[Sidenote: 49.
The Chhattar Manzil, Lucknow.] [Sidenote: 50.
Women planting Tobacco Plants, Lucknow.] Next we see the Chhattar
Manzil, once the Palace of the Kings of Oudh, now transformed into the
United Service Club. Finally, in contrast, is a scene near the
Residency, showing women planting out young tobacco plants, with an
irrigation well in the background. Notice the oxen pulling at the rope
with a skin attached, which draws up the water.
Already the busy hive of industry at Cawnpore plays no mean part in the
economy of the Indian Empire, but for British ears Cawnpore and Lucknow
have a historical and deeper interest. These two cities were the focus
of those events in the tragic year 1857, which we speak of as the Indian
Mutiny. At that time British India was still ruled by the East India
Company, an Association founded at the close of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
The British East India Company had at first purely mercantile aims, but,
as we have already heard in these lectures, was soon involved in native
intrigues and wars owing to the rivalry of the competing French Company.
Robert Clive went out to India as a writer or clerk in the employ of
“John Company,” as it was called, but he exchanged the pen for the
sword, and by his defence of Arcot brought about the defeat of the
French party in the Carnatic, and the supremacy of the British Company
in that state. So he established the Madras Province around Fort Saint
George on the southeastern coast. The great Colonel Clive, who
recaptured Calcutta and won the Province of Bengal by the decisive
victory at Plassey, was the same soldier grown a little older in the
service of the same great Company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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