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Pakistan
COMPANY RULE
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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