Name three policies adopted by British
Answers
Of all the European East India companies which came to India as traders in different periods of the 15th and 16th centuries, only the British and the French East India companies remained as dominant ones by the beginning of the 18th century.
In the first decade of the 18th century, the fortunes of the then mighty Mughal Empire began to decline and there emerged a number of successor states or regional powers or country powers in different parts of India.
The two European trading companies after realizing the weakness of the then country powers decided to make sincere efforts to become a strong political power and to expand and consolidate their sway in India. It is the trade interest that made the two European companies chart out this process of territorial expansion.
The European trading companies established their factories on the western, eastern and southern coastal areas and in this process they extended their influence into the mainland territories of the Indian subcontinent.
The expansion and consolidation of the British influence was achieved in a span of one hundred years, i.e., 1757 to 1857 by using the tools of war and diplomacy. Rabindra Nath Tagore, very aptly in a poetic way described this as “darkness settled on the face of the land then the weighing scales in the merchant’s hand changed into the imperial sceptre”.
Annexation Policies of the Company :
A) Doctrine of Lapse: Dalhousie, the last of the Governors General of the time of the Company was associated with this policy of the Doctrine of Lapse. By using this policy as a means, Dalhousie annexed the native states like Satara, Nagpur, Jhansi, Jaitpur and Sambhalpur. By denying the right of adoption to a Hindu native state as legitimate one, the British Governor General Dalhousie annexed the above native states to the British Empire in India.
His policy resulted in a political upheaval which threatened to destroy the solid foundations of the Company’s rule in India in 1857, because his annexationist policy based on the Doctrine of Lapse has no legal, moral or expediency justification. The British East India Company expanded its control over a vast territory and also extended its influence beyond India in Sri Lanka in the south, Mauritius in the south-west Afghanistan in the north-west, Nepal in the north to Andamans and Nicobar, Burma, Malaya, and Philippines in the south-east.
It can be said without any hesitation that it was mainly at the cost of India that England became the dominant power in the whole of South Asia and Asian lands on the Indian ocean by using the Indian sepoys like cannon fodder and draining the Indian treasury through unnecessary wars and diplomacy.
B) Subsidiary Alliance: Besides the tool of war, the British East India Company, like a hungry wolf was anxiously waiting to use any means to expand its territorial holdings in India. Of such means Subsidiary Alliance is one. It is Wellesley, the Governor General of Bengal, who vigorously implemented this policy for the advantage of the company. Though, Wellesley is associated with Subsidiary Alliance, the author and originator was not Wellesley but Dupleix, the French Governor. Dupleix devised it and implemented it and later the same was followed by the British from Clive to Wellesley.
Alfred Lyall notices four stages in the evolution of this system. In the first stage, the British East India Company supplied weapons and armies to the native ruler, as we notice the supply of arms and armies to the Nawab of Avadh against Rohillas during the tenure of Warren Hastings. In the second stage, the British with the help of the native ruler took the field. In the third stage, the British took money from the native ruler for the maintenance of the army separately for the defence of such state, e.g., Oudh in 1797.
In the fourth stage, the British agreed to maintain a permanent and fixed subsidiary force within the territory of its ally in return for a payment of a sum or ceding certain territory permanently to the British. Further, Wellesley by this Subsidiary Alliance system made it mandatory for the ally to keep a British Resident in the court of the native ruler, not to employ any other European nationals in this service, not to maintain relations with any other native ruler without the prior approval of the British. The British agreed to protect the territory of such allies from foreign aggression and not to intervene in the internal affairs of such native ally who entered into this alliance.
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