Conclusion

Summary

It should perhaps seem strange to conclude a book which seeks to emphasise the Asian genesis of the British Empire with a focus on that most infamous of all colonial conquerors, Robert Clive, the ‘victor’ of Plassey. But whereas most have considered Clive the architect of the British Empire in Asia, even the actions of this avid imperialist can be reconsidered within the context of the powerful local forces which shaped the Company’s expansion beyond the mid-eighteenth century. For in many ways, Clive encapsulated the increasing tensions between these Asian forces and the resurgent British state. So while the settlement of Plassey was a conservative one, ensuring that the Company’s expansion remained within the existing framework of nawabi Bengal, it had nonetheless placed the Company at the top of the post-Plassey hierarchy. Writing to the Prime Minister, William Pitt, Clive worried that if the Company were ever to directly rule Bengal one day, ‘so large a sovereignty may possibly be an object too extensive for a mercantile Company’. Rather, he wondered whether ‘an income yearly of upwards of two millions sterling, with the possession of three provinces, abounding in the most valuable productions of nature and art, be an objective deserving the public attention’. Clive was in rather stunning terms outlining a potentially new form of empire, one in which the British nation-state would directly exercise rule over Bengal for the benefit of the national interest.