INDIA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CAUSES OF THE LOSS OF CALCUTTA
(Evidence of David Rannie, Captain in E.I. Co.’s service, August, 1756)
(S. C. Hill, Bengal in 1756-57, Vol. III, pp. 283-4)
The causes of the war were principally three, viz., our acting unjustifiably by the Moors [Mahommedans]; our being tricked out of Cassim bazaar Fort, and the example shown on the coast of Coromandel, where the English and French have in a great measure, it is said, divided the country, while their respective Nabobs are no better than shadows of what they should be.
The injustice to the Moors consists in that being by their courtesy permitted to live here as merchants, to protect and judge what natives were their [our?] servants, and to trade custom free, we under that pretence protected all the Nabob’s subjects that claimed our protection, though they were neither our servants nor our merchants, and gave our dustucks or passes to numbers of natives to trade custom free, to the great prejudice of the Nabob’s revenue, nay more, we levied large duties upon goods brought into our districts from the very people that permitted us to trade custom free, and by numbers of their [our?] impositions [framed to raise the Company’s revenue] some of which were ruinous to ourselves, such as taxes on marriages, provisions, transferring land, property, etc., caused eternal clamour and complaints against us at Court.