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Just over 400 years ago, a group of London merchants arrived | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
here on the Indian coast hoping to do some peaceful trading. | 0:00:09 | 0:00:13 | |
Those early pioneers dreamt of making huge profits. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:17 | |
From humble beginnings, this rag-tag band of adventurers | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
secured land from Indian rulers, | 0:00:22 | 0:00:25 | |
formed alliances with local craftsmen | 0:00:25 | 0:00:28 | |
and built from scratch a commercial enterprise | 0:00:28 | 0:00:31 | |
to export goods to Britain. | 0:00:31 | 0:00:33 | |
The East India Company was part of this tremendous | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
globalisation of the world | 0:00:36 | 0:00:38 | |
which really started in the 17th century, | 0:00:38 | 0:00:40 | |
and speeded up in the 18th and 19th centuries. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
Over 200 years, the company grew into a commercial titan. | 0:00:43 | 0:00:47 | |
Its wealth rivalled that of the British state. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
It had its own army, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
and eventually ruled over 400 million people. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:58 | |
Its trade was vital to Britain's commercial success | 0:00:58 | 0:01:02 | |
and its shares were the centre point of London's financial markets. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:06 | |
It revolutionised the British lifestyle. | 0:01:06 | 0:01:09 | |
The East India Company changed the way we dress, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
it changed the way we eat, | 0:01:12 | 0:01:13 | |
it changed the way we socialise. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:15 | |
And, by accident, created one of the most powerful empires in history. | 0:01:15 | 0:01:21 | |
They were instrumental in making Britain THE maritime superpower. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
They helped lay the foundations for our own global trading system today | 0:01:27 | 0:01:32 | |
and they also helped to make English the world's language. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
Every step of the company's rise is recorded in a unique archive. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
"What a lucky fellow you are, Charley, going to India - | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
"you lead such a luxurious life! | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
"Why, you dog, when you come home you will be a rich man." | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
But the letters and diaries also chart its fall into profiteering, | 0:01:50 | 0:01:54 | |
nepotism and corruption. | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
"Every ancient friend of the family | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
"hoped I should live to be a major general." | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
And eventually a chilling story of drug-running and famine. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
"Numbers of famishing wretches followed our army | 0:02:05 | 0:02:08 | |
"for the sole purpose of existing on the offal of the camp." | 0:02:08 | 0:02:11 | |
This is the story of the greatest company the world has ever known. | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
This is where it all started. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:28 | |
On December 31st, 1600, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:30 | |
The East India Company was established by royal charter | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
in London | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
and granted a monopoly on trade with the East by Queen Elizabeth I. | 0:02:35 | 0:02:39 | |
It was the beginning of a new age in Britain's history - | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
an age of speculation and profit, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
enterprise and competition. | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
Capitalism would change forever | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
the lives of its people and politics. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
Trade would make Britain great | 0:02:53 | 0:02:56 | |
and turn London into the richest city in the world. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:00 | |
The company built a series of massive warehouses | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
across the City of London to store its goods. | 0:03:05 | 0:03:07 | |
There was Lime Street, | 0:03:07 | 0:03:09 | |
Fenchurch Street, Seething Lane. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:10 | |
Then when they filled up, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
they built more warehouses near the Tower of London | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
and here on Cutler Street. | 0:03:14 | 0:03:16 | |
These buildings were filled with muslins, calicos and silks | 0:03:16 | 0:03:20 | |
from India and the Orient. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:22 | |
Thanks to the East India Company, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:25 | |
exotic goods like spices from Indonesia, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:28 | |
tea and porcelain from China, | 0:03:28 | 0:03:30 | |
became part of everyday life. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:32 | |
Every year, huge merchant ships of the East India Company, | 0:03:33 | 0:03:37 | |
known as East Indiamen, | 0:03:37 | 0:03:38 | |
would leave from right here, loaded down with silver bullion | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
and British merchandise, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:44 | |
heading up the Thames and out to sea to trade with the East. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
On board were young men filled with hope. | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
Who they were and what happened to them | 0:03:53 | 0:03:55 | |
are questions we can now answer. | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
Thousands of them left behind | 0:03:58 | 0:03:59 | |
an extraordinary record of their daily lives in documents | 0:03:59 | 0:04:03 | |
now held at the British Library. | 0:04:03 | 0:04:05 | |
"Snakes have been found in the beds | 0:04:05 | 0:04:07 | |
"where gentlemen were about to repose. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:09 | |
"A lady was called in by her servant to see a snake | 0:04:09 | 0:04:11 | |
"that lay contentedly between two of her infants | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
"while sleeping in a small cot. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
"This perilous situation produced the utmost anxiety." | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
In following their dreams, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:20 | |
these young men would inadvertently forge an empire. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:24 | |
"Wealth and honour will pour upon me | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
"and to crown my felicity, some high-born damsel | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
"will eventually become my wife." | 0:04:30 | 0:04:32 | |
An empire that would create thousands of winners, | 0:04:32 | 0:04:35 | |
but millions of losers. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:37 | |
"The vulture rising reluctantly from its bloody banquet | 0:04:37 | 0:04:41 | |
"flapped its broad wings in anger and joined the wild chorus | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
"with discordant cries." | 0:04:44 | 0:04:47 | |
Wills, diaries, letters - more than 100,000 manuscripts - | 0:04:47 | 0:04:51 | |
fill nine miles of shelving. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:53 | |
The letters and diaries of the people who lived and died | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
under the company's flag | 0:04:57 | 0:05:00 | |
are the lost voices of the East India Company. | 0:05:00 | 0:05:02 | |
Historian Robert Hutchinson has spent six years studying them. | 0:05:05 | 0:05:09 | |
There are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of wills | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
of company employees, and all of them give insight | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
into life working for the company. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
Most of these documents have never been seen before. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
They put us in direct contact with the men and women of the company - | 0:05:24 | 0:05:28 | |
a unique glimpse of our social history. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
They're very graphic accounts of the attitudes | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
and the beliefs and the commitment | 0:05:34 | 0:05:39 | |
to the lives they'd made for themselves in India. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
They are extraordinarily graphic. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
You've been through all of them? | 0:05:44 | 0:05:46 | |
Not all of them, but it's a lifetime's work. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:49 | |
They're just fragments of personal testimony. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:53 | |
But pieced together, they paint a vivid portrait | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
of daily life in the service of the Honourable Company. | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
Armed with these letters and diaries I'm going on a journey | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
to retrace the footsteps of this band of adventurers, | 0:06:05 | 0:06:07 | |
charting the rise and fall of the world's greatest company. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
One country above all would play a pre-eminent role in that story... | 0:06:25 | 0:06:30 | |
..and become the jewel in the company's crown - | 0:06:32 | 0:06:35 | |
India. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:37 | |
Our story began in 1639 at an unlikely spot on the east coast. | 0:06:44 | 0:06:50 | |
A place that became known as Madraspatnam. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:53 | |
When the company arrived here | 0:06:56 | 0:06:57 | |
it wasn't pursuing dreams of conquest or empire, | 0:06:57 | 0:07:01 | |
but looking for a secure base from which to conduct trade, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
and one of its employees, Francis Day, | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
was convinced that this was the right spot. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
And with good reason. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
This is the Coromandel Coast - | 0:07:15 | 0:07:16 | |
a name synonymous with diamonds, pearls and the finest cotton. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:21 | |
In mid-17th century Europe, | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
Indian cotton was the height of fashion. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:26 | |
It was cheap, colourful and hard-wearing. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:30 | |
A fortune could be made exporting it. | 0:07:30 | 0:07:32 | |
Francis Day claimed a section of beach and set up shop. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:37 | |
Though he may have had other things on his mind. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
This lusty young man had a girlfriend nearby | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
and he was keen to see her as often as possible. | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
He even threatened to resign unless the company accepted his suggestion. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:51 | |
Not for the last time, human history turned on an affair of the heart. | 0:07:51 | 0:07:55 | |
But this was hardly the place to start a trading post. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
A dangerous sand bar, | 0:08:01 | 0:08:03 | |
just off the coast, would cause ships to capsize or run aground. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
And if you made it ashore... | 0:08:07 | 0:08:09 | |
it wasn't much better! | 0:08:09 | 0:08:10 | |
"They have no drinkable water within a mile of them, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
"the sea often threatening destruction on one side, | 0:08:14 | 0:08:17 | |
"and the river in the rainy season | 0:08:17 | 0:08:19 | |
"inundations on the other. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:22 | |
"The sun from April to September scorching hot. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
"Madraspatnam is one of the most incommodious places I ever saw." | 0:08:25 | 0:08:29 | |
Incommodious or not, | 0:08:32 | 0:08:34 | |
the company had established a vital foothold in south India - | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
and began to trade. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
They brought in what was the chief product of this area | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
from their point of view - | 0:08:44 | 0:08:46 | |
weavers and dyers to manufacture hand-loom cloth. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
And this was the biggest export from here. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:51 | |
Within a year, 300 Bengali weavers had set up shop, | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
alongside a motley crew of publicans and prostitutes. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:02 | |
A handful of Englishmen were busy exporting cloth and spices | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
back home for sale in London - | 0:09:05 | 0:09:07 | |
much to the delight of the company's shareholders. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:10 | |
They could send their ships out here, fill the holds with spices, | 0:09:11 | 0:09:15 | |
and hopefully return rich men. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:17 | |
It was a very lucrative trade - | 0:09:17 | 0:09:19 | |
one that had been exploited by other European powers | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
for quite a long time now. | 0:09:22 | 0:09:24 | |
But, by making a monopoly, | 0:09:24 | 0:09:25 | |
they could ensure there'd be no domestic opposition | 0:09:25 | 0:09:28 | |
to threaten the shareholders' profits. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:31 | |
Even so, the company's investors were taking a huge gamble. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
Each voyage could take two years or more - | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
a long and tense wait to see a return on investment. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
Along the way there would be | 0:09:44 | 0:09:47 | |
potential loss of ships through storms. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:49 | |
There could be piracy, | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
there could be conquest by local rulers, etc, etc... | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
So this was a very high-risk venture. | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
But one that paid dividends from the beginning. | 0:09:58 | 0:10:01 | |
When company ships first returned from the East Indies in 1607, | 0:10:01 | 0:10:04 | |
investors had hit the jackpot. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
Ah. That single voyage netted an absolutely vast amount of money | 0:10:09 | 0:10:13 | |
because of these... cloves! | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
A single cargo of this ensured that the investors made a 230% profit, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:20 | |
bringing them £36,000 - | 0:10:20 | 0:10:22 | |
that's tens of millions in today's money. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
It's hard to comprehend just how much of a revolution this was. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:29 | |
Something that we now take for granted. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:31 | |
Used in medicine as a painkiller, | 0:10:31 | 0:10:33 | |
cloves were so highly prized | 0:10:33 | 0:10:35 | |
they were literally worth their weight in gold. | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
With the construction of a warehouse | 0:10:44 | 0:10:46 | |
and several homes, the company was turning three miles of beach | 0:10:46 | 0:10:49 | |
into commercial real estate. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:51 | |
Trade was valuable, so they protected their new settlement | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
with a stockade and called it | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
Fort St George. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
The original Fort St George was built on this spot. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
Now it's been massively strengthened and enlarged over the years, | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
but it took 14 years to build, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
and the East India Company directors bitterly complained of the cost. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:13 | |
But this was like a big security barrier for their warehouse. | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
Madras was the springboard for expansion. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
Within 50 years, the company was building two further settlements - | 0:11:22 | 0:11:26 | |
which they called Bombay and Calcutta. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:28 | |
These three urban centres | 0:11:32 | 0:11:33 | |
certainly owe their existence | 0:11:33 | 0:11:36 | |
to the East India Company. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:38 | |
They didn't exist before. | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
They grew out of small trading posts which were gradually fortified, | 0:11:41 | 0:11:46 | |
became more residential, | 0:11:46 | 0:11:48 | |
Indian communities moved in servicing the needs | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
of the company and British trade. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
And, yeah, absolutely crucial. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
In the early years, these three forts had very small garrisons. | 0:11:58 | 0:12:02 | |
About 550 men were serving here at Fort George | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
in what was then Madras. | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
Less than half of them were European troops, | 0:12:08 | 0:12:10 | |
the rest of them were locally recruited Indians. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:12 | |
The merchants were here to trade, not fight. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:15 | |
The trouble was, this was a dangerous place to do business. | 0:12:17 | 0:12:20 | |
Competition from other European traders was fierce. | 0:12:20 | 0:12:23 | |
Skirmishes were common. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:25 | |
Thick walls were a necessary precaution. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
When you come up here to this battlement | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
you get such a sense of the defensive power of this fort. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:34 | |
Look at these walls - they're comfortably 30m thick. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:37 | |
Sloping here, so that any cannonballs incoming | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
will bounce harmlessly over the heads of the defenders. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
And each of these embrasures here - these V-shaped embrasures - | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
would've had a big heavy cannon, | 0:12:45 | 0:12:47 | |
and these cannonballs would have flown out through here, | 0:12:47 | 0:12:50 | |
an interlocking field of fire, | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
making sure that anyone approaching these fort walls | 0:12:52 | 0:12:55 | |
would have been obliterated. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:56 | |
It's an incredibly tough position to take. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
With the consent of the local Indian ruler, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
the settlement grew rapidly. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:05 | |
By 1700, Madraspatnam had become a bustling town | 0:13:07 | 0:13:12 | |
with 80,000 inhabitants. | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
Trade was booming. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:16 | |
Goods were now flooding back from here to Britain, | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
and were having a profound effect on the British lifestyle. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:23 | |
Can I have a single tea, please? | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
It was the beginning of new kinds of diets - | 0:13:29 | 0:13:31 | |
of choice, of consumerism. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
People could now choose to have sugar from the West Indies, | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
pepper from India. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:38 | |
It was also the start of the Brits' obsession with hot drinks - | 0:13:38 | 0:13:43 | |
tea and coffee arrived for the first time. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:46 | |
Thanks very much. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:51 | |
Delicious. | 0:13:57 | 0:13:58 | |
Gingham, silk, muslin, calico... | 0:14:01 | 0:14:05 | |
Back in Britain, the company was importing a cavalcade | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
of rich new fabrics. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
Bowled over by the exquisite skill of India's craftsmen, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:13 | |
the British public went crazy. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:15 | |
18th century Indian textiles | 0:14:17 | 0:14:19 | |
held at London's Victoria and Albert Museum | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
reveal that an impressive range of techniques | 0:14:22 | 0:14:24 | |
were used in their manufacture. | 0:14:24 | 0:14:26 | |
All these objects are made of chintz, which is basically | 0:14:28 | 0:14:32 | |
cotton which has been hand-painted | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
rather than printed. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
The Indians managed to find ways of dyeing cotton | 0:14:38 | 0:14:43 | |
so the colours remained brilliant and were colour-fast, | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
so that was very exciting for people in the West. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:50 | |
Cheap, washable and hard-wearing - | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
they made a huge impact. | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
Less formal clothing became acceptable and fashionable. | 0:14:56 | 0:15:00 | |
And it certainly worried the British textile industry, | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
because they were very fearful that there would be no demand | 0:15:04 | 0:15:08 | |
for their own wool and linen products. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
And, at one point, it caused such a sensation, | 0:15:11 | 0:15:14 | |
and so much fear amongst the silk workers, | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
that they tore the clothes off people's backs. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
-Really? -Because they thought their livelihoods were threatened. | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
It was that dramatic. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:26 | |
Company merchants were quick to respond | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
to the consumers' changing tastes. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:30 | |
The East India Company would report back regularly | 0:15:31 | 0:15:35 | |
after every shipment to Britain from India, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
saying, "Well, we liked this, but these didn't sell so well." | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
And, "Could you do more of the floral sprigs?" | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
Or, "Could you do of more of this colour?" | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
"The long cloth you sent us proved so very coarse, | 0:15:47 | 0:15:49 | |
"ill-washed and packed, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:51 | |
"that it is unfit to be sent home. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
"Our money is much better than such trash!" | 0:15:53 | 0:15:56 | |
The British retail fashion industry was born. | 0:15:56 | 0:15:59 | |
Pyjamas, bandanas, dungarees - | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
dozens of new words entered the English dictionary. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:08 | |
Demand for Indian textiles was so great | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
it threatened to destroy Britain's industry. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
"Everything that used to be made of wool or silk, | 0:16:13 | 0:16:17 | |
"relating to either the dress of women, | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
"or the furniture of our houses, | 0:16:20 | 0:16:23 | |
"was supplied by the India trade." | 0:16:23 | 0:16:26 | |
The Government even passed a law to ban people | 0:16:27 | 0:16:30 | |
from wearing Indian textiles. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:32 | |
But it didn't work - testimony to the rising power of the consumer. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:36 | |
Over the next 100 years, sales of Indian textiles | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
would generate 60% of the company's income. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:46 | |
By 1700, it was operating 22 trading posts across India. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:54 | |
Calcutta was one of the biggest. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
The company's star was rising fast. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
But investors were about to be handed a commercial opportunity | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
beyond their wildest expectations. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
For 200 years, India had been part of a vast empire | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
ruled by a powerful dynasty. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:25 | |
The Mughals had imposed a centralised government, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
built imposing monuments, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
and unified the country with a road system and single currency. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:35 | |
The population was huge compared with Britain's - | 0:17:40 | 0:17:42 | |
it was about 140 million, | 0:17:42 | 0:17:44 | |
and Britain then had about four million. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
Erm, the economic position | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
was it was the second largest economy in the world, | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
reputedly, erm... | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
with about 25% of the world's GDP. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:58 | |
For the first few decades, | 0:18:00 | 0:18:02 | |
the mighty Mughals barely even noticed the East India Company. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:06 | |
The British didn't cause trouble, | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
and besides, they paid good money. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:10 | |
The Mughal Empire had a tax on imports of bullion, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
so they were doing quite well out of the company, | 0:18:14 | 0:18:17 | |
bringing in all this silver and gold. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:19 | |
They were also selling the company trading concessions, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
and wherever they were able to set up factories, | 0:18:22 | 0:18:26 | |
they had to pay for it. | 0:18:26 | 0:18:28 | |
So it was quite a good sort of source of income for the Empire. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
But, in 1707, the Mughal Empire began to disintegrate. | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
When the last great Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb, died, | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
his successors were unable to hold his empire together, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
and power devolved into a patchwork of competing regional states. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:53 | |
Obsessed with its own problems, therefore, | 0:18:53 | 0:18:55 | |
the empire didn't have time to worry about | 0:18:55 | 0:18:57 | |
the little old East India Company. | 0:18:57 | 0:18:59 | |
Amid the confusion, a deal was signed. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:06 | |
In exchange for an annual fee, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
the East India Company was granted | 0:19:08 | 0:19:10 | |
the right to trade - duty-free - across the state of Bengal. | 0:19:10 | 0:19:14 | |
No gift could have been greater. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:17 | |
Company merchants previously restricted to the coast | 0:19:17 | 0:19:20 | |
could now do business across an entire province. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:24 | |
And as the Mughal Empire weakened further, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
the company expanded. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
The East India Company was sucked into this vacuum. | 0:19:31 | 0:19:33 | |
It would back one local claimant to a throne against another. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
And in return for its support, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
it would be given little land holdings or trading concessions. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:42 | |
That meant, within decades, the East India Company was becoming | 0:19:42 | 0:19:46 | |
a sovereign entity in its own right. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
It had the power to raise revenue, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:50 | |
to make war and peace, | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
to mint its own coins, to administer justice. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:55 | |
The East India Company was becoming a state. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
A state that, by 1800, | 0:20:00 | 0:20:02 | |
would rule 140 million people across 94,000 square miles | 0:20:02 | 0:20:09 | |
and command an army a quarter of a million strong - | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
all controlled by 159 civil servants in a London office | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
some 14,000 miles away. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:19 | |
Their headquarters, East India House, | 0:20:19 | 0:20:21 | |
has long since disappeared under this towering structure - | 0:20:21 | 0:20:24 | |
the Lloyd's building. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:25 | |
It was from here that the company was run. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
As its ships scoured the world's oceans, | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
they were controlled by directors elected by shareholders, | 0:20:30 | 0:20:34 | |
who were known collectively as the Court of Directors. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
There would be weekly board meetings of their directors. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
There'd be quarterly auctions of the company's products, | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
and then annual general meetings | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
which would often be ferocious affairs | 0:20:46 | 0:20:48 | |
where shareholders would be fighting over the size of the dividend. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:51 | |
TRADING FLOOR HUBBUB | 0:20:51 | 0:20:54 | |
Share dealing, corporate governance, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
annual accounts - the company would help develop | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
all the paraphernalia of modern business, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:03 | |
turning London into the world's commercial capital. | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
In India, the company's affairs were generating a mountain of paperwork, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:18 | |
every transaction recorded for scrutiny back in London. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:22 | |
So it needed a large body of able, young men | 0:21:22 | 0:21:25 | |
to keep everything in order. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
This awe-inspiring building was the nerve centre | 0:21:29 | 0:21:32 | |
of the East India Company's affairs in Bengal. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:35 | |
In here were based a group of men known as the writers. | 0:21:35 | 0:21:38 | |
They were bean counters and clerks noting down minutes of meetings | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
and financial transactions - | 0:21:42 | 0:21:43 | |
all the tedious day-to-day business of the East India Company. | 0:21:43 | 0:21:47 | |
For the well-connected young Briton of the 1700s, | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
a job with the company was a free ticket on the gravy train. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
To get a job as a writer, all you had to do was ingratiate yourself | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
with one of the company directors. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
They were free to give the jobs to whoever they chose, | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
and that meant that family connection counted for everything. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:08 | |
They gave them to their sons, their cousins, their nephews | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
and their associates' sons. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:14 | |
Things like merit or experience counted for nothing. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:19 | |
"I shall be placed on the staff, | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
"wear a cocked hat and laugh at the Governor General's jokes, | 0:22:22 | 0:22:25 | |
"and a capital appointment will follow in due course." | 0:22:25 | 0:22:29 | |
The pay wasn't great, | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
but you could do a bit of wheeler-dealing on the side. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
Private trading was a good way for young men to | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
supplement their income. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
The company did allow it, but there were rules. | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
A captain was allowed to have a portion of his cargo | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
to be reserved for his own private business. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:48 | |
And the young writers out here | 0:22:48 | 0:22:50 | |
were allowed to trade in certain commodities - | 0:22:50 | 0:22:53 | |
spices, diamonds, and textiles woven with gold and silver thread. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:58 | |
It was a nice little earner. | 0:22:58 | 0:22:59 | |
They lend money to Indian nobles at extortionate interest rates, | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
they speculate, they profiteer | 0:23:03 | 0:23:05 | |
and they engage in trade | 0:23:05 | 0:23:07 | |
and they use the East India Company monopolies | 0:23:07 | 0:23:09 | |
and its political power to create | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
very favourable trading conditions for themselves. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:15 | |
But a career in India came with considerable risk. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:27 | |
None of the company's men were prepared for the dangers | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
of a tropical climate. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
They were greeted on arrival by | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
a withering barrage of heat and disease. | 0:23:35 | 0:23:39 | |
It was said that during the hot season here in India, | 0:23:39 | 0:23:41 | |
it was as dangerous a place as anywhere in the world | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
for humans to live. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:45 | |
"Here I passed a night in a bed | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
"which might be called a chop house for mosquitoes." | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
"The intemperance of the climate, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:55 | |
"together with the excessive heat of the sun | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
"are very noxious to our health." | 0:23:58 | 0:23:59 | |
"I had so bad a night of it, I really expected it to be my last. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:03 | |
"My stomach is so weak it refuses everything." | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
Many who came to Calcutta | 0:24:08 | 0:24:10 | |
ended up here, in South Park Street Cemetery. | 0:24:10 | 0:24:13 | |
There are so many stories of friendships, love affairs, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:20 | |
families torn apart by death and disease. | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
To just pick one out here... | 0:24:22 | 0:24:24 | |
John Blackistone, a junior officer in the company's army, | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
and he had a friend who he looked up to, a few years his senior, | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
called Lieutenant Rowley, who was in the Engineers. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:33 | |
Rowely got dysentery and slowly wasted away. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
Blackistone wrote, "Poor fellow! | 0:24:36 | 0:24:39 | |
"He expired in my arms. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
"To one so young as myself and unaccustomed to such scenes, | 0:24:42 | 0:24:46 | |
"this could not but be a most painful circumstance." | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
People grew to accept that death could be sudden. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
"We've known instances of dining with a gentlemen at midday | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
"and being invited to his burial before suppertime." | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
Calcutta historian Sudip Bhattacharya | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
is researching mortality amongst the early settlers. | 0:25:11 | 0:25:15 | |
The cemetery was opened in 1767 | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
and burials took place until 1790. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:22 | |
So it's quite a short period? | 0:25:22 | 0:25:24 | |
Yes, it's a very short period, | 0:25:24 | 0:25:25 | |
-which only goes to demonstrate the mortality, the high mortality. -Wow. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:29 | |
There's one here that you might be interested in. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:36 | |
He was sincerely and universally regretted by Europeans and natives. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
Superintendent of the police in Calcutta. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
So it affected everybody. Just because you were high and mighty, | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
-it didn't mean you weren't going to get sick? -No, no. For instance, | 0:25:46 | 0:25:49 | |
here you have a judge, he was one of the first judges | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
of the Supreme Court of Adjudication in Bengal. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
They lacked the science, they lacked the knowledge | 0:25:55 | 0:25:58 | |
about how to combat these microbes? | 0:25:58 | 0:26:00 | |
-Yes. -So everyone was in the same boat. -Yes. | 0:26:00 | 0:26:03 | |
The worst period for sickness was of course the monsoon, | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
between June and September. | 0:26:15 | 0:26:17 | |
If you managed to survive September, around 15th October, | 0:26:17 | 0:26:21 | |
they would celebrate the fact that they had survived. | 0:26:21 | 0:26:25 | |
A number of deaths took place in September. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
Many people died. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:29 | |
In one year alone, more than a third | 0:26:30 | 0:26:33 | |
of Calcutta's European population died during the rainy season. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:36 | |
The average life span of a Briton in Bengal | 0:26:37 | 0:26:40 | |
was said to be two monsoons. | 0:26:40 | 0:26:42 | |
The company regularly shipped blank tombstones from England | 0:26:42 | 0:26:45 | |
to meet demand. | 0:26:45 | 0:26:47 | |
This is the dark twin of the East India Company's success. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:55 | |
This is the one they probably wouldn't have wanted to talk about | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
when they were recruiting those young men, full of hope, | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
to come out here and grow rich and powerful. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
The company tried to help. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
It supplied ships and factories with vast quantities of wine | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
in the mistaken belief that alcohol would promote health. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
It didn't help much - but the men couldn't have been more pleased. | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
And when the cellars ran dry, | 0:27:21 | 0:27:23 | |
there was always the local brew. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:26 | |
Toddy made from the sap of palm trees | 0:27:26 | 0:27:29 | |
was meant to cure griping of the stomach. | 0:27:29 | 0:27:31 | |
Then there was arrack, the locally brewed firewater. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:34 | |
It was supposed to promote health in young men. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
When it became clear that Peruvian bark - or quinine - cured fevers, | 0:27:39 | 0:27:44 | |
people started taking that. | 0:27:44 | 0:27:46 | |
Trouble is, it was very bitter. They found they had to mix it with | 0:27:46 | 0:27:49 | |
sugar, soda water, gin and lemons - | 0:27:49 | 0:27:53 | |
the quintessentially British gin and tonic had been produced. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:57 | |
When men weren't busy dying, | 0:27:57 | 0:28:00 | |
shuffling paperwork or raking in the cash, | 0:28:00 | 0:28:03 | |
they were getting smashed. | 0:28:03 | 0:28:05 | |
Hard drinking was a central part of their louche lifestyle. | 0:28:05 | 0:28:08 | |
"Spent a severe night of punch, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:14 | |
"and having sung ourselves to sleep in our chairs, | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
"were awoke next morning at five by the gun, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
"when we turned into our several nests | 0:28:18 | 0:28:20 | |
"to growl and keep our burning heads as cool as the weather would permit." | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
Rampant alcoholism put paid to many a promising career. | 0:28:24 | 0:28:28 | |
"More English fell in Hindustan | 0:28:30 | 0:28:31 | |
"by the intemperate and injudicious use of ardent spirits | 0:28:31 | 0:28:35 | |
"than by the sword." | 0:28:35 | 0:28:37 | |
Drinking, gambling and brawling - | 0:28:39 | 0:28:41 | |
they were the quintessential Englishmen abroad. | 0:28:41 | 0:28:45 | |
The staunchly Protestant company directors | 0:28:45 | 0:28:47 | |
soon realised they had a problem. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:50 | |
While they cared little about their employees' alcoholism, | 0:28:50 | 0:28:54 | |
they did care about their choice of women. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:57 | |
Some of them were apparently taking up with the locals | 0:28:57 | 0:29:00 | |
or, possibly even worse, | 0:29:00 | 0:29:01 | |
the Catholic daughters of Portuguese traders. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
This had to be dealt with, and the company came up with | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
a brilliant suggestion, which was, | 0:29:07 | 0:29:09 | |
pack a ship full of British women and send them out here! | 0:29:09 | 0:29:11 | |
What could possibly go wrong? | 0:29:11 | 0:29:13 | |
The answer was... | 0:29:15 | 0:29:16 | |
just about everything. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:18 | |
One lady traveller divided these women into two groups. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:22 | |
"Old maids of the shrivelled and dry description, | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
"and girls educated merely to cover the surface | 0:29:25 | 0:29:28 | |
"of their mental deformity." | 0:29:28 | 0:29:32 | |
When the women arrived, they behaved just as wildly as the men, | 0:29:32 | 0:29:35 | |
forming relationships with locals and having a great time. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:38 | |
The plan was abandoned immediately. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:40 | |
The East India Company realised they should stick to shipping out tweed. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:44 | |
Company servants had no need of a matchmaker, in any case. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
They were busy forming attachments of their own. | 0:30:11 | 0:30:16 | |
The allure of Bengali women was proving as potent | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
as the local firewater. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:21 | |
"The attachment of many European gentlemen | 0:30:23 | 0:30:26 | |
"to their native mistresses is not to be described. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
"An infatuation beyond all comparison often prevails." | 0:30:29 | 0:30:33 | |
Many company men adopted the local tradition of polygamy. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
"I have known various instances of two ladies | 0:30:43 | 0:30:46 | |
"being conjointly domesticated, | 0:30:46 | 0:30:47 | |
"and one of an elderly military character, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:50 | |
"who solaced himself with no less than 16 of all sorts and sizes." | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
Many of these relationships lasted a lifetime. | 0:31:00 | 0:31:03 | |
Thousands of company servants provided generously | 0:31:07 | 0:31:10 | |
for the future of their Indian mistresses and offspring | 0:31:10 | 0:31:12 | |
in wills held at the British Library. | 0:31:12 | 0:31:15 | |
So here we have Matthew Leslie, who calls himself | 0:31:16 | 0:31:20 | |
by his Muslim name - Meer Mohamed Hussein Khan - | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
and he talks about his wife and he talks about | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
his three mistresses, all of whom receive quite large sums of money. | 0:31:28 | 0:31:33 | |
His late wife Zehourun - for her sole and separate use of benefit, | 0:31:33 | 0:31:38 | |
20,000 sicca rupees to be paid | 0:31:38 | 0:31:40 | |
straight after his death, | 0:31:40 | 0:31:42 | |
the same sum of money is invested in company bonds | 0:31:42 | 0:31:45 | |
and quarterly payments made in every year. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
The same kind of thing goes on for his other girls. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
And the amounts seem to be going down here. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:54 | |
So there was favouritism? | 0:31:54 | 0:31:55 | |
There's a league table of favouritism here. | 0:31:55 | 0:31:58 | |
So here is Heera Bili. She gets 12,000 rather than 20,000, | 0:31:58 | 0:32:03 | |
and quarterly payments, so you can see his favouritism decreases. | 0:32:03 | 0:32:08 | |
But not only has he got four mistress heirs, | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
but he also, in his will, mentions | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
that if there's any of the young girls living in my family - | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
living in his house - | 0:32:16 | 0:32:18 | |
who may be with child at the time of my decease, | 0:32:18 | 0:32:21 | |
if they give birth within the requisite time after he died, | 0:32:21 | 0:32:24 | |
he's going to acknowledge that they're his children | 0:32:24 | 0:32:27 | |
and he leaves money to them. | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
And his executors will have discretion | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
to determine whether or not such child or children | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
"were or were not begotten by me". | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
So that's pretty brutal. If they look like him, they get the cash? | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
Absolutely. And he leaves 53,000 in ready cash, | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
in his will - £53,000 sterling that is, not rupees - | 0:32:44 | 0:32:49 | |
and today, in economic power, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
that's worth about £62 million. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:55 | |
The East India Company had serious misgivings about its employees | 0:32:57 | 0:33:00 | |
cohabiting with local women. | 0:33:00 | 0:33:03 | |
But then again, knowledge of local markets was good for business. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
Liaisons with indigenous women teach men languages, | 0:33:07 | 0:33:11 | |
so the company really has a vested interest in these relationships | 0:33:11 | 0:33:15 | |
being close and tightknit. | 0:33:15 | 0:33:17 | |
'By the middle of the 18th century, | 0:33:20 | 0:33:22 | |
'90% of company employees in India had local partners.' | 0:33:22 | 0:33:26 | |
Morning, Driver. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:28 | |
'Many could now afford several mistresses | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
'and a house full of servants.' | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
Right, let's go! | 0:33:32 | 0:33:34 | |
But something odd was going on. | 0:33:38 | 0:33:40 | |
They'd arrived here as humble merchants, | 0:33:40 | 0:33:42 | |
but their new-found wealth | 0:33:42 | 0:33:44 | |
was having a bizarre effect. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
They adopted the ostentatious, flamboyant lifestyles | 0:33:47 | 0:33:50 | |
of an Eastern prince - | 0:33:50 | 0:33:51 | |
surrounding themselves with armies of servants, | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
being carried from place to place in a palanquin. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:56 | |
The pomposity and extravagance of these white Mughals knew no bounds. | 0:33:56 | 0:34:01 | |
Much to the annoyance of their fellow countrymen. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:05 | |
"Many of the British inhabitants affect great splendour | 0:34:05 | 0:34:08 | |
"in their mode of living. | 0:34:08 | 0:34:10 | |
"They assume an air of much consequence, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:13 | |
"and often treat the rest of their countrymen | 0:34:13 | 0:34:15 | |
"with supercilious arrogance." | 0:34:15 | 0:34:17 | |
I think this is my favourite picture from the period. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
It shows a man who looks like a Mughal emperor. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:22 | |
He's sitting on a cushion, smoking a hookah, attended by servants, | 0:34:22 | 0:34:25 | |
master of all he surveys, in his luscious robes and turban. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
But that is no Mughal emperor. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
In fact, it's an accountant from Yorkshire. | 0:34:30 | 0:34:33 | |
His name's John Wombwell. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:35 | |
He's living the dream. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
While some lived like overblown maharajahs, others - | 0:34:40 | 0:34:43 | |
like Major General Charles Stuart - | 0:34:43 | 0:34:45 | |
engage with India on a more profound level. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
Charles Stuart came out here from his native Ireland aged 19, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
and immediately fell in love with the place. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:55 | |
He had a house here on Wood Street which he turned into a museum, | 0:34:55 | 0:34:59 | |
filling it up with Indian artefacts and carvings. | 0:34:59 | 0:35:02 | |
He was happy to show anybody around | 0:35:02 | 0:35:04 | |
and share his passion for all things Indian. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:08 | |
Stuart found the exoticism of Hindu myths irresistible. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:13 | |
"Whenever I look around me in the vast region of Hindu mythology, | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
"it appears the most complete and ample system of moral allegory | 0:35:18 | 0:35:22 | |
"that the world has ever produced." | 0:35:22 | 0:35:24 | |
Stuart's encounter with India changed his life. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
Within a year of his arrival, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:31 | |
he had discarded Christianity and become a Hindu. | 0:35:31 | 0:35:35 | |
Hindoo Stuart, as he became known, learned the local languages, | 0:35:38 | 0:35:41 | |
dressed like a local, | 0:35:41 | 0:35:43 | |
would've been very comfortable in places like this. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:45 | |
He took a local woman as a wife and had a brood of mixed-race children. | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
He even hired a group of Brahmins, Hindu scholars, | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
to prepare the family's food in traditional Hindu manner. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:55 | |
Stuart wasn't unusual in embracing his new home. | 0:35:59 | 0:36:03 | |
Many Britons and Indians accepted each other in an atmosphere | 0:36:03 | 0:36:07 | |
of mutual understanding. | 0:36:07 | 0:36:09 | |
The British came to India before the 19th century | 0:36:11 | 0:36:14 | |
very much as explorers, adventurers, people out to make their money, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:18 | |
and they encountered a very old and very complex civilisation, | 0:36:18 | 0:36:21 | |
and they were often impressed by it. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:23 | |
And so they didn't feel that they were in any way superior to Indians. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
They were just simply one of a number of groups jostling in India | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
to try and earn a living and to try and make their way. | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
And in the final analysis, integration was good for business. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:38 | |
In any case, the company's attention | 0:36:40 | 0:36:42 | |
was focused on a far bigger problem - | 0:36:42 | 0:36:44 | |
an escalating military confrontation with the French. | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
The British and French had set up trading posts | 0:36:48 | 0:36:51 | |
within a few miles of each other - | 0:36:51 | 0:36:53 | |
the French at Pondicherry and Chandernagore, | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
the British in Madras and Calcutta. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
In 1756, | 0:36:59 | 0:37:01 | |
rivalry exploded into open warfare. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
Driven by antagonism over colonial interests, | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
the Seven Years' War raged from Europe to North America | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
and across the world's oceans. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:14 | |
MILITARY BAND PLAYS | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
But in India, the ultimate prize was control over trade. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:22 | |
MEN SHOUT IN UNISON | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
The merchants of the East India Company | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
had traditionally tried to avoid war - | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
its costs were certain, but its outcomes far less so. | 0:37:35 | 0:37:37 | |
It was bad for business. | 0:37:37 | 0:37:39 | |
But as the French grew more threatening in the subcontinent, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:41 | |
the company realised it needed to get more serious | 0:37:41 | 0:37:44 | |
about the military side of things, | 0:37:44 | 0:37:46 | |
and the motley crews guarding its forts in India | 0:37:46 | 0:37:49 | |
weren't up to scratch. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:50 | |
What it needed was a serious standing army. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:53 | |
The company decided to strengthen its garrison at Fort St George. | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
In January 1748, | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
150 British troops arrived in Madras, | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
led by Major Stringer Lawrence, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:07 | |
an irascible old soldier known affectionately as Old Cock. | 0:38:07 | 0:38:11 | |
He's 50 years old, he's fought in the lowlands in Spain | 0:38:12 | 0:38:16 | |
and also in the Jacobite Rebellion, and he is a man with | 0:38:16 | 0:38:19 | |
great knowledge of military affairs, | 0:38:19 | 0:38:21 | |
and his job is really to re-form the company troops | 0:38:21 | 0:38:24 | |
out in India. | 0:38:24 | 0:38:26 | |
He begins by forming them into companies, | 0:38:30 | 0:38:32 | |
each commanded by an officer, | 0:38:32 | 0:38:33 | |
and those companies are equipped, trained and disciplined | 0:38:33 | 0:38:36 | |
exactly like British troops would be, | 0:38:36 | 0:38:38 | |
and of course the end result of all of this | 0:38:38 | 0:38:40 | |
is that it becomes a much more effective fighting force. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
MILITARY BAND PLAYS | 0:38:43 | 0:38:46 | |
His new army was led by European officers, | 0:38:46 | 0:38:48 | |
but most of the troops were Indians, | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
known as sepoys, from the Persian word for "soldier". | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
Stringer Lawrence is seen as | 0:38:54 | 0:38:57 | |
the grandfather of the modern Indian army. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:00 | |
Many units are the direct descendants of those | 0:39:00 | 0:39:03 | |
he founded 250 years ago. | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
One young soldier in Lawrence's new army was the future national hero, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:13 | |
Clive of India. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:15 | |
Robert Clive was from a family of provincial gentry. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:19 | |
As a young boy, he was a bit of a tearaway | 0:39:19 | 0:39:21 | |
and loved getting into fights, | 0:39:21 | 0:39:23 | |
he was expelled three times from school, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:25 | |
so his father thought nothing much would come of him | 0:39:25 | 0:39:28 | |
and he might as well gamble and send him out here to India | 0:39:28 | 0:39:31 | |
to join the East India Company, which made men or broke them. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:34 | |
At first, Clive had been desperately homesick and hated the searing heat. | 0:39:35 | 0:39:40 | |
"If I should be so blest | 0:39:41 | 0:39:43 | |
"as to revisit again my own country, but more especially Manchester - | 0:39:43 | 0:39:47 | |
"the centre of all my wishes - | 0:39:47 | 0:39:48 | |
"all that I could hope or desire for | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
"would be presented before me in one view." | 0:39:51 | 0:39:54 | |
He was known as a man | 0:39:54 | 0:39:55 | |
who had a relatively short temper. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
He was, as we discover in his later career, | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
a man with tremendous energy, | 0:40:00 | 0:40:02 | |
vigour and resolution, | 0:40:02 | 0:40:03 | |
and this must have seemed a pretty crushing way | 0:40:03 | 0:40:06 | |
to begin his career. | 0:40:06 | 0:40:08 | |
Clive would be the driving force in transforming the company | 0:40:09 | 0:40:12 | |
from commercial giant | 0:40:12 | 0:40:14 | |
to THE dominant political power in India. | 0:40:14 | 0:40:17 | |
In 1756, his great adversary was the Mughal ruler of Bengal. | 0:40:19 | 0:40:24 | |
Siraj ud-Daulah loathed the British | 0:40:27 | 0:40:29 | |
and bitterly resented the company's hold on Calcutta. | 0:40:29 | 0:40:32 | |
In June, he attacked the city. | 0:40:33 | 0:40:36 | |
Calcutta fell within hours. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
And on the evening of June 20th, | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
146 British prisoners were taken to Fort William - | 0:40:42 | 0:40:46 | |
now the site of the government post office. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:50 | |
100 yards from this spot | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
stands a grim reminder of what happened next. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
The most vivid account we have was left by a man called | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
John Zephaniah Holwell. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:02 | |
He'd been the chief magistrate of Calcutta. He'd been left in charge. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
And he and his men were marched into a cell | 0:41:06 | 0:41:08 | |
just 18 foot wide at gun point. | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
It became known simply as the Black Hole, | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
and what happened in there became one of the most infamous stories | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
in the whole of British Imperial history. | 0:41:17 | 0:41:21 | |
It's said the prisoners, crushed together, | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
suffocating and fighting to stay upright, | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
were gripped by claustrophobic terror. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:34 | |
The heat was almost unbearable. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
To try and slake his thirst, | 0:41:41 | 0:41:42 | |
Holwell took off his sweat-soaked shirt | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
and wrang it out into his mouth. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:47 | |
Other people trampled on the weakened bodies of their comrades, | 0:41:47 | 0:41:51 | |
desperately trying to reach the two small windows at the top of the wall | 0:41:51 | 0:41:56 | |
and gulp down some fresh air. | 0:41:56 | 0:41:58 | |
It was a night of unspeakable suffering and cruelty. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
When the doors were flung open at dawn the next day, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
the cell was filled with corpses. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
To Holwell's horror, just 23 had survived. | 0:42:10 | 0:42:14 | |
Towards the end of the account, | 0:42:15 | 0:42:17 | |
there's a particularly memorable line. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:20 | |
He writes, "But oh! Sir, what words shall I adopt to tell you | 0:42:20 | 0:42:23 | |
"the whole that my soul suffered | 0:42:23 | 0:42:25 | |
"at reviewing the dreadful destruction round me? | 0:42:25 | 0:42:29 | |
"I will not attempt it. And indeed, tears stop my pen." | 0:42:29 | 0:42:33 | |
The news of what had happened to their fellow countrymen | 0:42:35 | 0:42:38 | |
at the hands of a barbarous Indian despot | 0:42:38 | 0:42:41 | |
electrified congregations right across Britain. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
This, after all, was a generation that was starting to believe that | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
"Britons never, never, never shall be slaves". | 0:42:47 | 0:42:50 | |
The story of the Black Hole | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
left a deep scar in the British psyche for generations. | 0:42:55 | 0:42:58 | |
To Victorian schoolchildren, the events of 1756 | 0:42:58 | 0:43:02 | |
were as familiar as the Battle of Hastings. | 0:43:02 | 0:43:05 | |
But historians like Sushil Chaudury believe Holwell's account | 0:43:05 | 0:43:10 | |
can't be trusted. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:12 | |
Holwell first mentioned that in the Black Hole, | 0:43:12 | 0:43:15 | |
165 or 175 people were confined. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
Later, he revised the number. | 0:43:19 | 0:43:21 | |
He said it's 146, and out of 146, | 0:43:21 | 0:43:25 | |
23 were alive, but 123 died. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:29 | |
You don't think so many people could be packed into that small a space? | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
Surely not. It was impossible to put in 146 people in that small room, | 0:43:33 | 0:43:39 | |
which is 18ft by 14ft, | 0:43:39 | 0:43:41 | |
and then he said he knew most of the people, | 0:43:41 | 0:43:45 | |
but it was pitch dark. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
It was impossible for anyone to recognise people there. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
And then he said he looked at his watch. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
How could he look at his watch? You know? | 0:43:52 | 0:43:54 | |
It's fabrication, no doubt. | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
What we don't know for sure | 0:44:05 | 0:44:07 | |
is how many actually perished that night. | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
The numbers range from three | 0:44:09 | 0:44:12 | |
to over 100. I suspect it's somewhere in between. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
What is not in question is that this was an atrocity. Was it deliberate? | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
Almost certainly not. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:19 | |
It was unfortunate that this small, airless room was... | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
It happened on an incredibly hot and humid night, | 0:44:23 | 0:44:26 | |
some of the people inside were already wounded | 0:44:26 | 0:44:28 | |
from the battle that had taken place. | 0:44:28 | 0:44:30 | |
There were bound to be some fatalities, | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
but that there were so many was a point taken very seriously | 0:44:33 | 0:44:37 | |
by the remaining British in India and also the British back home, | 0:44:37 | 0:44:41 | |
and there was very much a sense that they wanted revenge. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
Determined to re-assert supremacy, | 0:44:53 | 0:44:55 | |
Clive recaptured Calcutta, | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
and confronted Siraj at a village called Plassey, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
120 miles north of the city, | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
in what would become a decisive moment in the history | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
of the East India Company. | 0:45:05 | 0:45:07 | |
At Plassey, Clive was terribly outnumbered | 0:45:13 | 0:45:16 | |
by more than 10 to 1. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:18 | |
But Clive had a plan that didn't just rely on military might alone. | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
He'd been in secret correspondence | 0:45:21 | 0:45:23 | |
with one of the nawab's key lieutenants - | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
the commander of his cavalry, a man called Mir Jafar. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
The deal is done between Clive and Mir Jafar | 0:45:29 | 0:45:33 | |
that at a certain key part of the fight, | 0:45:33 | 0:45:35 | |
Mir Jafar will come onto his side. | 0:45:35 | 0:45:37 | |
In other words, he'll leave his chief, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:39 | |
and in return for putting him on the throne, | 0:45:39 | 0:45:41 | |
the company will not only be paid vast sums of money - | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
and we are talking about fantastical sums - | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
but also, it will be given a free rein in terms of its trade. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:49 | |
It was all over in a matter of hours, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:58 | |
but it had little to do with military might. | 0:45:58 | 0:46:01 | |
Mir Jafar, the traitor, had been paid off | 0:46:01 | 0:46:03 | |
and he ensured that the majority of the nawab's troops | 0:46:03 | 0:46:06 | |
took no part in the battle. | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
He was then installed as Britain's puppet. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:10 | |
This opened up the richest province of India to the company. | 0:46:10 | 0:46:14 | |
Robert Clive regarded this Machiavellian manoeuvring | 0:46:14 | 0:46:18 | |
as the pinnacle of his career. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
Clive and the company were now rich. | 0:46:23 | 0:46:26 | |
Better still, in exchange for a single payment of £270,000, | 0:46:26 | 0:46:30 | |
the company was granted the right to manage | 0:46:30 | 0:46:34 | |
the Diwani - or the revenue and civil administration - of Bengal. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:38 | |
This allowed them to collect the land tax | 0:46:39 | 0:46:42 | |
from the entire population of Bengal - 10 million people. | 0:46:42 | 0:46:46 | |
It effectively turned them into the de facto government. | 0:46:46 | 0:46:49 | |
Robert Clive estimated that it would be worth | 0:46:49 | 0:46:52 | |
£1.7 million every year. | 0:46:52 | 0:46:56 | |
With control over the revenues of India's richest province, | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
the company's role had profoundly changed. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:04 | |
It's the point at which the East India Company really moves | 0:47:04 | 0:47:07 | |
from being a trading enterprise to an actual ruler of territory. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:11 | |
The Diwani was a licence to print money. | 0:47:13 | 0:47:16 | |
After the costs of administering Bengal had been met, | 0:47:16 | 0:47:19 | |
the company's profit margin was 49%. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
The commercial floodgates had opened. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
In 1766, news of the Diwani reached London. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
The prospect of massive financial gains in Bengal | 0:47:33 | 0:47:37 | |
pushed the company's share price through the roof. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
Now, this is partly fuelled by Clive, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:42 | |
who wrote to his friends from India, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
advising them to buy stock | 0:47:44 | 0:47:46 | |
and he wrote to his own attorneys, as well, | 0:47:46 | 0:47:48 | |
telling them to make huge purchases on his behalf. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:51 | |
Not surprisingly, other British and foreign investors followed suit. | 0:47:51 | 0:47:55 | |
Robert Clive returned home a national hero | 0:48:02 | 0:48:05 | |
with a personal fortune equivalent to £38 million today, | 0:48:05 | 0:48:10 | |
and a generous income from landholdings in Bengal. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:14 | |
He went on a spending spree. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:17 | |
He bought a raft of properties, including his childhood home, | 0:48:17 | 0:48:20 | |
Styche Hall, which he renovated for his father, | 0:48:20 | 0:48:22 | |
and then he bought this place, | 0:48:22 | 0:48:24 | |
Walcot Hall, for the princely sum of £90,000. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:28 | |
Not bad for 6,000 acres. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
Clive began transforming his new home into a lavish palazzo | 0:48:35 | 0:48:39 | |
with one of the finest gardens in England. | 0:48:39 | 0:48:42 | |
After ruling a state four times bigger than Britain, | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
Clive was determined to forge a political career | 0:48:46 | 0:48:49 | |
back in the old country. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:51 | |
His new Shropshire pile came with an added bonus. | 0:48:51 | 0:48:55 | |
Walcot Hall had traditionally been owned by the powerful Walcot family | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
and they'd been able to nominate the area's MPs. | 0:49:01 | 0:49:04 | |
When they fell badly into debt, Clive saw his chance. | 0:49:04 | 0:49:07 | |
He bought the estate | 0:49:07 | 0:49:08 | |
and with it came control of the local parliamentary borough. | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
That allowed him to basically appoint his cousin as the MP. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:16 | |
For the next 50 years, Clive's money ensured | 0:49:16 | 0:49:18 | |
that his family continue to live in style | 0:49:18 | 0:49:20 | |
and they continued to control the politics of the local area. | 0:49:20 | 0:49:24 | |
Clive added half a dozen seats in Shropshire | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
and further estates in Devon, Monmouth and Surrey | 0:49:29 | 0:49:32 | |
to a bulging property empire. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
He was just one of a number of company men | 0:49:36 | 0:49:38 | |
who'd grown fabulously wealthy in Bengal | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
and then had returned home to improve their status in life. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
They'd bought their way into the aristocracy, | 0:49:44 | 0:49:46 | |
they'd bought influence and power. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:49 | |
They became known as nabobs, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:52 | |
a term synonymous with vanity and absurd pretention. | 0:49:52 | 0:49:56 | |
They're perceived to be too rich for their own good, | 0:49:58 | 0:50:00 | |
to wear their diamonds too ostentatiously, | 0:50:00 | 0:50:04 | |
to wear textiles from India, | 0:50:04 | 0:50:06 | |
concerns about so-called Oriental despotism, | 0:50:06 | 0:50:09 | |
that they may have brought back from the Mughal Empire in India with them. | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
All of those are great concerns for people. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:16 | |
The nabobs represented the East India Company | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
at its most venal and corrupt - | 0:50:19 | 0:50:22 | |
a direct threat to the social and political order. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:25 | |
There was a concern that not only were they bringing back great wealth | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
but they were also infiltrating Parliament | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
with sort of Oriental corruption | 0:50:32 | 0:50:33 | |
and Asiatic practices of government, | 0:50:33 | 0:50:36 | |
which were viewed with a great deal of concern and scepticism and anxiety | 0:50:36 | 0:50:39 | |
by the ruling elite in Britain. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:41 | |
By the 1780's, they had become | 0:50:41 | 0:50:44 | |
a powerful minority, with one-tenth of the seats in Parliament. | 0:50:44 | 0:50:48 | |
But their good fortune would soon end. | 0:50:52 | 0:50:55 | |
A natural calamity was about to throw the honourable company | 0:50:59 | 0:51:03 | |
into the biggest crisis in its history. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:06 | |
Famine had long been a part of life in Bengal, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:13 | |
but one that began in the late 1760s | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
was turned into a full-blown humanitarian disaster | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
by the East India Company. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:23 | |
It's hard to come to terms with even after all these years, | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
but while the nabobs were back in Britain buying stately homes, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:29 | |
throwing parties, filling them with silver, wine and art, | 0:51:29 | 0:51:33 | |
the people of Bengal, who were paying for all that, | 0:51:33 | 0:51:36 | |
were experiencing some of the most appalling conditions imaginable. | 0:51:36 | 0:51:40 | |
A prolonged drought and a poor harvest | 0:51:46 | 0:51:48 | |
caused a famine that continued for three long years - | 0:51:48 | 0:51:52 | |
the worst in living memory. | 0:51:52 | 0:51:54 | |
The agony of the Bengali people is described in vivid detail. | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
The East India Company watched and recorded everything. | 0:52:04 | 0:52:08 | |
"7,600 dying in Calcutta in the last six weeks. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
"Double that number in other towns in the province." | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
And then these chilling, terrible, awful words... | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
"Hunger drives many of them to such distress, | 0:52:20 | 0:52:23 | |
"that the strongest frequently, in some parts of the country, | 0:52:23 | 0:52:27 | |
"fall upon the weaker and devour them." | 0:52:27 | 0:52:31 | |
We're talking about cannibalism? | 0:52:31 | 0:52:33 | |
We're talking about cannibalism here. | 0:52:33 | 0:52:35 | |
They're forced into those kinds of horrible means of staying alive. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:40 | |
And then, in contrast, the next paragraph says, | 0:52:40 | 0:52:44 | |
"Balls, concerts and all public entertainments | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
"ought to subside at this time of general scarcity, | 0:52:47 | 0:52:51 | |
"but I'm sorry to say they have not. | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
"And under the doors and windows of these places of amusement | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
"lie many dead bodies, and others, again, | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
"in all the agonies of death, despair and want." | 0:53:00 | 0:53:05 | |
So as you're going out to a concert or something, | 0:53:05 | 0:53:07 | |
you're stepping over the destitute, dead and dying? | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
Piles of dead people. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:11 | |
Did the East India Company help or make things worse? | 0:53:11 | 0:53:13 | |
They make things worse. | 0:53:13 | 0:53:15 | |
They raised the taxes on agricultural produce. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:18 | |
They banned the hoarding of rice and grain, | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
which was traditionally used to tide over the population | 0:53:20 | 0:53:23 | |
through periods of scarcity. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:26 | |
They ripped up some of the food crops | 0:53:26 | 0:53:28 | |
to plant much more profitable indigo | 0:53:28 | 0:53:31 | |
and even-more-profitable opium. | 0:53:31 | 0:53:33 | |
And, finally, some of their junior servants | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
started to speculate | 0:53:38 | 0:53:39 | |
and profiteer from the sale of rice and grain, | 0:53:39 | 0:53:45 | |
selling it out of the province at grossly inflated prices. | 0:53:45 | 0:53:50 | |
The letters reveal where the company's priorities really lay. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
While they lament "the distresses which the inhabitants | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
"may be reduced to thereby", | 0:54:01 | 0:54:03 | |
they can't divest themselves of anxious apprehensions | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
"concerning the effects which a continuation of the drought | 0:54:07 | 0:54:11 | |
"may have on the collections of our revenues". | 0:54:11 | 0:54:15 | |
So they're thinking profits rather than disaster relief. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:22 | |
It's estimated that between two million and ten million people died. | 0:54:24 | 0:54:29 | |
A salutary lesson on the dangers of unchecked corporate power. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
You have streams and streams of people who are dying | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
walking to company officials saying, "Help us. | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
"You are now the rulers, you need to do something, | 0:54:40 | 0:54:43 | |
"you have responsibility for us," | 0:54:43 | 0:54:45 | |
and the British do very little. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
Nobody was ultimately brought to account for it, | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
but there was certainly a sense that | 0:54:50 | 0:54:53 | |
the nature of East India Company government at the time | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 | |
had exacerbated the famine. | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
That it had made things worse, if it hadn't actually caused it. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:03 | |
The famine was a human tragedy | 0:55:08 | 0:55:10 | |
and a financial disaster. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
The Bengal economy collapsed, | 0:55:12 | 0:55:14 | |
the company's income plummeted, | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
its share price crashed and all dividend payments were suspended. | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
The bubble was burst. | 0:55:22 | 0:55:23 | |
People wanted to know why - how could this have happened? | 0:55:23 | 0:55:27 | |
Parliament set up its own enquiry | 0:55:27 | 0:55:28 | |
and a scapegoat was lined up - | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
Robert Clive, Britain's richest man. | 0:55:31 | 0:55:34 | |
He became seen as the leader of the nabobs | 0:55:37 | 0:55:39 | |
and was nicknamed Lord Vulture. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:42 | |
Denounced for enriching himself with Indian loot, | 0:55:44 | 0:55:47 | |
Clive was hauled before Parliament. | 0:55:47 | 0:55:49 | |
He asked his accusers to remember the situation that he'd been in - | 0:55:50 | 0:55:54 | |
an opulent city had lain at his mercy. | 0:55:54 | 0:55:56 | |
He'd been shown through vaults full of treasure, | 0:55:56 | 0:55:58 | |
gold and precious stones on every side. | 0:55:58 | 0:56:01 | |
He finished by saying, | 0:56:01 | 0:56:02 | |
"By God, Mr Chairman, I stand astonished at my own moderation." | 0:56:02 | 0:56:06 | |
Well, if Clive was greedy or corrupt, | 0:56:06 | 0:56:09 | |
he certainly wasn't the only one in the House of Commons. | 0:56:09 | 0:56:12 | |
He was acquitted. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:14 | |
In fact, he was even thanked for services to his country. | 0:56:14 | 0:56:18 | |
But like a plot twist in a Victorian melodrama, | 0:56:19 | 0:56:22 | |
his life ended in tragedy. | 0:56:22 | 0:56:24 | |
In November 1774, Clive was found dead at his London home. | 0:56:24 | 0:56:29 | |
He'd suffered depression for much of his life, | 0:56:30 | 0:56:33 | |
and he'd become an opium addict. | 0:56:33 | 0:56:35 | |
It's very likely that he committed suicide. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:37 | |
Dr Samuel Johnson wrote that his crimes had driven him | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
to slit his own throat. | 0:56:40 | 0:56:42 | |
It was a scandalous and pitiful end to a life of extraordinary, | 0:56:42 | 0:56:47 | |
if controversial, achievement. | 0:56:47 | 0:56:50 | |
Accused of corruption, incompetence and greed, | 0:56:50 | 0:56:53 | |
the company's reputation was in tatters, | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
and there was worse to come. | 0:56:56 | 0:56:58 | |
The crisis that was affecting the company | 0:56:58 | 0:57:01 | |
really came to a head in 1772, | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
where there was a failure of a major Scottish bank, the Ayr Bank, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:07 | |
which created a credit crunch. About 30 other banks, in fact, failed | 0:57:07 | 0:57:11 | |
and that led to a major shortage of money in the economy. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:14 | |
The company had to go repeatedly to the Bank of England for loans | 0:57:14 | 0:57:17 | |
to tide them over. They were very indebted. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:20 | |
Now, starved of funds, | 0:57:20 | 0:57:23 | |
the world's greatest company had run out of cash. | 0:57:23 | 0:57:26 | |
There was only one possible way out - | 0:57:26 | 0:57:29 | |
massive government bailout. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:31 | |
For reasons that are spookily familiar, it was decided | 0:57:31 | 0:57:34 | |
that the East India Company was too big to fail. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:37 | |
The British Government rescued the company with public money | 0:57:39 | 0:57:43 | |
today equivalent to £176 million. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
But its powers were progressively curtailed. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:51 | |
The India Act of 1784 transferred its executive management | 0:57:51 | 0:57:56 | |
to an independent board of control answerable to Parliament. | 0:57:56 | 0:58:01 | |
All kickbacks were banned. | 0:58:01 | 0:58:03 | |
The British State was now pulling the strings. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
Instead of chancers like Robert Clive, | 0:58:09 | 0:58:11 | |
the British Government would now send out | 0:58:11 | 0:58:13 | |
its own, more reliable people to run India. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:16 | |
The Governor General here in Calcutta would rule supreme, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
given sweeping new powers in revenue, diplomacy and war. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:23 | |
It was nothing less than the birth of empire. | 0:58:25 | 0:58:28 |