Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Hinduism
- Abbreviations
- Map of India
- Introduction
- 1 A Christian Company?
- 2 The East India Company, Britain and India 1770–1790
- 3 The 1790s: A Time of Crisis
- 4 The Pillar of Fire Moves Forward: The Advent of British Missionaries 1793–1806
- 5 The Wisdom of the Serpent and the Innocence of the Dove: The Vellore Mutiny and the Pamphlet War 1806–1808
- 6 Troubled Years 1807–1812
- 7 Battle Lines Drawn: Missions, Dissent and the Establishment
- 8 The 1813 Renewal of the Company's Charter: The Religious Public Takes on the Company
- 9 A Turbulent Frontier: The Company and Religion 1814–1828
- 10 A New Dawn? The Era of Lord William Bentinck 1828–1835
- 11 Between Scylla and Charibdis 1836–1858
- Conclusion and Epilogue: Strangers in the Land
- Appendix 1 Presidents of the Board of Control
- Appendix 2 Governors-General and Governors of Madras and Bombay
- Appendix 3 Aide Memoire to Names
- Appendix 4 ‘The Pious Clause’
- Bibliography
- Index
- WORLDS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
Conclusion and Epilogue: Strangers in the Land
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Hinduism
- Abbreviations
- Map of India
- Introduction
- 1 A Christian Company?
- 2 The East India Company, Britain and India 1770–1790
- 3 The 1790s: A Time of Crisis
- 4 The Pillar of Fire Moves Forward: The Advent of British Missionaries 1793–1806
- 5 The Wisdom of the Serpent and the Innocence of the Dove: The Vellore Mutiny and the Pamphlet War 1806–1808
- 6 Troubled Years 1807–1812
- 7 Battle Lines Drawn: Missions, Dissent and the Establishment
- 8 The 1813 Renewal of the Company's Charter: The Religious Public Takes on the Company
- 9 A Turbulent Frontier: The Company and Religion 1814–1828
- 10 A New Dawn? The Era of Lord William Bentinck 1828–1835
- 11 Between Scylla and Charibdis 1836–1858
- Conclusion and Epilogue: Strangers in the Land
- Appendix 1 Presidents of the Board of Control
- Appendix 2 Governors-General and Governors of Madras and Bombay
- Appendix 3 Aide Memoire to Names
- Appendix 4 ‘The Pious Clause’
- Bibliography
- Index
- WORLDS OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
Summary
BEFORE THE VELLORE mutiny occurred, William Bentinck, Governor of Madras, had concluded that the British were ‘strangers in the land’. This was an opinion he still held some twenty years later when he arrived in Bengal as Governor-General. He believed the people of India had not benefited from British rule and in 1829 wrote that Britain could expect no co-operation from Indians in times of emergency. Numerous Company servants had expressed similar views over the years. Despite a century of rule, and all the Company's efforts to conciliate Indian religious feelings, the Great Uprising made clear that the British were not only regarded as aliens in the Indian landscape but that Indians believed it had broken its ‘compact’ with them. In the breast-beating that occurred in Britain after the Uprising was put down, many indeed thought that the Company had given too much support to Christianity. Evangelicals, on the other hand argued that not enough support had been given.
The Company tried to cling on to its power. John Stuart Mill, who wrote the petition to Parliament requesting the continuance of Company rule, pointed out that:
In abstaining as they have done from all interference with any of the religious practices of the people of India, except such as are abhorrent to humanity, they have acted not only from their own conviction of what is just and expedient, but in accordance with the avowed intentions and express enactments of the legislature, framed ‘in order that regard should be had to the civil and religious usages of the Natives.’
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- Information
- The East India Company and Religion, 1698-1858 , pp. 237 - 244Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012