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MATERIAL TURNS IN BRITISH HISTORY: II. CORRUPTION: IMPERIAL POWER, PRINCELY POLITICS AND GIFTS GONE ROGUE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2019

Margot C. Finn
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Abstract

This address examines the ‘Old Corruption’ of Georgian Britain from the perspective of diplomacy and material culture in Delhi in the era of the East India Company. Its focus is the scandal that surrounded the sacking of Sir Edward Colebrooke, the Delhi Resident, during the reign of the penultimate Mughal emperor, Akbar II. Exploring the gendered, highly sexualised material politics of Company diplomacy in north India reveals narratives of agency, negotiation and commensurability that interpretations focused on liberal, Anglicist ideologies obscure. Dynastic politics were integral to both British and Indian elites in the nineteenth century. The Colebrooke scandal illuminates both the tenacity and the dynamic evolution of the family as a base of power in the context of nineteenth-century British imperialism.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 29 , December 2019 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2019 

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References

1 Charles Trevelyan to Harriet Trevelyan, 18 December 1828, Newcastle University Special Collections (henceforth NUSC), CET 3/12.

2 A fine example dating from the early nineteenth century is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IS.766A-1883) and can be viewed at http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O77019/shawl-unknown/. The accompanying description notes that weaving a large shawl took ‘anything from eighteen months to three years to complete’.

3 Frank Ames, Woven Masterpieces of Sikh Heritage: The Stylistic Development of the Kashmir Shawl under Maharaja Ranjit Singh 1780–1839 (2010), underscores the shawls’ role in royal politics in this era; see more broadly Cohen, Steven, Crill, Rosemary, Lévi-Strauss, Monique and Spurr, Jeffrey B., Kashmir Shawls: The Tapi Collection (Surat, 2012)Google Scholar.

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10 Charles Trevelyan to Harriet Trevelyan, 16 June 1830, NUSC, CET 3/14.

11 The most comprehensive analysis of this scandal is Prior, Brennan and Haines, ‘Bad Language’.

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18 In the 1840s Trevelyan was to administer famine relief in Ireland on the increasingly ascendant principles of liberal laissez-faire; in the 1850s, he instigated and oversaw reform of the British civil service, inaugurating competitive examinations designed to displace established aristocratic elites. For the former, see Haines, Robin, Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine (Dublin, 2004)Google Scholar; for the latter, MacDonagh, Oliver, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Revolution in Government: A Reappraisal’, Historical Journal, 1 (1958), esp. 53, 63–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Studies in the Growth of Nineteenth-Century Government, ed. Gillian Sutherland (1972).

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25 Prior, Brennan and Haines, ‘Bad Language’, 77–8; Sutherland, Sola Bona Quae Honesta, 33.

26 Trevelyan, A Very British Family, 25.

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29 As Prior, Brennan and Haines, ‘Bad Language’, 105, argue, the scandal's ‘elements of generational conflict were … stark – virtually a parody of the coming battle between the young Anglicists and the old Orientalists’.

30 Knights, Mark, ‘Anticorruption in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain’, in Anticorruption in History: From Antiquity to the Modern Era, ed. Kroeze, Ronald, Vitória, André and Geltner, G. (Oxford, 2018), 182Google Scholar.

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32 Robes of Honour: Khil'at in Pre-colonial and Colonial India, ed. Stewart Gordon (Oxford, 2003), and Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Stewart Gordon (New York, 2001).

33 Balkrishan Shivram, ‘From Court Dress to the Symbol of Authority: Robing and “Robes of Honour” in Pre-colonial India’, 6: http://iias.ac.in/sites/default/files/article/Balkrishan%20Shivram.pdf.

34 Cohn, Bernard S., ‘Representing Authority in Victorian India’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Hobsbawm, E. J. and T. O. Ranger (Cambridge, 2012), 168Google Scholar.

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37 Biedermann, Zoltán, Gerritson, Anne and Riello, Giorgio, ‘Introduction: Global Gifts and the Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia’, in Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia, ed. Biedermann, Zoltán, Gerritson, Anne and Riello, Giorgio (Cambridge, 2018), 1Google Scholar.

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41 Ibid., 171–2.

42 Panikkar, K. N., British Diplomacy in North India: A Study in the Delhi Residency, 1803–57 (Delhi, 1968)Google Scholar.

43 Prior, Brennan and Haines, ‘Bad Language’, 78.

44 Princes and Painters, ed. Dalrymple and Sharma; Yuthika Sharma, ‘Mughal Delhi on My Lapel: The Charmed Life of the Painted Ivory Miniature in Delhi, 1827–1880’, in Commodities and Culture in the Colonial World, ed. Supriya Chaudhuri, Josephine McDonagh, Brian H. Murray and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (2017), 15–31.

45 Chairman to Mr Grant, 24 October 1831, British Library (henceforth BL), IOR/H/708/Part 1, f. 50.

46 A. P. Coleman, ‘Ochterlony, Sir David, First Baronet (1758–1825)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004).

47 For an image and brief history of this country house, see www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/onlineex/apac/addorimss/t/019addor0005475u00067vrb.html.

48 David Ochterlony to Charles Metcalfe, 2 April 1820, BL, IOR/H/Misc/738, f. 773.

49 Princes and Painters, ed. Dalrymple and Sharma, provides the most detailed analysis of these visits and their visual and material culture.

50 See for example the ‘Panorama of a Durbar Procession of Akbar II’, c. 1815, BL, Add. Or.888.

51 Sivasundaram, Sujit, ‘Trading Knowledge: The East India Company's Elephants in India and Britain’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), 47, 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Ibid., 32, 33, 37.

53 Ibid., 32–6.

54 As Sivasundaram observes, ‘This made the elephant a perfect present. Under Mughal rule … the exchange of elephants served as both a symbol of friendship and subservience.’ Ibid., 36.

55 See for example Major Archer, Tours in Upper India, and in the Parts of the Himalaya Mountains: With an Account of the Courts of the Native Princes, &c. (2 vols., 1833), 1: 4, 14.

56 Ibid., 1: 14, 16.

57 Memorandum Concerning the Claims of the King of Delhi [1831], BL, IOR/H/708/Part 1, ff. 76–7, 90.

58 The harem and dynastic politics of Akbar's reign are detailed in Major General George Cunningham to Mr Ellis, 24 September 1831, BL, IOR/H/708/Part 1, ff. 13–36.

59 Memorandum Concerning the Claims of the King of Delhi [1831], BL, IOR/H/708/Part 1, ff. 141–2. See also Sharma, ‘Mughal Delhi’, 17–19.

60 Metcalfe to Stirling, 17 September 1826, BL, IOR/F/4/1179/30741, ff. 14–15.

61 Metcalfe to Stirling, 12 November 1826, ibid., 15–17.

62 Metcalfe to Stirling, 17 November 1826, ibid., ff. 18–19.

63 Stirling to Metcalfe, 6 December 1826, ibid., ff. 23–4.

64 Ibid., ff. 25–6.

65 Crafted in Lucknow and now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (IS.6-1991), Amherst's ‘throne chair’ can be viewed at https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O39550/throne-chair/.

66 Stirling to Metcalfe, 6 December 1826, BL, IOR/F/4/1179/30741, ff. 29–30, 32–3.

67 Memorandum Concerning the Claims, BL, IOR/H/708/Part I, ff. 142, 144–5, 146.

68 Archer, Tours of Upper India, 1: 7–10. Notwithstanding this directive, Archer – like the commander-in-chief – continued to accept gifts at state ceremonies. See for example ibid., 109–15.

69 Sutherland, Sola Bona Quae Honesta, 38–40.

70 Princes and Painters, ed. Dalrymple and Sharma, 126–9.

71 Samuel Sneade Brown, Home Letters, Written from India between the Years 1828 and 1841 (printed for private circulation, 1878), 8, 11.

72 For the enumeration of charges, see [Sir Edward Colebrooke], Papers Relative to the Case at Issue between Sir Edward Colebrooke, Bt., and the Bengal Government (1833), 18.

73 [Charles Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted from India by C.E. Trevelyan, Esq. (1830), 108.

74 Ibid., 116, 117, 119; BL, IOR/F/4/1200/30914A, f. 274.

75 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 129, 132.

76 For the gun, BL, IOR/F/4/1200/30914A, ff. 261, 265, 272–4, 279.

77 For example, [Colebrooke], Papers Relative, 79.

78 Ibid., 26–7.

79 Ibid.

80 In examining witnesses to Lady Colebrooke's sale of a necklace to a nawab for use in his investiture ceremony, Trevelyan made a point of confirming that she gave the necklace ‘with her own hand’. ‘Deposition of Khaja Qasim’, 5 November 1829, BL, IOR/F/4/1203/30914E, f. 1699.

81 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 14.

82 For the broader parameters of British moral reform in this period, see Roberts, M. J. D., Making English Morals: Voluntary Association and Moral Reform in England, 1787–1886 (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 [Colebrooke], Papers Relative, 4.

84 Ibid., 93–4, 188.

85 Ibid., 20.

86 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 13.

87 See esp. Clark, Anna, Scandal: The Sexual Politics of the British Constitution (Princeton, 2004)Google Scholar.

88 ‘Proceedings Relating to the Removal of Sir Edward Colebrooke’, BL, IOR/F/4/1200/30914B, ff. 338–9.

89 Michael H. Fisher, The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and Chancery ‘Lunatic’ (2010), chs. 1–3.

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91 The looted items included ‘the magnificent State Palanquin & five hunting Tygers’ as well as ‘some curiosities from the Palace’ for Lady and Miss Amherst. Combermere to Amherst, 19 December 1825, BL, MSS Eur F140/80(a), f. 19.

92 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 126.

93 Ibid., 111.

94 [Colebrooke], Papers Relative, 35–6.

95 Gaughan, Joan Mickelson, The ‘Incumberances’: British Women in India, 1615–1856 (Oxford, 2013), chs. 12–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 A. Stirling to G. Swinton, 3 March 1827, BL, IOR/F/4/1179/30741, ff. 47–8.

97 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 84.

98 One of the two principal investigators, moreover, had an obvious vested interest in finding Colebrooke guilty, having been engaged since 1823 in a protracted attack on ‘the Delhi system’ of revenue and government. See ‘Embezzlement at Delhi’, IOR/F/4/1279/51299.

99 Charles Trevelyan to Harriet Trevelyan, 30 December 1829, NUSC, CET/3.

100 Charles Trevelyan to Harriet Trevelyan, 1 December 1832, NUSC, CET21/11.

101 [Trevelyan], Papers Transmitted, 110–11.

102 Archer, Tours in Upper India, 2: 90.

103 Ibid., 1: 136–44, 2: 44, 50.

104 See esp. Saha, Jonathan, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma c.1900 (Basingstoke, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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108 For the earlier period, see Duindam, Jeroen, Dynasties: A Global History (Cambridge, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for contemporary regimes, Lacey, Robert, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (New York, 2009)Google Scholar and Ward, Vicky, Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (New York, 2019)Google Scholar.