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Pakistan
Index
It was not until the middle of the nineteenth century
that
almost all of the territory that constitutes Pakistan and
India
came under the rule of the British East India Company. The
patterns of territorial acquisition and rule as applied by
the
company in Sindh and Punjab and the manner of governance
became
the basis for direct British rule in the British Indian
Empire
and indirect rule in the princely states under the
paramountcy of
the crown.
Although the British had earlier ruled in the factory
areas,
the beginning of British rule is often dated from the
Battle of
Plassey. Clive's victory was consolidated in 1764 at the
Battle
of Buxar (in Bihar), where the emperor, Shah Alam II, was
defeated. As a result, Shah Alam was coerced to appoint
the
company to be the diwan (collector of revenue) for
the
areas of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (this pretense of
Mughal
control was abandoned in 1827). The company thus became
the
supreme, but not the titular, power in much of the Ganges
Valley,
and company agents continued to trade on terms highly
favorable
to them.
The area controlled by the company expanded during the
first
three decades of the nineteenth century by two methods.
The first
was the use of subsidiary agreements (sanad)
between the
British and the local rulers, under which control of
foreign
affairs, defense, and communications was transferred from
the
ruler to the company and the rulers were allowed to rule
as they
wished (up to a limit) on other matters. This development
created
what came to be called the Native States, or Princely
India, that
is, the world of the maharaja and his Muslim counterpart
the
nawab. The second method was outright military conquest or
direct
annexation of territories; it was these areas that were
properly
called British India. Most of northern India was annexed
by the
British. (OTR))
At the start of the nineteenth century, most of
present-day
Pakistan was under independent rulers. Sindh was ruled by
the
Muslim Talpur mirs (chiefs) in three small states
that
were annexed by the British in 1843. In Punjab, the
decline of
the Mughal Empire allowed the rise of the Sikhs, first as
a
military force and later as a political administration in
Lahore.
The kingdom of Lahore was at its most powerful and
expansive
during the rule of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, when Sikh
control was
extended beyond Peshawar, and Kashmir was added to his
dominions
in 1819. After Ranjit Singh died in 1839, political
conditions in
Punjab deteriorated, and the British fought two wars with
the
Sikhs. The second of these wars, in 1849, saw the
annexation of
Punjab, including the present-day North-West Frontier
Province,
to the company's territories. Kashmir was transferred by
sale in
the Treaty of Amritsar in 1850 to the Dogra Dynasty, which
ruled
the area under British paramountcy until 1947.
As the British increased their territory in India, so
did
Russia expand in Central Asia. The East India Company
signed
treaties with a number of Afghan rulers and with Ranjit
Singh.
Russia backed Persian ambitions in western Afghanistan. In
1838
the company's actions bought about the First Afghan War
(1838-
42). Assisted by Sikh allies, the company took Kandahar
and Kabul
and made its own candidate amir. The amir proved unpopular
with
the Afghans, however, and the British garrison's position
became
untenable. The retreat of the British from Kabul in
January 1842
was one of the worst disasters in British military
history, as a
column of more than 16,000 (about one-third soldiers, the
rest
camp followers) was annihilated by Afghan tribesmen as
they
struggled through the snowbound passes on their way back
to
India. The British later sent a punitive expedition to
Kabul,
which it burned in retribution, but made no attempt to
reoccupy
Afghanistan.
In Punjab, annexed in 1849, a group of extraordinarily
able
British officers, serving first the company and then the
British
crown, governed the area. They avoided the administrative
mistakes made earlier in Bengal. A number of reforms were
introduced, although local customs were generally
respected.
Irrigation projects later in the century helped Punjab
become the
granary of northern India
(see Irrigation
, ch. 3). The
respect
gained by the new administration could be gauged by the
fact that
within ten years Punjabi troops were fighting for the
British
elsewhere in India to subdue the uprising of 1857-58
(see the British Raj
, this ch.). Punjab was to become the major
recruiting
area for the British Indian Army, recruiting both Sikhs
and
Muslims.
Data as of April 1994
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