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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HAN-HEG |
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HASTINGS, WARREN (1732-1818) , the first governor-general of British India, was born on the 6th of December 1732 in the little hamlet of Churchill in Oxfordshire. He came of a family which had been settled for many generations in the adjoining village of Daylesford; but his great-grandfather had sold the ancestral manor-house, and his grandfather had been unable to maintain himself in possession of the family living. His mother died a few days after giving him birth; his father, Pynaston Hastings, drifted away to perish obscurely in the West Indies. Thus unfortunate in his birth, young Hastings received the elements of education at a charity school in his native village. At the age of eight he was taken in charge by an elder brother of his father, Howard Hastings, who held a post in the customs. After spending two years at a private school at Newington Butts, he was moved to Westminster, where among his contemporaries occur the names of Lord Thurlow and Lord Shelburne, Sir Elijah Impey, and the poets Cowper and Churchill. In 1749, when his headmaster Dr Nichols
When Hastings landed at Calcutta in October 1750 the affairs of the East India Company were at a low ebb. Throughout the entire south of the peninsula French influence was predominant. The settlement of Fort St George or Madras, captured by force of arms, had only recently been restored in accordance with a clause of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. The organizing genius of Dupleix everywhere overshadowed the native imagination, and the star of Clive had scarcely yet risen above the horizon. The rivalry between the English and the French, which had already convulsed the south, did not penetrate to Bengal. That province was under the able government of Ali Vardi Khan, who peremptorily forbade the foreign settlers at Calcutta and Chandernagore to introduce feuds from Europe. The duties of a young " writer " were then such as are implied in the name. At an early date Hastings was placed in charge of an aurang or factory in the interior, where his duties would be to superintend the weaving of silk and cotton
Cossimbazar
capital of Murshidabad. In 1756 the old nawab died, and was succeeded by his grandson Surajud-Dowlah, a young madman of 19, whose name is indelibly associated with the tragedy of the Black Hole. When that passionate young prince, in revenge for a fancied wrong, resolved to drive the English out of Bengal, his first step was to occupy the fortified factory at Cossimbazar
to use his name. It was this exemption, threatening the very foundations of the Mussulman government, that finally led to a rupture with the nawab. Macaulay, in his celebrated essay, has said that "of the conduct of Hastings at this time little is known." As a matter of fact, the book which Macaulay was professing to review describes at length the honourable part consistently taken by Hastings in opposition to the great majority of the council. Sometimes in conjunction only with Vansittart, some-times absolutely alone, he protested unceasingly against the policy and practices of his colleagues. On one occasion he was stigmatized in a minute by Mr Batson with having espoused the nawab's cause, and as a hired solicitor defended all his actions, however dishonourable and detrimental to the Company." An altercation ensued. Batson gave him the lie and struck him in the council chamber. When war was actually begun, Hastings officially recorded his previous resolution to have resigned, in order to repudiate responsibility for measures which he had always opposed. Waiting only for the decisive victory of Buxar over the allied forces of Bengal and Oudh, he resigned his seat and sailed for England in November '764. After fourteen years' residence in Bengal Hastings did not return home a rich man, estimated by the opportunities of his position. According to the custom of the time he had augmented his slender salary by private trade. At a later date he was charged by Burke with having taken up profitable contracts for supplying bullocks for the use of the Company's troops. It is admitted that he conducted by means of agents a large business in timber in the Gangetic Sundarbans. When at Falta he had married Mrs Buchanan, the widow of an officer. She bore him two children, of whom one died in infancy at Murshidabad, and was shortly followed to the grave by her mother. Their common gravestone is in existence at the present day, bearing date July ir, 1759. The other child, a son, was sent to England, and also died shortly before his father's return. While at home Hastings is said to have attached himself to literary society; and it may be inferred from his own letters that he now made the personal acquaintance of Samuel Johnson and Lord Mansfield. In '766 he was called upon to give evidence before a committee of the House of Commons upon the affairs of Bengal. The good sense and clearness of the views which he expressed caused attention to be paid to his desire to be again employed in India. His pecuniary affairs were embarrassed, partly from the liberality with which he had endowed his few surviving relatives. The great influence of Lord Clive was also exercised on his behalf. At last, in the winter of 1768, he received the appointment of second in council at Madras. Among his companions on his voyage round the Cape were the Baron Imhoff, a speculative portrait-painter, and his wife, a lady of some personal attractions and great social charm, who was destined henceforth to be Hastings's lifelong companion. Of his two years' work at Madras it is needless to speak in detail. He won the good-will of his employers by devoting himself to the improvement of their manufacturing business, and he kept his hands clean from the prevalent taint of pecuniary transactions with the nawab of the Carnatic. One fact of some interest
scheme for the construction of a pier at Madras, to avoid the dangers of landing through the surf, and instructed his brother-in-law in England to obtain estimates from the engineers Brindley and Smeaton.In the beginning of 1772 his ambition was stimulated by the nomination to the second place in council in Bengal with a promise of the reversion of the governorship when Mr Cartier should retire. Since his departure from Bengal in 1764 the situation of affairs in that settlement had scarcely improved. The second governorship of Clive was marked by the transfer of the diwani or financial administration from the Mogul emperor to the Company, and by the enforcement of stringent regulations against the besetting sin of peculation. But Clive was followed by two inefficient successors; and in 1770 occurred the most terrible Indian famine on record, which is credibly estimated to have swept away one-third of the population. In April 1772 Warren Hastings took his seat as president of the council at Fort William. His first care was to carry out the instructions received from home, and effect a radical reform in the system of government. Clive's plan of governing through the agency of the native court had proved a failure. The directors were determined " to stand forth as diwan, and take upon themselves by their own servants the entire management of the revenues." All the officers of administration were transferred from Murshidabad to Calcutta, which Hastings boasted at this early date that he would make the first city in Asia. This reform involved the ruin of many native reputations, and for a second time brought Hastings into collision with the wily Brahman, Nuncomar. At the same time a settlement of the land revenue on leases for five years was begun, and the police and military systems of the country were placed upon a new footing. Hastings was a man of immense industry, with an insatiable appetite for detail. The whole of this large series of reforms was conducted under his own personal supervision, and upon no part of his multifarious labours did he dwell in his letters home with greater pride. As an independent measure of economy, the stipend paid to the titular nawab of Bengal, who was then a minor, was reduced by one-halfto sixteen lakhs a year (say i6o,000). Macaulay imputes this reduction to Hastings as a characteristic act of financial immorality; but in truth it had been expressly enjoined by the court of directors, in a despatch dated six months before he took up office. His pecuniary bargains with Shuja-ud-Dowlah, the nawab wazir of Oudh, stand on a different basis. Hastings himself always regarded them as incidents in his general scheme of foreign policy. The Mahrattas at this time had got possession of the person of the Mogul emperor, Shah Alam, from whom Clive obtained the grant of Bengal in 1765, and to whom he assigned in return the districts of Allahabad and Kora and a tribute of 300,000. With the emperor in their camp, the Mahrattas were threatening the province of Oudh, and causing a large British force to be cantoned along the frontier for its defence. Warren Hastings, as a deliberate measure of policy, withheld the tribute due to the emperor, and resold Allahabad and Kora to the wazir of Oudh. The Mahrattas retreated, and all danger for the time was dissipated by the death of their principal leader. The wazir now bethought him that he had a good opportunity for satisfying an old quarrel against the adjoining tribe of Rohillas, who had played fast and loose with him while the Mahratta army was at hand. The Rohillas were a race of Afghan origin, who had established themselves for some generations in a fertile tract west of Oudh, between the Himalayas and the Ganges, which still bears the name of Rohilkhand. They were not so much the occupiers of the soil as a dominant caste of warriors and freebooters. But in those troubled days their title was as good as any to be found in India. After not a little hesitation, Hastings consented to allow th'e Company's troops to be used to further the ambitious designs of his Oudh ally, in consideration of a sum of money which relieved the ever-pressing wants of the Bengal treasury. The Rohillas were defeated in fair fight. Some of them fled the country, and so far as possible Hastings obtained. terms for those who remained. The fighting, no doubt, on the part of the wazir was conducted with all the savagery of. Oriental warfare; but there is no evidence that it was a war of extermination.Meanwhile, the affairs of the East India Company had come under the consideration of parliament. The Regulating Act, passed by Lord North's. ministry in 1773, effected considerable changes in the constitution of the Bengal government. ' The council was reduced to four members with a governor-general, who were to exercise certain indefinite powers of control over the presidencies of Madras and Bombay. Hastings was named in the act as governor-general for a term of five years. The council consisted of General Clavering and the Hon. Colonel Monson, two third-rate politicians of considerable parliamentary influence; Philip Francis (q.v.), then only known as an able permanent official; and Barwell, of the Bengal Civil Service. At the same time a supreme court of judicature was appointed, composed of a chief and three puisne judges, to exercise an indeterminate jurisdiction at Calcutta. The chief-justice was Sir Elijah Impey, already mentioned as a schoolfellow of Hastings at Westminster. The whole tendency of the Regulating Act was to establish for the first time the influence of the crown, or rather of parliament, in Indian affairs. The new members of council disembarked at Calcutta on the loth of October 1774; and on the following day commenced the long feud
A crisis was now approaching in foreign affairs which demanded all the experience and all the genius of Hastings for its solution. Bengal was prosperous, and free from external enemies on every quarter. But the government of Bombay had hurried on a rupture with the Mahratta confederacy at a time when France was on the point of declaring war against England, and when the mother-country found herself unable to subdue her rebellious colonists in America. Hastings did not hesitate to take upon his own shoulders the whole responsibility of military affairs. All the French settlements in India were promptly occupied. On the part of Bombay, the Mahratta war was conducted with procrastination and disgrace. But Hastings amply avenged the capitulation of Wargaon by the complete success of his own plan of operations. Colonel Goddard with a Bengal army marched across the breadth of the peninsula from the valley of the Ganges to the western sea, and achieved almost without a blow the conquest of Gujarat. Captain Popham, with a small detachment, stormed the rock fortress of Gwalior, then deemed impregnable and the key of central India; and by this feat held in check Sindhia, the most formidable of the Mahratta chiefs. The Bhonsla Mahratta raja of Nagpur, whose dominions bordered on Bengal, was won over by the diplomacy of an emissary of Hastings. But while these events were taking place,a new source of embarrassment had arisen at Calcutta. The supreme court, whether rightly or wrongly, assumed a jurisdiction of first instance over the entire province of Bengal. The English common law, with all the absurdities and rigours of that day, was arbitrarily extended to an alien system of society. Zaminddrs, or government renters, were arrested on mesne process; the sanctity of the zendna, or women's chamber, as dear to Hindus as to Mahommedans, was violated by the sheriff's officer; the deepest feelings of the people and the entire fabric. of revenue administration were alike disregarded. On this point the entire council acted in harmony. Hastings and Francis went joint-bail for imprisoned natives of distinction. At last, after the dispute between the judges and the executive threatened to become a trial of armed force, Hastings set it at rest by a characteristic stroke of policy. A new judicial office was created in the name of the Company, to which Sir Elijah Impey was appointed, though he never consented to draw the additional salary offered to him. The understanding between Hastings and Francis, originating in this state of affairs, was for a short period extended to general policy. Ari agreement was come to by which Francis received patronage for his circle of friends, while Hastings was to be unimpeded in the control of foreign affairs. But a difference of interpretation arose. Hastings recorded in an official minute that he had found Francis's private and public conduct to be " void of truth and honour." They met as duellists. Francis fell wounded, and soon afterwards returned to England. The Mahratta war was not yet terminated, but a far more formidable danger now threatened the English in India. The imprudent conduct of the Madras authorities had irritated beyond endurance the two greatest Mussulman powers in the peninsula, the nizam of the Deccan and Hyder Ali, the usurper of Mysore, who began to negotiate an alliance with the Mahrattas. A second time the genius of Hastings saved the British empire in the east. On the arrival of the news that Hyder had descended from the highlands of Mysore, cut to pieces the only British army in the field, and swept the Carnatic up to the gates of Madras, he at once adopted a policy of extraordinary boldness. He signed a blank treaty of peace with the Mahrattas, who were still in arms, reversed the action of the Madras government towards the nizam, and concentrated all the resources of Bengal against Hyder Ali. Sir Eyre Coote, a general of renown in former Carnatic wars, was sent by sea to Madras with all the troops and treasure that could be got together; and a strong body of reinforcements subsequently marched southwards under Colonel Pearse along the coast line of Orissa. The landing of Coote preserved Madras from destruction, though the war lasted through many campaigns and only terminated with the death of Hyder. Pearse's detachment was decimated by an epidemic of cholera (perhaps the first mention of this disease by name in Indian history); but the survivors penetrated to Madras, and not only held in check Bhonsla and the nizam, but also corroborated the lesson taught by Goddardthat the Company's sepoys could march anywhere, when boldly led. Hastings's personal task was to provide the ways and means for this exhausting war. A considerable economy was effected by a reform in the establishment for collecting the land tax. The government monopolies of opium and salt were then for the first time placed upon a remunerative basis. But these reforms were of necessity slow in their beneficial operation. The pressing demands of the military chest had to be satisfied by loans, and in at least one case from the private purse of the governor-general. Ready cash could alone fill up the void; and it was to .the hoards of native princes that Hastings's fertile mind at once turned. Chait Sing, raja of Benares, the greatest of the vassal chiefs who had grown rich under the protection of the British rule, lay under the suspicion of disloyalty. The wazir of Oudh had fallen into arrears in the payment due for the maintenance of the Company's garrison posted in his dominions, and his administration was in great disorder. In his case the ancestral hoards were under the control of his mother, the begum of Oudh, into whcse hands they had been allowed to pass at the time when Hastingswas powerless in council. Hastings resolved to make a progress up country in order to arrange the affairs of both provinces, and bring back all the treasure that could be squeezed out of its holders by his personal intervention. When he reached Benares and presented his demands, the raja rose in insurrection, and the governor-general barely escaped with his life. But the faithful Popham rapidly rallied a force for his defence. The insurgents were defeated again and again; Chait Sing took to flight, and an augmented permanent tribute was imposed upon his successor. The Oudh business was managed with less risk
The remainder of Hastings's term of office in India was passed in comparative tranquillity, both from internal opposition and foreign war. The centre of interest
On his arrival in England, after a second absence of sixteen years, he was not displeased with the reception he met with at court and in the country. A peerage was openly talked of as his due, while his own ambition pointed to some responsible office at home. Pitt had never taken a side against him, while Lord Chancellor Thurlow was his pronounced friend. But he was now destined to learn that his enemy Francis, whom he had discomfited in the council chamber at Calcutta, was more than his match in the parliamentary arena. Edmund Burke had taken the subject races of India under the protection of his eloquence. Francis, who had been the early friend of Burke, supplied him with the personal animus against Hastings, and with the know-ledge of detail, which he might otherwise have lacked. The Whig party on this occasion unanimously followed Burke's lead. Dundas, Pitt's favourite subordinate, had already committed himself by his earlier resolution of censure; and Pitt was induced by motives which are still obscure to incline the ministerial majority to the same side. To meet the oratory of Burke and Sheridan and Fox, Hastings wrote an elaborate minute with which he wearied the ears of the House for two successive nights, and he subsidized a swarm of pamphleteers. The impeachment was decided upon in 1786, but the actual trial did not commence until 1788. For seven long years Hastings was upon his defence on the charge of " high crimes and misdemeanours." During this anxious period he appears to have borne himself with characteristic dignity, such as is consistent with no other hypothesis than the consciousness of innocence. At last, in 1795, the Houseof Lords gave a verdict of not guilty on all charges laid against him; and he left the bar at which he had so frequently appeared, with his reputation clear, but ruined in fortune. However large the wealth he brought back from India, all was swallowed up in defraying the expenses of his trial. Continuing the line of conduct which in most other men would be called hypocrisy, he forwarded a petition to Pitt praying that he might be reimbursed his costs from the public funds. This petition, of course, was rejected. At last, when he was reduced to actual destitution, it was arranged that the East India Company should grant him an annuity of 4000 for a term of years, with 9o,000 paid down in advance. This annuity expired before his death; and he was compelled to make more than one fresh appeal to the bounty of the Company, which was never withheld. Shortly before his acquittal he had been able to satisfy the dream of his childhood, by buying back the ancestral manor of Daylesford, where the remainder of his life was passed in honourable retirement. In 1813 he was called on to give evidence upon Indian affairs before the two houses of parliament, which received him with exceptional marks of respect. The university of Oxford conferred on him the honorary degree of D.C.L.; and in the following year he was sworn of the privy council, and took a prominent part in the reception given to the duke of Wellington and the allied sovereigns. He died on the 22nd of August 1818, in his 86th year, and lies buried behind the chancel of the parish church, which he had recently restored at his own charges. In physical appearance, Hastings " looked like a great man, and not like a bad man." The body was wholly subjugated to the mind. A frame naturally slight had been further attenuated by rigorous habits of temperance, and thus rendered proof against the diseases of the tropics. Against his private character not even calumny has breathed a reproach. As brother, as husband and as friend, his affections were as steadfast as they were warm. By the public he was always regarded as reserved, but within his own inner circle he gave and received perfect confidence. In his dealings with money, he was characterized rather by liberality of expenditure than by carefulness of acquisition. A classical education and the instincts of family pride saved him from both the greed and the vulgar display which marked the typical " nabob," the self-made man of those days. He could support the position of a governor-general and of a country gentleman with equal credit. Concerning his second marriage, it suffices to say that the Baroness Imhoff was nearly forty years of age, with a family of grown-up children, when the complaisant law of her native land allowed her to become Mrs Hastings. She survived her husband, who cherished towards her to the last the sentiments of a lover. Her children he adopted as his own; and it was chiefly for her sake that he desired the peerage which was twice held out to him.Hastings's public career will probably never cease to be a subject of controversy. It was his misfortune to be the scapegoat upon whose head parliament laid the accumulated sins, real and imaginary, of the East India Company. If the acquisition of the Indian empire can be supported on ethical grounds, Hastings needs no defence. No one who reads his private correspondence will admit that even his least defensible acts were dictated by dishonourable motives. It is more pleasing to point out certain of his public measures upon which no difference of opinion can arise. He was the first to attempt to open a trade route with Tibet, and to organize a survey of Bengal and of the eastern seas. It was he who persuaded the pundits of Bengal to disclose the treasures of Sanskrit to European scholars. ITe founded the Madrasa or college for Mahommedan education at Calcutta, primarily out of his own funds; and he projected the foundation of an Indian institute in England. The Bengal Asiatic Society was established under his auspices, though he yielded the post of president to Sir W. Jones. No Englishman ever understood the native character so well as Hastings; none ever devoted himself more heartily to the promotion of every scheme, great and small, that could advance the prosperity of India. Natives and Anglo-Indians alike venerate his name, the former as their first beneficent administrator, the latter as the about 6 m. inland. After the Conquest William I. erected the earthworks of the existing castle. By ro86 Hastings was a borough and had given its name to the rape of Sussex in which it lay. The town at that time had a harbour and a market. Whether Hastings was one of the towns afterwards known as the Cinque Ports at the time when they received their first charter from Edward the Confessor is uncertain, but in the reign of William I. it was undoubtedly among them. These combined towns, of which Hastings was the head, had special liberties and a separate jurisdiction under a warden. The only charter peculiar to Hastings was granted in 1589 by Elizabeth, and incorporated the borough under the name of " mayor, jurats and commonalty," instead of the former title of " bailiff, jurats and commonalty." Hastings returned two members to parliament probably from 1322, and certainly from 1366, until 1885, when the number was reduced to one. Battle of Hastings.On the 28th of September ro66, William of Normandy, bent on asserting by arms his right to the English crown, landed at Pevensey. King Harold, who had destroyed the invaders of northern England at the battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire, on hearing the news hurried southward, gathering what forces he could on the way. He took up his position, athwart the road from Hastings to London, on a hill' some 6 m. inland from Hastings, with his back to the great forest of Anderida (the Weald) and in front of him a long glacislike slope, at the bottom of which began the opposing slope of Telham Hill. The English army was composed almost entirely of infantry. The shire levies, for the most part destitute of body armour and with miscellaneous and even improvised weapons, were arranged on either flank of Harold's guards (huscarles), picked men armed principally with the Danish axe and shield. Before this position Duke William appeared on the morning of the 14th of October. His host, composed not only of his Norman vassals but of barons, knights and adventurers from all quarters, was arranged in a centre and two wings, each corps having its archers and arblasters in the front line, the rest of the infantry in the second and the heavy armoured cavalry in the third. Neither the arrows nor the charge of the second line of foot-men, who, unlike the English, wore defensive mail, made any impression on the English standing in a serried mass behind their interlocked shields.2 Then the heavy cavalry came on, led by the duke and his brother Odo, and encouraged by the example of the minstrel Taillefer, who rode forward, tossing and catching his sword, into the midst of the English line before he was pulled down and killed. All along the front the cavalry came to close quarters with the defenders, but the long powerful Danish axes were most able and the most enlightened of their own class. If Clive's sword conquered the Indian empire, it was the brain of Hastings that planned the system of civil administration, and his genius that saved the empire in its darkest hour. See G. B. Malleson, Life of Warren Hastings (1894); G. W. Forrest, The Administration of Warren Hastings (Calcutta, 1892) ; air Charles Lawson, The Private Life of Warren Hastings (1895) L. J. Trotter, Warren Hastings (" Rulers of India " series) (1890) ; Sir Alfred Lyall, Warren Hastings (" English Men of Action " series) (1889) ; F. M. Holmes, Four Heroes of India (1892) ; G. W. Hastings, A Vindication of Warren Hastings (1909). Macaulay's famous essay, though a classic, is very partial and inaccurate; and Burke's speech, on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, is magnificent rhetoric. The true historical view has been restored by Sir James Stephen's Story of Nuncomar (1885) and by Sir John Strachey's Hastings and the Rohilla War (1892), and it is enforced in some detail in Sydney C. Grier's Letters of Warren Hastings to his Wife (1905), material for which existed in a mass of documents relating to Hastings, acquired by the British Museum. (J. S. Co.) End of Article: HASTINGS, WARREN (1732-1818) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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