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Clive in India: A legacy of controversy
In our special feature for this issue, Stephen Roberts first traces the life of this highly effective but undeniably divisive commander, then looks in more detail at the Battle of Plassey, the key victory that helped launch Britain’s empire in the subcontinent.
The historian William Dalrymple was undoubtedly speaking for many when he described the founding of British rule in India as the ‘supreme act of corporate violence in world history’ -- for the story of how the British East India Company, an unregulated private enterprise, succeeded in opportunistically wresting control of some of the richest lands on Earth has long been mired in controversy.
Militarily, the key moment came on 23 June 1757 at the Battle of Plassey -- where an upstart Company clerk by the name of Robert Clive (who had arrived in India as a penniless 19-year-old just over a decade earlier) led a small army to victory over the forces of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last Nawab of
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