American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)

North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720-1801 by Richard B.
Barnett; Het Personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azie in de achttiende
eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging Bengalen [The personnel of the United (Dutch)
East India Company in Asia in the eighteenth century, particularly in the Bengal settlement].
by Frank Lequin
Review by: Rosane Rocher
Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 118-124
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Sponsor: American Society for EighteenthCentury Studies (ASECS).
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118

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
STUDIES

including Diderot) set the stage for a new and more virulent antisemitism,
that of "enlightened" national societies such as emerged in nineteenthcentury France and twentieth-century Germany. Schwartz's study may
lead others to take on, calmly, the role of other major Enlightenment
thinkers in underpinning modern racism. It is regrettable that it took so
long to find a publisher willing to undertake this volume which was under
initial consideration in 1976.
RICHARD H. POPKIN

Washington University

RICHARD B. BARNETT. North India between Empires: Awadh, the

Mughals, and the British 1720-1801. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1980. Pp. xviii, 276. $25.00.

Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische

Compagnie in Azie in de achttiende eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in
de vestiging Bengalen [The personnel of the United (Dutch) East
India Company in Asia in the eighteenth century, particularly in
the Bengal settlement]. Leiden: [the author], 1982. Pp. xii, 653 in
two vols. Fl. 70.00.
FRANK LEQUIN.

Historianstend to prefersuccess storiesand to neglect periodsof transition and decline. This is a bias which Barnettand Lequin set out to
redress.The stretch of Indian historywhich separatesthe Mughal and
Britishempireshas been brandeda time of chaos, a legitimization,conscious or not, of Britain'smanifestdestiny.Workdevotedto eighteenthcenturyIndia has focusedprimarilyon the EnglishEast India Company
withwhich
at the onsetof its triumphantconquest.Yet,the resourcefulness
regionalsuccessorstates to the MughalsresistedBritishencroachments
and postponedforeigntakeovermakesa compellingstory.Othersas well
wereon the defensive.The Dutch seaborneempireknewits heydayin the
seventeenthcenturyand declinedsteadilyin the eighteenth,as the standard worksby C. R. Boxer (The Dutch SeaborneEmpire 1600-1800,
1965)andHoldenFurber(RivalEmpiresof Tradein the Orient1600-1800,
1976) haveshown.The Dutch declinehas often been blamedon the lower
quality of their eighteenth-centurypersonnel,yet no attempt has been
made thus far to surveytheir careers.Barnett'seloquentdemonstration
of the resilienceof Awadh(Oudh), and Lequin'smonumentaldocumentation of the lives and careersof Dutch personnel,constitutelandmarks
in the historicalstudy of eighteenth-centuryIndia as well as points of
departureforcomparison.Bothare doctoraldissertations:Barnett'sa thoroughlyrevisedand strictlyeditedversion,as the Americanpatternfavors,

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REVIEWS

119

Lequin's a work published prior to the public defense, as the Dutch system
requires. Both feature tables, illustrations, and maps, as well as extensive
bibliographies.
Barnett'swork aims to show that the eighteenth-centuryhistoryof Awadh,
the largest and most durable post-Mughal polity in North India and the
first Indian state to come under a subsidiary alliance system with the
British, is a success story of its own. Yet, the ascending phase of this
process, from 1720 to 1754, and its pinnacle, from 1754 to 1764, claim
only the first two chapters, or fifty pages of the book. The greater weight
of the work, and its most novel contribution, lies in the analysis of the two
decades 1765-85, during which Awadh and the Company engaged in a
series of moves and countermoves which resulted in Awadh's being assured
a period of semiautonomy, ending abruptly in 1801 with the annexation
of half of its territory. Awadh postponed the inevitable with a skillful
allocation of its resources. These consisted not only of overt financial and
military resources, but also of intangible, yet, as Barnett brilliantly demonstrates, very real resources such as prestige, legitimacy, buffer value,
provision of sanctuary for rivals in succession struggles, decentralization,
and concealment of assets, and, when all else failed, the civilian equivalent
of the scorched earth, total administrative shutdown. Barnett shows that,
contrary to common assumptions, both camps resorted as little as possible
to brutal force, which is relatively uneconomical.
In Barnett's presentation Awadh and the Company become bodies governed by internal impulses, desires, momenta, reflexes, and defense mechanisms. Their behavior shows how far off the mark were Sheridan's oratory
excoriating the spoliation of the Begams of Awadh and Burke's condemnation of the episode somewhat grandly labeled "the Rohilla war."Barnett,
however, is not interested in applying his findings to the interpretation of
WarrenHastings's impeachment, nor in reactions in London generally. His
focus, enhanced by his extensive use of Persian and Urdu sources, besides
the English sources which have so far provided most of the record of
events, remains steadily on the Indian scene. The home administration of
the Company is rarely mentioned, for the policies which he discusses were
made in India. Though the Court of Directors confirmed decisions or
dispatched countermanding orders, the fact that it took the better part of
two years for reports to be sent, issues to be discussed, and reactions to
reach Bengal, gave the Governor and Council, and sometimes the British
Resident at the court of Awadh, who similarly disposed of almost two
weeks' time vis-a-vis Calcutta, the undisputable advantage of the fait accompli.
Barnett's view of Awadh and the Company as systems, though both
were riddled with factions, is stretched to its utmost limit, in that it leads
him to negate the importance of individual players. He describes the different attitudes of British Residents, yet contrasts them as "styles," not
as substantive policies. He specifically denies that Asaf ud-daula's lack of

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
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interest in affairs of state contributed to Awadh's decline. The point is of

some importance, since, right from his accession to the throne, the communis opinio was that Asaf lacked the qualifications and the initiative
evidenced by his younger brother. Primogeniture and his mother's clout
alone militated in his favor. In Barnett's interpretation, Asaf's reluctance
to pay attention to the chores of administration was not a cause, but a
consequence of Awadh's decline:
He had becomeeven moreof a puppetrulerthanhis fatherhad beenat his death.
Every increasingshare of his revenueand every functionof his authoritythat
passed into Britishhands caused him to suffer under a daily humiliationfrom
which he could not possiblyescape. Governing,in short, had become a painful
occupation,and his only recourseseemedto be simplyto avoidit. (p. 204)
There are reasons to doubt the scenario Barnett draws for the resumption
of the Begams' jagirs (land revenues) and the Resident's short-lived assumption of power in Awadh, as a logical next step on the British agenda.
The Begams' treasure and the revenues of other jagir holders was the last
segment of the Awadh resources of which the British had been unable to
obtain a share. "Resuming the jagirs had been a goal of the Council as
soon as [former Resident] Purling had analyzed Awadh's resources" (p.
204). The need to finance the double war with France and Mysore pressured the British to exact yet a higher amount from Awadh's coffers. The
Begams' involvement in the Banaras revolt provided the needed opportunity. Yet, Hastings's uncharacteristic petulance in the entire affair raises
doubts about the planned and orderly nature of the endeavor. The Company unit assigned to protect the Governor had been massacred during
the Banaras outbreak, and he himself had had a narrow escape. The Begams' role in fomenting the violence was plain for all to see. To view the
resumption of their jagirs as an act of vengeance is all the more tempting
since Hastings treated with like harshness Alexander Hannay, a longtime
protege who failed to come to his rescue, and Nathaniel Middleton, his
trusted Resident who settled for less than the total surrender of the Begams' treasures. This and his instructions to Bristow, an archenemy, to
take the reins of power away from the Nawab, are evidence of the "frayed
nerves"described by his biographer(Keith Feiling, WarrenHastings, 1954,
p. 277).
An issue which is not addressed is the role played by Britons in the
employ of the Nawabs. Barnett points out that when the British pressured
Asaf into dismissing his French employees and banishing all Europeans
from his dominions, the Resident had to arrange for British replacements.
Yet, though he names some of the displaced foreigners, none of the British
substitutes is mentioned, nor are their activities outlined. What of military
men such as John Osborne, who, having been twice court-martialed while
in the Company's service, achieved the rank of major in that of the Nawab?
Was he one of the technical personnel whom the Nawab was eager to hire
in an effort to reorganize his army according to the European model? Or,

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121

since in spite of his tribulations Osborne remained a protege of Hastings,

was he foisted upon Awadh when in need of alternative employment? In
either case were such men part of the intelligence network which gave the
British Resident unmatchable powers? What also of Nathaniel Brassey
Halhed, whom the Nawab hired as his agent in London? The correspondence between Hastings and his man in Awadh clearly shows that in this
case the appointment was generated by the Governor's desire to provide
a protege with needed emoluments. Yet, what role did such an agent play
later on, what interference did he create in London that Governor Cornwallis found disruptive? Other Indian rulers as well had former Company
servants as their agents in London, whose activities the home administration resented as attempts to subvert the channels of communication in
India. How successful were the Nawabs and other heads of princely states
in undercutting the policies of the British administration in India?
The most signal omission in Barnett'sstudy of eighteenth-centuryAwadh
is its cultural life. Yet, it is in the cultural sphere that Awadh most clearly
emerges as the prime successor state to the Mughals. Poets and artists
deserted Delhi when the Mughal capital became unsafe. They flocked to
the Nawabs' court, making it the unrivaled center of Muslim culture in
India. Throughout India's history, both Hindu and Muslim, the ability to
attract and retain poets and artists over one's competitors was the hallmark
of a mighty ruler, a symbol of prestige, a consecrating act. On the architectural side the building in 1784 of the central mosque in Lucknow, an
engraving of which illustrates the book but is not mentioned in the text,
is evidence that, in spite of the heavy demands of the British, the Nawab
still disposed of vast resources which he could apply to the pious duties
of a Muslim ruler while providing relief for his people during a famine.
Reference to the Nawabs' role as patrons of the arts would have underscored the argumentwhich Barnettmakes on economic and politicalgrounds.
Contrary to Barnett's powerfully argued analysis of the state of Awadh,
Lequin's documentation of the Dutch East Indian personnel is essentially
descriptive. Lequin's goal is to bring to light materials preserved-and
heretofore buried-in Dutch and other archives. "This study is a report
of a systematic enquiry, not an attempt to package the results of the
enquiry in an attractive little story" (p. 33). It offers a comprehensive,
computer-assisted documentation in which twelve appendixes occupy center stage and the body of the text provides needed commentary. Throughout, the circumstances of Dutch personnel are compared and contrasted
with the much better known situation of servants of the rival English East
India Company.
The attitude of the Dutch East India Company vis-a-vis their personnel
was marked by arrogance, insensitivity, and obduracy. Whereas the English Company was centralized at home and decentralized in the East, the
Dutch Company, with its six Chambers, was decentralized at home and
centralized in the East, all settlements reporting to Batavia. Servants, even

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
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on the west coast of India, had to proceed to Batavia (modern Jakarta)

to seek permission to return home. They were considered deserters if they
failed to do so or returned by any other than a Dutch ship. They had to
sell all their assets and were not allowed to bring back any papers or books.
They were forbidden to discuss East Asian affairs in their private correspondence, which could be sent only by Dutch ships. Hierarchy was strictly
observed, down to the seating in churches and in mess halls. To make
matters worse, the Dutch Company did not have an automatic system of
promotions based on seniority. Private trading activities were strictly forbidden. Such at least was the theory, often violated in practice, but always
at considerable risk. Not only did the Dutch Company treat their servants
as menial labor to be had at the least possible cost, they turned a deaf
ear to proposals for reform forwarded by experienced administrators. Nor
did returned personnel play a significant role in the home administration
of the Company which remained oligarchical. By contrast East Indian
servants provided many directors to the English Company, as well as many
members of Parliament who were influential in the debates over the periodic renewals of the Company charter and saturated the press with
accounts and criticisms of former policies and plans for future development.
The only section in which Lequin departs from his descriptive stance
and engages in argumentative discourse is Chapter iv, in which he discusses the causes of the Dutch decline in the eighteenth century and
attempts a rehabilitation of the Company servants whose alleged corruption and lack of energy have often been blamed for this decline. He censures instead the central management of the Company, both at home and
in Batavia, for their unwillingness or inability to change with the times.
The Company rejected pleas to lift the ban on private trading and refused
to pay their servants in a way which compensated them for the greater
risks, particularly the higher death rate, in the East. It complained of an
increasing shortage of qualified personnel, especially in the military and
maritime services, yet refused to make East Indian service competitively
attractive. The increasingly oppressive and secretive bureaucratization of
the service stifled personal initiative. The servants of the Dutch Company
were not more corrupt, nor were they less energetic than their British
counterparts. They had less reason and less opportunity to exert themselves. The debilitating attitude of the Company's administration was the
prime cause of the Dutch decline. A contributing factor was the wane of
the Dutch maritime power which after the innovations of the seventeenth
century remained mired in techniques which had been surpassed. Lequin's
is a convincing indictment which unfortunately ends on a weak note, a
vacuous suggestion that "perhaps in the end there remains little else than
the realization that an organization, an enterprise such as the Company
is subjected like every living organism to a 'life cycle' and knows a time
of rise and a time of fall" (p. 99).

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123

In every other part of Lequin's two volumes the nature and contents of
the archival data shape the discussion. Thus the collection of data about
individual servants proceeds in two steps. Appendix 7 offers standardized
and computerized career surveys for the 115 servants who were members
of the Bengal Directorate in the eighteenth century, based on three sets
of official Company records relative to personnel. Additional data from a
variety of other sources such as church registers, notarial archives, stock
ledgers, as well as secondary literature, are provided in appendix 10.
A major drawback of allowing archival documents to speak for themselves is that, on occasion, they may record the official version of events
rather than the historical facts. A circumstance in which official reports
must be taken with a grain of salt is the British capture of Chinsura, the
Dutch headquarters in Bengal, during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in
1781. In spite of corporate rivalry, personal relations between the Dutch
and the British were cordial. The Dutch, who did not have the benefit of
clergy, used the services of the Anglican chaplain. Without a press of their
own they relied on Calcutta newspapers for news, notices of sales, and
want ads. Calcutta offered cultural and recreational resources in which
they took part. Most important, Dutch channels were the preferred method
for British servants to remit private earnings home, as Holden Furber's
John Company at Work(1948) and P. J. Marshall's East Indian Fortunes.
The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (1976) have shown.
Except with regard to the French, whom both Dutch and English East
Indians feared and distrusted, national wars were nuisances, which disturbed profitable business and good neighborliness. The British governorgeneral, Warren Hastings, and the Dutch Director, J. M. Ross, and their
wives, were particularly close friends. Thus, when orders from home required Hastings to occupy Chinsura and to seize Dutch citizens in Bengal
as prisoners of war, there was joy on neither side. Hastings first tried to
make the takeover as low-key as possible, but Ross refused to surrender
Chinsura to anything less than a full regiment. Not only did the Dutch
director have a well-documented penchant for the grand, he presumably
wished to prove to his superiors that, though the factory fell without a
shot being fired, he was bowing to a vastly superior force. Lequin does
not mention this episode, often quoted in the British secondary literature,
but only suggests, on the basis of papers introduced as evidence by a later
Director in an attempt to recover damages, that the takeover was not
handled with British tact, in that the British commander, who was inebriated, was insolent. Obviously not all events took place in perfect amity.
The appointment of British commissaries to oversee occupied Chinsura
was bound to create frictions. Ross nevertheless saw to it that private
property, after inventory, was left undisturbed, that no Dutch servants be
forced to leave, and that the British continue to pay their salaries for the
duration of the war. The British also helped individual Dutch families in
financial straits, though, generally speaking, private trade flourished at
that time. In these circumstances one may doubt the accuracy of a report

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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
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by the British governor to the home administration according to which

the British commissaries had found the stores of the Dutch Company "to
be of such indifferent quality as to be thought not worth the expence of
transportation. We have therefore ordered that they shall continue where
they are under charge of the Commissaries" (p. 125). Hastings, who was
then providing shelter for "poor old Ross" had to report to London that
their orders had been followed, but he clearly argued that drastic measures
were not called for.
The richness and novelty of Lequin's archival evidence make it mandatory reading for scholars who seek to assess the colonial experience
across nations and centuries. The "summing-up,"list of appendixes, and
explanatory notes concerning appendixes 7 and 10 are translated into
English (pp. 206-22). This should make most of the standardized and
computerized data accessible to those who do not read Dutch. It is that
body of information which, by the author's own acknowledgement, constitutes his most important contribution.
ROSANE ROCHER

University of Pennsylvania

FRANK A. KAFKER, ed. Notable Encyclopedias of the Seventeenth

and Eighteenth Centuries: Nine Predecessors of the Encyclopedie.
Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1981. Pp. 252.

The title, hintingat no thesis whatever,suits this book quite well. For
the book does not pretendto be anythingmorethan a descriptivesurvey
of nine predecessorsof the great Encyclopedie.
Believingthe task of surveyingthe variousencyclopediasto be beyond
the abilities of any but a "universalgenius"(p. 9), the editor,FrankA.
Kafker,farmsthe individualchaptersout to a seriesof collaborators.The
collaborators,who "include,"Kafkertells us, "specialistsin French,German, and Italian literature,historiansof early modernEurope, and a
historianof science who is also a professionalscientist,"are armedwith
guidelines,which they "werefree to use as much as they found appropriate"(p. 9). The guidelines,printed as an Appendixto the volume,
amountto a seriesof questionsconcerningthe "Historyof the enterprise,"
"Thework'seditingandprosestyles,""Theworkas a bookof knowledge,"
"The work'spolitics and religion,"and a requestfor bibliographicalinformation.In modestlydeferringto his coterie of specialists,the editor
becomesa sort of Diderot,standingat the head of his own "Societedes
hommesde lettres,"and his book becomesa sort of encyclopediaof encyclopedias.This parallelrequiresthe reviewerto be concernednot only
with the meritsof the individualchapters,but also with the conception
and organizationof the overallproject.

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