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March 30, 2007|Volume 35, Number 23


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Among the items on view in the exhibition "Collecting an Empire" is this image from Charles D'Oyley's book "Tom Raw, the Griffin," a burlesque poem describing the adventures of a cadet in the East India Company's service.



Exhibit reveals corruption behind
the 'glitter' of East India Company

A new exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library traces the nearly three-century history of the British East India Company, an institution that was once celebrated as a symbol of national and imperial power, and later reviled for its atrocities and mismanagement.

"Collecting an Empire: The East India Company (1600-1900)" traces -- through manuscripts, prints and images -- the encounters between the company and its partners and adversaries in South Asia.

"After 250 years of trade and territorial expansion in South Asia, the East India Company still conjures up images of silks and cottons, tea and spices, rajahs and nabobs -- all emblems of the fabled wealth of India," says the exhibit's curator, Ayesha Ramachandran, a graduate student in Renaissance studies. "But behind that glitter of commodity trading and imperial design lurks a darker, perhaps more haunting, picture of colonial exploitation and racial struggle, economic oppression, political corruption and near bankruptcy."

The exhibition draws on several Beinecke collections, primarily the Osborn Collection; the collection of Indic, Urdu and Persian manuscripts; and the collection of British tracts and broadsides. Materials on display include illuminated mythological manuscripts, maps, letters, official proclamations, diaries, ships' logs, company dictionaries and phrase books, travel journals, natural histories, novels, poems, ballads and broadsides.

Incorporated by royal charter in 1600, the East India Company (EIC) was formed as an early joint-stock company by Elizabethan merchants seeking to compete for a slice of the commercial markets opened up by the discovery of a sea-route to India. Thanks to concessions from the Mughal Empire, the company had set up 23 "factories" in India by 1652 and was able to add Bombay and Calcutta to its map by the end of the 17th century.

By the mid-18th century, the EIC controlled exclusive revenue collection rights in Bengal and had established a strong military presence in the region. Due to the company's increased involvement in territorial governance, the British government in London decided to regulate the activities of the EIC -- making it answerable to the government for its political policies, a move precipitated in part by the impeachment of Warren Hastings, first governor-general of India, who had been charged with corruption.

The scandal surrounding the Hastings Impeachment drew the attention of the British public towards India and spawned an explosion of "Asiatic" societies and other groups fascinated by Indian culture, history and religion. Many British learned Indian languages, translated texts, collected Indian manuscripts, and produced studies of the natural history, customs, clothes, sports and languages of the subcontinent.

"It may be surprising to remember that the chief language of power in India at the time was Persian, the language of the Mughal court, and it was in Persian that the officials of the English East India Company conducted its early rule, administration and even diplomacy," says Ramachandran. "EIC officials themselves became avid collectors of Persian manuscripts, many of them richly illuminated, and several Persian texts with interlinear English translations survive from this period, along with a plethora of phrase books, dictionaries and guides to translation." A number of these are on view in the exhibition.

By the early 19th century, the EIC controlled half the world's trade and its workings affected both foreign and domestic affairs. At the same time, however, the company was under pressure due to its loose accounting practices and mounting debts, which contributed to oppressive taxation, revenue extortion, and political oppression in India. During the so-called Sepoy Mutiny (the First Indian War of Independence) in 1857, a section of the company's army revolted against their officers and, backed by local support, challenged the authority of British rule.

"Horrific episodes of rape, looting, murder and mob violence on both sides swept across northern India, until the British finally suppressed the uprising in 1858," says Ramachandran. "The outcome marked a crucial turning point in Indian and British relations: the war marked the end of company control, the end of the Mughal Empire, and the formal introduction of direct British rule under a viceroy. By Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, India had become the Jewel in the Crown of the Empire; but by the same year, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was already protesting British rule in South Africa and would shortly return to India to take up the cause for independence."

The fortunes of the EIC has a particular resonance at Yale as it intersects with the history of its namesake, Elihu Yale, whose bequest of 417 books formed the core of the original Yale Library of 1742. Educated in London, Yale was employed as a clerk in the East India Company offices before being selected to go to India as a writer in 1671. He helped secure bases in Porto Novo, south of Madras, so the company could extend its trade, and he later became governor of Fort St. George. His success as a private trader, however, eventually cost him that post. Yale's personal papers and the copy of an early EIC report on India's geography and politics, part of the merchant's bequest to the University, are among the items on view in the exhibition.

"Collecting an Empire: The East India Company (1600-1900)" will be on view through early June at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 121 Wall St. Exhibition hours are 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday; and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. Admission is free.


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