Warren Hastings



Warren Hastings PC (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.

Early life
Warren Hastings was born at Churchill, Oxfordshire in 1732 to a poor father and a mother  who died soon after he was born. He attended Westminster School where he was a contemporary of the future Prime Ministers Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Portland. He joined the British East India Company in 1750 as a clerk and sailed out to India reaching Calcutta in August 1750. Hastings built up a reputation for hard work and diligence, and spent his free time learning about India and mastering Urdu and Persian. He was rewarded for his work in 1752 when he was promoted and sent to Kasimbazar, an important British trading post in Bengal where he worked for William Watts. While there he received further lessons about the nature of Indian politics.

At the time British traders still operated by the whim of local rulers and Hastings and his colleagues were unsettled by the political turmoil of Bengal with the elderly moderate Nawab Alivardi Khan likely to be succeeded by his grandson Siraj ud-Daulah and several other rival claimants also eyeing the throne. This made the British trading posts throughout Bengal increasingly insecure as Siraj ud-Daulah was known to harbour anti-European views and was likely to launch an attack once he took power. When Alivardi Khan died in April 1756 the British traders and small garrison at Kasimbazar were left vulnerable. On 3 June, after being surrounded by a much larger force, the British were persuaded to surrender to prevent a massacre taking place. Hastings was imprisoned with others in the Bengali capital Murshidabad while the Nawab's forces marched on Calcutta and captured it. The garrison and civilians were then locked up in the Black Hole of Calcutta.

For a while Hastings remained in Murshidabad and was even used by the Nawab as an intermediary, but fearing for his life he escaped to the island of Fulta where a number of refugees from Calcutta had taken shelter. While there he met and married Mary Buchanan, the widow of one of the victims of the Black Hole. Shortly afterwards a British expedition from Madras under Robert Clive arrived to rescue them. Hastings served as a volunteer in Clive's forces as they retook Calcutta in January 1757. After this swift defeat the Nawab urgently sought peace and the war came to an end. Clive was impressed with Hastings when he met him, and arranged for his return to Kasimbazar to resume his pre-war activities. Later in 1757 fighting began again, leading to the Battle of Plassey, where Clive won a decisive victory over the Nawab. Following the British victory Siraj ud-Daulah was overthrown and replaced by his uncle Mir Jafar who initiated pro-British policies.

Resident
In 1758 Hastings was made the British Resident in the Bengali capital of Murshidabad, a major step forwards in his career, at the instigation of Clive. His role in the city was ostensibly that of an ambassador but as Bengal was increasingly under the dominance of the East India Company he was often given the task of issuing orders to the new Nawab on behalf of Clive and the Calcutta authorities. Hastings personally sympathised with Mir Jafar and believed many of the demands placed on him by the Company were excessive. Hastings had already developed a philosophy that was grounded in trying to establish a more understanding relationship with India's inhabitants and their rulers and he often tried to mediate between the two sides.

During Mir Jafar's reign the East India Company exerted an increasingly large role in the running of the region, and effectively took over the defence of Bengal against external invaders when Bengal's troops proved insufficient for the task. As he grew older Mir Jafar was gradually less able to rule the state, and in 1760 British troops ousted him from power and replaced him with Mir Qasim. Hastings expressed his doubts to Calcutta over the move, believing they were honour bound to support Mir Jafar, but his opinions were overuled. Hastings once more established a good relationship with the new Nawab and again had misgivings about the demands he relayed from his superiors. In 1761 he was recalled and appointed to the Calcutta council.

Conquest of Bengal
Hastings was personally angered when he conducted an investigation into trading abuses in Bengal. He alleged some European and British-allied Indian merchants were taking advantage of the situation to personally enrich themselves. Widespread fraud was practised and illegal trading took place by figures who travelled under the unauthorised protection of the British flag, knowing that local customs officials would therefore be cowed into not interfering with them. Hastings felt this was bringing shame on Britain's reputation, and he urged the ruling authorities in Calcutta to put an end to it. The Council considered his report but ultimately rejected Hastings' proposals and he was fiercely criticised by other members, many of whom had themselves profited from the trade.

Ultimately, little was done to stem the abuses and Hastings began to consider quitting his post and returning to Britain. His resignation was only delayed by the outbreak of fresh fighting in Bengal. Once on the throne Qasim proved increasingly independent in his actions, and he rebuilt Bengal's army by hiring European instructors and mercenaries who greatly improved the standard of his forces. He felt gradually more confident and in 1764 when a dispute broke out in the settlement of Patna he captured its British garrison and threatened to execute them if the East India Company responded militarily. When Calcutta dispatched troops anyway, Mir Qasim executed the hostages. British forces then went on the attack and won a series of battles culminating in the decisive Battle of Buxar in October 1764. After this Mir Qasim fled into exile in Delhi where he later died. The treaty of Allahabad gave the East India Company the right to collect taxes in Bengal on behalf of the Mughal Emperor.

Return to Britain
Hastings resigned in December 1764 and sailed for Britain the following month. He was left deeply saddened by the failure of the more moderate strategy he supported which had been rejected by the hawkish members of the Calcutta Council. Once he arrived in London Hastings began spending far beyond his means. He stayed in fashionable addresses and had his picture painted by Joshua Reynolds in spite of the fact that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he had not amassed a fortune while in India. Eventually, having run up enormous debts, Hastings realised he needed to return to India to restore his finances and applied to the East India Company for employment. His application was initially rejected as he had made many political enemies including the powerful director Laurence Sulivan. Eventually an appeal to Sulivan's rival Robert Clive secured Hastings the position of deputy ruler at the city of Madras. He sailed from Dover in March 1769. On the voyage he met the German Baroness Imhoff and her husband. He soon fell in love with the Baroness and they began an affair, seemingly with her husband's consent. Hastings’ first wife, Mary, had died in 1759 and he planned to marry the Baroness once she had obtained a divorce from her husband. The process took a long time and it was not until 1777 when news of divorce came from Germany that Hastings was finally able to marry her.

Madras and Calcutta
Hastings arrived in Madras shortly after the end of the First Anglo-Mysore War during which the city had been threatened with capture by the forces of Hyder Ali. The Treaty of Madras which ended the war failed to settle the dispute and there were three further wars. During his time at Madras he initiated reforms of trading practices which cut out the use of middlemen and benefited both the Company and the Indian labourers but otherwise the period was relatively uneventful for him.

By this stage Hastings shared Clive's view that the three major British Presidencies (settlements), Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, should all be brought under a single rule rather than being governed separately as they currently were. In 1771 he was appointed to be Governor of Calcutta, the most important of the Presidencies. In Britain moves were underway to reform the divided system of government and create a single rule across all of British India with its capital in Calcutta. Hastings was considered the natural choice to be the first Governor General.

While Governor, Hastings launched a major crackdown on bandits operation in Bengal which was largely successful.

He also faced the severe Bengal Famine, with around ten million deaths.

Governor General
In 1773, he was appointed the first Governor-General of Bengal. The post was new, and British mechanisms to administer the territory were not fully developed. Regardless of his title, Hastings was only a member of a five man council so confusedly structured that it was difficult to tell what constitutional position Hastings actually held.

In 1784, after ten years of service, during which he helped extend and regularise the nascent Raj created by Clive of India, Hastings resigned. On his return to England he was charged in Parliament with high crimes and misdemeanors by Edmund Burke, who was encouraged by Sir Philip Francis, whom Hastings had wounded during a duel in India. He was impeached in 1787, but the trial, which ran from 1788 to 1795, ended in acquittal. Though Hastings spent most of his fortune on his defence, the East India Company provided substantial financial support towards the end of the trial.

His supporters from the Edinburgh East India Club, as well as a number of other gentlemen from India, gave a reportedly "elegant entertainment" for Hastings when he visited Edinburgh. A toast on the occasion went to the "Prosperity to our settlements in India" and wished that "the virtue and talents which preserved them be ever remembered with gratitude."

In 1788 he acquired the estate at Daylesford, Gloucestershire, including the site of the medieval seat of the Hastings family. In the following years, he remodelled the mansion to the designs of Samuel Pepys Cockerell, with classical and Indian decoration, and gardens landscaped by John Davenport. He also rebuilt the Norman church in 1816, where he was buried two years later.

Hastings's administrative ethos and legacy


During the final quarter of the eighteenth century, many of the Company's senior administrators realised that, in order to govern Indian society, it was essential that they learn its various religious, social, and legal customs and precedents. The importance of such knowledge to the colonial government was clearly in Hastings's mind when, in 1784, he remarked:

""Every application of knowledge and especially such as is obtained in social communication with people, over whom we exercise dominion, founded on the right of conquest, is useful to the state … It attracts and conciliates distant affections, it lessens the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in subjection and it imprints on the hearts of our countrymen the sense of obligation and benevolence… Every instance which brings their real character will impress us with more generous sense of feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own… But such instances can only be gained in their writings; and these will survive when British domination in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance""

Under Hastings's term as Governor General, a great deal of administrative precedent was set which profoundly shaped later attitudes towards the government of British India. Hastings had a great respect for the ancient scripture of Hinduism and set the British position on governance as one of looking back to the earliest precedents possible. This allowed Brahmin advisors to mould the law, as no English person thoroughly understood Sanskrit until Sir William Jones, and, even then, a literal translation was of little use; it needed to be elucidated by religious commentators who were well-versed in the lore and application. This approach accentuated the Hindu caste system and, to an extent, the frameworks of other religions, which had, at least in recent centuries, been somewhat more flexibly applied. Thus, British influence on the fluid social structure of India can in large part be characterised as a solidification of the privileges of the Hindu caste system through the influence of the exclusively high-caste scholars by whom the British were advised in the formation of their laws.

In 1781, Hastings founded Madrasa 'Aliya; in 2007, it was transformed into Aliah University by the Government of India, at Calcutta. In 1784, Hastings supported the foundation of the Bengal Asiatic Society, now the Asiatic Society of Bengal, by the oriental scholar Sir William Jones; it became a storehouse for information and data pertaining to the subcontinent, and existed in various institutional guises up to the present day. Hastings' legacy has been somewhat dualistic as an Indian administrator: he undoubtedly was able to institute reforms during the time he spent as governor there that would change the path that India would follow over the next several years. He did, however, retain the strange distinction of being both the "architect of British India and the one ruler of British India to whom the creation of such an entity was anathema."

Impeachment
He was impeached for crimes and misdemeanors during his time in India in the House of Commons upon his return to England. At first deemed unlikely to succeed, the prosecution was managed by MPs including Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. When the charges of his indictment were read, the twenty counts took Edmund Burke two full days to read.

The house sat for a total of 148 days over a period of seven years during the investigation. The investigation was pursued at great cost to Hastings personally, and he complained constantly that the cost of defending himself from the prosecution was bankrupting him. He is rumoured to have once stated that the punishment given him would have been less extreme had he pleaded guilty. The House of Lords finally made its decision on April 1795 acquitting him on all charges.

Throughout the long years of the trial, Hastings lived in considerable style at his town house, Somerset House, Park Lane. Among the many who supported him in print was the pamphleteer and versifier Ralph Broome. Others disturbed by the perceived injustice of the proceedings included Fanny Burney.



Recognition

 * The city of Hastings, New Zealand and the Melbourne outer suburb of Hastings, Victoria, Australia were both named after him.
 * 'Hastings' is the name of one of the 4 School Houses in La Martiniere for Boys, Calcutta. It is represented by the colour red.
 * 'Hastings' is a Senior Wing House at St Paul's School, Darjeeling, India, where all the senior wing houses are named after Anglo-Indian colonial figures.
 * There is also a road in Kolkata, India named after him.

In popular culture
Warren Hastings and his Bull is a well-known short story written by the prominent Indian writer Uday Prakash. This story, under the same name, was adaoted for the theatre by the director Arvind Gaur. It is a socio-economic political satire and the representation of Warren Hastings's interaction with traditional India.