The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company

by William Dalrymple

In October, Hastings went again to visit Mir Qasim at Monghyr, this time taking Governor Vansittart with him so that he could see what was happening with his own eyes. Both were appalled by what they witnessed and returned to Calcutta determined to end the abuses. But on arrival, the two young men failed to carry their fellow Council members with them. Instead, the majority decided to send one of their most aggressive members, Ellis’s friend James Amyatt, to make his own report, to put Mir Qasim in his place and to demand that all Company servants and managers should be entirely exempted from control by the Nawab’s government. Hastings vigorously objected: ‘It is now proposed absolving every person in our service from the jurisdiction of the [Nawab’s] Government,’ he wrote. ‘It gives them a full licence of oppressing others … Such a system of government cannot fail to create in the minds of the wretched inhabitants an abhorrence of the English name and authority, and how would it be possible for the Nawab, whilst he hears the cries of his people, which he cannot redress, not to wish to free himself from an alliance which subjects himself to such indignities?’90 As the urbane Gentil rightly noted, ‘The English would have avoided great misfortunes when they broke with the Nawab, had they but followed the wise counsel of Mr Hastings – but a few bankrupt and dissipated English councillors, who had got themselves into debt and were determined to rebuild their personal fortunes ...