The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

But for the people of Bengal, the granting of the Diwani was an unmitigated catastrophe. The Nawab was no longer able to provide even a modicum of protection for his people: tax collectors and farmers of revenue plundered the peasantry to raise funds from the land, and no one felt in the least bit responsible for the wellbeing of the ordinary cultivator. Merchants and weavers were forced to work for the Company at far below market rates; they also seized by force textiles made for their French and Dutch rivals. Merchants who refused to sign papers agreeing to the Company’s harsh terms were caned or jailed or were publicly humiliated by being made to rub their noses on the ground.94 A few years later, in 1769, Becher recorded, ‘it must give pain to an Englishman to think that since the accession of the Company to the Diwani, the condition of the people of the country has been worse than it was before; yet I am afraid the fact is undoubted. This fine country, which flourished under the most despotic and arbitrary government, is now verging towards ruin.’95 The economic indicators were all bad, he wrote, and growing daily worse: land revenues had been declining since the Diwani was handed over, coin was short and Bengal’s internal trade was shrinking.96