To Begin the World Over Again by Matthew Lockwood

Author:Matthew Lockwood
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780300232257
Publisher: Yale University Press

8

THE BIRTH OF BRITISH INDIA

Calcutta, you know is on the Hooghly, a branch of the Ganges, and as you enter Garden-reach which extends about nine miles below the town, the most interesting views that can possibly be imagined greet the eye. The banks of the river are as one may say absolutely studded with elegant mansions . . . surrounded by groves and lawns, which descend to the water’s edge and present a constant succession of whatever can delight the eye, or bespeak wealth and elegance.

Eliza Fay’s first glimpse of British Calcutta presented to the weary traveler, only recently released from her harrowing captivity in Calicut, a refreshing mix of romantic novelty and the familiar patterns of European civilization, a combination of lush, tropical vegetation and British architecture. As the city unfolded along the Hooghly, with neo-classical mansions lining the shore and the “amazing variety of vessels continually passing on its surface,” it reminded her of nothing so much as the Thames transported to Asia. “The general aspect of the country is astonishing,” she exclaimed. “I never saw a more vivid green than adorns the surrounding fields.” The effect was disorientingly enchanting, “a magnificent and beautiful moving picture; at once exhilarating the heart, and charming the senses: for every object of sight is viewed through a medium that heightens its attraction in this brilliant climate.”1

But despite this seeming idyll, the Calcutta that Eliza Fay entered in 1780 was no less tense and restive than London. France and Britain were at war in India, and everywhere the preparations for the much-feared French attack were being hurriedly completed. Among the soldiers massing in the forts and cantonments in and around Calcutta for the seemingly imminent French invasion was a young Muslim soldier named Dean Mahomet, a man whose life and career would be shaped by the tangled web of European imperialism in India. Dean Mahomet was born at Patna in the state of Bihar in 1759. His family had arrived in the area generations earlier as part of the Muslim service elite of the expanding Mughal Empire. By the time of Mahomet’s birth the Mughal Empire’s hold over its expansive realm was ebbing. Like so many empires before and after, the Mughals had over-reached, with rampant spending on the imperial army and court slowly eroding Delhi’s control over its more distant provinces. One by one, Mughal regional administrators began to usurp de facto control over their provinces, setting themselves up as hereditary rulers under nominal Mughal suzerainty. When the administrator of Bihar declared himself the hereditary Nawab of Bengal and Bihar, Mahomet’s forebears quickly shifted their allegiance to the new power on the ground. It was not the last time their loyalties would change as the reality of local power dynamics shifted.2

In April 1758, a year before Dean Mahomet’s birth, his father made the fateful decision to join the army of the East India Company during a recruiting drive at Patna. The East India Company army, led by Robert Clive, was then engaged in a massive effort to expand it ranks.

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