East India Company: #4 -The "Never Again" Man
Warren Hastings’ replacement was Lord Charles Cornwallis, writes William Dalrymple in The Anarchy . Cornwallis, the man who had surrendered the thirteen American colonies to George Washington. Never again, he swore, would he allow a colony to gain independence. Cornwallis brought in “unembarrassedly racist legislation” to prevent the British from mixing with the natives. After all, wasn’t that exactly what led to the American freedom struggle? Never again… And so began the phase of discrimination and contempt for non-whites. By now, the EIC’s revenue streams were so large that Cornwallis could out-finance all the EIC’s rivals, buy off enemies or hire armies to defeat them: “The colonial conquest of India was as much bought as fought.” It was this new, well financed army that now bore down on Tipu and forced terms of surrender that cut down his power to a point where he was no longer a possible rival to the EIC. Cornwallis also introduced the zamindari system: “just get EIC ...