The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

From the EIC’s factory on the southern edge of Murshidabad he became aware of the mutterings of the disaffected nobles at court and hints of a possible coup, so he sent his Armenian agent, Khwaja Petrus Aratoon, to investigate. The answer came back that Mir Jafar, in his position as paymaster of the Bengal army, was prepared to offer the Company the vast sum of 2.5 crore* rupees if they would help him remove the Nawab. Further investigation revealed that the scheme had wide backing among the nobility but that Mir Jafar, an uneducated general with no talent in politics, was simply a front for the real force behind the coup – the Jagat Seth bankers. ‘They are, I can confirm, the originators of the revolution,’ wrote Jean Law many months later. ‘Without them the English would never have carried out what they have. The cause of the English had become that of the Seths.’