Underhand tactics win the day for East India Company

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey, oil on canvas 

(Francis Hayman, c. 1762)

On 23rd June 1757 the Battle of Plassey (Bengali: পলাশীর যুদ্ধ, Pôlashir Juddho) was won by the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. This battle consolidated the Company's presence in Bengal, and allowed them to dominate the sub-continent for the next hundred years.

Plassey lies on the banks of the Bhagirathi River, about 150 kilometres (93 miles) north of Calcutta and south of Murshidabad, then capital of Bengal (now in Nadia district in West Bengal).

Prior to the battle Robert Clive, Commander-in-Chief of British India, and soldier of fortune undermined the Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah by bribing the his disgruntled army commander, Mir Jafar, promising him that he would make him Nawab if he won.

Siraj-ud-Daulah had a numerically superior force but Mir Jafar, along with his co-conspirators assembled their troops near the battlefield but made no move to actually join in when the fighting started. Siraj-ud-Daulah's army with 18,000 soldiers was defeated by 3,000 soldiers of Clive’s in just forty minutes.

After this battle the East India Company wielded enormous influence over the new Nawab and consequently acquired large concessions which enabled them to increase their revenues and military might which they used to push the other European colonial powers; the Dutch and the French out of South Asia.

My debut novel, Sinclair, begins on board an East Indiaman bound for Madras in 1786. I have based the beginning of the story on what happened to a real ship called the Halsewell which set out from Gravesend on New Year’s Day of that year with a contingent of fresh soldiers and military supplies for Fort St George in Madras. In the book I have called the ship the Sherwell as I have changed and added to the characters on board the original ship.

Like the real Halsewell the Sherwell never reaches its destination; it was brought to grief on the Dorset coast just 6 days later in one of the worst storms of the century.

Loss of the East Indiaman Halsewell by Robert Smirke

Of the 240 passengers and crew on board only 74 survive, my hero Sinclair is one of them. Find out how two young men; Dr James Sinclair and Captain Frank Greenwood, both on the brink of successful colonial careers with the East India Company rebuild their lives and search for meaning and love in the aftermath of this disaster in my new book called Sinclair which will be available this autumn.