The Emergence of British Power in India, 16001784: A Grand Strategic Interpretation (Worlds of the East India Company, 9)

Outlines the East Indias Companys infiltration of India from its inception to the late eighteenth century.Empires have usually been founded by charismatic, egoistic warriors or powerhungry states and peoples, sometimes spurred on by a sense of religious mission. So how was it that the nineteenthcentury British Indian Raj was so different? Arising, initially, from the militant policies and actions of a bunch of London merchants chartered as the English East India Company by Queen Elizabeth in 1600, for one hundred and fifty years they had generally pursued apeaceful and thereby profitable trade in the India, recognized by local Indian princes as mutually beneficial. Yet from the 1740s, Company men began to leave the counting house for the parade ground, fighting against the French and the Indian princes over the next forty years until they stood upon the threshold of succeeding the declining Mughul Empire as the next hegamon of India.This book roots its explanation of this phenomenon in the evidence ofthe words and thoughts of the major, and notso major, players, as revealed in the rich archives of the early Raj. Public dispatches from the Companys servants in India to their masters in London contain elaborate justificationsand records of debates in its councils for the policies (grand strategies) adopted to deal with the challenges created by the unstable political developments of the time. Thousands of surviving private letters between Britons in India and the homeland reveal powerful underlying currents of ambition, cupidity and jealousy and how they impacted on political manoeuvring and the development of policy at both ends. This book shows why the Company became involved in the military and political penetration of India and provides a political and military narrative of the Companys involvement in the wars with France and with several Indian powers.G. J. Bryant, who has a Ph.D. fromKings College London, has written extensively on the British military experience in eighteenthcentury India.