#Second Anglo-Maratha War

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

Adventures in Historyland is doing a Google Meet lecture + Q&A on Saturday, September 16 through Brandon F.'s brand new thingie, The Native Oak Symposium!

I know absolutely jack-shit about the Second Anglo-Maratha War and that's weird given what a huge frickin' deal India is in the history of the British Empire in the 1800s! I would also desperately like to see Blorbo from My Youtube Shows succeed in making this a recurring series with a variety of guest lecturers, so he gets this shameless plug from me!

[whencyclopedia]

Second Anglo-Sikh War

The Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-9) once again saw the British East India Company defeat the Sikh Empire in northern India. The war, which started off as a rebellion against British colonial rule, included the high-casualty Battle of Chillianwala, but the conflict was finally won by the EIC with a decisive victory at the Battle of Gujrat in February 1849.

The EIC & the Sikh Empire

The British East India Company had been grabbing territory since its victories at the 1757 Battle of Plassey and the 1764 Battle of Buxar, which gave the British a vast and regular income in local taxes, besides other riches. The EIC kept on expanding and defeated the southern Kingdom of Mysore in the three Anglo-Mysore Wars (1767-1799) and the Maratha Confederacy of Hindu princes in central and northern India in the three Anglo-Maratha Wars (1775-1819). Next came expansion in the far northeast and more victories in the Anglo-Nepalese War (1814-1815) and the three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824-1885). The next and final target of the EIC was northwest India and the Punjab, the heartland of the Sikh Empire.

Continue reading...

[barbucomedie]

Sword from the Mughal Empire dated to 1803 on display at the National War Museum in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland

This sword was presented to Colonel Sir John Macdonald by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. Colonel Macdonald was prominent in the victory of British Imperial Forces in the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803 - 1805). An inscription records the presentation of the sword to Macdonald in the aftermath of the Battle of Laswari. This gift was tactical as it was one of the gifts made by Shah Alam II to re-establish an alliance with the British following his neutral stance in the conflict. The sword was bequethed to the National Museums of Scotland in 1944 by Macdonald's descendants.

Photographs taken by myself 2023

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.23

38 – Drusilla, Caligula's sister who died in June, with whom the emperor is said to have an incestuous relationship, is deified. 1122 – Pope Callixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V agree to the Concordat of Worms to put an end to the Investiture Controversy. 1338 – The Battle of Arnemuiden, in which a French force defeats the English, is the first naval battle of the Hundred Years' War and the first naval battle in which gunpowder artillery is used. 1409 – The Battle of Kherlen is the second significant victory over Ming dynasty China by the Mongols since 1368. 1459 – The Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is won by the Yorkists. 1561 – King Philip II of Spain issues cedula, ordering a halt to colonizing efforts in Florida. 1779 – American Revolution: John Paul Jones, naval commander of the United States, on board the USS Bonhomme Richard, wins the Battle of Flamborough Head. 1803 – Second Anglo-Maratha War: The Battle of Assaye is fought between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India. 1821 – Tripolitsa, Greece, is captured by Greek rebels during the Greek War of Independence. 1846 – Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune. 1868 – The Grito de Lares occurs in Puerto Rico against Spanish rule. 1879 – The Macedo-Romanian Cultural Society is founded. 1884 – On the night of 23-24 September, the steamship Arctique runs aground near Cape Virgenes leading to the discovery of nearby placer gold, beginning the Tierra del Fuego gold rush. 1899 – The American Asiatic Squadron destroys a Filipino battery at the Battle of Olongapo. 1901–present 1905 – Norway and Sweden sign the Karlstad Treaty, peacefully dissolving the Union between the two countries. 1913 – The United Mine Workers of America launch a strike which eventually escalated into the Colorado Coalfield War. 1918 – World War I: The Battle of Haifa takes place in present-day Israel, part of the Ottoman Empire at that time. 1942 – World War II: The Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins: U.S. Marines attack Japanese units along the Matanikau River. 1947 – A magnitude 6.9 earthquake strikes South Khorasan in Iran, killing over 500 people. 1950 – Korean War: The Battle of Hill 282 is the first US friendly-fire incident on British military personnel since World War II. 1973 – Argentine general election: Juan Perón returns to power in Argentina. 1983 – Gulf Air Flight 771 is destroyed by a bomb, killing all 117 people on board. 2004 – Over 3,000 people die in Haiti after Hurricane Jeanne produces massive flooding and mudslides. 2008 – Matti Saari kills ten people at a school in Finland before committing suicide.

[bigbs-things]

Check out this post… "Third Anglo-Maratha War".

[dawnofthemornings]

Captain John Blakiston was a Royal Engineer serving in the second Anglo-Maratha war. Made famous by his memoir titled ‘Twelve Years' Military Adventure in Three Quarters of the Globe’. It’s a really exciting book that keeps you at the tip of your toes, I’d highly recommend it! Memoirs and first hand accounts always help make time periods in history feel closer to today.

Here’s a drawing of the very same guy, references pulled off from some figurines I found online. I’m still very new to digital art but being very proud of my first ‘decent’[at least to my eyes!] drawing, I felt compelled to share it

[cincinnatusvirtue]

The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842):  Britain’s Great Game ends up meeting a dead end...

 The region of Afghanistan has a long and varied history, one that is rugged like its topography of many mountain ranges, valleys and deserts.  Its mix of barren wastes, snowy caps and forested patches of oasis.  Its history has placed it at the crossroads of the geopolitical focus over the centuries.  The focus of empires and of trade, often trying to assert its own path in history but so often a focal point of foreign ambition.  As always to appreciate the modern we need to go back to earlier times.

Early History:

-Afghanistan is a patchwork of peoples, a testament to its status as a crossroads of empires over the ages.  Primarily it sits in the eastern end of the ethnolinguistic region of Iranian peoples, a mix of ethno linguistically related but diverse groups of peoples from Persians (Farsi), Kurds, Ossetians, Baloch to Pashtun and Tajik among others.  The latter two being the primary groups found in Afghanistan today, along with smaller Iranian groups like the Hazara & Baloch.  Others include the Turkic Uzbek and Turkmens and a small number of Arabs.  

-In ancient times Afghanistan was home to Iranian groups known as Bactrians & Sogdians who inhabited portions of the country.  These peoples were incorporated into their fellow Iranians sphere of influence, the first Persian or Achaemenid Empire.  This empire stretched from the Indus Valley in the East (modern Pakistan/India) to Greece and the Balkans in the West.  Members of these groups served in the Persian Empire’s army but maintained their own traditions too.  It is widely believed that the religion of the Persian Empire and of most Iranians in this time was Zoroastrianism, founded by Zoroaster in the region of Balkh in North Central Afghanistan.  This religion would serve in some ways as an influence on the monotheistic Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity & Islam later on history.

-During Alexander the Great’s march to conquer the Persian Empire, having defeated the Persians in three major battles and taken the western half of their empire, he sought to conquer the eastern half too which took him into the modern region of Afghanistan.  The Macedonian armies under Alexander founded new cities here and brought forth Greek culture which began to merge with the local religion and culture.  This Hellenistic culture spread as far as India as with Greek paganism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism all mixing in the same cities as times.  In the wake of Alexander’s death, his empire which essentially replaced the Persian Empire had no set structure of succession and quickly dissolved into portions going to his various generals.  The largest expanse of which was the Seleucid Empire which spanned the whole of the Iranian plateau to India and to the Levant, this included Afghanistan.  The region underwent many changes with portions being given to the Indian superpower of the day, the Mauryan Empire and later a successful uprising against the Seleucids, forming the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom which found itself at war with the Parthian Empire, a resurgent Iranian Empire which swept away the remnants of Seleucid Greek rule.  These wars left Afghanistan open to nomadic invasions, namely from the nomadic branch of Iranians from the Eurasian steppe, coming in different waves.  The Yuezhi and Scythians, the Scythians would later establish a kingdom that controlled portions of the region, the Indo-Scythian Kingdom as did the Yuezhi which became the Kushan Empire.  Eventually this gave way to the second Persian Empire or Sassanid Empire which took over the region.

-All the while this region sat along the Silk Road spanning from the eastern reaches of the Roman Empire in the West to the Han Chinese in the East.  Goods and peoples of different backgrounds travelled through the region, most just passing through but they all shared their influence, establishing Afghanistan as an important crossroads of commerce and not just conquest.  Additionally, ancient sources attest to portions of Afghanistan, namely the region around the city of Herat being a major source of grain due to fertile farmlands in Central Asia as well as supplying vineyards of grapes for winemaking in the Persian world.

-In terms of religion, Afghanistan reflected the many changes of its many ruling peoples religions remaining a hub of Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism along with lingering elements of Greek culture.  This would change with the eventual downfall of the Sassanids in the 7th Century AD to the Islamic Caliphates and their gradual expansion over the Iranian plateau.  Overtime Islam began to gradually take hold as the religion over the area but it was still set side by side with numerous other faiths and lived in relative tolerance to the other faiths.  Eventually the Ghaznavid and Ghurid & Khwarazmian dynasties ruled over the area, a mix of Iranian and Turkic peoples who gradually made Islam the unifying religion of the region by the Middle Ages.  

-The Mongols would invade and devastate the region in the 13th century.  The devastation was so complete that the many settled cities were ruined, forcing the peoples of Afghanistan back into rural agrarian societies, something which has not been fully removed from the majority of Afghan society today.  Overtime the peoples of Afghanistan, a region long noted for its literary, especially Islamic poetic contributions and had been a hotbed crossroads of cultural interfacing, was now reverted to an mostly tribal agrarian society once more.  With some centers of learning gone forever  Its peoples divided along ethnolinguistic grounds and into clans from there. 

-There was somewhat a renaissance in the ages with the Turco-Mongol ruler, Timur and his empire ruled with new additions to architecture and culture contributed to the region but this was short lived.  Meanwhile, a descendant of Timur named Babur would base himself in Afghanistan before launching an invasion of India and upon overtaking the Sultanate of Delhi, became the founder and ruler of the new Mughal Empire, the Islamic superpower that was to overrun much of India and dominate the subcontinent and beyond in the coming two centuries.

-Meanwhile, Afghanistan once more found itself on the fringe of an Iranian power, half the country at max was under the control of the Safavid Empire, a Kurdish dynasty that took power in Persia and expanded to reclaim historical “Persian” lands.  Indeed the Persian (Farsi) language was regarded as the lingua franca of the region for centuries and was the language of the learned and most educated in the Islamic world as a whole, whereas Arabic was for mostly religious celebration.  Persian was the language of government and the arts.

-Safavid rule was tenuous at best and their primary focus was facing the Turkish Ottomans to the west, leaving much of Afghanistan to de-facto local rule.  Here the tribal societies that have dominated Afghanistan to the modern era, in part a result of the resumption of rural life after the Mongol destruction of the major cities held sway, with tribal leaders functioning as more or less warlords among the Pashtun and Tajik peoples and their various clans among others ruled over certain sections of the country.  Only Islam united them in their differences.  Much time was spent raiding and fighting each other, along with the few travelers who ventured into this increasingly isolated and remote portion of the world.

-The Hotak dynasty of Pashtuns had a hand in the downfall of the Safavids which was increasingly corrupted and weakened by intrigue at the royal court.  In the wake of this, a Turco-Persianate ruler named Nader Shah took the reins in Persia and put down the Hotaks before setting up his own short lived Persian Empire, known as the Afsharid dynasty which pillaged the Mughals in India and defeated the Ottomans several times before Nader Shah was killed and his successors failed to maintain control.  In Afghanistan, another Pashtun dynasty, the Durrani took power in the middle 18th century.

-The Durrani would for the first time in the modern age have a local Afghan power base that expanded beyond the borders of Afghanistan with any longer lasting impact.  These mostly Pashtun peoples supported by some Persians invaded and controlled portions of India, defeating the Hindu superpower, the Maratha Empire at the peak of their powers at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761.  However the Durrani dynasty and its Emirate of Afghanistan, was weakened through ongoing external and internal pressures, military defeats from the Qajar dynasty in Persia and the new Sikh Empire in the Indian Punjab put closed in their borders.  Eventually, internal conflict led to the fall of the Durrani dynasty with one its Emirs (leader), Shuja Shah going into exile in India hoping to return to rule.  By 1823 the country had fractured into many smaller entities with civil war taking place until by 1837 Dost Mohammed Khan, founder of the Barakzai dynasty took power as Emir and reunited the country...

The Great Game:  

-The exile of Shuja Shah and rise of the Barakzai dynasty in Afghanistan after much civil war by the end of the 1830′s was the state into which Afghanistan again entered wider geopolitics.  Namely amidst the geopolitical struggle between the British and Russian Empires.  Called the Great Game by the British as Tournament of Shadows by the Russians, this rivalry for geopolitical and economic influence was a likened to a game of chess whereby each power vied for influence, mostly through proxies, a precursor to the Cold War of the 20th Century between the US and USSR.  Afghanistan it was hoped by both Empires would be one of those proxies.

-The British since the 16th and 17th centuries had pushed to become a naval power as well and felt that international commerce was the way to expand their economic and political power.  Along with the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch they all took an interest in naval power and setting up colonies in other parts of the world.  In Asia, the Indian subcontinent became their primary focus.  It was rich in resources such as tradable goods like cotton, silks, spices, jewels, salt, opium, various minerals and other commodities.  It was also a vital link in the idea of a global empire in protecting commerce links on the way to Indonesia and China.  Denying their main rival, France, influence in India was of high importance and by the mid 18th century, they became the unrivalled European power defeating the French at the Battle of Plassey during the Seven Years War.  India was not united in any meaningful fashion at the time locally with various empires, kingdoms and principalities fighting locally over this vast area.  They were divided by various ethnicities, religions and the usual drives of personal power and wealth.  Due to this division, the Europeans who first established small trading factories gradually could expand their power to the interior of India and through mutual alliances of convenience between them and their local Indian trading partners they could compete with other Europeans.  For some Indians, the European powers were initially more to their benefit, their presence was small but their weapons and military advantages were far superior giving them a strategic advantage over their opponents.  In time, this power dynamic changed as the Indians had to continually grant the Europeans more power, namely the British who routinely defeated the Indians and began ceding more territory to them.  Also the British’s vast wealth could now employ Indians against other Indian powers.  Especially after France’s defeat at Plassey, no other Europeans seriously threatened the British interests.  Britain’s East India Company, a joint-stock venture given great autonomy in the name of the British Crown had its own military, its own military officers school and total monopolies over half the world’s trade at one point.

-The British East India Company’ army had British officers, mostly Indian rank and file soldiers called sepoys and occasional regular British army regiments to complement it in its venture to conquer the whole of India by any means necessary.  The East India Company also known as the Company had since the 17th century established a number of trading posts, most importantly Calcutta which was the capital of Bengal in the eastern portion of the country.  This was decisively established after defeating the French and remnants of the crumbling Mughal Empire which they supported and which had declined since the 18th century due to the rising power of the Maratha Empire, India’s last great Hindu superpower before the British era.  

-Britain focused their efforts of conquest on south India, first defeating after much initial difficulty the Kingdom of Mysore, run by Tipu Sultan.  Later, battling the Maratha Empire which had piqued by the mid 18th century.  Following their defeat by the Afghan Durrani Empire at the Third Battle of Panipat, the Maratha started a gradual decentralization that led to civil war, the Company got involved trying to place their preferred candidates in power in the Maratha hierarchy.  The first war saw a British defeat but by the early 19th century, the British with Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, fought a second war, defeating the Marathas at Assaye from which they gained territory.  They finished off the Marathas in 1818 and had by then essentially absorbed the whole of India with exception of the Punjab where the Sikh Empire had arisen under Maharaja Ranjit Singh at the end of the 18th century and grew in power in the first decades of the 19th century.  The Sikhs had thrown off the last remnants of the Mughals in their realm and then pushed out the Afghans on their borders too.

-The Sikh Empire like many Indian powers used foreign mercenaries and officers from Europe & America to join their ranks, supply them with European and American style military training doctrine and supply them with the latest in military technology which far surpassed anything made in India at the time.  The Sikh army was quite strong and had French officers providing most of the training,  the Company’s default position was to make an alliance with them.  The Sikh’s had troubles with Afghanistan, namely over the city of Peshawar and the Khyber Pass.  

-The Russians for their part had expanded from Russia over the whole of Siberia towards the Pacific, this process had begun in the late 1500’s and was completed by the end of the 17th century.  Leading to Russian exploration and colonization in Alaska and elsewhere in the Pacific during the 18th century.

-Russian expansion into Central Asia was in part a result of their off and on conflicts with the Ottomans and Persians in the past.  By the second decade of the 19th century with the threat of Napoleonic France gone, their attention turned to maintaining a balance of power in Europe and a free rein in Central Asia.  The threat to their influence as they saw it was Britain, which Russian tsars, namely Nicholas I, viewed with suspicion as far too “liberal” for their belief in absolute monarchy and conservative values.  The British in turn were suspicious of Russian threats to their geopolitical spheres, namely gaining too much power at the expense of the Ottoman Empire or more directly to British India which was after the American Revolution to become the crown jewel in their global empire.  

-The Russians gradually defeated the various Islamic emirates in Central Asia, taking over modern Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.  The process was drawn out over several decades but through military conquest by the late 19th century would be achieved.  It was as this Russian encroachment neared Afghanistan, that alarm amongst the British in India began to be raised…

The British Misinterpret Everything:

-Britain’s government and the East India Company misinterpreted the Russian view of events.  It is true Russia sought to expand its influence but the British interpreted the expansion into Central Asia as meaning only one thing, eventual invasion and conquest of British India.  Only Tsar Paul I in 1800 seriously pressed for an invasion of British India but he was assassinated and the plans for invasion never thought of as a practical reality by most in Russia’s military were cancelled.  The Russians did want increased political influence in the area but even the most conservative of Russian tsars always believed a reproach with Britain could be obtained.  

-The British also saw civil war in Afghanistan as well as the strength of the Sikh Empire as threats to their border and greater sphere of influence in India.  The conflict between the Sikhs and Afghans meant they had to choose sides, they couldn’t be an alliance with both.  Precisely, because of this conflict and the greater specter of Russian influence did Britain find itself on a course for war.

-In Afghanistan, the British and Russians had spies and intelligence agents acting as emissaries.  The British had Scotsman Alexander Burnes, who joined the British East India Company.  Burnes was stationed in Kabul and in turn his presence spurred the Russians to counter with their own envoy, the Polish-Lithuanian born Jan Prosper Witkiewicz.  Both British and Russian envoys hoped to make an alliance with Afghanistan’s emir, Dost Mohammad Khan against the other.  The emir for his part sought to regain Peshawar, recently lost to the Sikhs.  This, however put the British in an awkward position, Company controlled India bordered the Sikh Empire and both sides had a mutual if tense respect for one another.  The Sikh Empire was the last major independent kingdom of India outside of British rule and while Britain sought to eventually neutralize it, now was not the time.  Furthermore, the Sikhs had a large standing army, with European doctrine, modern weapons and European officers who could pose a threat to British India, a threat they saw as greater than Afghanistan.  Afghanistan had no formal army, only tribal men with tribal loyalties but nominally served their overlord the emir in times of national defense.  

-Dost Mohammed Khan wasn’t enthused about the Russians to begin with but he believed the entertaining of an alliance might force the British to offer their alliance.  Instead, given the British calculations of realizing they couldn’t support the Afghans over the more powerful Sikhs but also couldn’t abide the possibility of s Russian allied Afghanistan, moved closer to a casus belli for war.  

-Burnes was apparently distraught at the arrival of the Russian envoy in 1836-1837, he wrote panicked reports.  The Russians in turn reported on British maneuvers in Kabul.  The British governor-general of India, Lord Auckland sent what amounted to a cease and desist letter to Dost Mohammed Khan.  The letter was very demanding of Khan, ordering him to not negotiate with the Russians or even receive them as envoys.  Khan was angered by this but wanted to avoid war.  He had his own advisor, an American named Josiah Harlan talk to Burnes.  Burnes argued he could only report on matters not make policy directly himself, Harlan saw this as merely stalling on his part and on his advice Khan expelled the British mission.

-Lord Auckland was now determined to force Afghanistan to submit to British demands.  Furthemore, Russia and Afghanistan couldn’t come to a deal and their mission too broke down.  Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s major western city, Herat was besieged by Qajar Persia with Russian material support.  Fearful the Russians might use this as a pretext to invade Afghanistan proper, Auckland would in turn use it as a pretext to restore “order” in Afghanistan.

-Auckland reached a reproach with Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Maharaja.  His goal was to fend off the Persians and their Russian support.  He would also depose Dost Mohammed Khan as emir, seeing him as too unfriendly to British interests by his earlier negotiations with the Russians, as well his conflict with the Sikhs, who the British treated as a nominal ally at the time.  His plan included placing the former Durrani emir, Shuja Shah on the throne once more.  Shah had lived in exile in British india since 1818 and had been deposed in 1809.  In the three decades since he last reigned, he was hardly remembered by anyone, aside from those who remembered his cruelty that had led to his deposition in the first place.  Shah had been given a Company pension and comfortable living in exile, considered a useful pawn in British geopolitics, he in turn was willing to ally with anyone who would support his restoration to the throne.  Auckland was led to believe that Shah was actually popular and that the instability in Afghanistan meant Khan was unpopular himself, the inverse turned out to be the case...

The First-Anglo-Afghan War:

-By October 1838, Auckland sent the so called Simla Declaration which resolved the British and the Sikhs to march in Afghanistan and restore Shuja Shah to the throne on the grounds that Dost Mohammed Khan was unpopular, had lead to instability within the country, was a threat to the Sikhs and British by extension and given rise to the prospect of foreign (Russian) interference.

-In Punjab, Lord Auckland and Ranjit Singh held a grand parade of the so-called Grand Army of the Indus which would march in Afghanistan jointly to bring “order”.  Two things happened in the interim.  The Persian siege of Herat was called off and the Russian tsar had recalled his envoy altogether.  The British pretexts for war ended before war began.  Auckland and others heading the Company’s policy in India however were deadset to commit to a military operation, believing Afghanistan essentially needed to be put in its place, meaning it needed a British backed ruler who would amount to a puppet and could put British interests in the region first.

-December 1838 saw the British East India Company’s 21,000 strong army set out for Afghanistan. Composed of British and Indian troops (mostly rank and file Indians and British officers) along with nearly 40,000 Indian camp followers, Indian servants, families and even prostitutes following too.  Ranjit Singh in the end backed out of the plan, not sending any troops to aid in Afghanistan.

-The British trek took months to cross the snowy Hindu Kush mountains.  Finally they reached the area near Kandahar in April 1839.  From there they waited two months until better conditions in the summer to march to Kabul.  The British found themselves having to besiege the fortress-city of Ghazni in July.  Eventually upon destroying a weakened gate, they breached the city and after much fighting captured the city.

-Khan upon hearing of Ghazni’s fall, offered a surrender to the British, he was replied with removal of his position on the throne to a life of exile in India, this was unacceptable, so the march to Kabul continued, though Ghazni remained occupied.

-A battle took place outside of Kabul which forced Dost Mohammed Khan to flee the city, the British entered and Shuja Shah was placed on the throne.  The war was seemingly at end, the main objective achieved, Khan’s removal and Shah placed on the throne.  Most of the British Indian force returned to India, leaving some 8,000 to occupy Afghanistan in various places from Kandahar to Kabul.

-The initial invasion was successful but the occupation and continued support of Shuja Shah was costly in terms of public relations for the British.  Shah resumed his cruelty, he punished and executed those who he considered traitors from decades before.  By his own admission, his people were dogs in need of “obedience” and corrective punishment.  He raised taxes which hurt the already impoverished economy.  This hurt his limited popularity along with his essentially martial rule, upheld by the British.  Now, a guerilla war phase was being instituted by various Afghan groups, some loyal to Khan and some just offended by the presence of foreign invaders.

-The British for their part did not help matters.  Many officers imported their families from India into Kabul, where they took residence in a cooler mountain valley climate, they created gardens and set up English country gentrified life in the Afghan capital.  Some English customs weren’t especially troublesome to the Afghans, tea drinking socials, cricket and polo, even ice skating on frozen ponds in the winter which actually amazed the Afghans having never before seen such a thing.

-However, the more the British lingered, the sense they'd never leave crept in, their presence in the daily markets brought raised prices which coupled with higher taxes meant they were linked with such economic hardship.  The British also drank alcohol and had wine cellars fully stocked, in a devout Muslim country this was offensive given Islamic prohibitions on alcohol.  However, most trying for the Afghan populace was the sexual relations between the occupiers and Afghan women.  British men soon found themselves acquiring the services of willing Afghan women for prostitution.  Afghanistan was quite poor to begin with and coupled with hardships brought on by the invasion a number of Afghan women, married or unmarried found themselves becoming prostitutes to the British.  Afghan women realized even the lowest paid British soldier was more wealthy than Afghan men, so their turns to prostitution were not unsurprising.  Others willingly entered into romantic relationships with the British and indeed some British officers did marry Afghan women, including daughters of tribal leaders.  This development offended the Afghan men, particularly the Pashtun who had a sense of society that revolved around honor to manhood, any slight real or imagined could be responded to with justified violence in their code of honor.  The Pashtun men could enact honor killings on women who fraternized with the British, on the grounds that these women brought shame to the men in their family for engaging in immoral behavior and for sleeping with infidel Christians.

-The guerilla war that developed in reaction to the British also spurred their sense of prolonging their stay.  Shuja Shah knew more British was the only way to ensure his continued reign.  Isolated British outposts or patrols could be attacked in ambush due to fighters whose entire fighting style relied less on technical skill or discipline beyond waging ambushes and raids.  Most Afghan warriors would have been armed with little more than an old matchlock musket or possibly a dagger or sword.

-The British nevertheless were negotiating with Shuja Shah to develop a standing army and do away with the tribal levy system.  He argued there was not enough infrastructure or more succinctly, funding to maintain a standing army.  So the British occupation dragged on.  

-Dost Mohammed Khan was eventually taken prisoner and exiled to India.  However, his sons continued to wage the war on their dynasty’s behalf.

- By 1841, George Elphinstone was in charge of the British forces in Kabul, most of his time was spent bed ridden with gout and other ailments.  

-Early November, saw in motion a planned uprising.  For months through Shuja, tribal chieftains had their loyalty earned by bribes of money.  The British used this as a way to pacify the resistance with some success but it was a tenuous development.  The spark for the uprising in Kabul came from British agent, Alexander Burnes.  Burnes had been particularly well known for his sexual relations and womanizing of Afghan women and was viewed as largely a focal point of the resentment Afghans had towards the British.  The final straw came when a slave girl from Kashmir who belonged to a Pashtun chieftain escaped to Burnes home.  At first the chieftain sent retainers to retrieve the girl, only to find Burnes in the act of sleeping with her himself, Burnes own guards then beat the retainers and sent them on their way.  The chieftain, having his code of honor offended along with other chieftains, proclaimed jihad.  The next morning a large riot broke out at Burnes residence in Old Kabul, away from the British camp which had moved to the outside of town.  Burnes, his brother and others were hacked to death by the angry mob, their beheaded skulls placed on pikes for display.  Shuja Shah sent a single British regiment to put down the events, it suffered casualties and was forced to return.  Shuja realized the people were rebelling against him and the British and he was effectively overthrown.

-Elphinstone was gripped with indecision on how to deal with the matter, he wrote to the Company Civil Administrator, William Macnaughten. Macnaughten tried to negotiate with Akbar Khan, son of Dost Mohammed, with an eye towards making him vizier, in exchange for extending the British stay.  Macnaughten also negotiated with other tribal leaders to assassinate Akbar Khan.  The news of these two faced dealings led to Macnaughten being captured and killed by Khan’s men, his body dragged through the streets of Kabul.

-Elphinstone realized it was time to withdraw, the British presence no longer tenable.  The Afghans had not attacked the encampment directly due to the concentrated British strength but these appeared to be only a matter of time.  He made the decision to withdraw the garrison, 4,500 strong with 12,000 camp followers including family and mostly Indian servants and some Afghan women who preferred life with their British lovers as opposed to facing the wrath of their angered families who would kill them for shaming them.

-January 1842 saw Elphinstone’s withdrawal in a massive column through snowy passes.  The retreat dragged out for weeks with little food, bad weather and repeated attacks from Pashtun guerillas who attacked and killed as many as they could.  Repeatedly, Elphinstone met with Akbar Khan to call off the attacks, Khan allowed the English women and children to return to Kabul to be ransomed later, but the Indian camp followers were not spared, they were forced to freeze to death in the snowy passes.  Meanwhile as Elphinstone and the army marched on, the attacks continued with Khan playing Elphinstone for a fool.  Eventually, he treated Elphinstone to a good meal before taking him prisoner, Elphinstone would die as a hostage some months later.  The 44th Foot, the only all British regiment made a famous last stand fending off many Afghan charges before being overrun.  The British column was mostly starved, frozen or hacked to death in the passes, most of the victims being Indian sepoys or their families and camp followers (servants) of the British officers. Some British women and children remained in Afghan captivity for a time, with some being ransomed and released, most being well treated.  Some women were forced to marry their captors and others as children were adopted into Afghan families, some living into the early 20th century in Afghanistan.  Only one British doctor and some scattered sepoys survived the ordeal at all.  Much of this episode was detailed by Lady Florentia Sale in a diary, later published to great acclaim.  She would spend nine months in captivity before her and her daughter were rescued by the British.

-The Afghans stormed the other British garrisons but all these attacks were repelled, in turn British reinforcements were arriving from India.  These reinforcements subsequently beat Akbar Khan in a pitched battle.  Plans were underway for a retaking of Kabul with a new larger force but Lord Auckland suffered a stroke and was replaced by Lord Ellenborough as Governor-General of India.  Plus, elections in Britain’s parliament brought a new government with orders to change policy, withdraw from Afghanistan, which found itself in a military stalemate.  A last battle took place in which Akbar Khan who was routinely defeated in pitched battles was beaten again with huge casualties at Kabul.  However, the measure was merely punitive for the deaths of Elphinstone’s column. The Company at government orders withdrew all British troops from Afghanistan, having inflicted numerous deaths on the Afghan side and destroyed more forts of theirs but politically been unable to change the situation.

-Dost Mohammaed Khan was allowed to return where he co-ruled with his son Akbar who eventually died in 1845, possibly poisoned on orders from his father, who is rumored to have misgivings about his ambition.  Dost Mohhamed Khan’s primary goal was to restore Peshawar from the Sikhs all along, during the Anglo-Sikh Wars that followed in the decade ((1845-1846 & 1848-1849), he was nominally neutral albeit he somewhat supported his old rivals the Sikhs with an Afghan mercenary force, still hoping to negotiate Peshawar.  These wars resulted in British victory over the Sikhs, the last of Indian independent kingdoms fell and India was more or less completely in Company hands, the Afghan border nor directly bordered British India in the Punjab.  The British never returned Peshawar despite their own promises to do so, but Dost having faced his own temporary overthrow and captivity realized, the British were far too powerful to resist in the long run and so he maintained quiet on his part, staying neutral during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, ruling until his death in 1863.

-The British for their part were defeated in the first Anglo-Afghan War, though their military generally held the upper hand in pitched battles and their initial invasion for all its hubris and motivations was successful.  It was the occupation that proved too much of an expense than originally endeavored.  British arrogance and ignorance of local custom also worsened reception of their plans.  In the end, it was British paranoia, belief in imperial prestige and jingoism that had led to a war that while a limited military success was a political failure, having achieved none of their goals, which seemed to shift as the situation shifted.  It was a confused war, brought on by people on all sides misreading the events surrounding them and made worse by their stubborn commitment to short-sighted policy goals and ego.  Britain would avoid venturing into Afghanistan for nearly forty years when similar disputes over diplomacy led to a second war...

[nahasrobo]

Cossacks european wars mutiny in tolousse

Battle of Trafalgar 21 October – Horatio Nelson defeats Villeneuve, signals "England expects every man to do his duty", Nelson killed.Battle of Schöngrabern – Pyotr Bagration commands Russian and Austrian forces against Murat and Napoleon.Battle of Ulm 16–19 October – Napoleon forces surrender of Austrian army under Baron von Leiberich.Battle of Elchingen 14 October – French army, under Marshal Michel Ney, defeats an Austrian army.Ulm Campaign 25 September – 20 October – Napoleonic Wars.Battle of Ivankovac 18 August – Serbian rebels defeated Ottoman army during the First Serbian Uprising.Battle of Derne 27 April – 13 May – United States victory during First Barbary War.Siege of Bharatpur (1805) 2 January – 22 February.Battle of Tabkin Kwatto - First decisive battle of Fulani War.Battle of Vizagapatam - French defeat British in Bay of Bengal.Siege of Delhi - Brits and Mughals hold Delhi.Battle of Farrukhabad 17 November – Lake defeats Maratha forces of Jaswant Rao Holkar.Second Battle of Sitka 1–7 October – In reprisal for the 1802 attack, Russian forces defeat the Tlingit in the last major armed conflict between Europeans and Alaska Natives.Second Battle of Tripoli Harbor October 1803 – September 1804 – Indecisive battle between United States and Barbary Pirates.Battle of Echmiadzin (1804) June – Russian forces forced to withdraw by Iranian forces during Russo-Persian War.Battle of Suriname 5 May – Battle between the Netherlands and Great Britain for the control of the Suriname colony.Castle Hill convict rebellion 5 March – Irish convict uprising in the New South Wales colony.Battle of Ganja (1804) 22 November 1803 – 15 January 1804 – Battle between Russian Empire and Persian Empire for the control of Ganja citadel.Second Ottoman invasion of Mani - Ottomans fail to conquer Mani a second time.Battle of Argaon 28 November – Wellesley defeats Sindhia.Battle of Vertières 18 November – Haitians defeat French in last battle of war of independence.Battle of Laswari 1 November – Lake defeats Marathas near Agra.Battle of Assaye 23 September – English under Wellesley defeat Marathas under Daulat Scindia in Deccan.Battle of Delhi 11 September – British forces under Gerard Lake defeat Maratha forces led by French officer Louis Bourquin.Blockade of Saint-Domingue 18 June – 6 December.Battle of Poona - precursor to the Second Anglo-Maratha War.First Battle of Sitka 20 June – Tlingit warriors massacre Russians and Aleut workers, and carry off the women and children.Battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres 23 February.Capitulation of Alexandria 30 August - End of the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.Battle of Mahé 19 August - British victory.Raids on Boulogne 4-16 August - French victory.Second Battle of Algeciras 12 July – British naval victory over French, Spanish.First Battle of Algeciras 6 July – British naval defeat by French.Action of 24 June 1801 - French victory.Battle of Copenhagen 2 April – Nelson defeats Danish fleet.Battle of Alexandria 21 March - British victory.Battle of Aboukir 8 March – British-Turkish army under Sir Ralph Abernathy defeats French Army of Egypt under Jacques de Menou.Action of 19 February 1801 - British victory.

[pcwalay]

Tipu Sultan (Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu), also known as Tipu Sahab or Tiger of Mysore, was a ruler of the Mysore Kingdom based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket weapons. Tipu was born on November 20, 1750, in Devanahalli at the time, now known as the Bangalore Rural District. Throughout his life, Tipu Sultan fought various battles and made his kingdom of Mysore proud of his will and strength. However, he is most closely associated with the first sepoy rebellion in India, known as Vellore Mutiny. It was one of the major oppose of the British before their rise to power in India. Mutiny of 1857 is well known to everyone; However, the Vellore Mutiny of 1806 was India's 1st revolt against British rule of east India company. Tipu introduced a large number of administrative innovations during his rule, including a new financial(mint) system and calendar, as well as a new revenue system that started the growth of the Mysore silk industry. He also embarked on an outstanding economic development program that established Mysore as a major economic power, with some of the world's highest wages and standard of living in the late 18th century. Tipu's father, Hyder Ali, rose to power and took over Mysore, and Tipu succeeded him as ruler of Mysore at his father's death in 1782. He won a significant British victory in the Second Anglo-Mysore War and negotiated the 1784 Mangalore Convention after the death of his father by cancer in December 1782 during the Second Anglo-Mysore War. Napoleon Bonaparte sought an alliance with Tipu Sultan. Both Tipu Sultan and his father Hyder Ali used their French-trained army in alliance with the French in their struggle against the British, and in Mysore's struggles with another surrounding power, against the rulers of Malabar, Carnatic, Kodagu, Bednore, Travancore, Marathas, and Sira. #TipuSultan #TigerofMysore #history https://www.instagram.com/p/CdJWIhqKwn_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[kevlo75]

General Count de Boigne, was a military adventurer from the Duchy of #savoy 🇫🇷🇮🇹, who became a success in India 🇮🇳 in the service of Mahadaji Sindhia of Gwalior in central India, who ruled over the Maratha Empire. Sindhia entrusted him with the creation and organization of an army. He became its general, and trained and commanded a force of nearly 100,000 men organized on the European model, which allowed the Maratha Empire to dominate north India, though it ultimately proved unable to match the military of the #eastindiacompany in the Second and Third Anglo-Maratha Wars. #adventuretime #alpsmountains (à French Alps) https://www.instagram.com/p/CZY42f3LmH9/?utm_medium=tumblr

[reeiiedu]

From Trade to Territory The Company Establishes Power

TRADE TO TERRITORY

Company Rule Expands 

After analyzing the cycle of annexation of Indian states by the East India Company from 1757 to 1857, certain key aspects rise. 

The Company rarely launched an immediate military attack on an obscure domain. It alternately utilized a variety of political, monetary and diplomatic strategies to broaden its impact before annexing an Indian realm. After the Battle of Buxar, the Company appointed Residents in Indian states. They were political or commercial agents and their activity was to serve and further the interests of the Company. 

Subsidiary alliance means Indian rulers were not allowed to have their free armed powers. They were to be ensured by the Company, however had to pay for the "subsidiary powers" that the Company should maintain with the end goal of this insurance. In the event that the Indian rulers failed to make the payment, at that point part of their region was taken away as a penalty. 

Tipu Sultan – The "Tiger of Mysore" 

Mysore, under the leadership of incredible rulers like Haidar Ali (administered from 1761 to 1782) and his famous child Tipu Sultan (managed from 1782 to 1799) had developed in quality. It controlled the profitable trade of the Malabar coast where the Company purchased pepper and cardamom. Tipu Sultan, in 1785, halted the fare of sandalwood, pepper and cardamom. The Company battled four wars with Mysore (1767-69, 1780-84, 1790-92 and 1799). Finally, in the last – the Battle of Seringapatam – the Company achieved triumph. 

War with the Marathas 

The Company from the late eighteenth century was planning to crush Maratha power. The Third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the Marathas were defeated and their dream of administering from Delhi was shattered. They were separated into many states under various bosses (sardars) having a place with dynasties such as Sindhia, Holkar, Gaikwad and Bhonsle. These bosses were held together under a Peshwa (Principal Minister) who became its viable military and administrative head based in Pune. 

Marathas were enjoyed a progression of wars. The primary war finished in 1782 with the Treaty of Salbai, there was no clear victor. The Second AngloMaratha War (1803-05) was battled on various fronts, bringing about the British gaining Orissa and the regions north of the Yamuna waterway including Agra and Delhi. Finally, the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817-19 squashed Maratha power. 

The claim to paramountcy 

Paramountcy another arrangement was initiated under Lord Hastings (GovernorGeneral from 1813 to 1823). The Company claimed that its capacity was greater than that of Indian states. In the late 1830s, the East India Company became stressed over Russia. It imagined that Russia may expand across Asia and enter India from the north-west. The Company battled a drawn out war with Afghanistan somewhere in the range of 1838 and 1842 and established roundabout Company rule there. Punjab was annexed in 1849, after two delayed wars. 

The Doctrine of Lapse 

Under Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor-General from 1848 to 1856 the final wave of annexations happened. The Doctrine of Lapse is an approach devised by him which declared that if an Indian ruler passed on without a male beneficiary his realm would "lapse", that is, become part of Company an area. In 1856, the Company took over Awadh. Enraged by the humiliating way in which the Nawab was removed, the individuals of Awadh joined the great revolt that broke out in 1857.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Transportation, political contingency and convict solidarities

....there were sharp peaks in convict flows [in the 19th and early 20th century]. It is possible to connect some of these to specific years when the East India Company and later the British crown were invoking penal transportation as a means of suppressing rebellion, and exporting rebels. The use of transportation as a means of quashing forms of anti-colonial solidarity – as a strategy of colonial governmentality – stretched back to the turn of the eighteenth century. Then, after the wars of 1799 to 1805, Polygar chiefs were shipped out of the former Tirunelveli kingdom of south India – to Bengal and to Penang. The Second Maratha Wars of 1803 to 1805, also contributed to the sharp rise in transportations at this time. During the Third Maratha War of 1816 to 1819, the overall number of convict transportations stayed relatively high. In the 1810s and again in the 1820s, Kandyan nobles were exiled from Ceylon to Mauritius. They were kept quite apart from the ordinary Indian convicts, the latter on occasion being allocated to them as servants. Transportation was also used increasingly in the 1840s, as a means of getting rid of soldiers who had fought the British during the Anglo-Sikh wars (1845–1846, 1848–1849). The most dramatic sudden rises of all, though, came in the aftermath of the Santal rebellion of 1855 and the 1857 revolt, when rebels were sent in the former case to the penal settlements of Southeast Asia and in the latter to the Andamans. The exile of the Manipuri royal family in the Andamans followed in the 1870s, after the Anglo-Manipur War of Assam. In 1877, the British also exiled the deposed sultan of Perak, Abdullah Jaffar Moratham, to the Seychelles.

Disguised within these figures are the subaltern peasant rebels of empire, who were almost continuously transported overseas during this period. Many of the first convicts shipped to Mauritius in 1815 for instance were from peasant and tribal groups, convicted in regions of the Bengal Presidency in near-permanent revolt against Company appropriation (of land) and extortion (or tax collection). Some of the convicts sent to Aden in the 1840s were transported in the aftermath of the rebellion in Kolhapur, which protested against EIC annexation.

It is possible to trace the transmission of anti-British sentiments over long distances, via the transportation of convicts. For instance, in the 1840s and 1850s there were several violent outbreaks amongst convicts transported after the Anglo-Sikh wars and consequent EIC annexation of the Punjab. In the aftermath of the conflict, the British transported dozens if not hundreds of former soldiers to Southeast Asian locations, including Singapore and Moulmein. One convict, Bhai Maharaj Singh, transported to Singapore, was described as a ‘saint-soldier’. He had led anti-British forces during the Second Anglo-Sikh War, and according to the British deputy commissioner at the time: ‘He is to the Natives what Jesus Christ is to the most zealous of Christians … This man who was a God, is in our hands’. The British attempted to keep him away from the bulk of Indian transportation convicts, confining him in the civil jail on Pearl’s Hill. Bhai Maharaj Singh wrote of his experiences in letters to India, in which he expressed a strong desire to go home, but he died in Singapore in 1856. His shrine is now the centrepiece of the Silat Road Gurdwara (temple), where Sikh worshippers remember him today as a nationalist hero.

Another hundred or so convicts in Burma were thugs from the upper provinces of Bengal. At the time, the British were making concerted efforts to ‘extinguish’ ‘thuggee’ (thagi) – which they represented as a pseudo-religious ritual of theft and murder by strangulation. In fact, as recent research has shown, thagi was a kind of militarized practice, closely related to the military labour market in the region, and in which a large percentage of the male population was engaged. Some of the convicts transported to Burma were allegedly so violent that on arrival they were made to wear leg fetters and handcuffs – attached with a chain to an iron neck ring.

Such convicts were not kept apart from other ordinary transportation convicts, and they often joined together to resist their situation. There were mass escapes in Burma in the years after 1843, for example, after discipline generally was tightened up and common messing was introduced (so that convicts cooked and ate together, rather than according to their own desires or cultural or religious imperatives). In 1846, transportation convicts attempted to break out of the jail on Ramree Island (off the coast of north Burma), and when they failed instead burnt down their wards and the guardrooms. Some violent episodes were inspired by convict knowledge of the weaknesses of the system. In 1847, for example, 120 convicts working on the Burmese roads attempted to get away. The Commissioner of Arakan claimed that he had no power to judicially punish any of them, for they were already subject to hard labour in chains, with limited rations. The convicts knew this all too well.

Transportation could also constitute a vector for the spread of insurrection, for convicts drew on and perpetuated the wider-ranging socio-political and anti-colonial grievances that had on occasion underpinned their initial transportation. In this respect, it is important to note that there were sometimes significant connections between the land-based rebellions for which some of the Indian convicts were transported, convict mutinies at sea and uprisings in the penal settlements. In Aden, it was the Kolhapur rebels who led ongoing attempts to kill their guards and to escape, including one mass attempt in 1844 in which five convicts died. A further convict mutiny at one of the coal depots in Burma, in 1849, involved 100 Punjabi men, who tried to escape while they were employed in weighing and packing coal. They did not succeed, and three were left dead and eight severely wounded in the ensuing gunfight. Commissioner A. Bogle reported: ‘the Secks [Sikhs] had … bound themselves by an Oath never to return to the prison and to eat beef sooner than abandon their purpose … Bold men will ever be found keen to emancipate themselves from thraldom, and when determined upon it, they are not to be restrained’.

Bogle’s comments on the Sikh convicts’ oath brings us to the question of culture and religion in transportation. They were not made subject to Christian proselytization, but otherwise we know relatively little about convicts’ religious practices. Fragments in the archives suggest that in the period to the 1850s in many locations Hindu and Muslim convicts built and worshipped in temples and mosques, often alongside the free population. To be sure, transported convicts both led and participated in the Muharrum, which marks the end of the period of mourning for the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson Husayn. In Singapore, they broke out in riots in 1856, after government banned their procession. They also took charge of the cremation or burial of their dead, according to community traditions. The Andaman Islands after 1858 had a different religious character to the pre-revolt settlements. Though a few low-caste men were employed as sweepers and a few high-caste Brahmins worked as cooks, otherwise the British took little notice of caste in allocating convicts to labour. They also refused to allow the construction of religious buildings, and would not let caste panchyats (councils) sit, even in self-supporter villages. The Andamans thus witnessed some astonishing transformations in caste, and the emergence of transformative social and religious formations (including Hindu/Muslim inter-marriage without conversion) that were distinct from those of the mainland.” - Clare Anderson, “ The British Indian Empire, 1789–1939.” in Clare Anderson, ed., A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies. Bloomsbury, 2018. pp. 234-236.

[nebris]

Company rule in India (sometimes, Company Raj,[2] "raj", lit. "rule" in Hindi[3]) refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company over parts of the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Sirajuddaulah surrendered his dominions to the Company,[4] in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar,[5] or in 1773, when the Company established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance,[6] and by 1818, with the defeat of Marathas followed by the pensioning of the Peshwa and the annexation of his territories, British supremacy in India was complete.[7]

The East India Company was a private company owned by stockholders and reporting to a board of directors in London.   Originally formed as a monopoly on trade, it increasingly took on governmental powers with its own army and judiciary.  It seldom turned a profit, as employees diverted funds into their own pockets.  The British government had little control, and there was increasing anger at the corruption and irresponsibility of Company officials or "nabobs" who made vast fortunes in a few years.[8] Pitt's India Act of 1784 gave the British government effective control of the private company for the first time. The new policies were designed for an elite civil service career that minimized temptations for corruption.[9]  Increasingly Company officials lived in separate compounds according to British standards. The Company's rule lasted until 1858, when it was abolished after the Indian Rebellion of 1857. With the Government of India Act 1858, the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.

The English East India Company ("the Company") was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies.  It gained a foothold in India with the establishment of a factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India in 1611 and the grant of the rights to establish a factory in Surat in 1612 by the Mughal emperor Jahangir.  In 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler farther south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Two decades later, the Company established a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges river delta, a factory was set up in Calcutta. Since, during this time other companies—established by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish—were similarly expanding in the region, the English Company's unremarkable beginnings on coastal India offered no clues to what would become a lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent.

The Company's victory under Robert Clive in the 1757 Battle of Plassey and another victory in the 1764 Battle of Buxar (in Bihar), consolidated the Company's power, and forced emperor Shah Alam II to appoint it the diwan, or revenue collector, of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa.  The Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the lower Gangetic plain by 1773.  It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore Wars (1766–99) and the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1772–1818) left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer.[10]

The expansion of the Company's power chiefly took two forms.  The first of these was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively came to comprise British India.  The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab) (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam (Ahom Kingdom 1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir, were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849–56 (Period of tenure of Marquess of Dalhousie Governor General); however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra Dynasty of Jammu, and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later.[11]

The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the Company's hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy. Since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule.[12] The most important such support came from the subsidiary alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule.[12] In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-thirds of India.[12] When an Indian ruler, who was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects.[13]

In return, the Company undertook the "defense of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor."[13] Subsidiary alliances created the princely states, of the Hindu maharajas and the Muslim nawabs.  Prominent among the princely states were: Cochin (1791), Jaipur (1794), Travancore (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Cis-Sutlej Hill States (1815), Central India Agency (1819), Cutch and Gujarat Gaikwad territories (1819), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur (1833).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_rule_in_India

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.11 (before 1840)

9 – The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest ends: The Roman Empire suffers the greatest defeat of its history and the Rhine is established as the border between the Empire and the so-called barbarians for the next four hundred years. 1185 – Isaac II Angelos kills Stephen Hagiochristophorites and then appeals to the people, resulting in the revolt that deposes Andronikos I Komnenos and places Isaac on the throne of the Byzantine Empire. 1297 – Battle of Stirling Bridge: Scots jointly led by William Wallace and Andrew Moray defeat the English. 1390 – Lithuanian Civil War (1389–92): The Teutonic Knights begin a five-week siege of Vilnius. 1541 – Santiago, Chile, is attacked by indigenous warriors, led by Michimalonco, to free eight indigenous chiefs held captive by the Spaniards. 1565 – Ottoman forces retreat from Malta ending the Great Siege of Malta. 1609 – Henry Hudson arrives on Manhattan Island and meets the indigenous people living there. 1649 – Siege of Drogheda ends: Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarian troops take the town and execute its garrison. 1683 – Battle of Vienna: Coalition forces, including the famous winged Hussars, led by Polish King John III Sobieski lift the siege laid by Ottoman forces. 1697 – Battle of Zenta: a major engagement in the Great Turkish War (1683–1699) and one of the most decisive defeats in Ottoman history. 1708 – Charles XII of Sweden stops his march to conquer Moscow outside Smolensk, marking the turning point in the Great Northern War. The army is defeated nine months later in the Battle of Poltava, and the Swedish Empire ceases to be a major power. 1709 – Battle of Malplaquet: Great Britain, Netherlands, and Austria fight against France. 1714 – Siege of Barcelona: Barcelona, capital city of the Principality of Catalonia, surrenders to Spanish and French Bourbon armies in the War of the Spanish Succession. 1758 – Battle of Saint Cast: France repels British invasion during the Seven Years' War. 1775 – Benedict Arnold's expedition to Quebec leaves Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1776 – British–American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop nascent American Revolutionary War. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Brandywine: The British celebrate a major victory in Chester County, Pennsylvania. 1780 – American Revolutionary War: Sugarloaf massacre: A small detachment of militia from Northampton County, Pennsylvania, are attacked by Native Americans and Loyalists near Little Nescopeck Creek. 1786 – The beginning of the Annapolis Convention. 1789 – Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury. 1792 – The Hope Diamond is stolen along with other French crown jewels when six men break into the house where they are stored. 1800 – The Maltese National Congress Battalions are disbanded by British Civil Commissioner Alexander Ball. 1802 – France annexes the Kingdom of Piedmont. 1803 – The Battle of Delhi, during the Second Anglo-Maratha War, between British troops under General Lake, and Marathas of Scindia's army under General Louis Bourquin ends in a British victory. 1813 – War of 1812: British troops arrive in Mount Vernon and prepare to march to and invade Washington, D.C. 1814 – War of 1812: The climax of the Battle of Plattsburgh, a major United States victory in the war. 1826 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for debt after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry, a book against Freemasonry. This sets into motion the events that led to his mysterious disappearance. 1829 – An expedition led by Isidro Barradas at Tampico, sent by the Spanish crown to retake Mexico, surrenders at the Battle of Tampico, marking the effective end of Spain's resistance to Mexico's campaign for independence. 1830 – Anti-Masonic Party convention; one of the first American political party conventions. 1836 – The Riograndense Republic is proclaimed by rebels after defeating Empire of Brazil's troops in the Battle of Seival, during the Ragamuffin War.

[notesonindianhistory]

We know that Tipu Sultan was defeated in the 3rd Anglo-Mysore war (1790-1792) by the British East India Company and its two allies, the Nizam of Hyderabad and the Marathas, and was compelled to make terms of peace. On 24th February, 1792, preliminary articles of a treaty of peace concluded between Tipu and the allied armies; following were the terms dictated by the Governor-General Charles Marquess Cornwallis to Tipu Sultan:-

1. One half of the dominions of which Tipu Sultan was in possession before the war, to be ceded to the allies [Haripant from the Maratha side; and from the Nizam's part, Sikander Jah, son of Nizam Ali Khan, and his minister Azim-ul-Umra].

2. Three crores and thirty lacs of rupees, to be paid by Tipu Sultan. One crore and sixty-five lacs, to be paid immediately; and the rest, to be paid in three installments, not exceeding four months each.

3. All prisoners of the four powers, from the time of Hyder Ali, to be unequivocally restored.

4. [Any] two of Tipu Sultan's three eldest sons to be given as hostages for a due performance of the treaty.

In this post we are discussing the reception ceremony of the young princes Abdul Khaliq, Tipu's second son aged ten, and Muiz-ud-din, his third son aged eight, and their surrender to Lord Cornwallis as hostages.

[jaibalajipackersagra]

After the First Battle of Panipat in 1526, Babur stayed in the fort, in the palace of Ibrahim Lodi. He later built a baoli (step well) in it. His successor, Humayun, was crowned in the fort in 1530. He was defeated at Bilgram in 1540 by Sher Shah Suri. The fort remained with the Suris till 1555, when Humayun recaptured it. Adil Shah Suri's general, Hemu, recaptured Agra in 1556 and pursued its fleeing governor to Delhi where he met the Mughals in the Battle of Tughlaqabad.[2] Diwan-i-Aam Sheesh Mahal, siya:The effect produced by lighting candles in Sheesh Mahal, Agra Fort. Realising the importance of its central situation, Akbar made it his capital and arrived in Agra in 1558. His historian, Abul Fazl, recorded that this was a brick fort known as 'Badalgarh'. It was in a ruined condition and Akbar had it rebuilt with red sandstone from Barauli area Dhaulpur district, in Rajasthan.[citation needed] Architects laid the foundation and it was built with bricks in the inner core with sandstone on external surfaces. Some 4,000 builders worked on it daily for eight years, completing it in 1573.[3] It was only during the reign of Akbar's grandson, Shah Jahan, that the site took on its current state. Shah Jahan built the beautiful Taj Mahal in the memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Unlike his grandfather, Shah Jahan tended to have buildings made from white marble. He destroyed some of the earlier buildings inside the fort to make his own.[citation needed] At the end of his life, Shah Jahan was deposed and restrained by his son, Aurangzeb, in the fort. It is rumoured that Shah Jahan died in Muasamman Burj, a tower with a marble balcony with a view of the Taj Mahal.[citation needed] The fort was under the Jat rulers of Bharatpur for 13 Years. In the fort they built the Ratan Singh ki haweli.The fort was invaded and captured by the Maratha Empire in the early 18th century. Thereafter, it changed hands between the Marathas and their foes many times. After their catastrophic defeat at Third Battle of Panipat by Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1761, Marathas remained out of the region for the next decade. Finally Mahadji Shinde took the fort in 1785. It was lost by the Marathas to the British during the Second Anglo-Maratha War, in 1803 Discovered at Agra Fort, Agra, India. See more at Trover