Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s8: § 3. British preparations—acquisition of the north-western frontier of Oudh
Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c56.s8
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§ 3. British preparations—acquisition of the north-western frontier of Oudh
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While such incredible folly, weakness and discord paralyzed the Marātha leaders in the face of the threatened British subjugation, we find on the English side the most amazing sagacity and efficiency in preparing for the coming contest. The Governor-General, Marquess Wellesley, was a statesman of marvellous vision, organising power, and skill in choosing the fittest instruments for his purpose. His dominating will made him take the initiative, cut red tape, and seize the quickest way to success, regardless of official conventions and the frowns of the distant Home authorities.
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The keynote of Wellesley's Indian policy was the destruction of "the French State now formed on the banks of the Jamunā."† as he called Perron's viceroyalty of Northern India nominally under Sindhiā. In the pursuit of this policy, framed in his mind even before he landed in India, he had already extinguished Tipu Sultan and emasculated the Nizām, and thus the Marāthas stood without any possible ally. The next step in his scheme was to induce the Peshwā to accept the protective vassalage of the English. This proposal had been repeatedly declined by Bāji Rao II, but Holkar’s victory on 25th October 1802, brought it to fulfilment before the year was out.
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∗ Repeated in a letter of 11th August, after the war had started,—"There is an urgent need of our setting out on march, but we have no money. He is daily urging, but no soldier will go out. If God wishes to preserve the Brāhman rāj and performs some miracle, then only will it be well."
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† MM. iii. 215, 211 ("an independent French State on the most vulnerable part of the Company's frontier.")
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But long before this unexpected and bloodlessly-achieved success Wellesley had been perfecting his preparations for the inevitable war against Bāji Rao’s overgrown feudatories and their European-led armies. His first step was to create a belt of British territory on the western flank of Oudh, so as to intercept any Maratha invasion from Sindhia’s part of Hindustan and also to enable British forces to penetrate into “Perron’s French kingdom” without delay. By a treaty forced on Nawab Sādat Ali Khan (on 10th November 1801), he secured for occupation and administration by the British the nine districts of Rohilkhand, Mainpuri, Etawa, Cawnpur, Allahabad, Azamgarh, Basti, Gorakhpur, and Farrukhabad (this last being ceded by its Bangash Nawāb a year later.) This territorial gain enabled the English to make a large addition to their forces kept ready on that frontier, at the expense of the Oudh Nawab.
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The moral effect of this transfer was even greater than its military gain. In this Ceded Province—the germ of the N.W.P. and U.P. of later times—the Indian world was given an unmistakable object-lesson of the superiority of British administration and the immense increase of the people’s prosperity by the change from indigenous rule to English government. A most efficient system of administration was set up in this Ceded Province, and it worked wonders in the year and a half that intervened before the outbreak of the war. The first Lieutenant Governor, Henry Wellesley, was a political genius like his two brothers, Marquess Wellesley and the Duke of Wellington, and he worked with unfettered powers and liberal financial support. Under him was placed a band of 23 British covenanted civil servants, picked up for their ability and knowledge of oriental languages, and they worked with the greatest zeal and success under their chief's active leadership and sympathetic support.*
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It was "an unsettled and discontented province with a population greatly debased and impoverished by long years of misrule" under the Oudh Nawābs. But in a short time the banditti who had hitherto ravaged the land were effectively suppressed; guard-boats patrolled the rivers and checked the pirates who had obstructed the natural and extensive trade down the great river-highway of the Jamunā and the Ganges. Periodical fairs were established to open up the different districts to mutual intercourse. The currency was reformed by restricting the minting of rupees to the two chief towns. Over-powerful zamindars, like Balwant Singh of Sāsni, who on the strength of their mud-forts and armed retainers, used to enforce arbitrary exactions from travellers and traders, and withhold the proper revenue from the Nawāb's officials, were crushed by strong British detachments. A new city named Wellesleyganj, with a ghāt, a sarāi, a market-place and offices was founded within three miles of Hardwār, where the British, Gurkhā and Marātha frontiers met, and thus the wilderness between Bareilly and Hardwār (200 square miles) began to be thrown open to cultivation and trade.
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This pacification, effected before the outbreak of the war with Sindhiā, tempted merchants from Hathrās and other places in Sindhiā's portion of the Doāb to remove with their families to the new province; a general cotton-market was established at Etāwā. The city of Allahabad, from being a mere pilgrim resort, rapidly grew into a flourishing commercial capital, where 600 new warehouses were built, and served as the chief emporium in upper India for piece-goods, sugar, opium, and raw cotton. The revenue of the Ceded Districts—which had fallen from 2½ crores in Mughal times to 135 lakhs under the Nawābi, increased by 40 lakhs after the first year of British rule, and this amount was willingly paid.*
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∗ In an address presented to him on the eve of his retirement, they thanked him for his "liberal and unwearied endeavours and his indefatigable personal exertions in an arduous task... in a newly acquired territory where everything yet remained to be done." *Asiatic An. Reg.* for 1807, pp. 17-30. *Ibid* for 1804, Sup. to Chronicle, p. 11. *Diary and Correspondence of H. Wellesley*, pp. 36-41.