TREATY OF ALINAGAR

11th February, 2023 Culture

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Context: The Treaty of Alinagar, signed on February 9, 1757, was a reluctant agreement signed by Bengal’s Nawab Siraj ud Daula with the English East India Company. An outcome of decades of tension that bubbled over into armed conflict between the two parties, the Treaty strengthened the position of the British in Bengal and laid foundations for the Battle of Plassey a few months later.

Details:

Background:

East India Company:

The English East India Company was formed in 1600 by a royal charter.
The charter gave the Company monopoly of all trade from England in the East and the right to carry gold bullion to finance its activities, with the aim of combating growing Dutch influence in the East.
Notably, at the time, the charter did not give the Company an overt mandate to colonise or go on imperial conquest.

Trading with India:

The Company formally began trading with India in 1613, supported by a royal farman from Mughal emperor Jehangir which allowed the Company to open its factories and warehouses.
Till the middle of the 18th century, the Company worked with local rulers, often subservient to them, and established a thriving business.
While over time it had acquired control of various trading posts on both sides of the coast, the Company was yet to engage in a concerted effort to expand its territories.
Notably, alongside trade that was carried out officially by the Company, its officers also engaged in private trade. This was highly lucrative and many Company officers made large fortunes while serving in India.

Troubles in Bengal:

The three primary trading towns where thriving British communities emerged by the 18th century were Bombay, Madras and Calcutta.
Of these, Calcutta was the most important, as by the 18th century, goods from Bengal comprised nearly 60 per cent of all English imports from Asia.
It was Mughal emperor Aurangzeb who gave the Company the right to trade in Bengal for an annual payment of Rs 3000.
After his death in 1707, the Mughal Empire started to crumble.
Those who were previously subordinate to the Mughal crown started vying for autonomy. While the Mughal emperor remained the symbolic head across much of the erstwhile Mughal heartland, his actual power was fast diminishing.
This was a problem for the British, who relied on the legitimacy of the Mughal crown to carry out trade,
When another farmaan from the Mughal emperor Farrukhsiyar in 1917 established favourable terms for the Company to continue its trade in Bengal, this was met with local opposition.
Nawab Murshid Quli Khan, the new autonomous ruler of Bengal, refused to extend the 1917 farmaan’s duty-free provision to cover also the private trade of the Company officials. He also denied permission to the Company to buy the thirty-eight villages and refused to offer minting privileges to the British.
To get around the Nawab’s order on private trade, officers carried out massive fraud, showing their private business as the Company’s.
Over time, this would be a source of constant acrimony between the Nawab and the Company, starting its troubles in Bengal.
It also led to the dawning of an important realisation – controlling territory would be the obvious next step towards expanding British business in India and in the context of the subcontinent’s fragmented polities, this would also be very possible.

Tensions boil:

Over the next few decades, the Company did not just have political troubles with the Nawab of Bengal but also engaged in a number of military conflicts with the French in South India.
In 1755, vary of French competition, the English began renovating the fortifications in Calcutta without the Nawab’s permission.
The situation was already tense when matters took a turn for the worse in 1756. An Indian trader named Krishna Ballabh took refuge inside the renovated Fort William in Calcutta. He had been charged with cheating by the new Nawab, Siraj ud Daula.
This was a major provocation and the young Nawab threatened military action as well as a crackdown on the Company’s business.
When the Company failed to listen to warnings, Siraj showed his strength by taking over the Company factory at Cossimbazar.
A few weeks later, the Nawab’s forces would attack Fort William, capturing Calcutta on June 20. They would ransack the city and the Nawab would shortly rename it Alinagar.
However, the Nawab’s position was far weaker than his easy takeover of Calcutta made it seem.
Not only did he face a large Company force on its way to Bengal from Madras under Robert Clive, there was also the looming threat of the Afghans under Ahmad Shah Abdali who had already caused havoc in the Northern territories of the weak Mughal Empire.
A surprise attack by the Company forces defeated the Nawab’s forces outside Calcutta in early 1757.
Under the threat of an impending Afghan assault and under advice from his ministers, the Nawab reluctantly decided to sign a treaty with the Company on February 9, 1757: the Treaty of Alinagar.

The Treaty:

This treaty restored all the privileges that Farrukhsiyar’s 1717 farmaanhad granted to the East India Company, allowing it to carry out duty-free trade, build further fortifications and operate a mint.
Though the treaty ostensibly maintained the sovereignty of the Nawab of Bengal, its terms were extremely favourable to the Company. This was not only embarrassing for the Nawab but also empowering for the Company.
For both sides, the situation was far from settled. While the British saw this as an opportunity to vastly increase their footprint in Bengal, the Nawab, who still outnumbered the British forces, were waiting to regain power and prestige. Tensions remained high and the peace was on tenuous terms.
Finally, on June 23, 1757, Robert Clive’s army met the Nawab’s once again, in the famous Battle of Plassey. Though outnumbered, the Company won a decisive victory, thanks to defections from senior commanders of the Nawab’s army, including the infamous Mir Jafar.
Company’s victory in Plassey is the moment when the East India Company became a proper colonial enterprise, interested not just in trade, but territorial control that would serve its economic interests.