Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/279

 CHAPTER XI

THE GOVERNOR-GENERALSHIP OF WARREN HASTINGS WARREN HASTINGS did not take his seat as first Governor-General in India until 1774; but from 1772, when he went to Calcutta as Governor of the Bengal Presidency, until his final departure in the spring of 1785, the whole course and character of Anglo-Indian history bear the impress of his personality and are connected with his name.

At the time of his taking office, the power of the Marathas, which had been accumulating for a hundred years, was threatening every prince and state in India from the Sutlaj River southward to Cape Comorin. The shattering overthrow that they had suffered at Panipat in 1761 had expelled them from the Panjab. Yet in Western India they were supreme; in Rajputana and Central India they plundered and ransomed at their leisure; and they were incessantly making predatory excursions northeastward into the fertile plains