Question

Give brief information about the Battle of Plassey.​

Answer 1

Answer:

On June 23, 1757, the Battle of Plassey led to the unlikely conquest of Bengal by Robert Clive’s army. George Bruce Malleson, in The Decisive Battles of India (1883), described Plassey as the most unheroic English victory. It was “Plassey which necessitated,” wrote Malleson, “the conquest and colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope, of the Mauritius, the protectorship over Egypt; Plassey which gave to the sons of her middle-classes the finest field for the development of their talent and industry the world has ever known… the conviction of which underlies the thought of every true Englishman.”

It was Plassey, however, that exposed the subcontinent’s internal conflicts, destroying the native dynasties then in power and also the economy of imperial Bengal.

On June 26, 1756, the British forces surrendered, Calcutta was renamed Alinagar, and a mosque was ordered to be built inside the fort. The Nawab captured the British enclave in Cossimbazar, near Murshidabad, and imprisoned many British officers, including a young Warren Hastings.

In 1756, as Calcutta burned from Fort William to Fulta, Emin arrived in London, working his way as a lascar

The Armenians of Bengal

All the histories of Plassey usually only recount Clive’s coalition with Jaffar, the Jagat Seths and Omichand. But another major force to reckon with in Bengal then were the Armenians. Without them, the victory at Plassey would have been a mirage for Clive and the Company, especially after the bedlam of 1756.

Three prominent Armenians of this time were Khoja Wajid, the Bengal merchant who supported Robert Clive but was later arrested on suspicion that he had shown allegiance to the French; Joseph Emin, the adventurer who travelled to London and for a decade remained a talked-about figure among the English nobility, and Khoja Petrus Aratoon, an ally of the English Company, who may well have gone on to succeed Mir Qasim as the Nawab of Bengal but for his assassination in 1763.

A century marked by religious intolerance and forced conversion of Armenians to Catholicism and Islam, exacerbated by the Afghan invasion of the 1720s, and the pillaging armies of Nadir Shah in the 1740s, had led to a mass-exodus of Armenians from Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan into India. Almost every native power or European company of the time strategically ushered Armenians to their side to jointly explore Asian opportunities.

Akbar exempted Armenians from taxes on their trade with the Persian Gulf. The Armenians settled in Surat (Gujarat) in the 16th century, and in Chinsurah (West Bengal) in the late 17th century. In 1665, they were allowed to form a settlement in Saidabad, in Murshidabad district of Bengal, after a royal farmaan was issued by Aurangzeb. Besides Murshidabad, Surat and Benares assumed robust identities as towns of silk crafts due to Armenian trade.

Armenian Street, Armanitola, and Armenian Ghat came up in 18th century Calcutta to the rhythms of Armenian vessels lumbering between India, Persia, Turkey and China. Built in 1734 by Huzoorimal, Armenian Ghat was the site of the first ticket reservation room of the East India Railway Company between 1854 and 1857. Between 1873 and 1902, the Calcutta Tramway Company ran a metre-gauge horse-drawn tram service between Sealdah and Armenian Ghat.

By the 20th century, there were about 25,000 Armenians in India, and about 1,000 Armenians in Calcutta alone, more than one-fourth of the population of 3,200 British settlers in the city.

For Clive and Company

The rise of the Armenians in Bengal was due to their ability to milk the trade conflicts and monopolies between the European and regional powers. They also decided to anglicise themselves to appease the dominant colonial power.

In 1744, Joseph Emin fled with his family — from Persia and later Afghanistan — joining about 4,000 Armenians in Calcutta. Emin wanted to train in the manners, language, arts and science of the English. In 1756, as Calcutta burned from Fort William to Fulta, Emin arrived in London, working his way as a lascar. He happened to meet Edmund Burke, who took him under his wing. Emin later copied Burke’s renowned essay, ‘On the Sublime and the Beautiful,’ among other of his works.

Explanation:

Answer 2

The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company over a much larger force of the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757, under the leadership of Robert Clive. The battle helped the Company seize control of Bengal. The reason for the Battle of Plassey was that the servants of the company were indulged in abuse of dastaks in inland trade and not paying duty.