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2 results

  • 3 - The crisis of empire, 1740–65

  • P. J. Marshall, King's College London
  • Book:
    Bengal: The British Bridgehead
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    31 March 1988, pp 70-92

  • Summary

    Alivardi Khan's successful usurpation of the throne of Bengal encouraged others to try to establish claims to Bengal's wealth. By the 1750s Alivardi Khan appeared to have come through his tribulations successfully. From 1751 the resources of Orissa were handed over as part of the settlement with the Marathas, although the Nawabs of Bengal continued to nominate the Naibs of Orissa until 1760, when the first Maratha Subedar was appointed as Governor. The quarrel was over British commercial penetration far into the interior of Bengal. In 1757 Mir Jafar had been compelled to concede total freedom of movement for the Company's trade all over Bengal. With the grant of the Diwani, the provinces of the Nawabs of Bengal came not merely under the dominance of the East India Company, but under full British rule. The Marathas and the Mughals had been followed by the British. The Nawabs were swept aside as Calcutta conquered Bengal.

  • 2 - Late Mughal Bengal

  • P. J. Marshall, King's College London
  • Book:
    Bengal: The British Bridgehead
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    31 March 1988, pp 48-69

  • Summary

    When Alivardi Khan became Governor of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1740, these areas were still provinces of the Mughal empire. The links binding the three provinces to the imperial centre, had become very tenuous. An independent state was in the making. This chapter explores the kind of state that state might eventually have emerged in eastern India. The three provinces had acquired an administrative system that was almost entirely separate from that of the rest of the empire. The taxation levied from Bengal was one of the major props of the Mughal Empire. The Mughal government employed intermediary collectors to handle the payments from this multitude of small zamindars. Cataclysmic interpretations of the fall of Mughal Bengal along the lines of the breakdown of its government or some powerful upsurge of Hindu disaffection do not seem to have much foundation. The regime was not a dynamic one and it had not put down deep roots.