Welcome back. In this talk, I want tofocus on what happened in India duringthese revolutionary wars. It turns out Ithink, this period is absolutely pivotalfor the whole future of India. I'd zero inon a period between oh, about 1799. And1805 as an absolutely critical phase, andeven within that phase, the pivotalbattles are probably, again, in 1802-03,which is an odd parallelism to the pivotalperiod in what's happening in NorthAmerica. Coincidental not intentional. Tohelp set the scene for that, let's go backand understand a little bit about thebasic layout of power in India, in the1780's. This map can be a littleconfusing. The key thing to understand is,the domains ruled or dominated by Britain.By the 1780's are here, here, here, offtheir outpost in Madras. They have anoutpost here in Bombay. That's it. Theother great power on the Indiansubcontinent in this period would be theMaratha Confederacy. And during thisperiod the Marathas really dominate almostthis entire area. There's another veryimportant power, a Muslim ruled statecalled Mysore that dominates southernIndia and is in constant conflict with theBritish in Madras. Usually either winningthose battles or fighting the British to adraw, so in the 1780s, these powers on theIndian sub-continent are pretty evenlymatched. The British have become just onemore of the big territorial powers inIndia. All of them paying nominalallegiance to the Mughal emperor living inDelhi. The British claimed that they'redoing everything they're doing in theemperor's name. Here's the way the dealworks, is the British pay a subsidy to theemperor in return for which the emperorgives the British rights to collect thetaxes in his domains. The emperor has asimilar relationship with the rulers, theHindu rulers, of the Maratha confederacy.The Mogul emperor is a Muslim ruling outof Delhi. He has his Hindu potentates, hisBritish potentates. Now the Sultan of

Mysore in Southern India, he doesn'trecognize the emperor at all. But the mainpoint t o get in the 1780s is, the Britishare now just one of several importantpowers. So what are the particularstrengths of the British potentates of theEmperor? Well, they are connected to thisworldwide network of British strength,British Naval power, the home base back inLondon. But the British have some reallysignificant weaknesses. One is that theBritish East India Company was stillreally running the show, and the companywas mainly interested in individualenrichment. So British weaknesses areplunder Huge poverty in their domains.Even a terrible famine in Bengal, duringthe 1770s. Also, the British are widelydetested, by the local people. So, theyplunder the territories. They're disliked,their people are poor. The company itselfis not terribly profitable, though it'smaking huge fortunes for some of theindividuals working for the company, verycontroversial back home. The Marathas alsohave some important strengths. Theycommand very large and powerful armies.They're traditional rulers at the top ofdeeply rooted traditional Hinduhierarchies of power. The Marathas alsohave some weaknesses. They don't have aseasy access to foreign trade, the Britishincreasingly control the oceans. Theydon't have a lot of money,one thing isclear.There are increasingly Europeanizedmiltaries on all sides, everybody hasguns,everybody has artillery. The Marathashave European advisers, many of themFrench.The sultan of Mysore in the southhas a really pretty strong physicalmilitary state that he's built up on hisown. No obvious advantage to the British,purely in military technology. But a bigthing happens that changes the picture.The British changed their, opponent'stown. British India goes through asignificant series of reforms in the1780's and 1790's driven in part fromLondon. London appoints governor generals.To exert firm control over all the

outposts of the British East IndiaCompany. Now, central direction. Further ,the Governor-General scraps the old systemof chaotic plunder of the East Ind iaCompany. He brings in a rule of law inplace like Bengal. Says here arecompletely new rules on property. Here isa whole new tax system. Here's a series ofcourts that are going to enforce it, thishas enormous consequences. What happensthen, is a huge turnover in who iscontrolling property, the institution of aregular tax system, and a lot of stabilitynow. You know who has property rights, youknow how much revenue is going to comeinto the state, you have courts that canadjudicate disputes. Which, by the wayhelps a lot of Bengally property owners aswell. Since the State has stable revenue,the State can borrow money against thatrevenue. So the financial capabilities ofthe British State now increase enormouslyas they borrow money both from Bengalibankers, Indian bankers, and from Britishbusinesses. What follows this period ofreform are a series of battles, in whichthe British defeat their main rivals. So,just, kind of, the what happened part.First, in 1799, the British finallyovercome defeat, and kill the sultan ofMysore. Now the British have establishedtheir strength in southern India, you seethese dates eighteen hundred and sevenfour then they engaged in a series ofbattles against the Maratha confederacyattacking from a couple differentdirections. battles that British win in1802 - 1803. The battles, by the way,incredibly close-run things. The Britishbarely win. But the Maratha Confederacy isdefeated. Okay so, that's what happened.But as we've talked about in previouspresentations, we're not just interestedin the what happened part, we wanna knowwhy. Why were the Marathas defeated? A fewfactors really stand out. It's not so muchthat the British had better militarytechnology or larger armies, the Marathaarmies were larger. What the British didhave, is, financial strength. Partly from

the way they'd reordered their government.They could hire more soldiers, and theycould buy friends. Which helps produce thedisunity of the British enemies. Theycould persuade states to becometributaries by agreeing to subsidize theirrulers. And another kind of disunity, theMoracos fall out among themselves. Therulers are fighting each other. Some ofthe rulers who are defeated in thesefights make common cause with the British.In that situation the British can prevail.The Governor General during this period,here's his painting, a man named RichardWellesley, he didn't have orders fromLondon to go out and conquer India. Hefaced these threats, these constantrivals. His policy was that the bestdefense was a good offence. Also he sawsigns, accurately of French influenceamong his rivals so he could make anargument that this was part of therevolutionary wars. But in a way a lot ofwhat happened here was an unexpectedsuccess for Wellesley and for the British.Some of those key pitched battles againstthe Marathas were in fact led by Richard'syounger brother, Arthur Welleslely, a manthat history knows perhaps a little betteras the Duke of Wellington. Theconsequence, however, of these fights inthe early 1800s are enormous. In anearlier presentation, I talked a littlebit about, how the British had actuallytried to expand their empire, withdeliberate purpose, in the westernhemisphere. They've made a bid to, conquerSan Domang in the West Indies. They'd madea bid to conquer Buenos Aires, andestablish a foothold in South America.They'd failed. At the very time they'refailing at the western hemisphere,Wellesley is succeeding in India. And theBritish can kind of feel, oh, there'swhere the empire is growing. There's wherewe're enjoying successes, there's wherethey begin pushing in additional assets.As the British become the dominant forcein India. They're bringing a lot of changeto India. They're upending the whole

culture of traditional rule. TraditionalMuslim rule had been represented by theMughal Empire. The classical transitionsof Islam its literature, its art areupended, by the dominance of new culturalinfluences. Also traditional Hinduhierarchies are also being overthrown. Buta lot of the people in India are beginningto adapt to new influences, trying to findways of fusing old traditions with theinfluence that the British are bringingwithin. What the British Paramount's inIndia creates, in the early 1800's, isreally an entirely new situation in India,and in Asia. For the British, they beginto realize, that they now have areasonably orderly, and very powerful basein India. In which they have amassed, verylarge armies, mainly made up of Indiansoldiers. Paid with a combination ofBritish and Indian money, and that armycan be used. That base of production canbe used. This map gives you a little bitof a sense of the way British power isexpanding. The British position is prettyfirm in this whole area by, say. 1810.They pretty easily expand to persuademonarchs to become British dependents inthe succeeding decade and then just simplybegin moving outward from there. Suddenly,the British find themselves governing ahuge part of South Asia. This isespecially new and interesting situationfor many Hindus. Some of them had beendefeated by the British and they weredeeply resentful of this. Some of them, onthe other hand, are seeing all sorts ofnew opportunities open up, new worlds ofknowledge, culture and commerce. Onereally interesting example of how Hindusare adapting to the British presence isthis man. This is a painting of Ram MohanRoy. Ram Mohan Roy came from Bengal. Anincredibly able person. Master of six,seven, eight languages. Internalized Hindutraditions. Also internalized a lot aboutwhat the British were bringing. He wastrying to find fusions of the two. Veryinterested in religious reform. Veryinterested in ways in fact to reinvent

Hinduism. His attitudes towards theBritish rule are very interesting. On theone hand, as you can see, he writes in1809 that British government is milder,more enlightened, and more liberal thanthe government had been under the Mogulempire. He finds it liberating in thatsense, yet he'll later point out that theBritish have created a new aristocracy inIndia. One that increasingly raciallyexclusive. Here's the way that he put it.That the better classes of the natives ofIndia, and he's writing it in English bythe way, in which he also became fluent.Are placed under the sway of theHonourable East India Company, in a stateof political degradation absolutelywithout parallel in their former history.For even under the Mahomedan conquerors,the Muslim conquerors he's referring topeople like the mogul emperors, such ofyour petitioners as are Hindus. Were notonly capable of filling, but actually didfill numerous employments, from whichunder the existing system of theHonourable Company's government, they areabsolutely shut out. In other words, fromthe start, the British are creating abasic tension. Yes their bringing betterpublic institutions and public ideals, butthe basic ideas of these inlineinstitutions are fundamentally at oddswith the way they treat the majority ofpeople they rule. That tension isn't goingto go away. Lets reflect in the next talkthe whole way the world has changed as aresult of these revolutionary wars. Letskind of take a look around this world of1980.