3 - Warfare and ‘Wanton Provocations’

Summary

Despite their diplomatic function, the Residents in office between 1798 and 1818 often preferred intimidation to accommodation. To some extent, their interventionist attitude reflected wider assumptions about the prevalence of ‘tyranny’, ‘inhumanity’, and misgovernment in India. These moral imperatives, combined with the supposed ineffectiveness and untrustworthiness of Indian allies, led Residents to argue for the necessity of unequal alliances backed by force. These convictions shaped the Residents’ relationships to the military, leading them to try and assert control over subsidiary forces in the region, and to panic when forces were disordered or insufficient. Subsidiary forces might have posed problems for the Resident, not least in the form of open mutiny, but they were also seen as essential to his control. Residents explicitly equated military and political power, and were determined to make a show of strength, contrary to the governor-general-in-council’s emphasis on conciliatory conduct. These differences of opinion become most apparent in the controversies that occasionally erupted around the Resident’s acts of judicial violence. Whereas superiors in London and Calcutta worried about undermining the Company’s claims to civilizational superiority through brutal acts of corporal punishment, in the Residents’ view civilization was instead a hindrance to be cast aside.