This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The intellectual ferment in early nineteenth-century Calcutta was one of the changes most attributable to colonial rule. Colonial rule brought fundamental change in the way in which the provinces were ruled. The new regime depended on the services of a huge number of its own subjects: soldiers, police, office staffs and a multitude of revenue payers. The East India Company's authority was to be supreme, and those from whom the Nawabs had been unable to wrest power or to whom they had chosen to delegate it were to lose it now. While employment under the British trade has been created in some areas, imports were beginning to threaten the livelihood of the most vulnerable artisans, those who spun and wove the higher quality cotton cloth. Establishing an empire in eastern India proved to be relatively easy; introducing more than superficial change into eastern India was another matter.

The establishment of British predominance in eastern India was a gradual and protracted process, beginning before 1757. This chapter discusses many different aspects of the British presence in Bengal during the first sixty years of colonial rule. In theory the settlement of 1765 had not established a British Bengal. The Nawabs would still be Nazims, holding court at Murshidabad, from where they would direct the defence of the provinces and the ordering of their internal peace and justice. The dispersal of the Nawab's army had eliminated the main rival to the East India Company's military supremacy. Warren Hastings, Governor, and the first Governor General from 1772 to 1785, embodied the mingling of old practices and new ideals. The period down to 1828 had seen the creation of a largely autonomous British-Indian state that was rather loosely connected with imperial Britain and pursued its own purposes of 'safety' and consolidation.