5 - Education and the Persistence of the Company State

Summary

In the 1820s–30s, the question of “native education” generated sprawling debates involving all three Company presidencies. At issue now was not whether the Company could or should secure extensive territory but instead whether, having done so, it could or should govern it. Throughout the period, officials debated the balance to be struck in education policy between conciliation and mass education. This question was briefly conflated with issues of language, leading to the so-called Anglicist-Orientalist controversy. For a fleeting moment in the 1830s, English education appeared to have prevailed. The more lasting impact of the controversy, however, was the end of conciliation and the triumph of mass education in Company ideology.