Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/615

 1920 ~ REVIEWS OF BOOKS 607. for receiving presents and a jagir. But Clive in Mr. Dod well's view improved upon Dupleix's statesmanship by adopting a settled principle of supporting Hindu ministers against oiipression on condition that they performed their duties. This was his first step in advance. In short he had displayed in Bengal as a statesman the same high qualities as he had displayed in the Carnatic as a soldier, and in a higher degree. This view is perhaps open to question. Clive's military success and the resolute character to which it was due rallied to him the shifting crowd of astute native politicians of Mir Jafar's court, whose habit was the traditional one of currpng the favour of the strongest. To retain their support and use it to control the nawab needed no more statesmanship than the expression of a determined will. Clive was the typical English soldier, characterized by courage, tenacity, and often a simplicity too lacking in insight to do anything but cut the Gordian knots of oriental diplomacy, and it was this very directness by which he dominated the situation at every turn. His successors failed because they recognized other factors than the English interests and attempted a more complex task. It is when Clive is faced by problems of statesmanship that he fails, both at home and abroad. He might have ruled Bengal himself by the strong hand, he could not organize a government through others. The former alternative he recognized in 1759 in the first ofEer of the Dewani, and would have seized could he have wrung from either Pitt or the directors sufficient support, as the following extract from a letter of 9 October 1 759 from the Calcutta Board to the Court of Directors shows : the President has been applied to. .to become. . . the King's Duan. . . . He'has temporized for the present from the absence of their small force and the small hopes of more. . . the Forces requisite will be 2,000 Europeans. . . .* These forces were not sent and Clive had to fall back upon Dupleix's policy of a puppet-nawab, but this was, as, Mr. Dodwell says, ' a system essentially unstable ', and the responsibility for its collapse must surely rest with its creator rather than his successors in the thankless task of propping it. Clive set up to rule Bengal a nawab dependent on English troops to control his own, enforce his orders, and collect his revenues. His orders were ignored and confusion reigned. ' He is neither loved nor feared by his troops or his people.' ' The present system is rotten to the core,' ' the financial system went from bad to worse.' It was bound to if the nawab did not recover power, and it was inevitable that he should presently be accused of ' being guilty (in his country's interests) of con- spiring against the English '. The English decided to strike first and deposed him, but seeing the country's need of order and being debarred from supplying it themselves, set up a stronger man. This led of course to war, for the stronger the nawab the less would he tolerate being the puppet of the English. Mr. Dodwell blames Vansittart for setting up Mir Kasim and strengthening his hands against the opposition of the Company's servants, but could the president only have controlled those servants Mir Kasim could have governed and kept the peace. It was the Englishmen's interference with inland trade which sapped his
 * India Oifice Records, Abstract Court and Bay, i, 237.