At that time England was a relatively impoverished, largely agricultural country, which had spent almost a century at war with itself over the most divisive subject of the time: religion. In the course of this, in what seemed to many of its wisest minds an act of wilful self-harm, the English had unilaterally cut themselves off from the most powerful institution in Europe, so turning themselves in the eyes of many Europeans into something of a pariah nation. As a result, isolated from their baffled neighbours, the English were forced to scour the globe for new markets and commercial openings further afield. This they did with a piratical enthusiasm. (查看原文)
In the absence of firm Mughal control, the East India Company also realised it could now enforce its will in a way that would have been impossible a generation earlier...
The Company’s emissary, Venetian adventurer Niccolao Manucci, who was now living as a doctor in Madras, replied that the EIC had transformed a sandy beach into a flourishing port; if Da’ud Khan was harsh and overtaxed them, the EIC would simply move its operations elsewhere. The losers would be the local weavers and merchants who earned his kingdom lakhs of pagodas each year through trade with the foreigners. The tactic worked: Da’ud Khan backed off. In this way the EIC prefigured by 300 years the response of many modern corporates when faced with the regulating and taxation demands of the nation state: treat us with ind... (查看原文)
Peace, however, now proved more elusive: the dogs of war, once let slip, were not easily brought to heel. Rather than disbanding his new sepoy regiments, Dupleix decided to hire them out to his Indian allies, and to use them to gain both land and political influence. (查看原文)
...weak Indian rulers of fragmented post-Mughal states offered large blocks of territory, or land revenue, to the different European Companies in return for military support. The warfare that followed, which usually involved very small Company armies, was often incoherent and inconclusive, but it confirmed that the Europeans now had a clear and consistent military edge over Indian cavalry, and that small numbers of them were capable of altering the balance of power in the newly fractured political landscape that had followed the fall of the Mughal Empire. (查看原文)
The Moors are indolent, luxurious, ignorant and cowardly beyond all conception … The soldiers, if they deserve that name, have not the least attachment to their Prince, he can only expect service from them who pays them best; but it is a matter of great indifference to them whom they serve; and I am fully persuaded that after the battle of Plassey I could have appropriated the whole country to the Company and preserved it afterwards with as much ease as Mir Jafar, the present Subah [governor] now does, through the terror of English arms and their influence... (查看原文)
Fortune seems determined to accompany me to the last ... Every object, every sanguine wish is upon the point of being completely fulfilled, and I am arrived at the pinnacle of all that I covet, by affirming the Company shall, in spite of all the envy, malice, faction and resentment, acknowledge they are become the most opulent company in the world. (查看原文)
Throughout 1773, Hastings worked with extraordinary energy. He unified currency systems, ordered the codification of Hindu laws and digests of Muslim law books, reformed the tax and customs system, fixed land revenue and stopped the worst oppression being carried out on behalf of private traders by the local agents. He created an efficient postal service, backed a proper cartographical survey of India by James Rennell and built a series of public granaries, including the great Gola at Patna, to make sure the famine of 1770–71 was never repeated (查看原文)
From his early twenties, his letters had been full of outrage at the unprincipled way Company officials were exploiting India and mistreating Indians. He had many close Indian friends and regarded himself as an honourable champion of justice for the people of Bengal. He had railed and campaigned against those who were plundering the country and wrecking the Bengali economy and he did his best to set it on a more prosperous and sustainable path. He took concrete measures to make sure there was no repetition of the terrible famine of 1770, including building the great Gola in Patna, which survives to this day. His successor said that in Bengal he was by far the most popular of all the British officials in India, ‘positively beloved of the people'.
Nor did he even look the part: far from bei... (查看原文)
Egged on by the Company, ministers had now become alarmed at the level of force the French were building up in India and the fact that the British could not begin to match it. This was a matter of personal concern for many MPs, as a large number had invested their savings in East India stock. (查看原文)
Intermarriage, he [Abdul Latif Shushtari] wrote, was common, though the Indian women who took European partners were, he maintained, rarely respectable: ‘The women of people with no future, of corrupt Muslims, of evil Hindus, who of their own desire enter into the bonds of wedlock with the English, they do not interfere with their religion nor compel them to leave purdah veiling; when any son born of the union reaches the age of 4, he is taken from his mother and sent to England to be educated.’ (查看原文)
作者: William Dalrymple 副标题: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire isbn: 1635573955 书名: The Anarchy 页数: 544 定价: GBP 25.00 出版社: Bloomsbury Publishing 出版年: 2019-9-22 装帧: Hardcover
