INTRODUCTION.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE STATE OF INDIA IN 1746.
Before entering on the Memoirs of Clive, it will be useful to take a succinct view of the state of India, at the period when he commenced his career in that country, and more especially of the coast of Coromandel, which was the scene on which he first displayed those talents that were afterwards to raise him to such eminence.
The emperors of Delhi, since the death of Aurungzebe (A. D. 1707), had rapidly declined from the power they once possessed. The government of distant countries was intrusted to soubahdars (or viceroys), who invariably took advantage of the dissensions in the imperial family, or the weakness of a reigning prince, to endeavour to render themselves independent. The same motives and principles which governed the conduct of these vicegerents, actuated those whose allegiance and obedience they claimed in virtue of their delegated powers from the nominal Sovereign of India. Hindoo rajahs, and Mahomedan nabobs owned or rejected the sway of their superiors according to their means of resistance; while the Mahrattas, a name unknown to the military history of Asia before the middle of the seventeenth century, threatened, by a system[1] of predatory warfare, to complete the destruction of these Mahomedan conquerors, whose chiefs, whether engaged in contest for the imperial Crown, the high office of soubahdar, or the inferior rank of nabob, appear to have lost, in their rancorous hostility to each other, all sense of union and of common danger, and to have blindly courted the aid of allies who (a little foresight would have shown them) were rising fast to greatness upon their ruin. These observations on the conduct of the Mahomedan princes are not more applicable to the connections they formed with the Mahrattas, than to those which, in the eighteenth century, they began to contract with Europeans. The Portuguese, who had discovered a passage to India in 1498, enjoyed the exclusive commerce with that country for a complete century; but their short and brilliant career was essentially different from that of the European nations who succeeded them. Their establishments were all maritime. They conquered and subdued the princes and chiefs on the shores and islands of India; but seldom, if ever, carried their arms into the interior, or engaged in any of those offensive and defensive alliances with native states, that must have hurried them into contests, to support which the resources and strength of the mother country would have been altogether inadequate. In consequence of this policy, their established character for valour, and the strength of their fortifications, they did not become objects of attack to the principal native powers of India. Neither the Emperors of Delhi, nor their princely delegates had, or desired to have, any naval force. They attached no value to the sea-coast or to islands, but as they might produce them profit through the medium of customs: and the increased commerce, consequent to the settlement of the Portuguese at Goa and other parts, was calculated to reconcile them to a nation, whose warfare on the continent of India was almost entirely limited to contest with the petty princes and chiefs who occupied or claimed the shores where they desired to settle.
The effect of the victories gained over these princes was improved by the valour, wisdom, and energy of the great men[2] who first established the Portuguese power in India; but all these impressions were lost by the subsequent conduct of their degenerate successors, who, selected by the favour, or removed by the caprice, of a weak and corrupt court, became the ready instruments of tyranny and oppression. This evil was augmented by the continual changes of their local rulers, and by other circumstances, calculated to bring ultimate ruin on their affairs, even had that not been accelerated by the attack of European states; to which the very considerations which saved them from the hostility of the great native princes of India left them peculiarly exposed. Every settlement which they had made depended exclusively upon their possessing a superiority at sea, and having no rivals either in commerce or war; but their monopoly of the trade of India, for so long a period, arose chiefly from a respect to their right as the first settlers, which extended even to that of the exclusive navigation to that country by the Cape of Good Hope. When this right was invaded, when their fleets came in contact with those of Holland and England, their power fell as rapidly as it had risen; and, like a meteor, left no trace but a recollection of its dazzling and short-lived splendour.
The successful voyages of Drake and others excited the merchants of England to seek establishments in India: but the enterprise of individuals was deemed unequal to so expensive and hazardous an undertaking; and a company was formed, to open and pursue a channel of commerce, from which such great gains were anticipated. This company and the nation were stimulated to greater efforts by the Dutch, having at this period (the close of the sixteenth century) sent several ships round the Cape of Good Hope. The English now began to settle in different parts of India. The first factory was established at Surat, in 1612, and continued to have the control over all the petty settlements on the western side of the peninsula, till the cession of Bombay, made in 1668 by the King to the Company, when that town, from its fine harbour, and central situation for commerce, soon rose to be the superior settlement in that part of India; while Madras obtained the same rank on the coast of Coromandel, and for some period counted Calcutta[3] as one of its subordinates. The latter at the period when Clive's career in India commenced, had become independent, and, like the settlements of Madras and Bombay, was under the government of a president and select committee; but it was still, in its establishment and means of defence, inferior to either of the other presidencies.