British Tools Of Expansion: War And Diplomacy

Only the British and French East India companies remained dominant by the beginning of the 18th century, out of all the European East India companies that came to India as traders in various periods of the 15th and 16th centuries. The fortunes of the then-mighty Mughal Empire began to wane in the first decade of the 18th century, and a number of successor states, regional powers, and country powers arose in various parts of India. After recognising the weakness of the then-country powers, the two European trading companies decided to make sincere efforts to become a strong political force and to expand and consolidate their sway in India. European trading companies established factories along the western, eastern, and southern coasts, extending their influence into the Indian subcontinent's mainland territories in the process. Using the tools of war and diplomacy, the British expanded and consolidated their influence over a one-hundred-year period, from 1757 to 1857. 

 

“Darkness settled on the face of the land, then the weighing scales in the merchant's hand changed into the imperial sceptre,” Rabindra Nath Tagore put it poetically. 

 

The Carnatic Wars, the Battles of Plassey and Buxar, the Anglo-Mysore and Anglo-Maratha Wars, the Anglo-Sikh Wars, and so on were all fought by the British. They did, however, use diplomatic tools to achieve their goals in India.

 

1.    Wellesley's subsidiary alliance

2.    Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse.

 

•    Aside from being a weapon of war, the British East India Company, like a ravenous wolf, was eager to use any means at its disposal to expand its territorial holdings in India.

 

•    Subsidiary Alliance is one of these methods. This policy was vigorously implemented for the company's benefit by Wellesley, the Governor General of Bengal. Though Wellesley is associated with Subsidiary Alliance, Dupleix, the French Governor, was the author and originator. It was created and implemented by Dupleix, and it was later adopted by the British, from Clive to Wellesley.

 

•    In the evolution of this system, Alfred Lyall notices four stages.

 

a.    The British East India Company supplied weapons and armies to the native rulers in the first stage, as evidenced by the supply of arms and armies to the Nawab of Avadh against Rohillas during Warren Hastings' reign. 

 

b.    The British, with the help of the native ruler, took the field in the second stage.

 

c.    In the third stage, the British demanded money from the native ruler for the upkeep of a separate army for the defence of the state, as in the case of Oudh in 1797.

 

d.    The British agreed to maintain a permanent and fixed subsidiary force within the territory of their ally in exchange for a payment or the permanent ceding of certain territory to the British in the fourth stage. 

 

•    Furthermore, Wellesley's Subsidiary Alliance system required the ally to keep a British Resident in the native ruler's court, not to employ any other European nationals in this service, and not to maintain relations with any other native ruler without the British's prior approval. The British agreed to defend such allies' territory against foreign aggression and not to interfere in the internal affairs of native allies who joined the alliance.

 

•    A critical examination of this policy reveals that it is beneficial to the British while being detrimental to the native ruler.

 

•    The policy was designed to serve the main interest of the British East India Company, which was to expand its hold in new territories of its allies without spending money from its coffers and to make these allies dependent on the British East India Company.

 

•    The policy of the Doctrine of Lapse was associated with Dalhousie, the last of the Company's Governors General at the time. Dalhousie used this policy to annexe native states like Satara, Nagpur, Jhansi, Jaitpur, and Sambhalpur. 

 

•    The British Governor General Dalhousie annexed the above native states to the British Empire in India by denying the right of adoption to a Hindu native state as legitimate. Because his annexationist policy based on the Doctrine of Lapse has no legal, moral, or expediency justification, his policy resulted in a political upheaval that threatened to destroy the solid foundations of the Company's rule in India in 1857.

 

•    The British East India Company expanded its influence beyond India, to Sri Lanka in the south, Mauritius in the south-west, Afghanistan in the north-west, Nepal in the north, and the Andamans and Nicobar Islands, Burma, Malaya, and the Philippines in the south-east.

 

•    It can be said without reservation that England became the dominant power in South Asia and Asian lands on the Indian Ocean primarily at the expense of India, by using Indian sepoys as cannon fodder and draining the Indian treasury through unnecessary wars and diplomacy.