Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/24

16 slowly but surely creating a sense of solidarity among the Indian peoples. For while Lord Dalhousie overleapt the old breakwaters between India and foreign nations, he also began the process of throwing down the ancient barriers between the races of India itself. And if he extended the foreign risks and responsibilities of India far beyond their previous limits, he also laid the foundation of a United India within her own frontiers.

I propose in this little book to write a brief but clear and connected narrative of Lord Dalhousie's conquests, as a whole, passing over for the moment the other events of his administration, which intervened between the conquest of the Punjab in 1848 and the conquest of Lower Burma in 1852. I shall then endeavour to present a similar view of what is known as Lord Dalhousie's annexation policy — that is to say of his systematic action in regard to the Native States which brought many of the Feudatory Powers in India under direct British rule. In this part of the work, also, I shall unfold the successive acts in the great drama of annexation, from that of Sátára in 1848, to that of Oudh in 1856, without interrupting the story by the intermediate measures of domestic administration.

Having thus shown how Lord Dalhousie built up the new India, by conquest and annexation. I shall exhibit the means which he took to consolidate it. For in Lord Dalhousie's great scheme of empire,