The Untold Story of Hicky's Bengal Gazette: Scandal, Blackmail and Corruption in Old Calcutta

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The Untold Story of India's First Newspaper

Andrew Otis

Madras: Westland Publications Private Ltd, 2018.

The History of the print media is an exiting field of research thanks to the pioneering works of Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton. Like Elizabeth Eisenstein who emphasized the revolutionary character of print as a medium that brought about a fundamental transformation  in society, both the historians mentioned studied the impact of print by analyzing the social groups which patronized the mass produced chap books, almanacs, and other uses of print. Darnton set his eyes on the great project of the eighteenth century, the publication of Diderot's Encyclopedia. Andrew Otis has a more humble quarry. He has studied the Bengal Gazette, a Newspaper which was started by James Augustus Hicky in Calcutta in 1780. The book is an exploration of the trials and tribulations faced by Hicky as he took on the powerful Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, 

Printing began in India in the tiny coastal village of Tranquebar in 1714  when Prussian missionaries from Halle established a printing press as support to carry out their evangelical activities. The troubles that Hicky faced in Calcutta stemmed from one Protestant missionary from Tranquebar who set up shop in Cuddalore and then moved to Calcutta, Johann Zacharias Kiernander who was seconded to India by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge according to Hicky was more interested in making money and he accused him of systematically defrauding the Society. Not content with his broadsides against the missionary, Hicky carried out a campaign against Warren Hastings accusing him of corruption and using the Chief Justice of the Sadr Adalat Eliah Impey as his accomplice, in extortion, corruption in Military Contracts and plain thuggery that will perhaps shame even an Indian politician today. Hicky was particularly savage in his attacks on Hasting regarding his war against the Rohillas which was waged for the sole purpose of seizing the wealth of the "Begums of Oudh", the grand dames of Awadh. Hicky compared Warren Hastings with Clive, his predecessor and obviously even Warren Hastings was not amused.

Both Kiermnader and Hastings brought charges of libel against Hicky and in spite of the Jury finding Hicky not guilty of most of the serious charges, he was sent to prison, making him the first martyr for the Independence of the Press. The four years that he spent in Jail weakened his health, drained his resources and impoverished his family. in 1799 Hicky died on his way to China and was buried at sea, off the coast of Malacca.

The book is written in a highly readable style and there is no attempt at painting heroes and villains and this is welcome. Warren Hastings was recalled as the news of his egregious corruption reached the House of Commons and the main articles of impeachment wer drawn up by Edmund Burke on the basis of Hicky's scathing attacks: the illegal execution of Nanda Coomar, the Poolbandy Army Contracts, the Affair of the Begums of Awadh being the most noteworthy. After a trial that lasted nearly 8 long years, and 5 changes in the British Government, Wrren Hastings was acquitted.

As a contribution to the history of the East India Company, the book is not of any importance. However, the life of Hicky as he took on the powerful officers of the East India Company is of great importance. In a foreign land, Hicky tried in vain as it turned out in his lifetime, to establish the Freedom of the Press. He refused to divulge the names of his sources, a strategy he could have used to deflect the charges of libel on to his informants. And for this adherence to principle we need to remember Hicky. The records of his trial by sheer happenstance have survived and I am sure that it will attract greater attention. 

Puritans and Royalists in seventeenth century Madras: The Sir Edward Winter Coup 1665

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The Company Building in Fort St. George

Old Madras was turbulent. The coup against Lord George Pigot in 1776 was preceded nearly a century earlier by an extraordinary set  of events whose place in the history of Old Madras has not been appreciated or understood. They seem to defy understanding and interpretation. The East India Copany has had an implacable record of "good goverance" in that its employees did not usurp the authority of the "Government" and stray beyon the limits of the Charter governing its corporate structure. Yet in the decades following the estblishment of fort St George we find a series of events unfolding, which even in hind sight defy comprehension. In this essay we deal with one such event.

Sir Edward Winter was Governor of Fort St George twice: 1661 to 1665 by right and from 1665 to 1688 by usurpation and force. This event remains singularly difficult for historians to understand as records are few and the protagonists of the unseemly sequence of events were less than savory. Sir Edward Winter was partonizing a set of Cloth Merchants whose names are, Timanna and Verona Kasi. It was the system of arbitrary purchase that Pitt tried to stop by allowing the merchants to bring their wares directly to the Sea Gate Market for sales. This system essentially by passed vested interests and made he procurement more transparent. And we have already witnessed the back lash in the form of Left and Right hand castes, in an earlier blog. These two Chief Merchants close to Edward Winter were given the authority to buy cloth on behalf of the company and these two in turn outsourced the contract to 16 weavers thereby making enormous profits and obviously Winter and his two agents became enormously wealthy. The East India company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was an elaborate set of intricate relationships that nested between social grioups, individual ties of clientelle and professional associations. While prosopographical details do suggest such a pattern in London, the same is the case in George Town and research into this aspect has not yet begun. When compaints about these two particular merchants reached London and suspicions of rent seeking and corrupt dealings were made public, the Company decided to recall Sir Edward Winter and replace him with George Foxcroft. Foxcroft had faught in the armies of Oliver Cromwell and perhaps carried his Puritan ideology with him.

The time line against which the events in Madras played themselves out is significant. The Civil War had ended with the beheading of Charles I on January 30, 1649, the short lived experiment of God's Englishman, Oliver Cromwell had ended and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 was mere five years in the past. John Milton another Puritan said: What stirs as Englishman sooner to rebellion is violent heavy hands upon their goods and purses". Foxcroft had set out from England with explicit orders to curtail the notorious Private Trade carried out by Interlopers and he was even authorised to seize them and consficicate their goods. And from the records it appears he intended to do just that and men like Sir Edward Winter were obviously going to be hard hit. In fact the Company sent out Nicholas Buckeridge to investigate Sir Edward Winter and his trading activities. However, nothing came of this venture as Buckeridge hmself was guilty of similar misconduct both at Surat and Persia, So the Inquiry was discretely scuttled. A sign of weakness that Sir Edward Winter did not hesitate to exploit.

If George Foxcroft was a Leveller, Edward Winter was a Royalists and given the charged political climate, a Puritan Governor and a Royalist second in command would find the going tough. A peculiar decision taken by the Board was to retain Sir Edward Winter as the Second in Council which essentially made him, a former Governor, as powerful as the incumbent one. What happened in Fort St George within the span of three short months is not quite clear. A clear factional division solidified in the Council which consisted of William Blake, William Jearsey, Charles Proby, John Neclaks, and Jeremy Sambrooke with Winter as Second in Council. In addition there was another man whose role even in death was significant, William Dawes. This Dawes was the husband of Ascentia Dawes whose murder of an Indian woman was one of the first trial by jury brought before the Mayor's Court and in the previous essay on the Mayor's Court we dealt with this issue. An interesting set of men on a collision course is how we can see the train of events as they unfolded.

The early chronicler, John Bruce saw the conflict in terms of personality traits: the intemperance of Sir Edward Winter and the imprudence of Mr Foxcroft were driving the conflict. The immediate provocation was an exchange of words between Winter and Nathaniel Foxcroft the son of the Governor and an appointed Factor of the company. He declared much to the chagrin of the Royalists assembled around the Company Table that no King had any right to the Throne except that confirmed by might. This innocuous statement contained within it the gist of the political philosophy of the Levellers and as Christopher Hill has argued Levellers rejected Monarchy as unChristian. And Nathaniel went on to add that private interest superceded the interests of the Sovereign. Taking exception to these or rather using these statments as the pretext, Sir Edward Winter on September 14, 1665 Edward Winter along with his conspirators Fransis Chuseman, the Commander of the Guards,attacked George Foxcroft and the Council when a Meeting was in progress. In the melee William Dawes was killed Foxcroft wounded and the regime of the duly appointed Governor was over. Sir Edwars Winter ordered that Foxcroft and his son be arrested and they were cofined, perhaps in the building that I have shown.

Immediately after this bloody Coup, Sir REdward Winter wrote a long letter and curiously enough he directed the letter to the King and the Archbishop and cleverly insinuated that he acted in defence of King and Church. His strategy succeeded as for over three years he remained the Governor and only when rumours began circulating that he was in correspondence with the Dutch in Ceylon for handing over the Fort that the Company acted and sent a fleet of five ships to remove Winter and reinstate Foxcroft.

This episode clearly demonstrates what we have been arguing throughout that the Company in the Asian world was riven with factional and political rivalries that often erupted into open confrontation and this trend is again seen a century later when Lord George Pigot was deposed.

John Bruce: From Armagon to Madras Historical Explanation and Realities

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The East India Company, for all its notoriety, well deserved or imputed by the hind sight of History, was indeed a global trading organization with the capability to raise Capital, outfit ships and undertake perilous voyages across the world in quest of pepper, cloves and other condiment. Sitting in their palatial rooms in Leadenhall Street the Directors lorded over a large maritme empire beset with all the problems that commercial enterprises face: supply chain impedimants, rivals in competition, local adventurers out to make a quick killing, political instability and a host of other challenges. From 1600 when the Company was chartered by Queen Elizaben to 1708 when the united Company was formed to the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 was charecterized by momentous events that needed a faithful chronicler and for the first phase of its History, the Company found one in John Bruce (1745-1826).

Headquarters of the East India Company, London

John Bruce along with Rober Orme were the only two official Historiographers of the East India Company. Both were Scots and both were appointed by Henry Dundas, the Earl of Melville, the unofficial Tsar of "india Interests."Henry Dundas has been accused f favoring his fellow Scots in app  political conflicts over the Constitution, Conduct and Character of the East India Company. And the influence of Adam Smith in the field of Political Economy added intellectual strength to the crtics of the Company who wanted the East India Company to be stripped of its trede privileges, particularly the monopoly over the India Trade. And with Lord Macartney.s visit to China, the trade over China as well. To deal with the political, leagal and commercial challenges, Henry Dundas created the Office of the Historiographer whose job was to provide public defenses of Company Conduct and Character as demanded from time to time. John Bruce did his job in an admirable fashion and his work is still worth reading. His prose is rather poor while his subordiante at Leadenhall, Charles Lamb was certainly a superb essayist, Bruce wrote a heavy turgid bureaucratic prose but regnant with facts and details which makes his Annals of the Honourable East India Company published in 1810 valuable. He had at his disposal two assets:Lemon, his assistant and a veritable treasure trove of primary records under his custody. And from the sources under his custody John Bruce created a narrtive that stretched from the creation of the East India Company to the merger of the London Merchant company in 1708 and beyond almost till the Battle of Plassey, 1757.

The Board Room

The character of the East India Company bafflesd contemporaries even as it continues to facinate contemporaries. Was it a "sovereign" power? Was it a Military Power? Was it an exclusive trading Power with monopoly over the most lucrative market of the contemporary world, India? And so on. The Annals is as its name suggests, an annual yearly record of the "transactions" of the  Company both at the London end as well as the commercial end'. Based on the Reports sent to the Headquarters and the Correspondence with the factors of the Company John Bruce strings his narrative along. A minute eye for detail makes the Annals a fascinating work. My question here is simple: How does John Bruce account for the establishment of Madras. What context does he give for the momentous decision and how does he explain the shifys in Company strategies and policies towards India in general and the Coromandl coast in particular.

A feature of John Bruce's metodology is to place that East India Company squarely in a global context, a Wheels of Commerce method in the early nineteenth century. The earliest settlement of the Company was the Presidency of Surat which commanded the trade of India and even sought to enter Persia. Here the Company faced local hostility in spite of the favorable response from the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, opposition from the Dutch and resistance from the Portuguese. Hormuz held by the Portuguese wa the prize both sought. The polical climate not being conducive toward English interests, the Company established a second settlement in Masulipattinam in 1614' Once again ill luck followed the Company as the local Nayaka who was favorably disposed towards the East India Company was defeated by the Sultan of Golconda. The reason for the shift to the West coast as we can glean from the Records provided by John Bruce is clear: the callioe of the East coast had a market in Bantam, Sumatra and that invstment alone could finance the acquisition of Spices without the need for the outflow of any bullion from the Cmpany. The Dutch, in spite of the alliance in Europe through the Treaty of 1619 were in no mood to accomodate English interests and in 1623 the Amboyna Massacre made the situation difficult for the Company which had to fall back on the Coromandel Coast. With Masulipatinam abandoned, the Company set up another settlement in Armagon but here again difficulties in procuring the trading commodities prevented the Company from establishing itself. The Raja of Tanjore offered a site but bythenFrancis Day and Cogan had identifed Madras and in 1639 the Company formally took possession of the strip of Coastline on which they built the Fort later called Fort St. George.

John Bruce in spite of the distance and lack of documents embodying diverse perspectives constructed a good account of the vissistitudes of fortunes.

Lord George Pigot, the Nawab of Arcot and the Pillage of the South India PART I

i

Lord George Pigot (1719-1777)

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PART I

There is a curious episode in the History of Old Madras that still remains a mystery. The death of a Governor of the Presidency, at the hands of his jailors who happened to be members of his own Council. Historians have neglecte this event largely because they felt that the events surrounding the deposition and subsequent death of George Pigot is so murky that it is best left to linger in that NeverNever Lnad between Hstorical Reality and imagination, The perpetrators would have gotten away with the crime but for the fact that the Governor's brother Sir Hugh Pigot, who comanded the British Forces at Bumker Hill, was a Member of the Hous of Commons and demanded a trial of all those connected or associated with the removal of the Governor. Sir Hugh Pigot was supported by Edmund Burke, the great Stateman of  the eighteenth century. The trial of George Straton anf John Call the two main conspirators was presided over by the Jusrist whose name is remembered till this day for the Judgement he gave in the Somersett Case: Lord Mansfield. Though they were tried for the capital offence of murder, they were acquitted of the charge of murder but were convicted of other henious offences and were ade to pay 1000 punds to the famiy of Lord Pigot.

Pondicherry after capture by the EIC

George Pigot came to India as a young lad of 17 and worked his way from the lowly position of a writer to the position of Governor of Madras Presidency. He served in madras and in Fort St, David and by all accounts he was an efficient administrator. From 1776 till his elevation to the Governorship of the Presidency, Pigot organized the "warehousing" ie, the manufacture and acqusition of Cloth and their coleection in the warehouses of the Comapany located in Fort St, George. Apart from textiles and other kinds of merchandise, Pigot was also involved in military duties as he had command over both Tamil and Portuguese having spent almost his entire adult life in this region. He became the Governor in 1755 and the first major challenge he face was the invasion of Dupliex, the French Governor of Pondicherry. He defended the city of Madras and took the battle right to the door step of Dupliex when he ordered Sir Eyre Coote to capture Pondicherry. The town was captured and raised to the ground. A contemporary print shows the total destruction of the town. The fortification walls first erected in 1654 by the Dutch were pulled down and the East India Company had planned to keep Pondicherry. However, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle forced the Company to return the town.

The Carnatic Wars caused huge loss of life and property in the region and essentially had three major protagonists: The Nawab of Arcot, the infamus Mohammad Ali, the Ruler of Mysore, first Hyder Ali and later his son, Tipu Sultan and the East India Company. Hoewever a large number of mnor actor crowded the stage and one of them was Tulaji the King of Tanavur and a host of smaller rulers who are known as Palaiyakkararars of Polygars, particularly in the dry region of the extrme south of the Peninsula where the name Kattaboman still resonates. The East India Company, at least at this point in time, preferred to clock its territorial and political claims behind a fascade of legitimacy derived from the pre British political order and hence the Nawab of Carnatic as the representative of the Nizam who in turn was an appointee of the Mugh ruler of Delhi, was vital to the designs and ambitions of the Company.

(Will be continued in Part II)

The Redoubt at Egmore: Possible Location and History

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1733 Map of Madras showing the Egmore Redoubt

Redoubt Pic Story of Madras

The Map given on the left is an important histoical document in that it gives us on overview of what Madras looked like in the first quarter of the eighteeenth century. More importantly, it illustrates the exact location of the Egmore Redoubt: the square bounded area outside the dark boundary lines towards the left top corner of the map. This Map was apparentlydone during the Governorship of Pitt when Madras underwent dramatic expansion. Right below we have the only surviving illustration of theEgmore Redoubt. The location geneally identified with the Redoubt is the Egmore Railway Station on theGandhi Irwin Road, opposite the Archives. This identification which was suggeted by Professor Srinivasachari in his "Place Names Of Madras"which he published in 1936 in the volume of essay commemoration the 300 years of the foundation of the City in 1636.

The identification seems to be slightly off the mark because there are historical documents that when sifted carefully give us a better site.

The location of the Redoubt was outside of the Bounded Hedges that surrounded the East India Company's self procalimed limits of its possessions. There was a Choultry in the place where the Redouby was constructed. And the purpose was strictly military. If we keep these factors in mind we get a better understanding of the location. The documents sate clearly that the Redoubt will have a brick wall around the Choultry in order to lodge such "forces as we shall send to defend peace". While there were frequent skirmishes with Dawood Khan, Mafuz Khan and even on ocassion with the Portuguese, the English faced only one serious contender, the French located in Pondicherry.And the defence of Madras implied guardingthe access points to the City. The obvious attacks from the sea were warded off as Love points out in his Vestiges of Old Madras by strengthening the Sea Gate with heavy weapons. And popular memory has it that the Fortification Walls were constructed with money collected from the Residents of the Black Town, that is the indigenous people and hence the name Wall Tax Road, The attaks on Madras by Dadood Khan prompted Thomas Pitt, whose granson was to become the Prime Minister of England, to seriously consider the issue of defenses.Kanchipuram and and Poonamalee were importantl towns frequently attacked by the Maharattas who controlled the Fort of Ginji and Vellore. Adding to the owes of the East India Company were polegars like Lingappa who commanded considerble armed following in the vicinity of Madras and preyed upon the trade and mechaindise passing through the area. It was during the invasion of the French under Count de Lally that we hear of the military role of the Egmore Redoubt.

The Consultations of the Governor in Council of the year 1710 state that a sum of 350 pagodas was sanctioned for the maintenance of the Choultry clearly a recognition that it was a useful asset. However the location of the Choultry in Egmore presented some thorny issues. Did East India Company have jurisdiction over thie area. Dawood Khan claerly a most colorful figure in the history of the time one one of his visits to Madras with the sole purpose of cadging liquor from the Governor, remarked that if the English came to trade why did they need fortifications, guns and cannon. A question that the Governor parried. By July 1711 a furter 563pagodas was spent in strngthening the Choultry and making it a Redoubt, a masonary fort.Apart from naking it a fort, the Company decided to build a Powder Mill in the same locaton. The reason recorded in the Consultations for the Year 1711 is the poor quality of gun powder available and the erratic supply from Europe which was involved in its usual seasonal conflicts. Brohiers was put in charge f the Powder Mill which was located within the Redoubt. By 1713 a total of 5060 pagodas had been expended on the Fortifications and th Powder Mill. The Redoubt had a dual purpose: to hold the Choultry Plains and was a Signal Post to alert the forces atFort St. George should an Army or Cavalry be seen. If these aspects are kept in mind it is clear that the location at the Egmore Station would have been quite futile to its stated purposes.

We have some other cluse about the location of the Egmore Redoubt in Robert Orme's Military Transactions of the British Nation in Hindustan. Wrting about the defense of Madras by Col Lawrence during the invasion of Lally he sates that the Choultry Plain extends two miles west of the Enclosures which bound St Thomas Mount and this plain extends right up to Mylapore. There is a reference to Chindradipettah as being close to the Redoubt and this is obviously a weaving village, chinna tari pettai. And there is a settlement by that name close to where we have located theRedoubt.

The Choultry Plain consisisted of (1) Puddupakkam (2) Chindradripet (3) Roypettah (4) Nungambakkam (5) Triplicane. Egmore itself came under the shifting sands of competing claims and various warlords of the time lid claim to it. The claim was finally setteld when Egmore was acquired by the Comapny.

Given these factors, and the location of the Redoubt given in the Map it appears that the location was much further west from where Srinivasachari located it.

  (This is only a tentative identification as this Historian has not had the opportunity of traveling to Madras and making an on the spot assessment)

Charles Umpherston Aitchison Administrator, Diplomat Historian (1832-1896)

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The Victorian Age was replete with monumental historical projects like the History of the Parliament, Calendar of State Papers, Victoria History of the Counties of England and witnessed prodigious publication of Historical records. Stubbs and Maitland were keen investigators of Anglo Saxon political institutions, particularly in the two centuries following the Norman Conquest in 1066 AD. In India too the British adopted a similar policy either to fends off challenges to their regime in the post Mutiny era when India was taken over by the Crown or as a intervention in preservation of Historical Documents and this project is associated with Charles Umpherston Aitchison. He was the Foreign Secretary of India, the first "President" of the Public Service Commission, the precurson of the UPSC and he was appointed to the Covenanted Civil Service soon after the Compettitive examinations were introduced and so was a pioneering competition wallah. Apart from these disctinctions, he was also the Lt. Governor of the Punjab and was closely associated with Sir John Lawrence.

C U Aitchisons

Charles Umperston Aitchison was born in Scotland in 1832 and was educated in the University of Edinburgh like the others we have studied in this series: William Roxburgh. He graduated with a Masters' degree in what was then quaintly described as Moral Philosophy and he was the only candidate selected from Scotland for appointment in the Covenenated Civil Srvice in India. His first appointment was inHissar in May 1857 but was providentially transferred to the Punjab and hence escaped the massacre that followed the Mutiny in May 1857, He was in Lahore when the Mutiny began. After the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, Aitchison was sent to Calcutta where he worked as an Under Secretary in the "Political Department".

The Mutiny was a turning point in Indian History in that it represented a significant movement towards national aspiration, although in an incohate fashion. For the English it was a moment of reckoning in that the violence that they had seen expereinced at the hands of their beloved "natives" was on a scale that shook the foundations of the political order that bound India to England or Great Britain as it styled itself then. And it is here that the work of C U Aitchison is reembered.

Historians have seen the rise of the East India Company to politcal and military power as a consequence of the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Treaty of Allahabad signed in 1765 merely ratified an pre existing reality. But in the "Narrative" part of his XIII volume Treaties, Sanads and Engagemets, a different and more sophisticated understanding of the process of territorial conquest of India is developed. We can call that process: Conquest by Treaty. Nearly 2500 individual documents are found over the XIII volumes that for some strange reason continued to be published under the editorship of C U Aitchison even after his death. The conflict between Paramountcy and So vereignty  lay at  the heart of this gigantic venture. Was the status of the East India Company in India until its takeover by the Crown in 1858 that of a Sovereign or the Paramount Power. The East India Company like any corporate body derived its charter to trade from the English Parliament but by the middle of the eighteenth century had transformed itself into a major political and military power largely on the strength of its huge land army and deft diplomacy. And the net result were Treaties which were signed by the Company with major political powers of the indigenous people like the Nizam, the State of Mysore, the states of Rajputana, the states of Central India etc. In most of these cases the Subsidiary Alliance from the time of Warren Hastings meant the accptance of a "Resident" and a detachment of Company forces which were o be maintined by the states in hih they were deployed.  Sannads were of a different order. They were documents issued by the Paramount Power in reply to or in response to an existing situation or dispute on the ground. The right of succession to the Gaddi was usually recognized through the grant of a sannad bearing the seal and signature of the Company. Engagments is a dubious category. Salt manufature, fishing and custom duties, forest grazing rights, native customs and practices were all governemed by the term Engagement. The English Administration both during the reign of the Company and the Viceroys communicated with "Native Chiefs" through the Political Department and it raises the question whether the Administartion then considered Natice chiefs to be "sovereign" entities. This question also has bearing on the later political history of India in that when the Transfer of Power took place in 1947 all the 616 entities that constituted the fabric of India became at one fell stroke "Independent"'.

C U Aitchison collected the documents which were widely dispersed in various territories and offices of the then regime and published them in order to demonstrate the legal validity of English authority to govern. The English Administration was particular that they nested and varying degrees of Sovereignty did not clash with the authority to governern India. And the Administration was based on consent in the strictly political sense in that it rested on the Treaty signed between the Native States and Princely States. The latter was a category that emerged only after the 1911 Durbar.

In the late nineteenth century, a major shift took place in the strategic thought that influenced the British policy in India. The security of India resided not only in the capability of defence on land but also the ability to intervene in the wide maritime worls stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Straits of Mlacca, a vision most eloquently articulated in Lord Curzon's celebated Address to the Royal Geographical Society, London and a vision whose wisdom in only now being understood after 70 years of neglect. Hence the Engagments with the Sultans of the decaying Ottoman Empire on the Gulf were brought into the imperial horizon: Muscat, Aden, Zanzibar and host og Arab sultans signed agreements including the Emir of Kuwait, a document they used to demonstrate their Independence when Saddam Hussein invaded the territory.

C U Aitchison was appointed President f the Public Service Commission in 1886 and he reccomended the establishment of the Imperial Civil Service, the nomenclature of which was changed to the IndianCivil Service. He also took interest in establishing educational insitutions in the Punab and the Aitchison College in Lahore is a good example. Upon his return to England he was created Knight Commander of the Star of India and he died in 1896.

Indian diplomats who have to answer challenges from a vaiety of different sources have to dpend heavily on Sir Aitchison's monumnetal work including the challege over Sir Creek.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade: Roxburgh and the Royal Botanical Garden Calcutta

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PART III

Wiki Commons Roxburg Mansion Howrah

After the terrible diasater faced by William Roxburgh, he was called upon to the Superindendent of the newly established Botanical Garden at Calcutta. His great work on Indian flora, Flora Indica was undertaken here and was published by the Serampore Baptist Press under the stewartsip of William Carey.The influence of the Linnean System of Taxonomy and Nomenclature is embodied in this work' William Roxburgh took charge of the Botanical Garden in 1793 and in his first stint remained till 1797 wnen he returned to England to regain his health.In October 1799 he returned to Calcutta and remained in India till 1805 and left for his native Scotland in 1805 after spending a few months at St. Helena, the Company Island.In 1813 he left India for good to settle in Scotland. At the time of his depature he left his botanical collection and the Manuscripts of his Flora Indica with Carey anf they formed the basis of the two major publications of william Roxburgh: Hortus Bengalensis, a catalogue of plants in the botanical Garden and Flora Indica the outstanding classica work on Indian plants which till this day is regarded as the starting point of Indian Botany.

One of the first taks that he accomplished at Calcutta was the construction of hie Residence and Herbarium that also housed his Library, With the help of his extensive network of collaborators strewn all over the World, Roxburgh was able to bud up a good library of Botanical works, thereby replacing the one that he lost at Samalkotta.Roxburgh was particularly interested in commercial plants like Cotton and Indigo which would enable the East India Company increase its profits. Though he was not a founding member of the Asiatic Society of India which was created by Sir William Jones in 1784, Roxburgh publihed many of his researches in the Journal of the Asiatic Society and in Asiatik Researches. It has become fashinable for historians of Science writing under the pernecious shadow of Saidian, Foucouldian and Post Colonial theories to argue that such scientific enterprises as for instance the one presided over by Roxburgh or that of his contemporary Colin Makenzie were in reality elaborated trophies of power and Imperial Domination. The  argument being that Empire seeks to classify,rationalise, and ultimately appropriate the local knowledge in order ro subserve imperial ends. Joseph Banks and William Roxburgh are viewed as marionettes on a stage pre determined by economic and technological actors. Such an approach to History is both teleological and deterministic and denies the agency of human actors involved. The work undertaken by men uch as these must be seen in the light of their own acions and perceptions within an overarching framework provided by the East India Company.

When Robert Kyd left the botanical garden, there were only around 335 species of plants, trees and ferns in the Royal Botanical Garden. When Roxburgh retired after serving the Garden for nearly two decades the number had passed 3335 species. A  number of plants were introduced from China, South East Asia especially the Mlay Peninsula, West Indies, Canary Island, St Helena. Effort was made to introduce Mahogony and the Garden still has the trees planted by Roxbergh and as if by mircale survived the recent Cyclone Anpham. SriLanka, Bhutan, Andaman Islands were some of the other places from where plants were secured. The logic behind such exchanges was the pesrvation of seed and plant types so that a better understanding of nature could be obtined. Al this, of course, was predicated on the pious assumption that by careful study the Garden of Eden could be recreated here on Earth.

Of great interest was Sugar to the early pioneers. The politics of the East India Company collided head on with that of the entrenched Sugar lobby in the House of Commons who wee represntative of the West Indies Sugar interests who used African Slave labour to grow their commercial crop. The American War of Independence and the problems in the Aylantic in the early nineteenth century gave Indian sugar some respite and India started exporting Sugar by the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, Another issue that the Company faced was the drain of silver caused b the voracious demand fro Tea in England. The trade with China was financed by the export of Silver and until the Company hit upon Opium and forced it upon the Chinese from 1832 onwards, effort was made to grow Tea in India. Ut was Roxburgh who got 272 tea cuttings from Canton and tried to acclamatize Ta to Indian conditions.

The lasting contibution of William Roxburgh lay i his Plants of the Coromandel and Flora Indica. 
Another commercial crop in which Roxburgh showed great interest was Hemp which was used in packing and cordage. In the 310 acres that constituted the Botanical Garden, a part was dedicated exclusively to commercial crops and it may not be out of palce to point out that Rxburgh was the founder of Plant Research in India.

William Roxburgh died in 1815 but his name lives on.

William Roxburgh and Indian Botany Plants Empire and Trade

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

William Roxburgh

The Scottsh Enlightenment had a profound impact on India and historians have failed to study the impact of the intellectual movement that emerged as a consequence of the Act of Union, 1707. I have been studying a number of Scots who worked in India during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; Mark Wilks, Colin Mackenzie, and am now beginning a more detailed study of William Roxburgh. My work on Col Mark Wilks has been cited in the latest English Historical Review and have worked earlier on Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India. I now hope to write a longer work on the Scottish Nation in India and its contribution to the understanding of India, it History, Literature and the Natural World. Obviously an Intllectual History of the sort we propose sits uncomfortably with the modern notions of post colonial study which negates the very idea that the past is accessible to human knowledge and is open to truthful and rational investigation. With these words let me move on to the study of William Roxburgh.

Government House Madras, Chennai

Perhaps the most honoured botanist of his day and was second only to Sir Joseph Banks. William Roxburgh was educated at the University of Edinburgh which was the instirutional centre of the Scottish Enlightenment' Born in 1751 Roxburgh died in 1815 and came from a family that had close ties with Henry Dundas who was the Chairman of the Board of Control of the East India Company and an influential politician in Georgian England. roxburgh stdied under John Hope who initiated the young William into the world of botanical study. Botany was still in its infancy, though the Royal Gardens of Kensington and Kew had been established it was under Sir Joseph Banks that these botanical gardens became centers of an ever widening web of botanical exchange, ropagation of plants and collection of seeds for further reseach and study. Indeed the very establishment of the Botanical Garden at Kew was itself a Scottish foundation as it owed its origin to John Stuart, the Earl of Bute in the 1760s. With the intervention of hs patrons in the Company establihsment, William Roxburgh got a position as Assistant Surgeon in the Madras Headquarters of the East India Company. Arriving in Madras after rounding the Cape of Good Hope in May 1776. The job of the Assistant Surgeo seems to have been extremely light as roxburgh found the time to indulge his passion for collecting botanical specimens.

Botanical nvestigation was rather chaotic in the early eighteenth century, a situation that was destined to change due to the theoretical and empirical work of the great Swedish naturalist Charles Linnaeus. The plants were studied on the bais of their external charecteristics rather than the inherent sexual and reproductive functions which were performed in numerous ways by plants. Linneaus introduced the taxonomic method by which the charecteristic features of plants were studied according to its Taxonomic feature, generic features and thereby the species was identified. The morphology of plants and their parts were studied in a scientific manner and Herberia were manitained for ready reference.

In Madras now renamed Chennai, Roxburgh mt Dr Koenig a pupil of Dr Charles Linneaus. Koenig was associated with the Danish settlemnt of Tranquebar, a notorious slaving station on the coromandel coast run by the Dutch East India Company and of course Protestant missionaries like Ziegenbang did not find anything offensive ethically or morally in the odious trae of indegenous people as slaves. Both Roxburgh and Koenig went of Plant collection expeditions all over the Coromandel region collecting specimens. The East India Company was particularly interested i economically beneficial plants like Teak, Indigo and of course Spices. We do not know what happened to this early collection. When Koenig died he left his papes to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society. In 1781 Roxburgh was transferred to Samalkota, near the estuary of the River Godavari and the wild life reserve Forest of Coringa and it was here that a mounumental tragedy struck.

( to be continued in Part II)

Roy Moxham's Great Hedge of India: A Review and a reflection on Historical Method

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

Marc Bloch the great French historian published a book that is unfortunately not widely known: French Rural History. In that book he argued that it is possible to look at the cadastral surveys produced during the era of the French Revolution in order to reconstruct the rural history of France. For eaxample why did Brittany and parts of France have an Open Field system and eclosed fields in other parts. Using the documents of a later age to reconstruct the social and economic landscape of an earlier epoch, the regressive method, has become a powerful tool of research. In the Graet Hedge of India, Roy Moxham does something similar. He has used the maps of the first half of the nineteenth century to trace the remanants of the Permit Line or the Custom Line thta separated the territories of the East India Company from those of the so called dependent states that had been brought under the overall suzerainty of the Company.
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The Great Hedge of India

A map showing the Custom Line

 The defeat  of the Maharatas in 1818 for all practical purposes left the East Indiat India Companyin a dominant position politically and militarily. From this singular historical fact stemmed a huge atrocity that even the genius, the political genius of Mohandas Gandhi barely grasped: the creation of a salt monopoly that was hugely profitable to the East India Company, but a terrible calamity visited upon the people of India. Maxham, unlike Indian historians, who write modern history with their eyes firmly fixed on the crumbs falling from the polical banquet, is unburdened by any expectation, except the thrill of historical discovery and analysis. From a stray, almost an aside in the Rambles and Recollections of Col. Sleeman, he stumbled upon the refence to the Custom Line or Parmat Lian as the "natives" termed it. Seeking to see if traces of this Custom Line still survived he sets off on a rather uninspiring journey across the badlands of Northern India: Chambal, Jhansi, Etawah, Erich. He even approached the Remote Sensing Agency of India for satellite imagery of the areas he is interested in but the price quoted, US $ 16,000 is way beyond his reach and so he perseveres on until he finally sees for himself a stretch of the anceint hedge near Jhansi.

Roy Moxham is extremely affectionate toward India and in a slightly partonizing tone even wrote his Theft of India as a reposte to the apologists of the Raj of whom we find an ever increasing number, especially after the disease of Postt Colonial Theory hit the Indian academia. He argues that the purpose of the Custom Line was to prevent the smuggling of salt from the Princely territories into the Company possessions. By a historical accident, the major salt producing areas of India, Bengal and Madras fell into the hands of the Company very early and these were the major salt producing territiries of India. Salt was extensively and freely traded all across the land until the East India Company established the Salt Monopoly and created an elaborate officiadom to control the manufacture and exort of salt. In order to prevent the Salt from British territoris from leaving without the collection of a steep tariff, the Custom Line was first established near Allahabad and Benares and soo stretched nealrly 1280 miles up to the North West Frontier Province. The Custom Line was a huge hedge with thory briar trees and thick shrub 20 feet high and 15 feet broad. In 1878 the Custom Line was abandoned after fiece criticism in the House of Commons.

I found the book interesting and will certainly reccomend it to those interested in historical sleuthing.