Warren Hastings

English colonial administrator

• Born: December 6, 1732
• Birthplace: Churchill, Oxfordshire, England
• Died: August 22, 1818
• Place of death: Daylesford, Worcestershire, England

As the first governor-general, Hastings consolidated British rule in India by intervening in the internal politics of Indian states and by meeting threats elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent.

Early Life

Warren Hastings had a difficult childhood: His mother died in childbirth, and his father deserted him. In turn, a foster mother, his grandfather, and his aunt all cared for him until he went to live with his uncle at Westminster at age eight. His uncle provided for his boarding school education. In 1749, Hastings’ uncle died, and a guardian helped him become a clerk in the British East India Company. In 1750, at age eighteen, Hastings sailed for India.

Young Hastings worked in Bengal, an area important to Great Britain for its wealth. He rose quickly in the company’s service. In 1755, he was promoted to the factory council as secretary and storekeeper. By 1757, the year of Robert Clive’s triumph at Plassey, Hastings was appointed to the position of company representative at the court of the nawab of Bengel. Increasingly successful financially, Hastings served on the company’s directing council in Calcutta after 1760 as the East India Company became a ruling as well as a trading body. In 1764, with his fortune in doubt and after losing a political battle, he resigned and sailed for England, where he spent the next four years. In 1769, he returned to India as deputy governor of Madras. His reserved and controlled temperament helped him overcome adversity, and his love for India brought him back to that land. Physically, Hastings did not appear able to withstand the rigors of India’s climate.

Life’s Work

The major break in Warren Hastings’s East India Company service came in 1771 with his appointment to the governorship of Bengal. During the early 1770’s, British policy toward India was undergoing great change. In the first half of the eighteenth century, East India Company employees were unscrupulous in their financial, diplomatic, and military actions in India. After Parliament investigated Clive in 1772-1773 for misconduct earlier in his service in India, a more honest administration in India and better government in the empire were important. Perhaps the Wesleyan revival in England made the public more conscious of morality and the aristocrats resented the company officials, the nouveaux riches, garnering great wealth through unsavory means. The company continually faced financial problems with wars, famine, and problems with the employees. Parliament passed two laws in 1773 to address those problems. With one act, the government not only loaned the East India Company funds for its debts but also limited its dividends and promised to scrutinize its treasury. Another act provided a new constitution for the East India Company, which meant more Crown control over the company and higher salaries to discourage the temptation for corruption. Also in 1773, Hastings was chosen as the first governor-general to rule over all of British India—Bengal, Madras, and Bombay.

As he began his tenure as governor-general, Hastings faced tough problems. Through the work of men such as Clive, the East India Company had become the dominant force in India, and Hastings had the task of resolving the problems of company rule. The Regulating Act of 1773 that made Hastings governor-general also created a council to control him, and the three council members from London, appointed by the government, were suspicious of the company and antagonistic toward Hastings. Hastings also had power over the other two presidencies in Madras and Bombay concerning questions of war and peace, but envy and distance made relations with them difficult. Hastings, more interested in Indian culture and language than most British officials, sought to rule India for the Indians, and he declared that he loved India a little more than England. Through reforms of taxes, trade, administration, education, and postal service, he sought better relations between the company and native Indians. In the Indian subcontinent, the governor-general dealt successfully with the continued French threat, helped Bombay survive a challenge from a new ruler in the Marāthās, and defended Madras from attacks by the forces of Mysore. Military affairs occupied most of his attention, and through diplomatic skills, Hastings succeeded despite financial distractions and the drain of the American Revolution on the rest of the empire.

During his eleven years as governor-general, Hastings was confronted with several crises. These difficulties kept him from striving toward any long-term goals, and they frustrated his vision for imperial India. The Rohilla War was his first major controversy. In 1772, and again in 1773, the Mārāthas attacked the Rohillas, a tribe that had taken land north of the state of Oudh. A combination of Rohilla, Oudh, and company forces pressured the Mārāthas to withdraw to their homes in central India. Until the Mārāthas invaded, the state of Oudh had not bothered with the Rohillas, but during that war the nawab of Oudh increasingly distrusted his neighbors to the north and wanted them defeated. For this task, the nawab enlisted the support of Hastings and the East India Company. The nawab of Oudh paid the company œ500,000 for the return of lands that Clive had given the Mughal emperor, pledged œ400,000 in exchange for its support against the Rohillas, and pledged more funds for use of a company brigade. Hastings considered his actions proper. The nawab was justified in attacking the Rohillas, he argued, and a threat was eliminated; meanwhile, the company made a profit. The successful war also enhanced the position of the company’s ally—the state of Oudh.

Three new council members, however, did not share Hastings’s opinion. They bitterly opposed the Rohilla War and stubbornly fought Hastings in the council. They overruled him and, more seriously, charged him with corruption. In 1775, an old Brahmin nemesis of Hastings, Nandakumar, accused the governor-general of bribery, and his enemies on the council seized on this charge in their persecution of Hastings. His political enemies were behind the council’s actions, and the government and the company did little to defend him. Yet Hastings fought back vigorously, with the chief justice of Bengal on his side. For his false charges, Hastings ordered Nandakumar arrested and, on rather slim evidence, convicted for conspiracy. Next, Hastings charged him with forgery, found him guilty, and sentenced him to death. Though guilty of forgery, Nandakumar had only committed a crime common in India, and even though British law prescribed the death penalty, it had never been used in Bengal. Hastings’s response was excessive, but his friends on the council did not come to Nandakumar’s defense and he was executed. Hastings’s firm action increased his public stature, however, and afterward ended his persecution from the council.

Expensive wars against the Mārāthas and Mysore brought financial pressures for Hastings, and the company did not support him financially. For funds, Hastings looked elsewhere and put pressure on tributaries. His unfortunate victim was Chait Singh, the raja of Benares, who since 1775 had been obligated to the company for the acquisition of lands. The raja’s annual tribute was œ225,000. In 1778, Hastings, desperate for more money for war, extorted additional funds from Chait Singh, and despite the raja’s resistance, he demanded even more money the following year. Such demands were traditional among Asian princes, but this action by Hastings violated the 1775 agreement between Chait Singh and the company.

In 1779, Hastings received his funds when he threatened to invade Benares with British troops. The following year, Hastings demanded more money and troops. When the raja did not comply, Hastings arrested him. Chait Singh’s soldiers in Benares resisted and massacred British troops, and the raja fled. Hastings placed the raja’s nephew on the throne and made similar demands on him. The governor-general’s appetite for money reached extremes when he used British troops to force the mother and grandmother of the nawab of Oudh to yield a treasure of more than œ1 million to satisfy debts owed to the company.

For such actions, Hastings was severely criticized. Just as Clive’s conduct led to new legislation, Hastings’s record revealed weaknesses in the British rule of India. The remedy was the proposed India Act of 1784, which would have placed the East India Company under a board of control based in England.

Hastings returned to England in 1785 and encountered opposition from his enemies, who charged him with corruption and oppression in India. Edmund Burke and William Pitt the Younger led the attack in Parliament. Accused of improper conduct in the Rohilla and Mārātha Wars, Hastings was acquitted, but in 1786, Parliament charged him with extortion of Chait Singh by a comfortable margin. Other charges of corruption followed, and by 1787, the Commons impeached Hastings and tried him before the House of Lords. The trial began in 1788 and lasted eight years because of elections, wars, and quarrels among his enemies. The House of Lords accused Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors on the basis of British moral standards. Hastings’s defense was that he acted like an Indian ruler, and he produced witnesses who so testified. The trial personally bankrupted him, but vindication came in 1795 when the lords acquitted him of all charges.

After the trial, Hastings avoided publicity and lived for twenty-three years in retirement at his estate, a broken man, worried about his health and finances. There were moments of public rehabilitation, such as when the Royal Society made him a member and when the royal family befriended him. In 1813, he was honored with an appearance before the Commons with testimony concerning India, and he received an honorary degree from Oxford. Having outlived most of his enemies, Hastings died in 1818 at the age of eighty-five.

Significance

Clearly the accusations against Warren Hastings had substance, but in his favor, historians argue as his contemporary defenders did, that his conduct compared well with that of others involved in imperial Indian affairs. Perhaps the problem was not Hastings himself but the shifting public attitude in Great Britain toward the empire. The Wesleyan revival sweeping the country heightened its sense of morality in public affairs, especially concerning India. Just administration became more important than territorial acquisition and financial aggrandizement, actions previously acceptable for imperial officials. Hastings nevertheless consolidated British rule in India after the conquests of earlier leaders such as Clive. As a result of his policies, the British became increasingly involved in the politics of their Indian states and also in the affairs of the entire subcontinent. Though he spent most of his time responding to a series of crises, Hastings left as his legacy a greater role for the British in India. The India Act of 1784 corrected a basic problem that plagued Hastings. As governor-general, his commercial role with the East India Company conflicted with his political duties. A board of control in England would hereafter set policy for the East India Company in India, and in that way future governors-general reflected the moral and humanitarian concerns of the British public. In the end, Hastings’s misfortunes brought positive changes.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Jeremy. Dawning of the Raj: The Life and Trials of Warren Hastings. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. A popular, well-written biography that includes some updated material about Hastings’s private life.

Davies, Alfred Mervyn. Strange Destiny: A Biography of Warren Hastings. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1935. Lengthy, well-documented biography of Hastings, focusing on and defending his twenty-five years in India.

Freiling, Keith. Warren Hastings. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1954. Based primarily on Hastings’s papers. A favorable, straightforward overview of his life. However, weak on analysis and interpretation.

Huttenback, Robert A. The British Imperial Experience. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. A solid analysis of various topics associated with the full span of the British Empire, geographically and chronologically. The first chapter includes an excellent assessment of Hastings.

Keay, John. The Honourable Company: A History of the East India Company. London: HarperCollins, 1991. A history of the company, containing information on Hastings, whom the author describes as a “misunderstood” figure.

Lloyd, T. O. The British Empire, 1558-1983. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. One of few excellent narrative histories of the British Empire from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century. Scholarly and thorough, the work provides proper background for an evaluation of Hastings.

Marshall, P. J. The Impeachment of Warren Hastings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. The first part deals with the impeachment process, and the second part evaluates the charges against Hastings. Marshall’s work is the result of extensive research and examines Hastings in the context of his times.

Moon, Perderel. Warren Hastings and British India. New York: Macmillan, 1949. Rather than a biography, this work is an interpretation of the major episodes in Hastings’s career in India. No notes.

Sutherland, Lucy Stuart. East India Company in Eighteenth Century Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1952. Based on East India Company records and massive private correspondence, Sutherland’s work is a comprehensive and scholarly examination of the company in the context of the times. Looks at Westminster politics and company activities in East India.