Robert Clive

Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. He is credited along with Warren Hastings for laying the foundation of British rule in India. He began as a writer (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the East India Company (EIC) who established the military and political supremacy of the EIC on the Indian subcontinent by winning the Battle of Plassey. In return for supporting the Nawab of Bengal Mir Jafar on the throne, Clive was granted a jaghire of £30,000 (equivalent to £4,100,000 in 2019) per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax farming concession. When he left India he had a fortune of £180,000 (equivalent to £24,300,000 in 2019) which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.Blocking impending French mastery of India, and eventual British expulsion from the continent, Clive improvised a military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the EIC to return a second time to India, Clive conspired to secure the company’s trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England, he used the wealth accumulated from India to secure an Irish baronet from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).Clive’s actions on behalf of the EIC have made him one of Britain’s most controversial colonial figures. His achievements included checking French Imperial ambitions on the Coromandel Coast and establishing EIC control over Bengal, thereby taking the first step towards establishing the British Raj, though he worked only as an agent of the East India Company, not the British government. He was vilified by his political rivals in Britain, and put on trial before Parliament where he was absolved from every charge. Historians have criticised Clive’s management of Bengal during his tenure with the EIC and his responsibility in contributing to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 which historians estimate resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million people.