THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MUGHAL EMPIREman after whose death there was no continuity and very often a serious
breakdown. In the most rapid phase of expansion the service of the
company offered amazing careers to ambitious young men. The meteoric
rise of a Clive, from humble clerk to proud lord, could stimulate
everybody’s imagination—although very few could hope to emulate him.
Even a good organisation and able and ambitious young men, however,
would not have guaranteed the success which the British enjoyed in India
had there not been several favourable circumstances which contributed to
it. The trade in textiles from Bengal was one of these preconditions. Highly
specialised and extremely profitable, this trade required an increasing
knowledge of the conditions within the country. In the years after 1720
when white cotton cloth from Bengal was exported as a semi-finished good
to London where it was used by the new industry of cotton printing, the
company had to be very resourceful in finding the right type of cloth and
getting it bleached according to the specifications of the printers. Even
while the Marathas were ravaging Bengal the agents of the company
managed to get this cloth by shifting their supply lines from one district to
another. Moreover, many British soldiers recruited for the company’s
troops in India were weavers who could work as technical experts when
they were not engaged in warfare. Another factor which contributed to the
British penetration of Bengal was the flow of silver with which they paid
for the cotton cloth. This in turn facilitated the monetisation of the land
revenue and made the Indian rulers look with favour, or at least with
tolerance, on the activities of the British. Used to the methods of the
counting-house, the British knew how much money the Indian rulers
managed to collect. When a weak ruler challenged them and was defeated,
they took full advantage of the opportunity thus arising. They were also
aware of the importance of military finance, a subject which most Indian
rulers never mastered. The great warriors were notoriously improvident
and were often left without sufficient troops because they could no longer
pay them. This was to some extend also true of Europe in the eighteenth
century, where the British gained supremacy mainly because they knew
best how to finance wars and how to keep their own engagement limited,
getting as much leverage as possible out of the endeavours of other
conflicting parties. In India the British did the same. Here, however, they
also annexed more and more territory, whereas they were satisfied with
maintaining the balance of power in Europe. In Europe there was a concert
of powers; in India there were only soloists who could be tackled one by
one. While accomplishing all this, the East India Company still had
nothing more than the legal title of ‘Diwan of Bengal’. In India, where the
personal element is always important, it was difficult to conceive of the
new ruler in collective terms and thus a curious expression emerged for this
collective entity: ‘Company Bahadur’ (bahadur=hero, an honorific title).
‘Company Bahadur’ claimed the heritage of the Mughal empire.