India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of HindustanSteel, Flora Annie Webster
History
India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of Hindustan
Steel, Flora Annie Webster
India -- History
Meanwhile, the Nawâb of Oude had died, and his son reigned in his
stead. Out of this arose fresh disputes on the Council. The
Triumvirate being all for imposing exceedingly harsh terms on the new
Nawâb, Asaf-daula; Mr Hastings refusing to sanction what was "no
equitable construction of the treaty with the late Nawâb," and was
indeed an extortion which the new ruler had "no power to fulfil."
The Directors at home, however, continuing their career of persistent
greed, after first refusing to agree with the Triumvirate on the
ground that "their treaties with Oude did not expire with the death of
Sûjah-daula," suddenly changed their opinion when they realised the
immense pecuniary advantage to be derived from the new arrangement.
The extortion, therefore, was carried out, Mr Hastings protesting. And
now two new problems arose: one in Madras, one in Bombay, both
presidencies being subordinate to that of Calcutta. The first
concerned the re-installing of the Râjah of Tanjore, which country had
been made over to the Nawâb of the Carnatic. This was a quarrel which,
like a snowball, grew as it went along, and ended in most
extraordinary fashion, by the arrest and imprisonment of Lord Pigot,
the Governor of Madras, at the hands of a vice-admiral of the Fleet!
The bewildering complexity of complication in the whole case would
take pages to unravel, and the result--the death of one poor old man
(for Lord Pigot succumbed to the ignominious treatment meted out to
him)--would no doubt, in the opinion of the Directors, scarcely
justify the expenditure of so much pen and paper.
The trouble in Bombay arose out of the taking of Salsette, and
involved conflict with the Mahrattas, who had persisted in refusing
possession of it to the English.
The state of affairs amongst the Mahrattas was at this time confusion
itself. Râgonâth-Rao had been made regent by Bâji-Rao, who, it will be
remembered, had died during his son's minority of grief, after the
fatal day of Pânipat. The boy Peishwa had since been murdered;
conspirators had declared that his wife had borne a son; claims and
counterclaims, intrigue and counter-intrigue, had reduced the Mahratta
Government to an invertebrate condition, which the Bombay Council
considered favourable to their earnest desire to keep the Portuguese
from again acquiring the peninsula (or island) of Salsette, which
virtually commands the harbour at Bombay. They therefore temporarily
annexed Salsette, and made its cession the foundation of an offer to
aid Râgonâth-Rao (commonly called Râgoba), who was then in very low
water, against the opposite faction. The temptation was great; a
treaty was signed, by which the East India Company, in addition to
gaining Salsette and Bassein, were to be paid £225,000.
But here the Supreme Council at Calcutta intervened--why, it is
impossible to say--declared in one breath that the treaty with Râgoba
was "unpolitic, unreasonable, unjust, and unauthorised," and advised
one with the opposite faction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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