Chapter 12 The Colonial Period 449rich. Clive was only 23 when he made his fame in India. There was one throne
in nearby Arcot and two claimants; the French backed one, the English backed
the other. The local prince (nawab), backed by the French, took all his troops
from the capital to lay siege to the British candidate in Trichinopoly. Clive
hatched the plan of taking Arcot while the nawab was away. A million specta-
tors watched as he marched in with 200 British soldiers and 300 sepoys (from
sipahi, soldier; Indian soldiers). It was so bold and brilliant that Clive’s fame
immediately spread throughout India. The outcome was that the British-
backed contender was declared king; the French-backed contender was exe-
cuted; the French general, Dupleix, was humiliated and went back to France;
and Clive was said to be invincible.
Not long afterward there was an incident in Calcutta that again began as
competition between the English and the French but embroiled them with local
rulers. The young prince, Siraj-ud-Daula, became suspicious when the English
began to fortify Fort William against the French, and he moved an army to put
a stop to it. The British official in charge took fright and fled downriver, leaving
a small army behind, who were captured and imprisoned by Siraj in a small cell
used to lock up three or four drunks at a time. As many as 145 men and one
woman were forced inside to spend the night in the heat of May; only 23 sur-
vived until morning. This incident, known as the “Black Hole of Calcutta,”
provoked outrage in England, and Clive was sent to Bengal to take vengeance.
There was a round of intrigue and duplicity, leading to the British victory in the
Battle of Plassey in 1757, which resulted in another Clive puppet being put on a
throne. Siraj-ud-Daula, who was only 20 years old, was captured, cut into
pieces, and his remains paraded through the streets on an elephant. Clive was
rewarded with the Mughal title of mansabdar, an administrative position that
included a cavalry of 6,000 for which he was responsible, equivalent to that of a
Mughal prince; this rank came with an estate of 880 square miles from which
the expenses of the cavalry and his own personal fortune were to be raised.
Overnight “Clive of India” became the richest man in England.
By the end of Clive’s career, the East India Company was the most impor-
tant power in North India. In 1765 the Mughal emperor, Shah Alam, pro-
claimed the East India Company his diwan or governor for the provinces of
Bihar, Bengal, and Orissa. The Company was now to rule the millions of peo-
ple in this region and collect the millions of rupees of revenue it generated. In
return, they owed loyalty and support to the emperor in Allahabad plus
260,000 pounds annually. The East India Company was no longer just a trad-
ing company; it had become the government of a vast territory of India.
As the official government with responsibility for the welfare of millions of
Indians, the East India Company was expected to behave more responsibly
than it had up to now. This was brought home when nearly a third of Bengali
peasants starved to death in the famine of 1770. The famine was caused in
large measure by British exploitation and was worsened when grain stores
were sold at vast profit to the starving peasants who produced the grain in the