India Under British Rule from the Foundation of the East India Company

by James Talboys Wheeler

The crowning event in the administration of Lord Hastings was the renewal of protective treaties with the princes of Rajputana. The raids of the Mahrattas, which had been the curse and agony of Rajputana for nearly a century, were stopped for ever. The territory of Ajmere, in the heart of Rajputana, which had been successively the head-quarters of Mogul and Mahratta suzerainty, was taken over by the British government, and is to this day the head-quarters of the Agent to the Viceroy for the states of Rajputana, and a centre of British supremacy and paramount power.

Lord Amherst, 1823-28: demands of Burma.

§12. Lord Amherst succeeded Lord Hastings as Governor-General in 1823. The wars of 1817-18 had established the peace of India, by breaking up the predatory system which had been a terror to Hindus and Mohammedans for more than a century. But the king of Burma, to the eastward of Bengal, was causing some anxiety by demanding the surrender of political fugitives from his dominions who had taken refuge in British territory. The British government refused compliance. Had the refugees been given up, they would have been crucified, or otherwise tortured to death by the Burmese officials. Common humanity forbade the concession, so the refugees were required to keep the peace within British territory, and to abstain from all plots or hostile movements against the Burmese government.

Burmese aggressions.

For years the Burmese officials tried to bully the British government into surrendering these refugees. They knew nothing of the outer world, and treated the British with contempt as a nation of traders, who had paid the Indian sepoys to fight their battles. Conciliation only provoked them to insolence and aggression. They seized an island belonging to the British. They overran the intervening countries of Munipore and Assam, and demanded the cession of Chittagong. Finally, they invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of sepoys, and threatened, with all the bombast of barbarians, to conquer Bengal, and bring away the Governor-General in golden fetters.

Expedition to Rangoon, 1824.

At last Lord Amherst sent an expedition under Sir Archibald Campbell to the port of Rangoon, the capital of the Burmese province of Pegu. The Burmese officials were taken by surprise. They sent a mob of raw levies to prevent the British from landing, but the impromptu army fled at the first discharge of British guns. The British landed, and found that all the men, women, and children of Rangoon had fled to the jungle, with all their provisions and grain. The British occupied Rangoon, but the country round about was forest and swamp. The rains began, and the troops were struck down with fever, dysentery, and bad food. No supplies could be obtained except by sea from Madras or Calcutta. Nearly every European in Rangoon who survived the rains of 1824 had reason to remember the Burmese seaport to the end of his days.

British advance to Ava.

Peace.

When the rains were over a Burmese general of great renown approached Rangoon with an army of 60,000 braves, and environed the place with stockades. There was some severe fighting at these stockades, but at last they were taken by storm, and the braves fled in a panic. The British expedition advanced up the river Irrawaddy, through the valley of Pegu. The people of Pegu, who had been conquered by the king of Burma some sixty years before, rejoiced at being delivered from their Burmese oppressors, and eagerly brought in supplies. The British expedition was approaching Ava, the capital of the kingdom, when the king of Burma came to terms, and agreed to pay a million sterling towards the expenses of a war which cost more than ten millions. The British were content with annexing two strips of sea-board, known as Arakan and Tenasserim, which never paid the cost of administration; and left the valley of Pegu, and even the port of Rangoon, in possession of the king of Burma. But Assam and Cachar, between Bengal and Burma, were brought under British rule, and eventually made up for the expenditure on the war by the cultivation of tea.