A History of India, Third Edition

THE PERIOD OF COLONIAL RULE

In addition to the permanent settlement of Bengal, Lord Cornwallis
introduced another major reform which was of even greater importance
for the future development of India. He changed the terms of service for
the East India Company’s covenanted servants by raising their salaries
substantially so as to place them beyond corruption. Whereas the servants
of a trading company could be paid nominal salaries as they were making
their real money on private deals, civil servants in charge of the
administration of large territories could not be treated in that way. At the
same time this reform meant that these new, well-paid posts would attract
more talent—which was badly needed for the enormous tasks which grew
day by day as the policy of conquest greatly extended British territorial
rule in India.
The next governor general, Lord Wellesley—a dynamic conqueror
indeed—accomplished very much in this field within a very short time.
Without the new type of civil service he would not have been able to
control the new territories which he acquired. He was very conscious of
the qualities needed for this type of civil service; accordingly, he established
Fort William College, Calcutta, in which the young servants of the
company were subjected to some formal education immediately after their
arrival in India. Instruction in Indian languages was one of the main
priorities of this college, so that the young servants might become
competent rulers not entirely at the mercy of interpreters.
The civil servants also influenced Wellesley’s plans from the very
beginning of his period of office. He operated on the same wavelength as
the expansionists among them who felt that their own careers could be
advanced in this way. Many of these new servants of the company were
military officers rather than traders and they were interested in conquest
rather than commercial profit. Wellesley did not mind diverting funds sent
to him for the finance of trade to waging wars in India. This displeased the
directors of the company and they tried to recall him, but he had friends in
high places who protected him. The militarisation of the company
progressed rapidly under him. Territorial acquisitions interested him much
more than the investment in export commodities. This British Napoleon in
India was greatly helped by the imagined threat of the real Napoleon who
had after all entered Egypt. Wellesley did not take this threat seriously but
readily used it as an argument when defending his own strategy.

Economic change and Indian enterprise

While ‘Company Bahadur’ became more and more of a ruler and less of a
trader in this way, the trade itself underwent a major structural change due
to political conditions in Europe and the progress of the industrial
revolution in England. Napoleon’s blockade greatly affected the re-export
of Indian textiles to the European continent; at the same time industrial