Imperial dawn to sunset
Charles Allen
RAJ: THE MAKING AND UNMAKING OF BRITISH INDIA by Lawrence James Little, Brown, £25, pp. 722 Lawrence James's Rise and Fall of the British Empire won universal praise for its sweep and dash. Whatever followed was bound to lie under its shadow and that much is true of this his latest chronicle of empire. Even so, here is a splendid, bone- shaking charge through an episode of our history that only humbugs can look back on without some degree of wonder. And if, towards the end, the gallop slows to the pace of a Bombay gharrie drawn by some lame, spavined nag, that no more than reflects the course of the events recounted. The last chapter of the Raj was indeed shameful; 50 years on and its consequences still haunt all parties, though less so here than in India and its balkan states, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
This is a subject that historians tend to deal with in chunks, either sawing it in half and presenting two volumes, pre- and post- Mutiny, as Philip Woodruff, aka Philip Mason, did in his classic study of the Indian Civil Service, The Men Who Ruled India, or homing in on specific episodes a la Jan Morris. In opting for the tell-it-all-in-one- volume approach James takes an awful risk: that he succeeds in avoiding generali- ties and loss of detail is a measure of his skill as a storyteller.
Besides possessing a gift for the choice phrase — General Sir Hugh Gough's tacti- cal thinking is described as belonging to `the Ritchie-Hook school of warfare: victo- ry came from continually "biffing" the enemy' — James has the magpie touch. He packs his chapter on Clive with felici- tous quotes from Addison, Defoe, and Samuel Foote whose comedy, The Nabob, had them rocking in the aisles of the The- atre Royal Dublin in 1773. In detailing the scrimping that characterised most officers' lives in India he adds a neat phrase drawn from Sir Walter Scott, who saw India as `the corn chest for Scotland where we poor gentry must send our youngest sons as we send our black cattle to the South'. This surely is a lot more on the nail than that happy but misleading phrase of James Mill's about India being 'a vast system of outdoor relief for Britain's upper classes'.
Not only were British India's 'civil and military' officered by younger sons of the manse drawn very largely from Scotland and Ireland but the soldiers who filled the ranks of the East India Company's Euro- pean militia were in the majority Irishmen. James makes the point that for all the mar- tial qualities of the Indian sepoy these last provided the shock troops — 'the cutting edge of empire' — in virtually every battle fought on Indian soil (even if, on average, a quarter of their number were infected with syphilis at any one time).
Rule by gentlemen was the Raj ideal. James traces this back to that archetypal Anglo-Irishman Richard Wellesley, Irish peer and elder brother of Arthur, and to lessons learned at Eton from its provost, Dr Barnard. Wellesley's India was to be `ruled from the palace not a counting house' on principles of what James calls `romantic Toryism', with power 'concen- trated in the hands of gentlemen like him- self, who were born to rule'. Amazingly, it worked: in part because Marquess Welles- ley surrounded himself with like-minded subordinates, three of whom became exceptional soldier-diplomat-administra- tors: Mountstuart Elphinstone (Scot), John Malcolm (ditto) and Charles Metcalfe (English but Eton and the first student at Wellesley's college for East India Company cadets at Fort William, Calcutta).
It is too simplistic, I believe, to label these three 'pugnacious members' of the `forward' school of East India Company expansionists, as James does. All were exceptionally forward-looking by the mea- sure of their times: you have Elphinstone, for example, writing in 1819 about the need to 'apply ourselves to bring the natives into a state where they can govern themselves' and suggesting that it was in Britain's inter- est 'to have an early separation from a civilised people rather than a rupture with a barbarous nation'.
However, the Elphinstones, Malcolms and Metcalfes were also victims of their successes. Each victory, every peace- settlement with more concessions won, made it that much harder to retreat. Clive's rallying cry — 'To stop is danger- ous, to recede ruin' — continued to ring out loud and clear. Always outnumbered, forever conscious of their alien status, the civil and military had always to keep strengthening their position. There could be no turning-back, no retreats. Add to this a growing sense of mission — think of Cur- zon's 'Our work is righteous and it shall endure' — and you end up with an empire: not necessarily a just empire — James draws together some damning statistics on the burdens placed on the poorest in the land by the high rates of land revenue but a very impressive one.
But did it have to end in tears? Anyone who witnessed the last months will want to know if James has anything new to say on Lord Mountbatten's tenure of office as the last Viceroy. In short, not a lot. James is on shifting sands here and makes some uncharacteristic errors. August 15 was not selected by Hindu astrologers as a propi- tious day, but chosen by Mountbatten more or less on the spur of the moment, and surely, Sir Gerald Templar's notorious `corkscrew' jibe about the Supremo dates from the Malayan Emergency a decade later?
Despite his patent distaste for this `demolition engineer' and his 'jejune socialite' wife, James does not condemn him. Political power had passed into Indian hands by the time Mountbatten arrived in India: 'Quite simply, the last Viceroy lacked the prestige, authority and resources of his predecessors and, therefore, placed himself in the hands of those who pos- sessed all these assets.'The blame for the division and its attendant horrors lies else- where.
James makes good use of the private papers of two outstanding officers of the Raj, Evan Jenkins and Reginald Savory, one a civilian, the other a soldier. Their wise words and actions serve to remind us that it was the civil and military who held India together, who were British India. Nothing became such men so well as the manner in which they sought to keep the Pax Britannica as the politicians and the goondas did their damnedest to bring it crashing down about their ears.
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