Wars Under Warren Hastings (1772-85) And Cornwallis (1786-93)

By 1772, the East India Company had established itself as a major Indian power, and its directors in England and Indian officials set out to consolidate their control over Bengal before embarking on a new round of conquests. However, their proclivity for meddling in the internal affairs of Indian states, as well as their desire for territory and money, led to a series of wars.

 

•    In 1766, they formed an alliance with the Nizam of Hyderabad, agreeing to assist him in attacking Haidar Ali of Mysore in exchange for the Northern Circars' surrender. 

 

•    Haidar Ali, on the other hand, was more than a match for the Company's forces. He threatened Madras in 1769 after repelling the British attack and forcing the Madras Council to sign a peace treaty on his terms. Both sides agreed to restore each other's conquests and promised mutual assistance in the event of a third-party attack. 

 

•    When Haidar Ali was attacked by the Marathas in 1771, the English broke their promise and refused to help him. As a result, Haidar Ali grew suspicious of them and disliked them.

 

•    The English then clashed with the Marathas in 1775. At the time, the Marathas were engaged in a fierce power struggle between supporters of the infant Peshwa Madhav Rao II, led by Nana Phadnis, and Raghunath Rao. 

 

•    British officials in Bombay decided to take advantage of the situation and intervene on Raghunath Rao's behalf. They hoped to repeat their countrymen's exploits in Madras and Bengal, reaping the financial benefits as a result. From 1775 to 1782, they were involved in a long war with the Marathas.

 

•    The Marathas defeated the British forces at Talegaon and forced them to sign the Wadgaon Convention, in which the English renounced all their conquests and abandoned Raghunath Rao's cause. However, the war was quickly resumed.

 

•    All the Maratha chiefs were united behind the Peshwa and his chief minister, Nana Phadnis, at this critical time for British power in India. The British presence among the Southern Indian powers had long been resented, and Haidar Ali and the Nizam chose this moment to declare war on the Company.

 

•    As a result, the British were up against a formidable alliance of the Marathas, Mysore, and Hyderabad. Furthermore, they were fighting a losing war in their American colonies, where the people had revolted in 1776. They also had to deal with the French's determined plan to take advantage of their old adversary's difficulties.

 

•    However, the British in India were led at the time by Warren Hastings, their brilliant, energetic, and experienced Governor-General.

 

•    He resurrected British power and prestige by acting with firm resolve and determination. In a brilliant military manoeuvre, a British force led by Goddard marched across central India and captured Ahmedabad in 1780 after a series of victorious engagements. 

 

•    The English had discovered a tenacious foe with vast resources in the Marathas. Mahadji Sindhia had demonstrated his power, which the English were afraid to challenge. The war had come to a halt because neither side had won a victory. The Treaty of Salbai, signed in 1782 with Mahadji's help, established peace and maintained the status quo. It saved the British from a combined Indian power opposition.

 

•    The First Anglo-Maratha War, as it is known in history, did not end in victory for either side. However, it provided the British with 20 years of peace with the Marathas, the most powerful Indian power at the time. 

 

•    The British used this time to solidify their control over the Bengal Presidency, while the Maratha chiefs wasted their time fighting amongst themselves. Furthermore, the Treaty of Salbai allowed the British to exert pressure on Mysore because the Marathas agreed to assist them in reclaiming their lands from Haidar All. 

 

•    The British had once again succeeded in dividing the Indian powers.

 

•    The conflict with Haidar Ali began in 1780. Haidar Ali repeated his earlier exploits in the Carnatic, inflicting defeat after defeat on the British armies and forcing them to surrender in greater numbers. He soon had almost the entire Carnatic under his control. However, British arms and diplomacy once again saved the day.

 

•    Warren Hastings obtained the Nizam's withdrawal from the anti-British alliance by bribing him with the cession of Guntur district. He made peace with the Marathas in 1781-82, freeing up a large portion of his army to fight Mysore. The British army, led by Eyre Coote, defeated Haidar Ali at Porto Novo in July 1781 and saved Madras.

 

•    Tipu Sultan, Haidar Ali's son, continued the war after his father died in December 1782. Because neither side could defeat the other, a peace treaty was signed in March 1784, and both sides restored their conquests. 

 

•    Despite the fact that the British had been shown to be too weak to defeat the Marathas or Mysore, they had shown that they could hold their own in India. They had not only been saved from extinction in the south, but they had also emerged from recent wars as one of India's three great powers.

 

•    From a British perspective, the third British encounter with Mysore was more fruitful. The 1784 peace did not eliminate the grounds for conflict between Tipu and the British; it simply postponed it. The East India Company's authorities were vehemently opposed to Tipu. 

 

•    They saw him as their most dangerous adversary in the south, as well as the main impediment to their complete dominance of the region. Tipu, on the other hand, despised the English, saw them as the greatest threat to his independence, and harboured ambitions to expel them from India.

 

•    The two went to war again in 1789, this time ending in Tipu's defeat in 1792. Despite Tipu's valour, Lord Cornwallis, the then Governor-General, had succeeded in isolating him by winning over the Marathas, the Nizam, and the rulers of Travancore and Coorg through shrewd diplomacy. 

 

•    This war once again demonstrated that Indian powers were too shortsighted to aid a foreigner against another Indian power for the sake of short-term gain. 

 

•    Tipu ceded half of his territories to the allies in the Seringapatam Treaty in exchange for 330 lakhs of rupees in indemnity. The Third Anglo-Mysore War obliterated Tipu's hegemony in the South and firmly established British dominance.