The advent of Europeans and the British Conquests

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).

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

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.

This is what James Mill, the famous economist and political philosopher from Scotland, wrote about the residents appointed by the Company.
“We place a resident, who really is king of the country, whatever injunctions of non-interference he may act under. As long as the prince acts in perfect subservience, and does what is agreeable to the residents, that is, to the British Government, things go on quietly; they are managed without the resident appearing much in the administration of affairs but when anything of a different nature happens, the moment the prince takes a course which the British Government think wrong, then comes clashing and disturbance”.

In simple terms, the doctrine stated that the adopted son could be the heir to his foster father’s private property, but not the state; it was for the paramount power (the British) to decide whether to bestow the state on the adopted son or to annex it.
• The doctrine was stated to be based on Hindu law and Indian customs, but Hindu law seemed to be somewhat inconclusive on this point, and the instances of an Indian sovereign annexing the state of his vassal on account of ‘lapse’ (i.e., leaving no issue as heir) were rather rare.
• Maharaja Ranjit Singh had annexed a few of his feudatory principalities on account of ‘lapse’. Likewise, the Company in 1820 acquired a few petty Cis-Sutlej states on the absence of heirs.
• Nonetheless, there was no clear-cut instance of an adopted son being deprived of an entire state or of such a state being regarded as a ‘lapse’.
• Though this policy is attributed to Lord Dalhousie (1848-56), he was not its originator. It was a coincidence that during his governor-generalship several important cases arose in which the ‘Doctrine’ could be applied.
• Dalhousie showed too much zeal in enforcing this policy which had been theoretically enunciated on some previous occasions.

His predecessors had acted on the general principle of avoiding annexation if it could be avoided; Dalhousie in turn acted on the general principle of annexing if he could do so legitimately.
• It was a matter of chance that during Lord Dalhousie’s term many rulers of states died without a male issue and seven states were annexed under the Doctrine of Lapse.
• The most important of these were Satara (1848), Jhansi and Nagpur (1854). The other small states included Jaitpur (Bundelkhand), Sambalpur (Orissa), and Baghat (Madhya Pradesh).

Polygar Rebellions (1799-1805).
•Polygars (Palaiyakkarars) were feudal lords who were appointed as military
chiefs and administrative governors from the time of the Vijayanagara Empire
in parts of Southern India. (They were given the charge of a Palayam or a group of
villages).
•It was the Polygars who collected taxes from the cultivators.
•But the East India Company came into conflict with the Polygars over the question
of who should collect taxes, and sought to control the Polygars.
•The first rebellion, also called the First Polygar War broke out in September 1799
in Tirunelveli district in modern Tamil Nadu.
•The Polygars were led by Kattabomma Nayak (also called Veerapandi Kattabomman)
who was in charge of Panchalankurichi Palayam?
•In the battles with the British troops, Kattabomman initially escaped but was
subsequently caught and publicly hanged as a warning to other Polygars.

A difference of opinion with Kitchener, regarding the status of the military
member of the council in India (who controlled army supply and logistics,
which Kitchener wanted under his own control), led to a controversy in which Curzon failed
to obtain the support of the home government.