The Company Raj: British Expansion from Plassey to the Revolt of 1857

Polity & Administration

• Dual government in Bengal (1765–72): the Company held the Diwani (revenue) while the Nawab retained the Nizamat in name — power without responsibility until Warren Hastings ended it.
• Regulating Act (1773) and Pitt's India Act (1784) brought parliamentary oversight, creating the Governor-General of Bengal and the Board of Control — the British state began regulating the Company.
• Subsidiary Alliance under Lord Wellesley (from 1798, Hyderabad among the earliest): states hosted Company troops and accepted British control over external relations — indirect control without immediate annexation.
• Doctrine of Lapse under Lord Dalhousie annexed states such as Satara (1848), Jhansi (1854) and Nagpur (1854) for want of a recognised natural heir — alienated rulers and fed resentment.
• Charter Acts (1813, 1833, 1853) reduced and ended the Company's trade monopoly, created a Governor-General of India and opened the Civil Service to competition — marking closer parliamentary control.

Economy & Trade

• Permanent Settlement (1793, Cornwallis) fixed revenue with zamindars in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — strengthened landlord rights but burdened tenants and fixed the state's revenue demand.
• Ryotwari system, associated with Thomas Munro and Alexander Read, settled revenue directly with cultivators in much of Madras and Bombay — high, revisable assessments deepened peasant debt.
• Mahalwari system, associated with Holt Mackenzie and later modifications, settled revenue with the village or mahal in the North-Western Provinces and parts of Punjab and Central India — demand often remained heavy.
• Deindustrialisation: machine-made British imports and colonial trade policies weakened handloom production, notably Bengal's fine textiles — India increasingly supplied raw materials and consumed British manufactures.
• The drain of wealth through Company remittances, home charges and unrequited exports transferred Indian surplus to Britain; the Bengal Famine of 1770 exposed the vulnerability of agrarian society under revenue pressure.

Society & Daily Life

• Abolition of sati by Regulation XVII (1829) under Bentinck, supported by Rammohan Roy — a major legislative social reform.
• Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act (1856), championed by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar — gave legal sanction to widow remarriage among Hindus.
• Suppression of female infanticide and of thuggee, associated especially with William Sleeman in the 1830s — the colonial state intervened directly in selected social and policing matters.
• A new English-educated middle class, including the Calcutta bhadralok, emerged in the Presidency towns — important in later reform associations and public life.

Religion & Philosophy

• Raja Rammohan Roy founded the Brahmo Sabha (1828), later associated with the Brahmo Samaj — advocating monotheism, drawing on the Upanishads and rejecting idolatry and superstition.
• Henry Derozio's Young Bengal movement at Hindu College (1820s–30s) promoted rationalism — encouraging radical questioning of orthodox tradition.
• Missionary activity expanded after the Charter Act of 1813; the Serampore missionaries, including William Carey, advanced printing and vernacular education — provoking both conversion fears and reform responses.

Literature, Language & Learning

• The Asiatic Society of Bengal (1784), founded by Sir William Jones, studied Sanskrit texts and comparative philology — important in the development of modern Indology.
• The Orientalist–Anglicist controversy was decided in favour of English education by Macaulay's Minute (1835) and Bentinck's resolution — state support shifted toward Western learning through English.
• Wood's Despatch (1854), often called the 'Magna Carta of English education in India', framed a graded system — leading to the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857.
• Rammohan Roy's journals, including Sambad Kaumudi and Mirat-ul-Akhbar, and the Serampore presses helped build vernacular and English print culture — an emerging public sphere.

Decline & Legacy

• Annexations by lapse and the takeover of Awadh (1856) alienated rulers, taluqdars and pensioners such as Nana Sahib — creating deep political grievance.
• Revenue demands and deindustrialisation distressed peasants and artisans — widening agrarian and artisanal discontent.
• Sepoy grievances over pay, allowances, overseas service and the General Service Enlistment Act (1856) — strengthened military disaffection in the Bengal Army.
• Fear that the Company aimed at conversion — encouraged by reforms, missionary activity and the greased-cartridge rumour of 1857 — helped provide the immediate spark for the Revolt of 1857.

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