Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (History, Art & Culture) – August 17, 2020

Commercial institutions were also well-developed to promote such extensive trade.

• Because a variety of coins were in circulation, there were money-changers or shroffs to test coins for their purity and decide their value in current terms.
• They also served as local bankers.

In early 18th Century the Dutch had given up Pulicat and moved their headquarters further south to Nagapattinam.

They had decided to shift their focus to the spice-producing islands of Indonesia and established their capital at Jakarta (Batavia).

The Portuguese threatened disruption of trade by violence unless their protection, cartaz, was bought.

• Under the cartaz system, the Portuguese exacted money from the traders as price for protection against what they termed as piracy.
• But much of this was caused by Portuguese freebooters themselves and so the whole system was a blatant protection racket.

Treaty of Salbai: It was signed on 17 May 1782, by representatives of the Maratha Empire and the British East India Company after long negotiations to settle the outcome of the First Anglo-Maratha War it was signed between Warren Hastings and Mahadaji Scindia.

Treaty of Bassein: It was a pact signed on December 31, 1802 between the British East India Company (Lord Wellesley) and Baji Rao II, the Maratha peshwa of Pune (Poona) in India after the Battle of Poona.

The treaty was a decisive step in the dissolution of the Maratha Confederacy, which led to the East India Company’s usurpation of the peshwa’s territories in western India in 1818.

Treaty of Perpetual friendship: Maharaja Ranjit Singh, also called Sher-i-Punjab was born November 1780 at Gujranwala. When he was 12 years old he became the chief of his own misl after the death of his father in 1792.

Ranjit Singh wanted to annex Sind but could not do so because of the English opposition. In 1831 he signed the treaty of perpetual friendship with the English (William Bentinck).

The ongoing national movement influenced the tribal movements in the early decades of 20th century: The Tana Bhagat movement of Gumla in Ranchi district, and the Zeliangrong movement in the Naga Hills were two such instances.

• Jadonang (1905-193 I), who set up the Haraka religious cult with three basic objectives started the complex Zeliangrong or Haomei movement in 1925.
• The first aimed at reformation of the tribes, particularly the Zemi, Liangrnei and Rangmei, to enable them to face the onslaught of Christianity.
• Secondly, the overthrows of the exploitative colonial laws by attacking British rule.
• And third, establishment of the Naga Raj.
• The movement was also aimed against the Kuki tribe, the “outsider”.
• From 1927 onwards, influenced by Gandhi, Jadonang began a civil disobedience movement in the area.
• On 13 June 1931, Jgdonang was arrested and sentenced to death, and finally hanged on 29 August 1931

Wellesley broadened the scope of this arrangement by his Subsidiary Alliance System, bringing under it Hyderabad, Mysore, Lucknow, the Maratha Peshwa, the Bhonsle (Kolhapur) and Sindhia (Gwalior).

The provisions of the Subsidiary Treaty are:

• An Indian ruler entering into Subsidiary Alliance with the British had to dissolve his own armed forces and accept British forces and a British Resident in his territory.
• He had to pay for the British army’s maintenance. If he failed, a portion of his territory would be taken away and ceded to the British.
• The protected prince was to sever all connections with European powers other than the British, especially the French.
• No European should be employed without the permission of the British.
• No negotiation with any Indian power should be held without the Company’s permission and
• No other Indian power to interfere in its internal affairs.

Gaidinliu a teenage girl took over the leadership of the civil disobedience movement.

• In March 1932, the entire village of Bopugoanrni in the Naga Hills was burnt down by the government forces, in retaliation to the attack on the Assam Rifles outpost by Gaidinliu’s followers.
• Finally the seventeen year old leader, called Rani Gaidinliu by’Nehru, was arrested on 17 October 1932, and sentenced to life imprisonment.

The development of the Western culture and ideology forced the traditional institutions to revitalize themselves.

• During the second half of the nineteenth century, the expression of protest and desire for change were articulated through various reform movements.
• What gave these reform movements an ideological unity were rationalism, religious universalism and humanism.
• For example, Raja Rammohun Roy repudiated the infallibility of the Vedas and during the Aligarh Movement, Syed Ahmed Khan emphasized that religious tenets were not immutable.
• As Keshab Chandra Sen said, ‘Our position is not that truths are to be in all religions, but that all established religions of the World are true.’

The disastrous famine of 1770 and the harsh economic order of the British compelled a group of sanyasis in Eastern India to fight the British yoke.

• Originally peasants, even some evicted from land, these sanyasis were joined by a large number of dispossessed small zamindars, disbanded soldiers and rural poor.
• They raided Company factories and the treasuries, and fought the Company’s forces. It was only after a prolonged action that Warren Hastings could subdue the sanyasis.
• Equal participation of Hindus and Muslims characterised the uprisings, sometimes referred to as the Fakir Rebellion.
• Majnum Shah (or Majnu Shah), Chirag Ali, Musa Shah, Bhawani Pathak and Debi Chaudhurani were important leaders.
• Debi Chaudhurani’s participation recognizes the women’s role in early resistances against the British.
• Anandamath, a semi-historical novel by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, is based on the Sanyasi Revolt.

Warren Hastings took charge as the governor-general at a critical period of British rule when the British were to encounter the powerful combination of the Marathas, Mysore and Hyderabad.

• He followed a policy of ring-fence which aimed at creating buffer zones to defend the Company’s frontiers.
• Broadly speaking, it was the policy of defence of their neighbours’ frontiers for safeguarding their own territories.
• This policy of Warren Hastings was reflected in his war against the Marathas and Mysore.