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British Annexation of Sind in 1843: An Economic Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

J. Y. Wong
J. Y. Wong
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
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Extract

Generally speaking, there are two dominant schools of thought with regard to the British annexation of Sind in the Indian sub-continent in 1843. One takes the view that individuals on the spot make history. It was a harsh, bitter and frustrated soldier by the name of General Sir Charles Napier who was determined to seek glory and wealth for himself by annexing Sind. In this respect, the eminent historian and former Special Commissioner for Sind (1943–46), H. T. Lambrick, has put his case extremely well. The other school interprets the annexation in strategic terms, as part of a search for a defence system which would safeguard British India from the dangers of attack from the northwest. In about 600 pages, the distinguished historian M. E. Yapp has achieved his goal with remarkable success. Furthermore, Yapp has done so without discounting the first school of thought. Indeed, the two are not mutually exclusive. In this paper I wish to suggest that there is a third dimension, an economic one; and that the three are not mutually exclusive either. Indeed, all three appear to have different weights at different levels of the policy-making process.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , May 1997 , pp. 225 - 244
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

I wish to thank the British Academy, the Australian Research Grants Committee (now the Australian Research Council), the Smuts Memorial Fund at Cambridge and the Lee Foundation of Singapore, for having funded and then bridged embarrassing gaps in my protracted research project on the Arrow War (1856–60) in China, a project which is not of a kind to yield rapid results. This paper is but one of the fruits of that project. I am grateful to Professors Christopher Bayly of the University of Cambridge, and Patrick O'Brien of the University of London, for having made valuable comments on an earlier draft. All the faults are mine.

1 See Lambrick, H. T. C.I.E., Sir Charles Napier and Sind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952). Mr Lambrick has ably put that violently controversial subject of the annexation of Sind in due perspective.Google Scholar For an assessment of the scholarship up to the time of Mr Lambrick, see Vincent Smith, A., The Oxford History of India, 3rd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 619.Google Scholar

2 Yapp, Malcolm E., Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).Google Scholar His main thesis is that ‘the concerns of British foreign policy were mainly in Europe and Indian strategies were viewed in the light of that preoccupation’.(Ibid., p. 19.) Thus, the perceived French and then Russian threat to India was portrayed as part of the same threat to Britain. In addition, he finds that the deliberately cultivated opinion of British invincibility was the fundamental cause of many wars in India. ‘If Indian enemies of British power believed that revolt was foredoomed to failure they would be less inclined to make the attempt. Accordingly, it was vital that the Raj should never be defied and never beaten but should always present an impression of confident, overbearing power. Essentially it was bluff, but it was a bluff which no one could be allowed to call and its maintenance was at the root of most of the wars of British India.’ (Ibid., p. 12.) See also Huttenback, Robert A., ‘The French Threat to India and British Relations with Sind: 1799–1809’, English Historical Review, v. 76 (10 1961).Google Scholar

3 In addition, small quantities of opium produced in north India also found their way via Nepal and Lhasa into remote Chinese Turkistan, but not into the main market of China. See Bakhala, Franklin, ‘Indian Opium and Sino-Indian Trade Relations, 1801–1858’, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1985, Chapter 5.Google Scholar

4 India Office, Bengal Consultations, Governor-General in Council to the Government of Bombay, 30 June 1803, quoted in Owen, David Edward, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) p. 83.Google Scholar

5 Richards, J. F., ‘Peasant Production of Opium’, Modern Asian Studies, v. 15, no. 1 (1981), p. 65.Google ScholarOwen, , British Opium Policy, p. 101.Google Scholar

6 India Office, Letters from Bengal, v. 49, Governor-General in Council to the Court of Directors (public general), 7 June 1806, quoted in Owen, British Opium Policy, p. 84.

7 India Office, Bengal Board of Revenue, Miscellaneous Proceedings (Opium), 27 June 1823, R.102, v.35, no. 3, paras 34 and 40, quoted by Bakhala, ‘Indian Opium’, Chapter 3, n. 36. Revenue from this source began to feature on a fairly regular basis in 1830 (Parliamentary Papers [hereafter PP] 1865, v.40, pp. 85–7. Some revenue in this score was listed in PP 1822, v. 17, p. 560, but apparently not as part of a centrally planned long-term policy.

8 India Office, Letters from Bengal, v. 81, Governor-General in Council to the Court of Directors (territorial: salt and opium), 30 July 1819, quoted in Owen, British Opium Policy, p. 87.

9 India Office, Letters from Bengal, v. 114, Governor-General in Council to the Court of Directors (separate revenue), 8 Feb. 1831, quoted in ibid., p. 106.

10 India Office, Letters from Bengal, v. 118, Governor-General in Council to the Court of Directors (separate revenue), 10 April 1832, quoted in ibid., p. 107.

11 India Office, Bengal Board of Revenue, Miscellaneous Proceedings (Opium), 3 Aug. 1830, quoted in ibid.

12 India Office, Bengal Board of Revenue, Miscellaneous Proceedings (Opium), 26 Oct. 1830, quoted in ibid., p. 108. See also Chaudhuri, B., ‘Regional Economy (1757–1857): East India’, in Kumar, Dharma (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, Volume 2: c. 1757–c. 1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 327Google Scholar

13 By the time of the Arrow War beginning in 1856, the production had increased by more than four and a half times from that in 1830.

14 India Office, Bengal Board of Revenue, Miscellaneous Proceedings (Opium), 9 March 1824, Samuel Swinton to the Board of Customs, Salt, and Opium, 17 Feb. 1824; Third Report from the Select Committee, App. 4, p. 28, Abstracts on Malwa Opium, Bengal Political Consultations, 25 Oct. 1822; both quoted in Owen, British Opium Policy, p. 90.

15 Chaudhuri, , ‘Regional Economy (1757–1857): East India’, p. 313.Google Scholar

16 Third Report from the Select Committee, App. 4, p. 33, Abstracts on Malwa Opium, quoted in Owen, British Opium Policy, p. 93. Apparently the main route followed was Malwa, Pali, Jesalmir, Karachi, Daman. See Morse, H. B., The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, 3 vols (London and Shanghai, 1910–1918), v. 1, p. 177, n. 18.Google Scholar

17 India Office, Letters from Bombay, LXI, Government of Bombay to the Court of Directors, 2 July 1835, quoted in Owen, British Opium policy, p. 101, n. 61. We must not use the Daman of today to gauge the Daman of 1835. Today at Merseyside, Liverpool, for example, there is hardly an ocean-going vessel to be seen. But when Sun Yatsen arrived there on 30 September 1896, the place was bustling with long-range vessels of all descriptions, passenger and cargo (see Wong, J. Y., The Origins of An Heroic Image: Sun Yatsen in London, 1896–1897 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1986)).Google Scholar

18 Owen, , British Opium Policy, p. 102.Google Scholar

19 Third Report from the Select Committee, App. 4, p. 33, Abstracts on Malwa Opium, quoted in ibid., p. 93.

20 See Table 1, column 2.

21 Siddiqi, Asiya, ‘The Business World of Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, v. 19, nos 3–4 (07–12 1982), p. 310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 313–17.

23 He meant the Opium War in China (1839–1842).

24 Governor-General, Secret Consultations, Bengal Secret Letters (1) 28, 419; Ellenborough to Wellington (pte.), 22 April 1843, PRO 30/12/28/12; Ellenborough to Fitzgerald (pte.), 22 April 1843, PRO 30/12 77, all quoted in Yapp, Strategies, pp. 488 and 624.

25 Yapp, , Strategies, p. 488.Google Scholar

26 Napier, C.J., Defects, Civil and Military, of the Indian Government (Charles Westerton, 1853), p. 357.Google Scholar

27 Yapp, , Strategies, pp. 493–4.Google Scholar

28 Ibid., p. 495.

29 Ibid., Part IV.

30 Outram to Willoughby (pte.), 22 February. 1842; Outram to Colvin (pte.),27 Feb. 1842, ESL 84, 86 & 89/25, 22 Feb. 1842, all quoted in Yapp, Strategies, pp. 482 and 623.

31 Yapp, ,Strategies, p. 485.Google Scholar

32 Ellenborough to Napier, 24 Nov. 1842, ESL 90, 64/62, 20 Dec. 1942, quoted in ibid., pp. 486 and 623.

33 Ibid., p. 486.

34 Ibid., p. 487.

35 Ibid., p. 485.

36 Ibid., p. 484.

37 Ibid., p. 485.

38 Ibid., p. 492.

39 Hansard, , 3rd series, v. 53, cols 743, 855–6, Gladstone's speech, 8 April 1840.Google Scholar

40 Hansard, , 3rd series, v. 53, col. 818, Gladstone's speech, 8 April 1840.Google Scholar

41 Mill's, J. evidence, 28 June 1832, in PP 1831–32, v. 11, Question 3040.Google Scholar

42 Ibid.

43 See Wong, J. Y., ‘Monopoly in India and Equal Opportunities in China, 1830– 1833: An Examination of an Apparent Paradox’. Journal of South Asian Studies, New Series, Vol. 5, no. 2 Festschrift in Honour of Emeritus Professor Marjorie Jacobs (12 1982).Google Scholar

44 For col. 1, see PP 1825, v. 24, pp. 6 and 14 for the years 1821–23; PP 1828, v. 23, pp. 6 and 14 for the years 1823–26; PP 1831, v. ig, pp. 30 and 38 for the years 1826–28; PP 1834, v. 44, pp. 4 and 12 for the years 1828–32; PP 1837–38, v. 41, pp. 4 and 16 for the years 1832–35; PP 1840, v. 37, pp. 180 and 190 for the years 1835–38; PP 1843, v. 25, PP. 50 a nd 60 for the years 1838–41; PP 1846, v. 31, pp. 14 and 24 for the years 1841–44; PP 1849, v. 39, pp. 12 and 22 for the years 1844–47; PP 1852 v. 36, pp. 16 and 28 for the years 1847–50; PP 1854–55, v. 40, pp. 16 and 28 for the years 1850–53; PP 1856, v. 45, pp. 16 and 28 for the years 1853–55; PP 1857–58, v. 42, pp. 87 and 93 for the years 1855–56; PP 1859, Session 2, v. 23, pp. 112 and 116 for the years 1857–58. In the above Parliamentary Papers, the first page reference is about Bengal, and the second about Bombay. For col. 2, see PP 1859, Session 2, v. 23, pp. 78–9.

45 For cols 1–3, see PP 1859, Session 2, v. 23, pp. 78–9. For col. 4, years 1800– 52, see PP 1854–55, v. 40 PP. 325–39. For col 4. years 1852–58, see PP 1856, v. 45, pp. 16 and 28; PP 1857, Session 2, v. 29, pp. 73 and 79; PP 1857–58, v. 42, pp. 87 and 93; PP 1859, Session 2, v. 23, pp. 112 and 116; PP 1860, v. 49, pp. 148 and 152; PP 1861, v. 43, pp. 32 and 36.

46 See my forthcoming book, entitled ‘Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the Arrow War (1856–1860) in China’. For the Chinese domestic context of that war, see Wong, J. Y., Yeh Ming-ch'en, Viceroy of Liang-Kuang, 1852–8 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).Google Scholar For the diplomatic relations between the two countries leading up to that war, see Wong, J. Y., Anglo-Chinese Relations 1839–1860: A Calendar of Chinese Documents in the British Foreign Office Records (published for the British Academy by the Oxford University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

47 Hansard, , 3rd series, v. 144, cols 1362–3, Lord Ellenborough's speech, 26 February. 1857.Google Scholar

48 Ibid., col. 1363.

49 Lambrick, , Napier.Google Scholar

50 Yapp, , Strategies, p. 485.Google Scholar

51 Lambrick, , Napier, p. 365.Google Scholar

52 Yapp, , Strategies, pp. 1–2 and pp. 484–5.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., Parts I–IV.

54 Ellenborough's Political Diary, v. 1, pp. 207 and 237, 11 December. 1828,Google Scholar quoted in Philips, C. H., The East India Company, 1784–1834 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1940), pp. 261–2.Google Scholar

55 Commons, Select Committee, Report III, Accounts, no. 6, 1831, quoted in ibid., p. 262.

56 Ellenborough's Political Diary, v. 1, pp. 207 a nd 237, 11 Dec. 1828, quoted in ibid.

57 See Bayly, C. A., The New Cambridge History of Indian, II. 1. Indian society and the making of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 110 and 128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58 Philips, C. H., The East India Company, 1784–1834, p.302.Google Scholar See also ibid., p. 288.

59 Ibid., p. 288.

60 For a meticulous study of the administration and collection of land revenue in India, see Misra, B. B., The Central Administration of the East India Company, 1773–1834 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), Chapters 3 and 4.Google Scholar