bengal Presidency, on the eastern coast to Lahore in the north-western region of the Punjab, annexed just three years before; (ii) from Agra in north-central India (in, what was still being called North-Western Provinces) to Bombay city on the western coast; (iii) from Bombay to Madras city on the southeastern coast; and (iv) from Madras to the southwestern Malabar coast (see map below). The proposal was soon accepted by the Court of Directors.
During this time work had been proceeding on the experimental lines as well. The first leg of the East Indian Railway line, a broad gauge railway, from Howrah to Pandua, was opened in 1854 (see picture of locomotive below), and the entire line up to Raniganj would become functional by the time of the Indian rebellion of 1857. The Great Indian Peninsular Railway was permitted to extend its experimental line to Poona. This extension required planning for the steep rise in the Bor Ghat valley in the Western Ghats, a section 15 3/4 miles long with an ascent of 1,831 feet. Construction began in 1856 and was completed in 1863, and, in the end, the line required a total of twenty five tunnels and fifteen miles of gradients (inclines) of 1 in 50 or steeper, the most extreme being the Bor Ghat Incline, a distance of 1 3/4 miles at a gradient of 1 in 37 (see picture below).
Each of the three companies (and later five others that were given contracts in 1859) was joint stock company domiciled in England with its financial capital raised in pound sterling. Each company was guaranteed a 5 per cent return on its capital outlay and, in addition, a share of half the profits. Although the Government of India had no capital expenditure other than the provision of the underlying land free of charge, it had the onus of continuing to provide the 5 percent return in the event of net loss, and soon all anticipation of profits would fall by the wayside as the outlays would mount.
The technology of railway construction was still new and there was no railway engineering expertise in India; consequently, all engineers had to be brought in from England. These engineers were unfamiliar not only with the language and culture of India, but also with the physical aspect of the land itself and its concomitant engineering requirements. Moreover, never before had such a large and complex construction project been undertaken in India, and no pool of semi-skilled labour was already organized to aid the engineers. The work, therefore, proceeded in fits and starts—many practical trials followed by a final construction that was undertaken with great caution and care—producing an outcome that was later criticized as being "built to a standard which was far in excess of the needs to the time." The Government of India's administrators, moreover, made up in their attention to the fine details of expenditure and management what they lacked in professional expertise. The resulting delays soon led to the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons in 1857–58 to investigate the matter. However, by the time the Committee concluded that all parties needed to honour the spirit rather than the letter of the contracts, Company rule in India had ended.
Although, railway construction had barely begun in the last years of this rule, its foundations had been laid, and it would proceed apace for much of the next half century. By the turn of the 20th century, India would have over 28,000 miles of railways connecting most interior regions to the ports of Karachi, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Chittagong, and Rangoon, and together they would constitute the fourth-largest railway network in the world.
Canals
Some of the first irrigation works completed during the period of Company rule, consisted of extensions or reinforcements of previous works of Indian rulers. One such example was a small dam across the Godavari river, which was built over 1,500 years ago, and had come to be known as the Great Anicut. In 1835–36, Sir Arthur Cotton supervised an effort to reinforce the dam. The successful outcome, prompted him to put forward a scheme for other irrigation projects on the Godavari. Similarly the Vijayanagara ruler, Krishna Deva Raya, had constructed some weirs on the Tungabhadra river in the 16th century. These works too would be extended under British administration.
In the mid-14th century, Firoz Shah Tughlaq, the Sultan of Delhi, had constructed a 150 mile long canal, the Western Jamuna Canal, which took off from the right bank of the Jumna river early in its course, and irrigated the Sultan's territories in the Hissar region of Eastern Punjab. However, by the mid-sixteenth century, the fine sediment carried by the Himalayan river had gradually choked the flow. The canal was desilted and reopened during the reign of Akbar the Great; later, some of its water was diverted to Delhi during the reign of his grandson Shah Jahan. At this time the Eastern Jamuna Canal or Doab Canal was also constructed. This canal took off from the left bank of the Jamna, also high in its course. However, because of the steep slope of the land through which the canal was cut, it difficult to control the canal's flow, and it was never tp function efficiently. With the decline of Mughal power in the eighteenth century, both canals fell into disrepair and closed.
In Punjab, a smaller canal, the Hasli Canal, had been constructed by previous rulers; this left-bank canal took off from the Ravi river and supplied water to the cities of Lahore and Amritsar. The canal would later be extended by the British in the Bari Doab Canal works. More rudimentary irrigation, such as by "inundation canals," consisting of open cuts on the side of a river and involving no regulation, had been used in both the Punjab and Sind for many centuries. As a result of the energetic
administrations of the Sikh and Pathan governors of Mughal West Punjab, many such canals in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Muzaffargarh were still working efficiently at the time of the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849.
See also
The History of British India
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