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American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)
North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the
British, 1720-1801 by Richard B.Barnett; Het Personeel van de
Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azie in de achttiendeeeuw,
meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging Bengalen [The personnel of
the United (Dutch)East India Company in Asia in the eighteenth
century, particularly in the Bengal settlement].by Frank
LequinReview by: Rosane RocherEighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 18,
No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 118-124Published by: The Johns Hopkins
University Press. Sponsor: American Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies (ASECS).Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2738319
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118 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
including Diderot) set the stage for a new and more virulent
antisemitism, that of "enlightened" national societies such as
emerged in nineteenth- century France and twentieth-century
Germany. Schwartz's study may lead others to take on, calmly, the
role of other major Enlightenment thinkers in underpinning modern
racism. It is regrettable that it took so long to find a publisher
willing to undertake this volume which was under initial
consideration in 1976.
RICHARD H. POPKIN Washington University
RICHARD B. BARNETT. North India between Empires: Awadh, the
Mughals, and the British 1720-1801. Berkeley, Los Angeles, Lon-
don: University of California Press, 1980. Pp. xviii, 276.
$25.00.
FRANK LEQUIN. Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie in Azie in de achttiende eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in
de vestiging Bengalen [The personnel of the United (Dutch) East
India Company in Asia in the eighteenth century, particularly in
the Bengal settlement]. Leiden: [the author], 1982. Pp. xii, 653 in
two vols. Fl. 70.00.
Historians tend to prefer success stories and to neglect periods
of tran- sition and decline. This is a bias which Barnett and
Lequin set out to redress. The stretch of Indian history which
separates the Mughal and British empires has been branded a time of
chaos, a legitimization, con- scious or not, of Britain's manifest
destiny. Work devoted to eighteenth- century India has focused
primarily on the English East India Company at the onset of its
triumphant conquest. Yet, the resourcefulness with which regional
successor states to the Mughals resisted British encroachments and
postponed foreign takeover makes a compelling story. Others as well
were on the defensive. The Dutch seaborne empire knew its heyday in
the seventeenth century and declined steadily in the eighteenth, as
the stan- dard works by C. R. Boxer (The Dutch Seaborne Empire
1600-1800, 1965) and Holden Furber (Rival Empires of Trade in the
Orient 1600-1800, 1976) have shown. The Dutch decline has often
been blamed on the lower quality of their eighteenth-century
personnel, yet no attempt has been made thus far to survey their
careers. Barnett's eloquent demonstration of the resilience of
Awadh (Oudh), and Lequin's monumental documen- tation of the lives
and careers of Dutch personnel, constitute landmarks in the
historical study of eighteenth-century India as well as points of
departure for comparison. Both are doctoral dissertations:
Barnett's a thor- oughly revised and strictly edited version, as
the American pattern favors,
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REVIEWS 119
Lequin's a work published prior to the public defense, as the
Dutch system requires. Both feature tables, illustrations, and
maps, as well as extensive bibliographies.
Barnett's work aims to show that the eighteenth-century history
of Awadh, the largest and most durable post-Mughal polity in North
India and the first Indian state to come under a subsidiary
alliance system with the British, is a success story of its own.
Yet, the ascending phase of this process, from 1720 to 1754, and
its pinnacle, from 1754 to 1764, claim only the first two chapters,
or fifty pages of the book. The greater weight of the work, and its
most novel contribution, lies in the analysis of the two decades
1765-85, during which Awadh and the Company engaged in a series of
moves and countermoves which resulted in Awadh's being assured a
period of semiautonomy, ending abruptly in 1801 with the annexation
of half of its territory. Awadh postponed the inevitable with a
skillful allocation of its resources. These consisted not only of
overt financial and military resources, but also of intangible,
yet, as Barnett brilliantly dem- onstrates, very real resources
such as prestige, legitimacy, buffer value, provision of sanctuary
for rivals in succession struggles, decentralization, and
concealment of assets, and, when all else failed, the civilian
equivalent of the scorched earth, total administrative shutdown.
Barnett shows that, contrary to common assumptions, both camps
resorted as little as possible to brutal force, which is relatively
uneconomical.
In Barnett's presentation Awadh and the Company become bodies
gov- erned by internal impulses, desires, momenta, reflexes, and
defense mech- anisms. Their behavior shows how far off the mark
were Sheridan's oratory excoriating the spoliation of the Begams of
Awadh and Burke's condem- nation of the episode somewhat grandly
labeled "the Rohilla war." Barnett, however, is not interested in
applying his findings to the interpretation of Warren Hastings's
impeachment, nor in reactions in London generally. His focus,
enhanced by his extensive use of Persian and Urdu sources, besides
the English sources which have so far provided most of the record
of events, remains steadily on the Indian scene. The home
administration of the Company is rarely mentioned, for the policies
which he discusses were made in India. Though the Court of
Directors confirmed decisions or dispatched countermanding orders,
the fact that it took the better part of two years for reports to
be sent, issues to be discussed, and reactions to reach Bengal,
gave the Governor and Council, and sometimes the British Resident
at the court of Awadh, who similarly disposed of almost two weeks'
time vis-a-vis Calcutta, the undisputable advantage of the fait ac-
compli.
Barnett's view of Awadh and the Company as systems, though both
were riddled with factions, is stretched to its utmost limit, in
that it leads him to negate the importance of individual players.
He describes the dif- ferent attitudes of British Residents, yet
contrasts them as "styles," not as substantive policies. He
specifically denies that Asaf ud-daula's lack of
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120 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
interest in affairs of state contributed to Awadh's decline. The
point is of some importance, since, right from his accession to the
throne, the com- munis opinio was that Asaf lacked the
qualifications and the initiative evidenced by his younger brother.
Primogeniture and his mother's clout alone militated in his favor.
In Barnett's interpretation, Asaf's reluctance to pay attention to
the chores of administration was not a cause, but a consequence of
Awadh's decline:
He had become even more of a puppet ruler than his father had
been at his death. Every increasing share of his revenue and every
function of his authority that passed into British hands caused him
to suffer under a daily humiliation from which he could not
possibly escape. Governing, in short, had become a painful
occupation, and his only recourse seemed to be simply to avoid it.
(p. 204)
There are reasons to doubt the scenario Barnett draws for the
resumption of the Begams' jagirs (land revenues) and the Resident's
short-lived as- sumption of power in Awadh, as a logical next step
on the British agenda. The Begams' treasure and the revenues of
other jagir holders was the last segment of the Awadh resources of
which the British had been unable to obtain a share. "Resuming the
jagirs had been a goal of the Council as soon as [former Resident]
Purling had analyzed Awadh's resources" (p. 204). The need to
finance the double war with France and Mysore pres- sured the
British to exact yet a higher amount from Awadh's coffers. The
Begams' involvement in the Banaras revolt provided the needed
oppor- tunity. Yet, Hastings's uncharacteristic petulance in the
entire affair raises doubts about the planned and orderly nature of
the endeavor. The Com- pany unit assigned to protect the Governor
had been massacred during the Banaras outbreak, and he himself had
had a narrow escape. The Be- gams' role in fomenting the violence
was plain for all to see. To view the resumption of their jagirs as
an act of vengeance is all the more tempting since Hastings treated
with like harshness Alexander Hannay, a longtime protege who failed
to come to his rescue, and Nathaniel Middleton, his trusted
Resident who settled for less than the total surrender of the Be-
gams' treasures. This and his instructions to Bristow, an
archenemy, to take the reins of power away from the Nawab, are
evidence of the "frayed nerves" described by his biographer (Keith
Feiling, Warren Hastings, 1954, p. 277).
An issue which is not addressed is the role played by Britons in
the employ of the Nawabs. Barnett points out that when the British
pressured Asaf into dismissing his French employees and banishing
all Europeans from his dominions, the Resident had to arrange for
British replacements. Yet, though he names some of the displaced
foreigners, none of the British substitutes is mentioned, nor are
their activities outlined. What of military men such as John
Osborne, who, having been twice court-martialed while in the
Company's service, achieved the rank of major in that of the Nawab?
Was he one of the technical personnel whom the Nawab was eager to
hire in an effort to reorganize his army according to the European
model? Or,
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REVIEWS 121
since in spite of his tribulations Osborne remained a protege of
Hastings, was he foisted upon Awadh when in need of alternative
employment? In either case were such men part of the intelligence
network which gave the British Resident unmatchable powers? What
also of Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, whom the Nawab hired as his agent
in London? The correspon- dence between Hastings and his man in
Awadh clearly shows that in this case the appointment was generated
by the Governor's desire to provide a protege with needed
emoluments. Yet, what role did such an agent play later on, what
interference did he create in London that Governor Corn- wallis
found disruptive? Other Indian rulers as well had former Company
servants as their agents in London, whose activities the home
administra- tion resented as attempts to subvert the channels of
communication in India. How successful were the Nawabs and other
heads of princely states in undercutting the policies of the
British administration in India?
The most signal omission in Barnett's study of
eighteenth-century Awadh is its cultural life. Yet, it is in the
cultural sphere that Awadh most clearly emerges as the prime
successor state to the Mughals. Poets and artists deserted Delhi
when the Mughal capital became unsafe. They flocked to the Nawabs'
court, making it the unrivaled center of Muslim culture in India.
Throughout India's history, both Hindu and Muslim, the ability to
attract and retain poets and artists over one's competitors was the
hallmark of a mighty ruler, a symbol of prestige, a consecrating
act. On the archi- tectural side the building in 1784 of the
central mosque in Lucknow, an engraving of which illustrates the
book but is not mentioned in the text, is evidence that, in spite
of the heavy demands of the British, the Nawab still disposed of
vast resources which he could apply to the pious duties of a Muslim
ruler while providing relief for his people during a famine.
Reference to the Nawabs' role as patrons of the arts would have
under- scored the argument which Barnett makes on economic and
political grounds.
Contrary to Barnett's powerfully argued analysis of the state of
Awadh, Lequin's documentation of the Dutch East Indian personnel is
essentially descriptive. Lequin's goal is to bring to light
materials preserved-and heretofore buried-in Dutch and other
archives. "This study is a report of a systematic enquiry, not an
attempt to package the results of the enquiry in an attractive
little story" (p. 33). It offers a comprehensive, computer-assisted
documentation in which twelve appendixes occupy cen- ter stage and
the body of the text provides needed commentary. Through- out, the
circumstances of Dutch personnel are compared and contrasted with
the much better known situation of servants of the rival English
East India Company.
The attitude of the Dutch East India Company vis-a-vis their
personnel was marked by arrogance, insensitivity, and obduracy.
Whereas the Eng- lish Company was centralized at home and
decentralized in the East, the Dutch Company, with its six
Chambers, was decentralized at home and centralized in the East,
all settlements reporting to Batavia. Servants, even
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122 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
on the west coast of India, had to proceed to Batavia (modern
Jakarta) to seek permission to return home. They were considered
deserters if they failed to do so or returned by any other than a
Dutch ship. They had to sell all their assets and were not allowed
to bring back any papers or books. They were forbidden to discuss
East Asian affairs in their private corre- spondence, which could
be sent only by Dutch ships. Hierarchy was strictly observed, down
to the seating in churches and in mess halls. To make matters
worse, the Dutch Company did not have an automatic system of
promotions based on seniority. Private trading activities were
strictly for- bidden. Such at least was the theory, often violated
in practice, but always at considerable risk. Not only did the
Dutch Company treat their servants as menial labor to be had at the
least possible cost, they turned a deaf ear to proposals for reform
forwarded by experienced administrators. Nor did returned personnel
play a significant role in the home administration of the Company
which remained oligarchical. By contrast East Indian servants
provided many directors to the English Company, as well as many
members of Parliament who were influential in the debates over the
pe- riodic renewals of the Company charter and saturated the press
with accounts and criticisms of former policies and plans for
future develop- ment.
The only section in which Lequin departs from his descriptive
stance and engages in argumentative discourse is Chapter iv, in
which he dis- cusses the causes of the Dutch decline in the
eighteenth century and attempts a rehabilitation of the Company
servants whose alleged corrup- tion and lack of energy have often
been blamed for this decline. He cen- sures instead the central
management of the Company, both at home and in Batavia, for their
unwillingness or inability to change with the times. The Company
rejected pleas to lift the ban on private trading and refused to
pay their servants in a way which compensated them for the greater
risks, particularly the higher death rate, in the East. It
complained of an increasing shortage of qualified personnel,
especially in the military and maritime services, yet refused to
make East Indian service competitively attractive. The increasingly
oppressive and secretive bureaucratization of the service stifled
personal initiative. The servants of the Dutch Company were not
more corrupt, nor were they less energetic than their British
counterparts. They had less reason and less opportunity to exert
them- selves. The debilitating attitude of the Company's
administration was the prime cause of the Dutch decline. A
contributing factor was the wane of the Dutch maritime power which
after the innovations of the seventeenth century remained mired in
techniques which had been surpassed. Lequin's is a convincing
indictment which unfortunately ends on a weak note, a vacuous
suggestion that "perhaps in the end there remains little else than
the realization that an organization, an enterprise such as the
Company is subjected like every living organism to a 'life cycle'
and knows a time of rise and a time of fall" (p. 99).
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REVIEWS 123
In every other part of Lequin's two volumes the nature and
contents of the archival data shape the discussion. Thus the
collection of data about individual servants proceeds in two steps.
Appendix 7 offers standardized and computerized career surveys for
the 115 servants who were members of the Bengal Directorate in the
eighteenth century, based on three sets of official Company records
relative to personnel. Additional data from a variety of other
sources such as church registers, notarial archives, stock ledgers,
as well as secondary literature, are provided in appendix 10.
A major drawback of allowing archival documents to speak for
them- selves is that, on occasion, they may record the official
version of events rather than the historical facts. A circumstance
in which official reports must be taken with a grain of salt is the
British capture of Chinsura, the Dutch headquarters in Bengal,
during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1781. In spite of corporate
rivalry, personal relations between the Dutch and the British were
cordial. The Dutch, who did not have the benefit of clergy, used
the services of the Anglican chaplain. Without a press of their own
they relied on Calcutta newspapers for news, notices of sales, and
want ads. Calcutta offered cultural and recreational resources in
which they took part. Most important, Dutch channels were the
preferred method for British servants to remit private earnings
home, as Holden Furber's John Company at Work (1948) and P. J.
Marshall's East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the
Eighteenth Century (1976) have shown. Except with regard to the
French, whom both Dutch and English East Indians feared and
distrusted, national wars were nuisances, which dis- turbed
profitable business and good neighborliness. The British governor-
general, Warren Hastings, and the Dutch Director, J. M. Ross, and
their wives, were particularly close friends. Thus, when orders
from home re- quired Hastings to occupy Chinsura and to seize Dutch
citizens in Bengal as prisoners of war, there was joy on neither
side. Hastings first tried to make the takeover as low-key as
possible, but Ross refused to surrender Chinsura to anything less
than a full regiment. Not only did the Dutch director have a
well-documented penchant for the grand, he presumably wished to
prove to his superiors that, though the factory fell without a shot
being fired, he was bowing to a vastly superior force. Lequin does
not mention this episode, often quoted in the British secondary
literature, but only suggests, on the basis of papers introduced as
evidence by a later Director in an attempt to recover damages, that
the takeover was not handled with British tact, in that the British
commander, who was ine- briated, was insolent. Obviously not all
events took place in perfect amity. The appointment of British
commissaries to oversee occupied Chinsura was bound to create
frictions. Ross nevertheless saw to it that private property, after
inventory, was left undisturbed, that no Dutch servants be forced
to leave, and that the British continue to pay their salaries for
the duration of the war. The British also helped individual Dutch
families in financial straits, though, generally speaking, private
trade flourished at that time. In these circumstances one may doubt
the accuracy of a report
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124 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
by the British governor to the home administration according to
which the British commissaries had found the stores of the Dutch
Company "to be of such indifferent quality as to be thought not
worth the expence of transportation. We have therefore ordered that
they shall continue where they are under charge of the
Commissaries" (p. 125). Hastings, who was then providing shelter
for "poor old Ross" had to report to London that their orders had
been followed, but he clearly argued that drastic measures were not
called for.
The richness and novelty of Lequin's archival evidence make it
man- datory reading for scholars who seek to assess the colonial
experience across nations and centuries. The "summing-up," list of
appendixes, and explanatory notes concerning appendixes 7 and 10
are translated into English (pp. 206-22). This should make most of
the standardized and computerized data accessible to those who do
not read Dutch. It is that body of information which, by the
author's own acknowledgement, con- stitutes his most important
contribution.
ROSANE ROCHER University of Pennsylvania
FRANK A. KAFKER, ed. Notable Encyclopedias of the Seventeenth
and Eighteenth Centuries: Nine Predecessors of the Encyclopedie.
Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1981. Pp. 252.
The title, hinting at no thesis whatever, suits this book quite
well. For the book does not pretend to be anything more than a
descriptive survey of nine predecessors of the great
Encyclopedie.
Believing the task of surveying the various encyclopedias to be
beyond the abilities of any but a "universal genius" (p. 9), the
editor, Frank A. Kafker, farms the individual chapters out to a
series of collaborators. The collaborators, who "include," Kafker
tells us, "specialists in French, Ger- man, and Italian literature,
historians of early modern Europe, and a historian of science who
is also a professional scientist," are armed with guidelines, which
they "were free to use as much as they found appro- priate" (p. 9).
The guidelines, printed as an Appendix to the volume, amount to a
series of questions concerning the "History of the enterprise,"
"The work's editing and prose styles," "The work as a book of
knowledge," "The work's politics and religion," and a request for
bibliographical in- formation. In modestly deferring to his coterie
of specialists, the editor becomes a sort of Diderot, standing at
the head of his own "Societe des hommes de lettres," and his book
becomes a sort of encyclopedia of en- cyclopedias. This parallel
requires the reviewer to be concerned not only with the merits of
the individual chapters, but also with the conception and
organization of the overall project.
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Article Contentsp. 118p. 119p. 120p. 121p. 122p. 123p. 124
Issue Table of ContentsEighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 18, No.
1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 1-146Front MatterPhonetics and Politics:
Franklin's Alphabet as a Political Design [pp. 1-34]Goya's
Teratology and the Critique of Reason [pp. 35-56]The Origin of
Burke's Ideas Revisited [pp. 57-71]ForumJohnson's Intentions in The
Vanity of Human Wishes [pp. 72-75]
ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 76-81]Review: untitled [pp.
81-84]Review: untitled [pp. 84-89]Review: untitled [pp.
89-92]Review: untitled [pp. 92-96]Review: untitled [pp.
96-99]Review: untitled [pp. 99-103]Review: untitled [pp.
103-108]Review: untitled [pp. 108-112]Review: untitled [pp.
112-115]Review: untitled [pp. 115-118]Review: untitled [pp.
118-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-128]Review: untitled [pp.
128-132]Review: untitled [pp. 132-133]Review: untitled [pp.
134-137]Review: untitled [pp. 137-141]Review: untitled [pp.
141-143]Review: untitled [pp. 143-144]Review: untitled [pp.
144-146]
Back Matter