British Expansion and the Colonial State, 1757–1857
Wars with Mysore, the Marathas and the Sikhs
Haidar Ali, a soldier who rose to control the Wodeyar kingdom of Mysore in the 1760s, and his son Tipu Sultan built the most modern state the Company faced in the south — a French-trained army, a navy project, state trading and new coinage, calendar and weights. Tipu planted a "Tree of Liberty" at Srirangapatna, joined a Jacobin club and sent embassies to France, the Ottoman sultan and Afghanistan. Four wars were needed to destroy Mysore.
| War | Governor-General / British side | What happened | Treaty |
|---|---|---|---|
| First (1767–69) | Madras government | Haidar reaches the gates of Madras | Treaty of Madras (1769) — conquests restored, mutual defence promised |
| Second (1780–84) | Warren Hastings | Haidar defeated by Eyre Coote at Porto Novo (1781); Haidar dies (1782), Tipu fights on | Treaty of Mangalore (1784) — mutual restitution |
| Third (1790–92) | Cornwallis (allied with the Nizam and the Marathas) | Tipu besieged at Srirangapatna | Treaty of Seringapatam (1792) — Tipu cedes half his territory, pays an indemnity, gives two sons as hostages |
| Fourth (1799) | Wellesley | Srirangapatna stormed; Tipu killed, 4 May 1799 | Wodeyars restored to a reduced Mysore under a subsidiary alliance |
| War | Cause and course | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| First (1775–82) | Bombay backs the claimant Raghunathrao (Treaty of Surat, 1775); the Calcutta council disowns it (Treaty of Purandar, 1776); British humbled at Wadgaon (1779) | Treaty of Salbai (1782), mediated by Mahadji Scindia — status quo; twenty years of peace |
| Second (1803–05) | Peshwa Baji Rao II signs the subsidiary Treaty of Bassein (31 December 1802); Scindia and Bhonsle resist; Assaye (Arthur Wellesley) and Laswari (Lake), 1803 | Treaties of Deogaon (Bhonsle) and Surji-Anjangaon (Scindia), 1803; Holkar by Rajghat (1805) |
| Third (1817–18) | Lord Hastings’s campaign against the Pindaris merges with a last Maratha rising; Koregaon (1 January 1818) | Peshwaship abolished; Baji Rao II pensioned off to Bithur; a small state of Satara created for Shivaji’s descendant |
In the north-west, Ranjit Singh united the Sikh misls and took Lahore in 1799. By the Treaty of Amritsar (1809), negotiated by Charles Metcalfe, he accepted the Sutlej as the limit of his ambitions to the east. After his death in 1839 the Lahore state fell into faction. The First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–46) — Mudki, Ferozeshah, Aliwal, Sobraon — ended in the Treaty of Lahore (March 1846): the Jullundur Doab was annexed and the Sikhs had to pay a large indemnity; unable to pay it, they gave up Kashmir, which the British sold to Gulab Singh of Jammu for Rs 75 lakh by a separate Treaty of Amritsar (1846). The Treaty of Bhairowal (December 1846) placed a British Resident in control at Lahore during the minority of Duleep Singh. The Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–49), which began with Mulraj’s revolt at Multan and ended at Gujrat (February 1849), led Dalhousie to annex the Punjab in March 1849.
- Anglo-Nepal War (1814–16) under Lord Hastings — ended by the Treaty of Sugauli (1815–16): Nepal ceded Garhwal and Kumaon and accepted a British Resident; the British gained hill sites such as Shimla, Mussoorie and Nainital.
- First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26) under Amherst — Treaty of Yandabo (1826): Burma ceded Assam, Arakan and Tenasserim and recognised Manipur. Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) under Dalhousie — Lower Burma (Pegu) annexed. (Upper Burma followed only in 1885.)
- Sindh annexed in 1843 under Ellenborough after Charles Napier defeated the Amirs at Miani; the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42) under Auckland ended in the disastrous retreat from Kabul.
Expansion without War: Ring-Fence, Subsidiary Alliance and Lapse
Conquest was expensive, so the Company also expanded by treaty and by legal doctrine. Under Warren Hastings it followed a ring-fence policy — defending the frontiers of its neighbours (above all Awadh) so as to keep its own territories safe behind a buffer. Lord Wellesley (1798–1805) turned this defensive idea into an offensive one, the subsidiary alliance; and Lord Dalhousie (1848–56) completed the map with the doctrine of lapse and annexation for "misgovernment".
- The Indian ruler accepted a British force stationed in his territory and paid for it — first in cash, later by ceding territory whose revenue covered the cost.
- A British Resident was posted at his court.
- He could employ no other Europeans (aimed at the French) and could make no war or alliance without the Company’s consent.
- In return the Company promised to protect him from external attack and not to interfere in his internal affairs — a promise it rarely kept.
| State | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hyderabad (Nizam) | 1798 | The first; in 1800 the Nizam ceded the territories he had won from Mysore (the "Ceded Districts") |
| Mysore | 1799 | Imposed on the restored Wodeyars after Tipu’s death |
| Tanjore | 1799 | Administration taken over; the raja pensioned |
| Awadh | 1801 | Rohilkhand and the lower Doab ceded — about half the state |
| The Peshwa | 1802 | Treaty of Bassein |
| Bhonsle (Berar), Scindia | 1803 | After defeat in the Second Anglo-Maratha War |
The doctrine of lapse held that if the ruler of a dependent state died without a natural heir, his right to adopt a successor needed the paramount power’s consent, and without it the state "lapsed" to the Company. The principle had been applied occasionally before, but Dalhousie applied it systematically: Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambalpur (1849), Baghat (1850), Udaipur in Chhattisgarh (1852), Jhansi (1853) and Nagpur (1854). He also stopped titles and pensions — the pension of Nana Saheb, adopted son of the last Peshwa, and the titles of the nawabs of the Carnatic and the raja of Tanjore.
Governors and Governors-General: Who Did What
Questions on this period very often pair a Governor-General with a measure. The trick is to attach each name to one big theme and then hang the details on it: Hastings — building a state; Cornwallis — fixing it in rules; Wellesley — subsidiary alliances; Lord Hastings — finishing the Marathas; Bentinck — reform; Dalhousie — lapse and railways.
| Name and term | Measures and events to remember |
|---|---|
| Robert Clive — Governor of Bengal 1757–60, 1765–67 | Treaties of Allahabad; dual government; curbed the private trade and presents of Company servants; put down the officers’ mutiny of 1766 over the field allowance (double batta) |
| Warren Hastings — Governor 1772; first Governor-General of Bengal 1773–85 | Ended dual government; treasury moved from Murshidabad to Calcutta; Board of Revenue and district collectors; revenue farming (five-year 1772, annual 1777); district diwani and faujdari adalats (1772); Calcutta Madrasa (1781); supported the Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784, William Jones); Rohilla War (1774); First Maratha and Second Mysore Wars; impeached in Parliament (1788–95) and acquitted |
| Cornwallis — 1786–93 | Permanent Settlement (1793); Cornwallis Code (1793) — collectors stripped of judicial powers, separation of revenue and justice; district police under daroga-led thanas; covenanted civil service with high pay and a ban on private trade (often called the "father of the civil services in India"); Third Mysore War |
| Sir John Shore — 1793–98 | Policy of non-intervention; Charter Act of 1793 |
| Wellesley — 1798–1805 | Subsidiary alliance; Fourth Mysore War (1799); Second Maratha War; College of Fort William (1800) to train civil servants; Censorship of the Press Act (1799) |
| Minto I — 1807–13 | Treaty of Amritsar with Ranjit Singh (1809); Charter Act of 1813 |
| Lord Hastings (Marquess of Hastings) — 1813–23 | Anglo-Nepal War (Sugauli); suppression of the Pindaris; Third Maratha War and the end of the Peshwaship; Ryotwari introduced in Madras (1820) by Thomas Munro; press censorship relaxed (1818) |
| Amherst — 1823–28 | First Anglo-Burmese War and the Treaty of Yandabo (1826); Barrackpore mutiny (1824) |
| William Bentinck — 1828–35; first Governor-General of India from 1833 | Abolition of sati (Regulation XVII, 1829); suppression of thuggee (William Sleeman); English Education Act (1835) after Macaulay’s Minute; Calcutta Medical College (1835); Mahalwari revised (Regulation IX of 1833); provincial courts of appeal and circuit abolished |
| Charles Metcalfe — 1835–36 (acting) | Removed press restrictions (Press Act of 1835) — the "liberator of the Indian press" |
| Auckland — 1836–42; Ellenborough — 1842–44; Hardinge — 1844–48 | First Anglo-Afghan War; annexation of Sindh (1843) and abolition of slavery (Act V of 1843); First Anglo-Sikh War |
| Dalhousie — 1848–56 | Doctrine of lapse; Punjab (1849), Lower Burma (1852) and Awadh (1856) annexed; first railway, Bombay–Thane, 16 April 1853; first telegraph lines (Calcutta–Agra); Post Office Act (1854) — uniform postage; a separate Public Works Department; Wood’s Despatch (1854) |
Parliament and the Company: the Regulating Act to the Charter Act of 1853
After 1765 a trading company was collecting the revenue of a province larger than Britain, its servants were returning home as rich "nabobs", and it was still asking Parliament for loans. Parliament’s answer, over eighty years, was a series of Acts that slowly turned the Company from a sovereign merchant into an agent of the British state. Each Act did a few big things; learn those, not every clause.
| Act | Main provisions |
|---|---|
| Regulating Act, 1773 (Lord North) | First parliamentary control of the Company’s Indian affairs. Governor of Bengal became Governor-General of Bengal (Warren Hastings the first) with a council of four; the governors of Bombay and Madras made subordinate to him; a Supreme Court at Calcutta (1774) under Chief Justice Elijah Impey; servants forbidden private trade and presents; the Court of Directors to report revenue, civil and military matters to the government |
| Act of Settlement, 1781 (Amending Act) | Exempted the Governor-General-in-Council and revenue matters from the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction; personal laws to be respected |
| Pitt’s India Act, 1784 | A Board of Control in London for political affairs, the Court of Directors keeping commercial affairs — the "dual system of control"; Governor-General’s council cut to three; the Company’s territories called "British possessions in India" for the first time |
| Act of 1786 | Governor-General (Cornwallis) allowed to override his council and to be Commander-in-Chief as well |
| Charter Act, 1793 | Monopoly renewed for 20 years; the overriding power extended to later Governors-General and governors; Board of Control’s salaries to be paid from Indian revenues |
| Charter Act, 1813 | Ended the Company’s trade monopoly in India, except in tea and trade with China; set aside Rs 1 lakh a year for the revival of literature and the promotion of knowledge of the sciences among Indians; Christian missionaries permitted to work in India |
| Charter Act, 1833 | Governor-General of Bengal became Governor-General of India (Bentinck the first), with all civil and military power; Bombay and Madras lost their legislative powers — the first step to centralisation; the Company’s commercial activities ended altogether — a purely administrative body; a law member (Macaulay) added and a Law Commission set up, whose draft became the Indian Penal Code (1860); no Indian to be barred from office by religion, birth, descent or colour |
| Charter Act, 1853 — the last | Separated the legislative and executive functions of the Governor-General’s council: six additional members for legislation, forming a separate legislative council that worked like a mini-parliament; four of the six appointed by the provincial governments of Madras, Bombay, Bengal and Agra — local representation; open competition for the covenanted civil service (Macaulay Committee, 1854); the Company’s rule continued without a fixed term |
- 1600Royal charter to the East India Company
- 1765Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa
- 1773Regulating Act — Governor-General of Bengal
- 1784Pitt’s India Act — Board of Control
- 1813Indian trade monopoly ends (tea and China excepted)
- 1833Governor-General of India; Company stops trading
- 1853Legislative council separated; open competition
- 1858Government of India Act — the Crown takes over; Secretary of State and Viceroy
Land Revenue: Permanent Settlement, Ryotwari and Mahalwari
Land revenue was the Company’s largest income, and the question of whom to tax — a zamindar, a peasant or a village — decided who would own land in British India. Warren Hastings first auctioned the right to collect for five years (1772) and then year by year (1777); both drove collectors to rack-rent the peasants and left the revenue uncertain. Three settlements followed.
| Feature | Permanent Settlement | Ryotwari | Mahalwari |
|---|---|---|---|
| Introduced by / when | Cornwallis, 1793 (advised by John Shore), after a ten-year (decennial) settlement of 1789–90 | Alexander Read in Baramahal (1792), then Thomas Munro — Madras from 1820; Bombay under Elphinstone | Holt Mackenzie (Regulation VII of 1822); revised by Regulation IX of 1833 under Bentinck — R. M. Bird and James Thomason |
| Region | Bengal, Bihar, Orissa; later Benares division and parts of northern Madras | Madras and Bombay presidencies, parts of Assam and Coorg | North-Western Provinces (Agra–Awadh region), Punjab, parts of central India |
| Approx. share of British Indian area | About 19% | About 51% | About 30% |
| Who paid / who owned | Zamindars recognised as owners; peasants became their tenants | The ryot (cultivator) paid the state directly and was recognised as the holder | The village or estate (mahal) jointly, through the headman or lambardar |
| Revenue demand | Fixed for ever: ten-elevenths of the rental to the state, one-eleventh to the zamindar | Assessed field by field and revised periodically (every 20–30 years); often very high | Assessed on the mahal and revised periodically |
The Permanent Settlement promised the Company a fixed, predictable income and hoped to create a class of improving English-style landlords loyal to British rule. In practice the "sunset law" — an estate whose revenue was not paid by sunset on the due date was auctioned — ruined many old zamindar families in the first decades, and their estates passed to merchants and moneylenders who often lived in Calcutta as absentee landlords. Layers of intermediaries (sub-infeudation, as in the patni tenures) grew between zamindar and cultivator, and the ryots were left as tenants-at-will until tenancy laws of 1859 and 1885 gave some of them protection. Because the demand never rose, the state lost all later growth in land values.
Drain of Wealth, Deindustrialisation and Early Resistance
The drain theory argued that a part of India’s national product was transferred to Britain every year without any equivalent economic return. Its classic statement came from Dadabhai Naoroji — first in the paper "England’s Debt to India" (1867), then in "Poverty of India" (1876) and finally in the book Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901). R. C. Dutt developed it in his two-volume Economic History of India (1901–03), and M. G. Ranade and others added to it. The drain was made up of the "Home Charges" — salaries and pensions of British officials, interest on India’s public debt held in Britain, the cost of the India Office in London and of wars fought outside India — together with the Company’s "investment" (Indian goods bought for export out of Indian revenue, so that India paid for her own exports) and the remitted profits of British capital.
Deindustrialisation is the term for the decline of India’s traditional manufactures, above all handloom textiles, in the first half of the nineteenth century. Machine-made Lancashire cloth flooded in after the Charter Act of 1813, while Indian textiles faced heavy duties in Britain — a system of one-way free trade. The fine muslins of Dacca and the silks of Murshidabad lost their markets; the loss of princely courts as patrons hurt luxury crafts further; and many artisans were pushed back on to the land, increasing pressure on agriculture. The scale is debated. In the 1960s Morris D. Morris argued that the evidence for a large overall decline was thin; nationalist and many later historians reply that, whatever the national aggregates, specific crafts and regions were devastated and the share of the population living on agriculture rose. Present it as a debate, not a settled number.
The new order met resistance long before 1857 — from dispossessed chiefs, demobilised soldiers, peasants squeezed by revenue and tribes losing their forests. The best-known tribal risings of eastern India (the Kol uprising of 1831–32, the Bhumij revolt under Ganga Narain, the Santhal Hul of 1855–56), the Wahabi movement and the Munda Ulgulan are taught in the chapter on peasant and tribal movements. The table below gives the others.
| Rising | Region and date | Leaders and features |
|---|---|---|
| Sanyasi–Fakir rebellion | Bengal, c. 1760s–1800 | Wandering ascetics and peasants after the 1770 famine; Majnu Shah, Bhawani Pathak; remembered in Bankim Chandra’s Anandamath (1882) |
| Chuar uprising | Jungle Mahals of Midnapore and Bankura, 1760s–1830s (major rising 1798–99) | Tribal peasants and local chiefs against revenue demands |
| Poligar rebellions | Tamil country, 1799 and 1800–01 | Veerapandiya Kattabomman of Panchalankurichi (hanged 1799); the Marudu brothers of Sivaganga |
| Velu Thampi’s revolt | Travancore, 1808–09 | The Dalawa (chief minister) Velu Thampi against the subsidiary burden; Kundara proclamation (1809) |
| Paika rebellion | Khurda, Odisha, 1817 | Paika militia under Bakshi Jagabandhu against loss of service lands and high revenue |
| Kittur revolt | Kittur, Karnataka, 1824 | Rani Chennamma resisted annexation after the Company refused to recognise an adopted heir; continued by Sangolli Rayanna |
| Ahom revolt | Assam, 1828 | Gomdhar Konwar against the British, who had stayed on after the Burmese war |
| Khasi uprising | Khasi hills, 1829–33 | Tirot Sing against a road through the hills linking Brahmaputra valley and Sylhet |
| Faraizi movement | Eastern Bengal, from c. 1818 | Religious reform by Haji Shariatullah that turned agrarian under his son Dudu Miyan, against zamindars and indigo planters |
| Titu Mir’s rising | Barasat, Bengal, 1831 | Titu Mir built a bamboo fort at Narkelberia; killed when it was stormed |
| Ramosi and Bhil risings | Western India, 1810s–1830s | Ramosis under Chittur Singh (1822) and Umaji Naik; Bhils of Khandesh after the fall of the Peshwa |
Key takeaways
- Plassey (23 June 1757) was won by intrigue (Mir Jafar, Jagat Seth); Buxar (22 October 1764) against Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-daulah and Shah Alam II brought the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa by the Treaties of Allahabad (1765); dual government lasted until 1772.
- Carnatic Wars ended French ambitions at Wandiwash (1760); Mysore fell in four wars (Treaties of Madras 1769, Mangalore 1784, Seringapatam 1792; Tipu killed 1799); Marathas — Salbai (1782), Bassein (1802), end of the Peshwaship (1818).
- Sikhs: Treaty of Amritsar (1809) fixed the Sutlej; after the First Anglo-Sikh War Kashmir went to Gulab Singh (1846); the Punjab was annexed by Dalhousie in 1849.
- Subsidiary alliance (Wellesley; Hyderabad first, 1798) and doctrine of lapse (Dalhousie; Satara 1848 first, then Jhansi, Nagpur); Awadh (1856) was annexed for misgovernment, not by lapse.
- Acts: Regulating Act 1773 (Governor-General of Bengal, Supreme Court at Calcutta); Pitt’s India Act 1784 (Board of Control); Charter Acts 1813 (monopoly ends, Rs 1 lakh for education), 1833 (Governor-General of India, trade ends), 1853 (separate legislative council, open competition).
- Land revenue: Permanent Settlement (Cornwallis, 1793) — zamindars, fixed for ever, sunset law; Ryotwari (Read, Munro; Madras 1820) — the ryot, periodically revised; Mahalwari (Holt Mackenzie 1822; Bird and Thomason 1833) — the village or mahal.
- Drain of wealth: Naoroji (Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, 1901), R. C. Dutt — Home Charges and the "investment"; deindustrialisation is real for specific crafts but its overall scale is debated (Morris D. Morris). Early risings: Sanyasi–Fakir, Poligar, Velu Thampi, Paika (1817), Kittur, Khasi, Faraizi, Titu Mir.
Practice questions (17)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Consider the following statements:
1. The Battle of Plassey was fought between Robert Clive and Siraj-ud-daulah in 1757.
2. At Buxar, the Company defeated the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-daulah and Shah Alam II.
3. After Buxar, Awadh was restored to Shuja-ud-daulah on payment of a war indemnity.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: D — 1, 2 and 3
All three are correct. Statement 3 is the one candidates doubt: Awadh was not annexed in 1765 but returned to Shuja-ud-daulah for Rs 50 lakh and kept as a buffer state; it was annexed only in 1856. The Diwani, not Awadh, was the Company’s prize from Buxar.The Battle of Wandiwash (1760) is remembered in Indian history because it:
Show answer
Answer: A — decided the Anglo-French struggle for supremacy in India in favour of the English
At Wandiwash, during the Third Carnatic War, Eyre Coote defeated Count de Lally; Pondicherry fell in 1761 and the French never again challenged the English for empire in India. The Diwani came in 1765, after Buxar — a different war against different enemies.Arrange the following treaties in chronological order:
1. Treaty of Salbai
2. Treaty of Bassein
3. Treaty of Mangalore
4. Treaty of Seringapatam
Select the correct answer using the code below.Show answer
Answer: C — 1-3-4-2
Salbai (1782) ended the First Anglo-Maratha War; Mangalore (1784) the Second Anglo-Mysore War; Seringapatam (1792) the Third Anglo-Mysore War; and Bassein (1802) was the Peshwa’s subsidiary alliance. The trap is to put Mangalore first because the Mysore wars "come first" — Salbai is two years earlier.Consider the following pairs of war and the treaty that ended it:
1. First Anglo-Mysore War — Treaty of Madras
2. Third Anglo-Mysore War — Treaty of Mangalore
3. First Anglo-Maratha War — Treaty of Salbai
4. First Anglo-Sikh War — Treaty of Lahore
How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?Show answer
Answer: C — Only three pairs
Pairs 1, 3 and 4 are correct. Pair 2 is wrong: the Treaty of Mangalore (1784) ended the Second Anglo-Mysore War; the Third ended with the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792), in which Tipu lost half his kingdom.Which was the first Indian state to enter into the subsidiary alliance on the terms devised by Lord Wellesley?
Show answer
Answer: D — Hyderabad
The Nizam of Hyderabad signed in 1798. Mysore had it imposed in 1799 after Tipu’s death, Awadh in 1801 and the Peshwa in 1802 at Bassein. Awadh is the tempting answer because Company troops had been stationed there since the 1760s, but its Wellesley-type treaty came later.Consider the following statements about the doctrine of lapse:
1. Satara was the first state annexed under it by Lord Dalhousie.
2. Awadh was annexed in 1856 under the doctrine of lapse.
3. Jhansi and Nagpur were annexed under it.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: B — 1 and 3 only
Statements 1 and 3 are correct: Satara (1848) came first, Jhansi (1853) and Nagpur (1854) later. Statement 2 is the classic trap — Wajid Ali Shah was alive and had heirs, so Awadh could not "lapse"; it was annexed in 1856 on the charge of misgovernment.Which one of the following was NOT a provision of the Regulating Act of 1773?
Show answer
Answer: B — A Board of Control was created to supervise the Company’s political affairs
The Board of Control came eleven years later, under Pitt’s India Act of 1784, creating the dual system of control. The other three are the core of the Regulating Act, which also gave the Governor-General a council of four that could outvote him — a defect later Acts corrected.Consider the following statements about the Charter Act of 1833:
1. It made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India.
2. It ended the commercial activities of the East India Company.
3. It separated the legislative and executive functions of the Governor-General’s council.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: A — 1 and 2 only
Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Statement 3 belongs to the Charter Act of 1853, which added six legislative members and created a separate legislative council. The 1833 Act centralised law-making instead, taking it away from Bombay and Madras.The Charter Act of 1813 is significant because it:
Show answer
Answer: C — ended the Company’s trade monopoly in India except in tea and the China trade, and set aside a sum for education
The 1813 Act opened Indian trade to all British merchants (tea and the China trade excepted), allotted Rs 1 lakh a year for education and admitted missionaries. Open competition came in 1853 and Crown rule in 1858; the Board of Control lasted until 1858.Consider the following pairs of land revenue system and the person associated with it:
1. Permanent Settlement — Lord Cornwallis
2. Ryotwari — Thomas Munro
3. Mahalwari — Alexander Read
How many of the pairs given above are correctly matched?Show answer
Answer: B — Only two pairs
Pairs 1 and 2 are correct. Alexander Read was Munro’s senior in the Baramahal experiment that began Ryotwari; Mahalwari is associated with Holt Mackenzie (1822) and, in its revised form, with R. M. Bird and James Thomason (1833).Consider the following statements about the Permanent Settlement of 1793:
1. The revenue demand on the zamindars was fixed in perpetuity.
2. Under the sunset law, an estate whose revenue was not paid on time could be auctioned.
3. It recognised the cultivating ryots as owners of the land.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: A — 1 and 2 only
Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Statement 3 describes the opposite of what happened: the zamindars were made owners, and the ryots became their tenants with little security until the tenancy laws of 1859 and 1885. Recognising the ryot as holder was the Ryotwari principle.The book "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India", a classic statement of the drain theory, was written by:
Show answer
Answer: B — Dadabhai Naoroji
Dadabhai Naoroji published it in 1901, drawing together papers written since 1867. R. C. Dutt is the near-miss: he developed the same critique in his Economic History of India (1901–03), a different book.Which one of the following pairs of Governor-General and event is NOT correctly matched?
Show answer
Answer: B — Lord Hastings — Treaty of Yandabo
The Treaty of Yandabo (1826) ended the First Anglo-Burmese War under Amherst. Lord Hastings’ treaty with a Himalayan neighbour was Sugauli (1815–16) with Nepal — the near-miss that makes this pair look right.Consider the following statements:
1. By the Treaty of Amritsar of 1809, Ranjit Singh accepted the Sutlej as the limit of his territory to the east.
2. After the First Anglo-Sikh War, Kashmir was transferred to Gulab Singh.
3. The Punjab was annexed by Lord Dalhousie after the Second Anglo-Sikh War.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: D — 1, 2 and 3
All three are correct. The likely confusion is between the two Treaties of Amritsar: 1809 (Ranjit Singh and the Company, the Sutlej line) and 1846 (the Company and Gulab Singh, the sale of Kashmir for Rs 75 lakh). Both are true statements about different treaties.Which one of the following pairs of early rising and its leader is NOT correctly matched?
Show answer
Answer: C — Khasi uprising — Rani Chennamma
Rani Chennamma led the Kittur revolt (1824) in Karnataka; the Khasi uprising (1829–33) was led by Tirot Sing. The other pairs are correct — Dudu Miyan, son of Haji Shariatullah, gave the Faraizi movement its agrarian turn.With reference to the drain of wealth, consider the following statements:
1. The Home Charges included pensions of British officials and interest on India’s public debt paid in Britain.
2. The Company’s "investment" meant buying Indian goods for export out of the revenues of India.
3. The British government officially accepted Naoroji’s estimate of the annual drain.
Which of the statements given above are correct?Show answer
Answer: D — 1 and 2 only
Statements 1 and 2 are correct and together are the heart of the theory: India paid for its own exports and for its rulers’ salaries, pensions and debts abroad. Statement 3 is false — the government contested the drain argument; it was a nationalist critique, not an accepted official figure.Arrange the following annexations in chronological order:
1. Awadh
2. Sindh
3. The Punjab
4. Satara
Select the correct answer using the code below.Show answer
Answer: A — 2-4-3-1
Sindh (1843, under Ellenborough), Satara (1848, the first lapse), the Punjab (1849) and Awadh (1856). The trap is to start with Satara because it heads Dalhousie’s list; Sindh was annexed five years before Dalhousie arrived.