6 - Conclusion

Summary

The intellectual ferment in early nineteenth-century Calcutta described at the end of Chapter 5 was one of the changes most obviously attributable to colonial rule. The ‘new’ intellectuals were of course rooted in a tradition that had often shown itself to be adaptable in the past, but they were living in an environment that was largely new and mastering new techniques and institutions, the printing press, the newspaper and the college, as well as absorbing new ideas.

Colonial rule also brought fundamental change in the way in which the provinces were ruled. The installing of European administrators only represents a part of the break with the past. The new regime, like the old, depended on the services of a huge number of its own subjects: soldiers, police, office staffs and a multitude of revenue payers. But the service was to be on new terms. The Company's authority was to be supreme, and those from whom the Nawabs had been unable to wrest power or to whom they had chosen to delegate it were to lose it now. Naibs, faujdars, great chieftains in Bihar and the major Bengal zamindars were all brought to heel. The new system of courts and police were evidence that the new rulers believed that their subjects should render obedience to them directly. The rulers' wishes in this respect might be very imperfectly fulfilled, but a state apparatus had been created which was much more powerful than any previous one.