Overview
The first Governor-General of India was Lord William Bentinck, who took the new title at the end of 1833 under the Charter Act of that year. Before him the office was Governor-General of Bengal, created by the Regulating Act of 1773, and its first holder was Warren Hastings. Between them, Cornwallis, Wellesley, Lord Hastings and others turned the East India Company from a trading power into the ruler of most of India.
First Governor-General of India: From Bengal in 1773 to India in 1833
Who Was the First Governor-General of India? Warren Hastings and William Bentinck
By the 1770s the Company ruled three presidencies, Bengal, Madras and Bombay, each under a Governor. The Regulating Act of 1773 brought Madras and Bombay under Bengal's control and raised Hastings from Governor to the new post of Governor-General, but it made him only one member of a five-man Supreme Council. He had direct control only over his own presidency and supervised the Company's officials elsewhere.
Sixty years later the office grew into a government for the whole of British India. The Charter Act of 1833 redesignated the Governor-General of Bengal as the Governor-General of India, and for the first time his government was called the Government of India. The Governor-General in Council gained exclusive legislative powers, taking them away from the governors of Bombay and Madras, and a fourth, legal member was added to the council for making laws; Macaulay was the first.
The title outlived the Company. After independence it was used for the Dominion of India: Lord Mountbatten was the first Governor-General of free India, and C. Rajagopalachari became the only Indian to hold the office.
Governors-General of Bengal and India, 1773 to 1835: Tenures and Landmarks
Nine men held the office between 1773 and 1835, and each term is remembered for one or two landmarks.
| Governor-General | Landmark of his term |
|---|---|
| Warren Hastings | Regulating Act, courts, Asiatic Society |
| Lord Cornwallis | Permanent Settlement, Cornwallis Code |
| Sir John Shore | Non-intervention; Battle of Kharda between the Marathas and the Nizam |
| Lord Wellesley | Subsidiary alliance, Fourth Anglo-Mysore War |
| Sir George Barlow (acting) | Vellore Mutiny |
| Lord Minto | Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh |
| Lord Hastings | Paramountcy, Third Anglo-Maratha War |
| Lord Amherst | First Burmese War |
| Lord William Bentinck | Sati banned, English education |
Warren Hastings (1773 to 1785): Courts, Codes and Impeachment
Warren Hastings' Reforms: District Courts, Law Digests and Oriental Learning
Warren Hastings introduced several administrative reforms, above all in justice. From 1772 each district was to have two courts, a criminal court, the faujdari adalat, and a civil court, the diwani adalat. Maulvis and Hindu pandits interpreted Indian laws for the European collectors who presided over the civil courts, while the criminal courts stayed under a qazi and a mufti, supervised by the collectors.
- Law digests: Because pandits interpreted local laws differently, 11 pandits compiled a digest of Hindu laws in 1775, which N.B. Halhed translated into English; a code of Muslim laws followed by 1778.
- New courts: Criminal appeals went to the Sadar Nizamat Adalat, which sat first at Murshidabad and was later moved to Calcutta, and the Regulating Act of 1773 added a Supreme Court at Calcutta.
- The Collector: The principal figure in a district, he collected revenue and kept law and order, and his office became the new centre of power.
- Oriental learning: Hastings set up the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781 to promote Arabic, Persian and Islamic law, and backed William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta on 15 January 1784.
Warren Hastings' Wars, Pitt's India Act and His Impeachment
Hastings also fought. He sent Company troops in 1774 to help the Nawab of Awadh against the Rohillas, the first of several wars that later harmed his name. The First Anglo-Maratha War ended in 1782 with the Treaty of Salbai and no clear victor, and the Second Anglo-Mysore War against Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan ran from 1780 to 1784. Pitt's India Act of 1784 then set up a Board of Control in London to supervise the Company's government of India.
When Hastings went back to England in 1785, Edmund Burke accused him of personal responsibility for the misgovernment of Bengal. The charges included corruption and the alleged judicial killing of Maharaja Nandakumar. The trial opened in Westminster Hall on 13 February 1788, where Burke's opening speech impeached him in the name of the people of India. It lasted seven years, and in 1795 Hastings was acquitted.
Lord Cornwallis (1786 to 1793): Permanent Settlement, Civil Service and Police
Lord Cornwallis and the Permanent Settlement of 1793: Zamindars and the Sunset Law
The Bengal famine of 1770 had killed about 10 million people, and the Company needed a way to secure its revenue and revive farming. After two decades of debate, Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement in 1793. Rajas and taluqdars were recognised as zamindars; they collected rent from the peasants and paid revenue to the Company, and the amount was fixed permanently, never to be raised.
- The hope: A fixed demand would give the Company a regular income and encourage zamindars to invest in the land, since they would keep the gain from higher production.
- The Sunset Law: The revenue did not change with the harvest and had to be paid on time; if it did not arrive by sunset on the fixed date, the zamindari could be auctioned.
- The problem: The demand was set so high that many zamindars could not pay, and numerous zamindaris were auctioned; in Burdwan the Raja's estates were sold in 1797.
- The peasant's lot: Rents were high and rights insecure, and a cultivator who could not pay was evicted from land his family had tilled for generations.
Later officials turned away from a permanent demand. The mahalwari settlement of 1822 in the North Western Provinces fixed revenue village by village and revised it periodically, and the ryotwari system, tried by Alexander Read and developed by Thomas Munro, who established it in Madras in 1820, settled directly with the cultivators in the south.
Cornwallis Code: Civil Services, Courts and a Regular Police
The Cornwallis Code of 1793 set out rules for policing, justice and civil administration, and it separated revenue administration from civil justice. Revenue collectors ran the districts, and district judges answered to provincial courts in civil cases and courts of circuit in criminal ones.
- Civil services: Cornwallis was the first to bring the civil services into existence and organise them, checking corruption by raising salaries, enforcing the rules against private trade, barring presents and bribes, and promoting by seniority.
- Police: In 1791 he organised a regular police force, with thanas under an Indian daroga and a superintendent of police at the head of a district, and relieved the zamindars of police duties.
- Exclusion: The higher ranks of the services were kept for the British, depriving Indians of any responsible office.
Sir John Shore, who succeeded Cornwallis in October 1793 and governed until 1798, kept the Company out of Indian quarrels; he did not intervene when the Marathas defeated the Nizam at Kharda in 1795.
Lord Wellesley (1798 to 1805): Subsidiary Alliance and Expansion
Lord Wellesley's Subsidiary Alliance: Terms, Aims and the States That Joined
Lord Wellesley, who succeeded Shore in 1798, came to India with one priority, to defeat French power, at a time when Britain was at war with France in Europe. His chief tool was the subsidiary alliance. Indian rulers under it could not keep independent armed forces; the Company protected them, but they had to pay for the subsidiary forces, and if they failed, part of their territory was taken as a penalty.
- Terms: The ruler kept the Company's army at or near his capital, accepted British supremacy in external affairs, paid in money or territory for the troops, expelled other Europeans, and accepted a British Resident at his court.
- Aim: In February 1801 Wellesley wrote that the policy was to place the states in such dependence on British power that they could not form any confederacy against it.
- States that joined: The Nizam of Hyderabad accepted first, in 1798, then Mysore and Tanjore in 1799, Awadh in 1801 and the Peshwa in 1802.
- Penalties: Awadh was forced to hand over half its territory in 1801 for failing to pay, and Hyderabad also ceded territories.
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, Second Anglo-Maratha War and Fort William College
Wellesley turned first on Mysore. In 1798 he learnt that Tipu Sultan was negotiating an alliance with France. In the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War of 1799 Tipu was killed defending his capital, Seringapatam, on 4 May 1799; Mysore was given back to the old Wodeyar dynasty, and a subsidiary alliance was imposed on it.
The Marathas came next. In 1802 the Peshwa, Baji Rao II, fled to British protection and signed the Treaty of Bassein, ceding territory for a subsidiary force. The Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803 to 1805), with the Maratha defeat at Assaye in September 1803, gave the British Orissa and the lands north of the Yamuna, including Agra and Delhi.
Wellesley also founded Fort William College at Calcutta on 18 August 1800 as a training ground for future European administrators. In 1806 the Court of Directors preferred a college at Haileybury in England, and the Calcutta college's collection of manuscripts is now among the Oriental Records of the National Archives of India.
Barlow, Minto, Lord Hastings and Amherst: Paramountcy, 1805 to 1828
Barlow, Minto and Lord Hastings: Vellore, Amritsar and Paramountcy
Cornwallis was reappointed in 1805 to curb Wellesley's expansion, arrived in July and died on 5 October at Ghazipur, where his memorial is a protected monument. Sir George Barlow then acted as Governor-General until Lord Minto arrived in 1807. In 1806 the sepoys at Vellore rose in the Vellore Mutiny, provoked by an order of William Bentinck, then Governor of Madras, forbidding native troops their traditional attire; the order was withdrawn and Bentinck was recalled in 1807.
Lord Minto, Governor-General from 1807 to 1813, secured the north-west by diplomacy. The Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh, signed on 25 April 1809, made the Sutlej the boundary between the Company and the Sikh kingdom. Minto also extended British power to Java and other Dutch possessions in the East Indies during the Napoleonic Wars.
Under Lord Hastings, Governor-General from 1813 to 1823, a new policy of paramountcy began. The Company now claimed that its authority was paramount, greater than that of any Indian state, and that it could annex or threaten to annex any kingdom to protect its interests. The same view guided later British policy, as in Lord Dalhousie's annexations.
- Nepal: The Anglo-Nepal war of 1814 to 1816 ended with the Treaty of Sugauli.
- Marathas: After Pindari raids in 1817, the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817 to 1819 crushed Maratha power, and the Peshwa was sent to Bithur near Kanpur with a pension.
Lord Amherst (1823 to 1828) fought the First Burmese War of 1824 to 1826, which brought the cession of Arakan and Tenasserim, and captured Bharatpur in 1826. Paramountcy also met resistance in his term. When the British tried to annex the small state of Kitoor (Kittur), in present-day Karnataka, Rani Channamma (also spelt Chennamma) took up arms; she was arrested in 1824 and died in prison in 1829.
Why the Company's Armies Won: Discipline, Alliances and Divided Rivals
The Company's power rested on its army, and the army was mostly Indian. Mughal armies had been dominated by cavalry, but the Company, like Awadh and Benaras before it, recruited peasants and trained them as professional soldiers, the sepoy army. From the early nineteenth century they were put through European-style training, drill and discipline, and as warfare changed, its infantry regiments, armed with muskets, became more important.
- Allies against a rival: In the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790 to 1792), under Cornwallis, Tipu Sultan faced the combined forces of the Marathas, the Nizam and the Company; he was forced to cede half his territory and hand over two sons as hostages.
- Divided rivals: After 1761 the Marathas were split among chiefs, the Sindhia, Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle, held together only loosely under the Peshwa.
- Disarmed states: The subsidiary alliance took away the allied rulers' own armies and made them pay for the Company's.
- Disciplined sepoys: At Koregaon on 1 January 1818 about 500 Company infantry, almost all Indian sepoys, held the village through a day of fighting until the Peshwa's forces withdrew.
Lord William Bentinck (1828 to 1835): Reforms of the First Governor-General of India
Lord William Bentinck's Reforms: Abolition of Sati and Suppression of Thuggee
Lord William Bentinck, Governor-General from 1828 to 1835, is remembered for social reform. Raja Rammohun Roy had campaigned against sati, showing that widow burning had no sanction in ancient texts, and British officials were willing to listen. On 4 December 1829 the Bengal Sati Regulation, Regulation XVII of 1829, made sati illegal and punishable by the criminal courts.
- Opposition: Conservative Hindus led by Radhakanta Deb and the Dharma Sabha appealed to the Privy Council, but the ban was upheld.
- Other practices: Bentinck is also credited with suppressing female infanticide and human sacrifice.
- Thuggee: William Henry Sleeman led the campaign against the thugs, gangs of ritual stranglers, and served as General Superintendent of the Thuggee Department from 1835 to 1855.
- The army: Bentinck removed flogging as a punishment in the Indian Army.
Macaulay's Minute, English Education and Bentinck's Other Measures
Bentinck also settled the long argument over what Indians should be taught. Thomas Babington Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 dismissed Eastern learning and argued for English. Following it, the English Education Act of 1835 made English the medium of instruction for higher education and stopped the promotion of Oriental institutions such as the Calcutta Madrasa and the Benaras Sanskrit College.
Macaulay wanted English education to produce "a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect", who would carry Western learning into the Indian languages. The change reached the government as well as the schools. English became the language of administration and of the higher courts in place of Persian, which lost its official status in the Company's territories in 1837.
Bentinck's term also changed the law, the finances, the territory and the trade of the Company:
- Law Commission: The Charter Act of 1833 provided for a commission to consolidate and codify Indian laws, and in 1835 Macaulay became chairman of the First Law Commission.
- Finance: Bentinck carried out a wide range of cost-cutting measures, cutting even military wages, and is credited with more efficient financial management.
- Territory: Mysore was annexed in 1831 and Coorg in 1834.
- Company trade: The Charter Act of 1833 ended the Company's commercial activities and made it a purely administrative body.
Previous Year UPSC‑CSE Questions
Each Prelims question is explained option by option, and each Mains question comes with an answer outline.
- UPSC Prelims 2023By which one of the following Acts was the Governor General of Bengal designated as the Governor General of India?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Trace the title through the Acts. The Regulating Act of 1773 created the Governor-General of Bengal; Pitt's India Act of 1784 and the Charter Act of 1793 left the title unchanged; the Charter Act of 1833 renamed the office Governor-General of India.
Trap to watch: The Regulating Act created the Governor-General of Bengal, not of India.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) The Regulating Act: Wrong. It created the office of Governor-General of Bengal in 1773.
- (b) The Pitt's India Act: Wrong. It set up the Board of Control in 1784 and did not rename the office.
- (c) The Charter Act of 1793: Wrong. It renewed the Company's charter in 1793 and kept the old title.
- (d) The Charter Act of 1833: Correct. It made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India.
Answer: (d) The Charter Act of 1833. It made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India.
- UPSC Prelims 2020Wellesley established the Fort William College at Calcutta because
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Recall the college's purpose. Fort William College opened at Calcutta on 18 August 1800 as a training ground for future European administrators, and the Court of Directors did not ask for it; in 1806 they preferred a college at Haileybury in England.
Trap to watch: The college did oriental studies, but its purpose was to train British civil servants.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) he was asked by the Board of Directors at London to do so: Wrong. The Directors preferred their own college at Haileybury.
- (b) he wanted to revive interest in oriental learning in India: Wrong. Its languages were taught to serve administration.
- (c) he wanted to provide William Carey and his associates with employment: Wrong. Carey was a missionary based at Serampore, and the college was not founded to employ him.
- (d) he wanted to train British civilians for administrative purpose in India: Correct. That was the college's purpose.
Answer: (d) he wanted to train British civilians for administrative purpose in India. The college was founded to train the Company's future administrators.
- UPSC Prelims 2018Which one of the following statements does not apply to the system of Subsidiary Alliance introduced by Lord Wellesley ?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Test each aim against the system's terms. Under the subsidiary alliance an Indian ruler kept a Company force paid for by his own state, so the Company kept a large army at others' expense. Wellesley's first priority was to defeat French power while Britain was at war with France, and the system made the Company paramount. Nothing in its terms aimed at a fixed income for the Company.
Trap to watch: The states paid for the troops, but a fixed income was not the policy's aim.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) To maintain a large standing army at other's expense: Wrong. This was an aim; the allied states paid for the Company's troops.
- (b) To keep India safe from Napoleonic danger: Wrong. This was an aim; Wellesley came to India to defeat French power.
- (c) To secure a fixed income for the Company: Correct. This was not an aim; the alliance sought troops and control, not a fixed income.
- (d) To establish British paramountcy over the Indian States: Wrong. This was an aim; allied rulers lost control of their foreign policy.
Answer: (c) To secure a fixed income for the Company. The alliance aimed at troops and control, not a fixed income.
- UPSC Prelims 2018With reference to educational institutions during colonial rule in India, consider the following pairs:Institution | Founder
- Sanskrit College at Benaras - William Jones
- Calcutta Madarsa - Warren Hastings
- Fort William College - Arthur Wellesley
Which of the pairs given above is/are correct?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Check the founder named in each pair.
- Pair 1: The Sanskrit College at Benaras was proposed by Jonathan Duncan, not William Jones; wrong.
- Pair 2: Warren Hastings set up the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781; correct.
- Pair 3: Fort William College was founded by Richard Wellesley, not his brother Arthur; wrong.
Trap to watch: Arthur Wellesley was the brother; Richard Wellesley founded the college.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) 1 and 2: Wrong. Pair 1 is wrong, because William Jones founded the Asiatic Society, not the Benaras college.
- (b) 2 only: Correct. Only the Calcutta Madrasa and Warren Hastings are correctly paired.
- (c) 1 and 3: Wrong. Both pairs name the wrong founder.
- (d) 3 only: Wrong. Fort William College was founded by Richard Wellesley, the Governor-General, not his brother Arthur.
Answer: (b) 2 only. Only the Calcutta Madrasa is paired with its true founder, Warren Hastings.
- UPSC Prelims 2010Who among the following Governor Generals created the Covenanted Civil Service of India which later came to be known as the Indian Civil Service?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Recall which Governor-General organised the services. The covenanted civil service, with high salaries and a ban on private trade, was Lord Cornwallis's reform of 1786 to 1793. Warren Hastings is known for courts and codes, Wellesley for the subsidiary alliance and Fort William College, and Bentinck for social reforms and English education.
Trap to watch: Wellesley trained recruits at Fort William College; he did not create the service.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) Warren Hastings: Wrong. His reforms were the district courts, the law digests and oriental learning.
- (b) Wellesley: Wrong. He is known for the subsidiary alliance and for training civil servants at Fort William College.
- (c) Cornwallis: Correct. He raised salaries, barred private trade and built the covenanted service that became the ICS.
- (d) William Bentinck: Wrong. His reforms were the ban on sati, the suppression of thuggee and English education.
Answer: (c) Cornwallis. He organised the covenanted civil service that later became the Indian Civil Service.
- UPSC Prelims 2007Consider the following statements:
- Robert Clive was the first Governor-General of Bengal.
- William Bentinck was the first Governor-General of India.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Match each statement to the office its Act created.
- Statement 1: The office of Governor-General of Bengal was created by the Regulating Act of 1773, and its first holder was Warren Hastings; Robert Clive had been Governor of Bengal, not Governor-General, so it is wrong.
- Statement 2: The Charter Act of 1833 renamed the office, and William Bentinck became the first Governor-General of India, so it is correct.
Trap to watch: Clive was Governor of Bengal, not Governor-General.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) 1 only: Wrong. Statement 1 is wrong, because the first Governor-General of Bengal was Warren Hastings, not Clive.
- (b) 2 only: Correct. Bentinck became the first Governor-General of India under the Charter Act of 1833.
- (c) Both 1 and 2: Wrong. Clive was the first British Governor of Bengal, a different and earlier office.
- (d) Neither 1 nor 2: Wrong. Statement 2 is correct.
Answer: (b) 2 only. Bentinck was the first Governor-General of India; Warren Hastings, not Clive, was the first Governor-General of Bengal.
- UPSC Prelims 2003Which one of the following provisions was NOT made in the Charter Act of 1833?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Check each provision against the Act. It ended the Company's commercial activities, renamed the office Governor-General of India and gave the Governor-General in Council exclusive legislative powers. It also added a fourth, legal member to the council, but the first was Macaulay, an Englishman; the Act did not provide for an Indian law member.
Trap to watch: The law member was new in 1833, but he was not an Indian.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) The trading activities of the East India Company were to be abolished: Wrong. The Act did make this provision; it ended the Company's commercial activities.
- (b) The designation of the supreme authority was to be changed as the Governor General of India in Council: Wrong. The Act did make this provision; it is the new title of 1833.
- (c) All law-making powers to be conferred on Governor General in Council: Wrong. The Act did make this provision; the council gained exclusive legislative powers.
- (d) An Indian was to be appointed as a Law Member in the Governor-General's Council: Correct. The Act made no such provision; the first law member was Macaulay.
Answer: (d) An Indian was to be appointed as a Law Member in the Governor-General's Council. No Indian law member was provided for; the first law member was Macaulay.
- UPSC Prelims 1999At a time when empires in Europe were crumbling before the might of Napoleon which one of the following Governors-General kept the British flag flying high in India?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Find the Governor-General whose term was spent against France. Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798 to 1805, came to India while Britain was at war with France, and his first priority was to defeat French power in India. He crushed Tipu, who was negotiating with France, and imposed subsidiary alliances on the major states, so British power grew while France fought in Europe. The other three governed at other times or with other aims.
Trap to watch: Lord Hastings (1813 to 1823) also conquered widely, but the French danger belonged to Wellesley's term.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) Warren Hastings: Wrong. He left India in 1785, long before Wellesley's struggle against French power.
- (b) Lord Cornwallis: Wrong. His main term ended in 1793, and he returned only briefly in 1805, to curb expansion.
- (c) Lord Wellesley: Correct. He governed from 1798 to 1805, defeated Tipu and spread the subsidiary alliance while Britain fought France.
- (d) Lord Hastings: Wrong. His term began in 1813, and his policy was paramountcy over the Indian states.
Answer: (c) Lord Wellesley. He governed from 1798 to 1805, while Britain fought Napoleon's France.
- UPSC Prelims 1997Who among the following was associated with the suppression of Thugs?
How to approach this Prelims question
Approach: Recall who led the campaign against the thugs. Under Lord William Bentinck it was led by William Henry Sleeman, General Superintendent of the Thuggee Department from 1835; the other three officers are known for other work.
Trap to watch: Alexander Burnes is linked to Afghanistan, not the thugs.
Why each option is right or wrong:
- (a) General Henry Prendergast: Wrong. He was a Madras Army officer and Victoria Cross holder, not the thuggee officer.
- (b) Captain Sleeman: Correct. He led the campaign against the thugs and headed the Thuggee Department.
- (c) Alexander Burnes: Wrong. He was an explorer of Central Asia in the Great Game, known as Bokhara Burnes.
- (d) Captain Robert Pemberton: Wrong. He served in Manipur and drew the Manipur-Burma boundary known as Pemberton's Line.
Answer: (b) Captain Sleeman. He led the campaign against the thugs and headed the Thuggee Department.
- UPSC Mains 2026 GS‑IDiscuss the impact of Macaulay's Minute on colonial administration and education in India.
Answer outline
The outline sets out what the question asks, the main arguments, relevant examples and the direction of the conclusion; it is not a full model answer.
Introduction: Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 settled the argument between Oriental and English learning in favour of English.
Body (sub-themes to develop):
- Education: English the medium of higher education under the English Education Act of 1835.
- Oriental institutions: Support stopped for bodies such as the Calcutta Madrasa and the Benaras Sanskrit College.
- Aim: A class of persons Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, to carry Western learning into Indian languages.
- Administration: English the language of administration and the higher courts; Persian lost official status in 1837.
- Law: Macaulay chaired the First Law Commission from 1835, which began codifying Indian law.
Conclusion: The Minute opened higher education to Western learning, at the cost of state support for Indian learning.
- UPSC Mains 2022 GS‑IWhy did the armies of the British East India Company – mostly comprising of Indian soldiers – win consistently against the more numerous and better equipped armies of the then Indian rulers? Give reasons.
Answer outline
Introduction: The Company's armies were largely Indian sepoys, yet between the 1790s and 1818 they won against larger Indian armies.
Body (sub-themes to develop):
- Organisation: Peasants trained as professional infantry with European-style drill and muskets.
- Diplomacy: Allies against one rival at a time, as against Tipu in 1792.
- Rivals divided: The Maratha chiefs under a loose confederacy.
- Subsidiary alliance: Allied rulers disarmed and paying for Company troops.
- Example: At Koregaon in 1818 about 500 sepoys held the village for a day until the Peshwa's forces withdrew.
Conclusion: Organisation and diplomacy, more than numbers or equipment, decided the wars.
Sources
- NCERT: Exploring Society: India and Beyond Part I (Class VIII), The Colonial Era in India
- NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part III (Class XII), Colonialism and the Countryside
- Legislative Department, Government of India: Introduction (Charter Act 1833, Law Commission)
- National Archives of India: Oriental Records (Fort William College Collection)
- Ministry of Culture: The Asiatic Society Act, 1984
- Wikipedia: Governor-General of India
- Wikipedia: Warren Hastings
- Wikipedia: Impeachment of Warren Hastings
- Wikipedia: Aliah University
- Wikipedia: Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis
- Wikipedia: Cornwallis Code
- Wikipedia: John Shore, 1st Baron Teignmouth
- Wikipedia: Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
- Wikipedia: Subsidiary alliance
- Wikipedia: Fort William College
- Wikipedia: Second Anglo-Maratha War
- Wikipedia: Sir George Barlow, 1st Baronet
- Wikipedia: Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 1st Earl of Minto
- Wikipedia: Treaty of Amritsar (1809)
- Wikipedia: Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings
- Wikipedia: Third Anglo-Maratha War
- Wikipedia: William Amherst, 1st Earl Amherst
- Wikipedia: Lord William Bentinck
- Wikipedia: Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829
- Wikipedia: William Henry Sleeman
- Wikipedia: English Education Act 1835
- Wikipedia: Saint Helena Act 1833
- Wikipedia: Sampurnanand Sanskrit Vishwavidyalaya
- Wikipedia: Persian language in the Indian subcontinent
- Wikipedia: Thomas Babington Macaulay
- UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers
- Wikipedia: Ryotwari
- Press Information Bureau: Rani Chennamma of Kitturu
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