Person · Company soldier & governor · United Kingdom
Robert Clive
Also known as Clive of India, Lord Clive, Robert Clive
A Company writer who turned soldier, held Arcot in 1751, won Plassey in 1757 by arranging Mir Jafar's defection before the battle rather than by fighting it, and returned as governor of Bengal in 1765 to take the diwani — the right to collect the province's revenue. The Company becomes a government in his career.
- Date
- 1725–1774
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 23.802, 88.252
Worth knowing
He took a personal fortune out of Bengal large enough that Parliament inquired into it, told the Commons he was astonished at his own moderation, and killed himself in 1774. The famine of 1770, which followed the revenue system he installed, is estimated to have killed a third of Bengal.
About the place
Placed at Plassey, the mango grove where the battle he is chiefly remembered for was fought in June 1757. He died in London.
Connections (4)
- AnalogueJoseph François Dupleix
Clive learned the subsidiary-alliance method from the man he defeated. Dupleix invented it: back a claimant, lend him drilled infantry, take districts as payment. Clive applied it in Bengal with the revenues of a province rather than a company's credit behind him, which is the whole difference in outcome. The British Indian empire is, in its mechanics, Dupleix's design executed by his opponents.
- CampaignArcot
Clive was a twenty-six-year-old Company writer who had transferred to the military service when he took Arcot in 1751 and held it for fifty days against Chanda Sahib's army. The siege made his reputation and the Company's case that Indian politics could be decided by small European-drilled forces — the argument he carried to Bengal six years later.
- CampaignPlassey (Palāśī)
Clive's conduct of Plassey was financial before it was military: Mir Jafar's defection, William Watts's negotiation and the Jagat Seth bankers' money were arranged weeks before the armies met, and the fighting lasted an afternoon. Clive took over two hundred thousand pounds personally from the settlement, and the precedent that a Company servant could sell a throne was set here.
- Imperial administration ofKolkata: Fort William & the Maidan
Clive returned to Calcutta as governor in 1765, took the diwani grant from Shah Alam II, and issued the regulations against private trade that his own fortune had made necessary. The dual system he left — a Company collecting revenue behind a Nawab who still nominally governed — produced the 1770 Bengal famine and, in London, the Regulating Act of 1773.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Robert Clive”. Reports of the Select Committee of the House of Commons on East India affairs (1772–73); P.J. Marshall, Bengal: The British Bridgehead (1987).
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