The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain by Nicholas B. Dirks

Author:Nicholas B. Dirks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: India and History, India, British India, History
Published: 2011-01-26T11:49:00+00:00

Hastings's interest in clarifying Company sovereignty was not unrelated to his political ambitions, even before the full flowering of his quarrel with Francis. In early 1773, he advocated that the "sovereignty of this country [be] wholly and absolutely vested in the Company," and that he be the sole "instrument" of this sovereignty.3s Burke had read Hastings's ambition as personal megalomania rather than as the inevitable logic of empire. Even Francis agreed in principle with Hastings about most questions of governance (though he wanted to be the governor-general himself). Writing to Lord North in 1777, he observed that there could be no reform in India "as long as the Interests of the Company and those of Bengal are committed to the same hands . . . they are in fact incompatible. If the territorial Acquisitions are to be preserved, it must be under a System of Government which does not refer all its measures to the supposed Rights or Interests of a Body of Merchants."' No doubt he felt he was condemning Hastings when he argued that the authority of Company sovereignty should not be bound by the narrow interests of Company trade. But in fact, despite their differences about whether and how to engage the Marathas in warfare, Francis and Hastings were in fundamental agreement. Both of them understood the slippery relations between trade and sovereignty in India, where trade was only the ostensible object of imperial ambition. And they shared as well concerns that had been expressed so well in Adam Smith's critique of mercantilism.

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