1 The main trade in which those servants were involved was seaborne country trade. This trade demanded high outlays of capital and was more or less controlled by the President and Council. The closer one stood to the Council, the more chances one had to participate i n this trade and the more money one normally had available to invest in it.

2 Because of the rapid turnover of servants in the period after Plassey, servants with little more than ten years of service could find themselves occupying a seat in the Council. Therefore, many of the fortunes made in this period were still made by men in the senior ranks of the service though at a considerably younger age than what had been customary before 1756. However, men like Henry Lushington and John Wood (who, like Bolts, came out as Factors in 1759), died after eight and seven years of service respectively and worth £45,000. Bolts himself acquired twice that sum after hardly eight years of presence in Bengal of which six were in the service of the Company. See: Marshall, P.J., East Indian Fortunes: The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford 1976) 238Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 230–250.

4 Shortly after his arrival in Bengal to take up his second governorship, Clive wrote to his wife: ‘[…] my whole time is taken up in introducing economy and subordination among the civil servants […] I will pronounce Calcutta to be one of the most wicked places in the Universe. Corruption, licentiousness and a want of principle seem to have possessed the minds of all civil servants, by frequent bad examples they are grown callous, rapacious, and luxurious beyond conception […]’; Clive to Lady Clive, 31 January 1766: Quoted in Forrest, G.B., Life of Lord Clive II (London 1918) 280Google Scholar.

5 The districts Burdwan, Chittagong and Midnapur had been ceded to the Company by Mir Kasim in 1760, after he had become Nawab of Bengal in MirJafar's stead with British support. After two years in Chittagong Verelst estimated himself to be worth from £25,000 to £30,000; ‘a fortune I think sufficient to set down with myself and also to serve my friends’. See: British Library Oriental and India Office Collection (B.L.O.I.O.C.), Neg 4373/15: Europe letter book of Harry Verelst (originals in the Ames Library of South Asia, Minnesota, U.S.A); Harry Verelst to his sister Tryphena: Chittagong, 29 September 1762.

6 Kuiters, W.G.J., ‘Les Britanniques au Bengale 1756–1773: Une société en transition vue a travers la biographie d'un rebelle: William Bolts (1739–1808)’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris 1998)Google Scholar; Details on Bolts' career mentioned in this article are drawn from this thesis.

7 Banian: Indian in the personal service of a European. Banians transacted their master's business, kept their books, employed their personnel and acted often as their interpreters. They were, in short, their employer's contact with the Indian world. For a description of the role of banians see: Marshall, P.J., ‘Masters and Banians in Eighteenth-century Calcutta’ in: Kling, B.B. and Pearson, M.N. eds, The Age of Partnership: Europeans in Asia before Dominion (Honolulu 1979) 191–213Google Scholar.

8 Ibid.

9 After Mir Jafar had acceded to the throne of Bengal in 1757, he had ceded a territory to the south of Calcutta called the 24 Parganas to the Company. To organize the collection of the revenue of this territory the Council set up a Committee of New Lands.

10 Henry Vansittart, a member of the Madras Council, was appointed Governor of the Company's Bengal establishment on Clive's recommendation. He took up his post in July 1760 at the young age of 28. His appointment caused discontent among the members of the Bengal Council, not in the least because Vansittart was junior to any of them. Relations between him and a majority of the Council worsened after the Company's relations with Mir Kasim, a Nawab Vansittart had placed upon the throne in preference o t MirJafar, deteriorated. Mir Kasim attempted to restrain the Company's servants private trade. Vansittart, aware of the abuses provoked by an unwarranted extension of trade privileges and the exemption of the servants' agents from the Nawab's jurisdiction, saw the justice of Mir Kasim's revendications and started to implement remedial measures.

His appeasement policy towards Mir Kasim was thwarted by the majority of his Council over which Vansittart had no overriding authority. His position was further weakened because he was himself extensively engaged in private trade, then the main source of income for all Company servants including the Governor. Vansittart was accused of profiting privately by the limitations he put on the trade of his colleagues by his privileged relation with Mir Kasim. Unable to prevent the open conflict between the Company and Mir Kasim from breaking out in 1763, h e resigned after the conclusion of the war in November 1764. See: Stephen, L. ed., Dictionary ofNational Biography (London 1888)Google Scholar; Vansittart, H., Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock (London 1767)Google Scholar.

11 Bolts was worth about £90,000 after hardly eight years presence in Bengal.

12 William Hay was killed during what came to be known in imperial historiography as the ‘Patna massacre’ on 5 October 1763. Johnstone returned to Britain after openly clashing with Clive at the very start of the latter's second governorship in 1765.

13 The Benares factory had been established in November 1764, after the Company's victory at Buxar. The Company first intended to take the collection of the Benares revenue in their own hands but later came to an agreement with Rajah Balwant Singh to leave him i n the possession of his zamindari against payment of a stipulated sum. The members of the Benares factory were to receive Balwant Singh's payments for the Company, who used the money to pay its troops in those parts. This settlement would only last one year. At the treaty of Allahabad it was decided that the Benares territory would be handed back to the Nawab of Awadh, Shuja-ud-daula, by the end of November 1765. In practice this meant that Balwant Singh would now pay a stipulated sum out of the revenue to Shuja instead of to the Company. However, the Allahabad treaty also stipulated that Shuja-ud-daula would pay five million rupees to the Company to cover the expenses of the war. Two million were to be paid out of the revenue derived from the newly restored Benares territory. The Company's factory at Benares was charged to collect this money, called tankhwah money. Benares was a flourishing city and formed an excellent base for the servants stationed there to carry on their schemes of private trade. See: Sanyal, S., Benares and the East India Company, 1764–1795 (Calcutta 1979) 16–51, 171–231Google Scholar.

14 Respectively headed by Lord Robert Clive and Laurence Sulivan.

15 Petrie had been dismissed the Company's military service by Clive after the officers mutiny of 1766. He was a personal friend of Bolts whom he helped in 1795 when the latter was in serious difficulties in France by sending him over a sum of money Bolts would never be able to repay. See: P.R.O. Prob. 11 -1485; N 710: The will of William Bolts.

16 B.L.O.I.O.C, MSS Eur. F 218/23: Verelst Collection: f. 4; John Petrie to the Company's secretary Peter Michell; London, 24 September 1771.

17 Johnstone, J., A Letter to the Proprietors of East India Stock (London 1766) 29.Google Scholar

18 P.R.O., C13/1226/1: Bill of Complaint by William Bolts, dated 29 September 1770.

19 Sir Namier, L. and Brooke, j. eds, The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1754–1790 II (London 1964).Google Scholar

20 Keir, A., Thoughts on the Affairs of Bengal (London 1772) 15.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 16–21.

22 Keir had formerly been a free-merchant with considerable concerns in the salt trade of Bengal. He elaborately describes a plan he had thought out to realise an important revenue to th e Company's Bengal government by imposing a tax on the production of salt. He proposed to put his expertise and experience at the service of the Company in order to put his plan into execution.

23 Verelst, H., A View of the Rise, Progress and Present State of the English Government in Bengal (London 1772) 143–147;Google Scholar B.L.O.I.O.C, MSS Eur. F 218/20: Letter by Verelst on relinquishing his governorship to John Cartier; Calcutta, 21 December 1769: ff. 2–14.

24 After 1765 the Governor was no longer allowed to engage in trade on his own account. Clive was the first Governor to make an oath not to engage in any scheme of private trade while in office before accepting his second governorship. After him, all Governors took an oath to the same effect. Verelst, therefore, was the first Governor not allowed to trade after Clive.

25 B.L.O.I.O.C., L/Parl/2/7: Reports from Committees, IV; Seventh report, p. 333. Whittall had brought some interesting documents back from Bengal. Bolts was aware of this and introduced Whittall to GovernorJohnstone. One of the documents Whittall had in stock and had submitted to Johnstone's consideration was the secret indenture Clive and the other members of the Select Committee had entered into with themselves to protect the capital that had been invested in the Society of Trade. In this document they guaranteed the Society at least one whole year of trading, to secure the sale of its stocks, regardless of what orders might arrive from the Directors in London. Whittall had at the time been employed by Clive and the Select Committee to write up this secret indenture. See: B.L.O.I.O.C., MSS Eur, F 128/141: Sutton Court Collection; GovernorJohnstone's declaration to the Committee of Correspondence, 20 December 1771, B.L.O.I.O.G., L/Parl/ 2/6: Reports from Committees, III; Fourth report.

26 Misra, B.B., The Judicial Administration of the East India Company in Bengal, 1765–1782 (Delhi 1961) 139, 140.Google Scholar

27 For a full account of the details of Alexander and Philipinia Jephson's case see: B.L.O.I.O.C, D/149: Auditors References: ff. 220–369.

28 The Governor and Council had maintained that they were not to receive appeals on interlocutory - but only on final judgements by the Mayor's Court. However, as the Company's legal counsellors in England pointed out, it was every day's practice in England to see appeals lodged in the House of Lords, against interlocutory orders of the Courts of Chancery or of the courts ofjustice in the King's dominions abroad. See: Misra, B.B., The Judicial Administration, 140, 141Google Scholar.

29 Bhargava, K.D. ed., Fort William - India House Correspondence VI (Delhi 1960) 83Google Scholar; Court of Directors to the Bengal Council; London, 3 May 1771.

30 Sparks even maintained that Verelst had made him ‘the butt whereon to vent his malice, for having adhered to your interest so steadily’. See: Bolts, W., Considerations on India Affairs II (London 1775) Appendix, p. 569:Google Scholar George Sparks to William Bolts; Calcutta, 15 February 1769.

31 Ibid., 570.

32 Ibid., 547; George Sparks to William Bolts; Chittagong, 2 January 1771.

33 Small shell imported from the Maldives used in India as small money at a rate of 4000 t o 4800 to a rupee.

34 Bolts, , Considerations on India Affairs II, Appendix, p. 576:Google Scholar George Sparks to William Bolts; Sundarbans, 20 February 1773. Sparks fortunes would never mend. In 1774, writing his testament, he began thus; ‘I, George Sparks, born a citizen of London […] shall probably die one of the savages of Chittagong’. He bequeathed everything he might possess at the time of his death to his wife, Mary Sparks, but was ‘extremely mortified that fortune has not enabled me to leave her in circumstances more adequate’. Sparks died early in 1775. See: B.L.O.I.O.C, P/154/56: No 34; The will of George Sparks.

35 Whether Sparks, and Bolts for that matter, were really the innocent victims of arbitrary courts of justice is rather open to doubt. There is reason to suspect them of collusive dealings in buying up certain protested bonds from Bolackydass and afterwards bringing them before the Mayor's Court where Bolts, sitting as an alderman, would order their payment.

Sparks denied having bought the bonds only in his name while Bolts was the real purchaser. But it could well be that the two were acting under some other kind of secret agreement to their mutual benefit. This suspicion is the more justified as we find Bolts addressing the Committee of Correspondence in London on the 6th of December 1769, as attorney to Bolackydass, a rich banker, asking for orders to be sent out to Bengal 'to settle and pay off his demand for a large sum of money advanced by Bolackydass for the Company's service in 1763'. See: Bolts, , Considerations on India Affairs II, Appendix, p. 569:Google Scholar George Sparks to William Bolts; Calcutta, 15 February 1769, B.L.O.I.O.C, D/26: Correspondence Reports; f. 96

36 Henry Vansittart, Luke Scrafton and Francis Forde.

37 Bowen, H.V., Revenue and Reform: The Indian problem in Britishpolitics, 1757–1773 (Cambridge 1991) 94n.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Ibid.

39 Tea was at the heart of the Company's problems. A large part of its capital was invested in this commodity, which lay unsold in its warehouses. The unsound policy of continuing o t pay unwarranted dividends to prevent a fall in the price of India stock aggravated the problem.

40 Bowen, , Revenue and Reform, 98–100.Google Scholar