Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power by Robert D. Kaplan

Author:Robert D. Kaplan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: United States, Indian Ocean Region, International Relations, National security, Geopolitics, General, International Security, Political Science, Political Freedom & Security
ISBN: 9781400067466
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published: 2010-04-15T02:44:31+00:00

The problem with Clive is that being a larger-than-life risk taker, who operated in a savage, frontier environment in which he made up his own rules accordingly, the very traits that allowed him to form the foundations for a British empire in India, were also the ones that make us uneasy. But there was certainly, as Macaulay indicates, an element of hypocrisy in the opprobrium that greeted him back in England. “It was a very easy exercise of virtue to declaim in England against Clive’s rapacity; but not one in a hundred of his accusers would have shown so much self-command in the treasury of Moorshedabad.”34

And not one in a hundred would have shown so much audacity, repeatedly willing to risk an entire reputation on yet another throw of the dice. When in 1759 seven Dutch ships arrived in the Hooghly from Java, Clive would have been within his rights to accept their presence. Meer Jaffier favored the Dutch as a balancer against the British, and Clive was loath to upset his relationship with his own chosen nawab. Moreover, London was already engaged in a war with the French and could least afford another enemy. Yet knowing how the Dutch presence would threaten Britain’s emerging hold on India, Clive ordered an attack completely on his own, and the Dutch were subsequently routed.

Indeed, it was Clive whom the British authorities sent back to India in 1765 to clean up the corruption and disorganization in the government of Bengal that had ensued in his absence, and was the result of a system that he was partly responsible for erecting. Though he remained in India only eighteen months, in that time he accomplished a comprehensive reform of the British East India Company, including the way it dealt with the indigenous population. The root of Clive’s reforms was his understanding that to give men power, and at the same time to keep them poor, was an invitation to rampant corruption. Thus, a centerpiece of his reform was to raise the salaries of company employees. He accomplished this by giving employees a share of the revenue of the salt trade according to their rank, an act that caused greater damage in some quarters to Clive’s reputation than much else that he did. Clive’s ultimate tragedy was that he often knew what had to be done, and did not shy away from doing it, even as what had to be done was never for the pure at heart. Of course, this holds true for many men, but it is particularly so with Clive, whose choices and temptations—and their consequences—were of a momentous scope. Here, again, is Macaulay:

If a man has sold beer on Sunday morning, it is no defence that he has saved the life of a fellow-creature at the risk of his own.… But it is not in this way that we ought to deal with men who, raised far above ordinary restraints, and tried by far more than ordinary temptations, are entitled to a more than ordinary measure of indulgence.

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