ABSTRACT
William Roger Lewis, in his Foreword to The Origin of Empire, suggests that British imperialism was a catalyst for change and was part of the larger and dynamic interaction of European and non-Western societies.1 From a purely Eurocentric point of view, this may appear to have been the case. Within the context of India, however, the British conquest was more than the mere acquisition of land and territory, the plunder of an ancient civilization, or the expansion of British trade and administration. It was also cataclysmic for the indigenous social, economic, and political order. Eighteenth century Indian contemporaries characterized the situation as an inqilab, a revolution.2 In the beginning it may have been an ambiguous encounter of two distinctly dierent cultures that lasted for 150 years; then, that encounter quickly turned to one of subjugation and exploitation. When the Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II, granted the diwani of Bengal to the British in 1765, it was with the stipulation that:
Later, in 1772, Hastings rearmed, in his Plan for the Administration of Justice, that the British administration of India should be conducted agreeably to the old constitution of the Mughal Empire.4 At this point, the two cultures were beginning to show signs of mutual integration. However, this policy of accommodation was short-lived as Company policy began realigning itself.
