The English East India Company (1600-1874) is one of the few organizations in history that has been highly successful in combining economic and military-political activities. From the very beginning, this corporation had a dual, political and economic nature. Moreover, it had the potential to turn into a full-fledged domineering organism. This article focuses on the problem of the political and economic nature of the English DEC. The purpose of the article is to analyze the mechanism of evolution of this nature in the key period for the Company - the time of its transformation into an Indian power.

For the first century and a half of its existence (XVII - first half of the XVIII century), the East India Company (OIC) functioned primarily as a commercial corporation. During this period, trade needs mainly determined the nature of DECs ' relations with various types of polities1. From the English state-the crown and Parliament-the Company received the rights to monopoly trade with the East and a number of other privileges. By coming into contact with the authorities of the Indian patrimonial polities (the largest of which was the Mughal Sultanate at the beginning of the 17th century), the OIC gradually also achieved significant benefits. As a result, by the middle of the 18th century, the OIC's exports to Asia reached £ 1.3 million and imports from Asia reached £ 1 million [Chaudhuri, 1978, Tables 1-2, p. 507, 510], and it annually sent up to 20 ships to the East [Keay, 1991, p. 220].

However, even in the first period, the activities of DECs were not limited to trade. Since its incorporation in 1600. it had a number of characteristics of a sovereign state: the Crown delegated to the Company legislative, executive and judicial power over its employees and the right to independent foreign policy. The reason for this delegation was the very nature of the DEC's activities as a monopoly organization that conducts business in another part of the world, where England as a state is still an independent state.

1 I follow the tendency that has been rapidly developing in political science and historical research in recent decades not to use the term " state "in relation to the stadially preceding nation-state, i.e., to" pre-capitalist " forms of power organization. The very fact that the magazine "Oriens" has a special heading "Polity in the East" indicates, in my opinion, not only the strength of this trend, but also its "institutionalization" in general and in Russian Oriental studies in particular. Indeed, in the strict scientific and terminological sense, the phenomenon of the state and the term itself are rigidly "tied" to the New European reality. For example, the authoritative Encyclopedia of Social Sciences defines the state as "a form of centralized civil government that has been developing in Europe since the 16th century" (Social Science Encyclopedia, 1985, p. 818). In the analysis of forms of power organization, the broader term "polity" allows us to observe the principle of historicism, clearly distinguishing the phenomena of the capitalist system from all others. The phenomena and terms "state" and" patrimonium " are special cases of polities.

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not present. For the DEC to function successfully, it had to act as a State for its employees. Among other things, this required the Company to be prepared for the use of armed force-both to its employees (performing police functions) and to other (eastern) power organizations. Therefore, among the privileges given to the Company were the right to recruit an army and build forts 2.

Despite its power potential, until the mid-1740s, the Company lacked the resources to unleash it, and the polities it dealt with in the East were still strong (this was most clearly demonstrated by the OIC's brief and unsuccessful war with the Mughals in the late 1680s). By the middle of the eighteenth century, the European presence in India was still, in the aptly phrased phrase of Fr. Only a "point-based occupation" (Braudel, 1979, p. 621). However, being fortified settlements, the largest of the European trading posts de facto (sometimes dejure) came under the rule of Europeans (Madras, Bombay, Calcutta for the British 3, Pondicherry and Shandernagore for the French). Although until the middle of the 18th century neither the British nor the French set political goals for themselves in India, objectively their enclaves were formed as alternative centers of power to the Indian patrimonies (on the territory of which they were located), steadily gaining commercial, military and demographic weight4.

A qualitative leap occurred in the 1740s-1750s, when favorable circumstances developed for the realization of the power potential inherent in the DEC. First, by this time, the process of disintegration of the pan-Indian Mughal Sultanate had entered its final stage, during which a number of regional patrimonies were formed with varying degrees of centralization of power, military power and economic development. Secondly, the situation in India was directly affected by the processes at the core of the capitalist world system: the struggle of Great Britain and France for hegemony in this system entered a decisive phase. Having taken a " hot "form, it resulted in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748), and then in the first world War in history - the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). India was engulfed by the confrontation between the two nations when, taking advantage of the war of their states, the OIC and the French Company of Indies (CI) decided to deal with each other in a non-economic way, transferring their sharp rivalry from the commercial plane to the military one. In this regard, companies were able to rely on substantial military and legal support from their states. It was the needs of the war with France that forced the British Parliament to bring to its logical conclusion the process of transferring the characteristics of a sovereign state to the British OIC, giving it the legal possibility of creating a large land army. Therefore, the Anglo-French conflict was radically different from the previous naval wars between European competitors in Asia: for the first time it spilled out on land.

2 Already at the time of the appearance of the European DECs in the East, long before their transition to large-scale territorial seizures, the possession of significant military power (primarily naval) put them in a special position in relations with the authorities of Asian polities. By sharply distinguishing European merchants from Asian trade groups, it allowed them - unlike their Asian counterparts - not to pay the authorities "protection rent" (protection rent is the term of the American sociologist F. Lane). Moreover, the Eastern rulers sometimes counted on military assistance from European companies.

3 These three cities were the centers of the Indian OIC Presidencies , the trade and territorial units into which the British had divided India by the beginning of the eighteenth century. With the transformation of the Company into a power, the trade and territorial division became administrative-territorial.

4 It is significant that in the 1730s and 1740s, at least twice as many merchant ships anchored in Calcutta as in Hooghly, the economically leading port of Northeastern India under the Mughals (Marshall, 1976, p. 57). Europeans constantly carried out fortification work in their trading posts. Attracted by the European demand for cloth and the protection of cannons, the population of these enclaves grew rapidly. For example, the population of Calcutta reached 100,000 by 1735 [Roberts, 1952, p. 70-71], and the population of the largest imperial cities of Lahore, Delhi, and Agra declined in the eighteenth century from 400,000 to 100,000 [Bayly, 1983, p.112].

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The beginning of the turning point can be dated back to 1746, when, with the goal of forcibly eliminating each other, European companies began to reconsider the attitude towards their armed forces in India. Previously, the companies ' land detachments were intended only to protect their enclaves, and therefore were only relatively small garrisons of forts and trading posts. Now they had an offensive function-an attack on enemy enclaves, so the course was taken to create a large army, most of which were Indian Sepoys. This gave companies an incentive to introduce European military innovations of the 17th century-mobile field artillery and infantry drill training [Marshall, 1993, p. 36].

The main military operations of the Europeans were deployed on the territory of the Nawab state5th Carnatic in south-eastern India. First, the French took the initiative. The Governor-General of Pondicherry, J. F. Duplex (1741 - 1754), was the first to recruit a large army and with its help took Madras. This event dramatically changed the balance of power in the Carnatic. Nawab Anwar-ud-din (1744-1749), not without reason, regarded military operations on his own territory as arbitrariness and decided to restore order. However, when he reached Madras, his five thousand strong army was surprisingly easily routed by the musket volleys of a French-Sepoy detachment ten times outnumbered. This victory for the first time demonstrated to both the Indians and the Europeans themselves the multiple superiority of European discipline and armament. This was the beginning of a radical change in the nature of relations between European companies and Indian polities: the former felt their military strength on land, and the latter - their weakness. The Europeans were forced to come out from behind the walls of their forts, where they were hiding from the Indian authorities, by the war with each other, and suddenly it turned out that the authorities should take cover now: the Europeans are not only the masters of their cities, but also an invincible force on the battlefield.

Despite the capture of Madras, the first Anglo-French Carnatic War (1746-1748) ended in a draw. However, the beginning of a serious struggle was laid, and already in 1749 a new war broke out in India between the companies, despite the conclusion of the Peace of Aachen in Europe (which, however, was only a respite). This time, the parties were more sophisticated: they intervened in the struggle for power in the principalities of Carnatic and Hyderabad, entering into a completely new relationship with their rulers - subsidiary. Their essence was the provision by companies of a military detachment to the ruler, who paid for its services with money, but more often allocated certain territories for its maintenance. By the time of the Anglo-French Wars, there was already a market for subsidiary troops in India.7 Having forged combat-ready armies in war with each other, Ev-

Nawab 5-the viceroy of the Mughal Shah; by the middle of the 18th century, such viceroys had become virtually independent rulers.

6 Artillery played a significant role in the preliminary skirmish. The rate of fire of European field artillery in the 18th century was 15 rounds per minute, while in the Indian armies (before borrowing the latest European achievements from the 1760s), one shot in 15 minutes was considered an excellent indicator. The Nawab's cavalry was stunned by the rapid firing of only two French cannons and fled in panic, abandoning the baggage train (Ramaswami, 1984, p. 86).

7 Contrary to popular opinion in the literature, subsidiary relations in India were not an innovation of Europeans. As noted by the American indologist S. Gordon, this practice was a characteristic feature of relations in the sphere of power in post-Mongolian India. When the empire was no longer able to provide military force for the succession to the throne in the tributary principalities, conflicts became more frequent in them and applicants for power began to hire troops from outside, often allocating territories for their maintenance [Gordon, 1998, p.137-138]. However, the roots of this practice lie deeper: after all, in fact, a subsidiary territory is a variant of jagir, or iqta, i.e. a form of granting land income in Muslim polities, which assumed the maintenance of a military detachment. The term "ikta" was used by the eighteenth - century Indian chronicler Ghulam Husein to describe the first grant of the ruler of Hyderabad, the Northern Sarkars region, to Europeans (the French) (1753) (Ghulam Husein, 1898, p. 397). The use of the term "iqta" here is not surprising: a grant of this type was a characteristic feature of the military-administrative practice of all Islamic empires, the model of which was set by the Abbasids.

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The Ropeians immediately met considerable demand for their services from the Indian princes. However, in the case of subsidiary practice, there was a risk of the "employee" establishing military control over the "employer". In the case of the Europeans, this is exactly what happened.

Taking advantage of the struggle between the Navayat and Valajah dynasties in Karnataka and within the Asafiyya dynasty in Hyderabad, the French placed their proteges on the masnads (thrones) of both principalities. As a result, for the first time in India, a European trading corporation has established military control over an entire polity: in the key fortresses of the two principalities, its garrisons were located. The goal of the French entry into the sphere of power of Duplex was to siphon funds from the coffers of the principalities to finance the war with the British enemy. 8 However, by the end of the second Anglo-French War (1749-1754), the British had gained the upper hand in the Carnatic and their protege Muhammad Ali (1754-1799) was recognized as the Nawab.

Thus, in just five years, the nature of relations between European companies and Indian rulers has changed radically. Having discovered a huge advantage in the military sphere, Europeans turned from applicants for trade benefits to king-makers.

The outcome of the Third Carnatic War (1758-1761) was decided even before it began. A respite in the south allowed the British to pay attention to the richest country in India-Bengal, where in 1757 DECs also entered the sphere of power relations. By using Bengali resources, the British permanently eliminated the French threat to their positions in India. France was soon completely defeated in the Seven Years ' War.

A series of Carnatic wars irrevocably changed the OIC, which took the place of its French "counterpart" as the real military force in the country: the Nawab (Muhammad Ali) was completely indebted to the British for his masnad, and their troops were stationed in the country, which during the war years grew to several thousand soldiers. As a result, the OIC was able to make various demands to the Nawab, not only of a commercial nature, and to achieve their satisfaction, and could threaten both the use of military force and the termination of support, which was based on the same military force.

Having entered into subsidiary relations with the Nawab in order to obtain funds for the war with a European rival, after the victory over him, the OIC was not going to give up a new, non-commercial source of funds. Already after the war, in 1763, she forced Muhammad Ali to send her to the jagir of the Chengalapatta region adjacent to Madras [Collection..., 1812, p. 348-349]. Thus, the OIC acquired the function of the Mughal jagirdar, although it differed from the classical jagirdar in that, due to the unconditional nature of the grant, it was not obliged to maintain a military detachment for the Shah (the nominal ruler of the Nawab), but appropriated taxes without any remainder.9 British Bank income

8 It is not by chance that the French took the initiative here. In contrast to the private one, OIK CI was a semi-public enterprise; its business was chaotic and it was constantly in need of funds.

9 It is appropriate to emphasize that the OIC became (formally) an official of the Mughal Shah, and not his feudal vassal, as foreign and domestic indologists often call the Jagirdars. The Mughals granted representatives of the nobility not land, but the right to collect taxes from it, withholding part of the taxes for themselves. This situation makes Mughal grants similar to ancient Russian feeding, and, as the greatest expert on the history of Kievan Rus I. Ya. Froyanov convincingly showed, feeding was not related not only to feudal vassalage, but also in general to private-legal forms. I. Ya. Froyanov calls it a public-legal, official relationship [Froyanov, 1980, p. 63, 145]. (Many prominent pre - revolutionary Russian historians, such as A. E. Presnyakov, V. I. Sergeevich, and V. O. Klyuchevsky, shared a similar point of view.) However, it should be noted that I. Ya. Froyanov, unfortunately, used an inaccurate term. The fact is that the division into public and private spheres is characteristic of bourgeois society, but not of pre-capitalist ones. Nevertheless, despite the not quite accurate conceptual design of the idea, I. Ya. Froyanov correctly grasped the essence of the matter, emphasizing not the class, but the administrative, managerial nature of this type of attitude. By the way, K. A. Antonova calls the large iqtas of the Delhi Sultanate of the XIII-XV centuries feeding [Antonova, 1952, p. 68-69].

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jagira made up £ 160k. [Sheikh Ali, 1963, p. 3]. Thus, the DEC officially had a large non - economic source of income, from which it could draw funds for any needs-both commercial and military-administrative. At the same time, the Company's jagir (as well as all subsequent territories acquired by it) in fact, it fell out of the navabship, was irretrievably lost for him. Below the level of the Nawab, there were many different lords, sometimes with a high degree of autonomy from him. However, their territories remained in the post-Mongol power space and passed from hand to hand to the most powerful representatives of the nobility at a certain time. The OIC, on the other hand, was a fundamentally different force from them - both quantitatively (having a huge military advantage over other centers of power, including the Nawab), and qualitatively (being a capitalist corporation belonging to a European nation and not losing foreign loyalty). This determined her iron grip on the territories that she managed to bring under control.

This marked the beginning of the DEC's transformation from a merchant to a merchant power. It is no coincidence that this process began in the Carnatic, and not in Bengal - the most economically valuable region of Asia for the British. There were both power and economic reasons for this. The power problem was the weakness of the Nawab regime in the Carnatic compared to the Bengal regime, where as early as 1745 the Nawab had enough strength (by blockading trading posts) to force the British to return the ship they had captured to the French [Chaudhuri, 1978, p. 129]10. The economic reason was that the Carnatic did not have a trading house comparable to the Bengali bankers Jagat Seth, which was able to counteract British economic penetration by using both its own and administrative resources (the existence of the OIC mint in Madras, unlike Calcutta, speaks volumes). However, in order to start the process of transformation into the OIC's own polity, the British only had to establish control over one local polity - the main thing was to start.

In Carnatic, until the beginning of the 19th century, the "power" of the OIC was expressed only in the maintenance of a large land army and the indirect collection of taxes (in the form of a subsidy received from the nawab). The full-fledged British breakthrough to power took place in Bengal, which was part of another OIC presidency, and this was due to the local situation, and not to the Anglo-French struggle.

During the first half of the XVIII century. The OIC gradually developed a serious conflict with the Nawab of Bengal." Officials of the latter tried to prevent the British from abusing the dastak (a document that exempts goods from duty), did not fulfill the conditions of the shah's firman (order) of 1717, which provided the OIC with numerous trade privileges, and extorted money from its employees. However, while remaining primarily a commercial organization during this period, the OIC preferred to build relations with the regime according to the scheme of Anglo-Mughal relations of the previous century, more often buying off the claims of the authorities than resorting to the blockade of the coast (it had such a lever of pressure) [for example, see: Fursov, 2004, pp. 6-9].

In the first half of the 1750s, the Nawab power in Bengal significantly weakened. Due to Maratha raids from Central India by Nawab Alivardi Khan (1740-1756)

10 Mughal power in the Carnatic was initially weaker, as the Mughals conquered it a hundred years later than Bengal (in the 1680s); moreover, if in Bengal until about the second quarter of the XVIII century. Since there was no real social counterbalance to the Nawab power before the advent of the Zalshndar tax collector layer, the Mughals found in the Carnatic the already established power of the Palayakkars (military officials who inherited their positions), and under them the powerful structures of the Vellala caste that dominated the countryside.

11 This refers to a huge area that included the Mughal sub-provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (the latter, however, passed under the rule of the Marathas in 1751).

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It was necessary to sharply increase the financial requirements for zamindars and merchants, including Europeans, by resorting to real "fiscal terrorism", which seriously weakened the regime [Marshall, 1987, p. 72]. Alivardi's successor, Siraj-ud-daula (1756 - 1757), decided to restore order in the country: to crush the nobles, who had intensified the struggle for power, and to curtail the growing power of the British (as the most powerful Europeans in Bengal). However, he calculated his forces only in the short term and essentially provided the OIC with the case that eventually gave rise to the British Raj.

Fearing the development of events in Bengal in the "Carnatic scenario" (in which the British could support a court group hostile to the Nawab), Siraj demanded that the OIC demolish the new fortifications of Calcutta, hand over one of its opponents who had fled there, and stop abusing dastak. However, the Calcutta Council, headed by Governor R. Drake, was arrogant and self-confident.12

During its history, the OIC forts in India were repeatedly blockaded by the Mughal authorities, but they were always satisfied with ransom, not wanting to risk large losses during the assault. The situation in Bengal in 1756 was different from all previous conflicts in that both sides put too much at stake: the Nawab-the integrity and prestige of his power, the British - their independence. Therefore, Siraj, who approached the city with a 20 - 50-thousandth army, was determined to finish the job. When this became clear, most of the British, led by the governor, ran in panic to the ships and fled down the river.

Siraj did not set out to completely expel the British, who had so much weight in his country's economy. After the capture of Calcutta, he sent a letter to the Madras Governor, J. R. R. Tolkien. A letter to Pigot explaining that he was not going to interfere with the DEC's trade, but had taken the city away from it because of Drake's arbitrariness [Gopal, 1963, p. 99]. The Nawab only sought to reduce the British to the position of simple merchants, which they started with in Bengal, that is, to return them "to the beginning of the game", to the start, limiting them to this start. By taking Calcutta, Siraj felt that he had taught the British a lesson, forestalling their possible plans to seize power in Bengal. In fact, the Nawab provoked the British to such a seizure.

As in 1690, after the Anglo-Mughal war (when the OIC was forced to temporarily leave Bengal), the British could easily return to the country and continue trading, although they would have to be content with the role of poorly protected merchants. Unlike in 1690, they were not going to do this and chose a forceful solution to the problem. The British returned, not to accept the Nawab's terms, but to impose their own. Indeed, the OIC could restore its former privileged position only with a sword. She had recently forged this sword (in the south of India) and not only held it firmly in her hand, but managed to use it and see a brilliant result. Moreover, the Company had many allies in Bengal.

In just six months of his rule, Siraj managed to turn many of his subjects against him13: he replaced Alivardi officials and military leaders with his proteges, quarreled with some powerful zamindars (who essentially ruled parts of the country as semi-autonomous rulers), and alienated Jagat Seth

12 In particular, the Nawab's messenger, who came to Calcutta disguised as a traveling merchant to first investigate the situation in the city, was simply thrown out by the British, accusing him of entering the city like a thief and spy [Gupta, 1962, p.50]. This shows that the OIC, which owned Calcutta as a zamindar (it received this status in Bengal in 1698, having leased this territory), in fact began to perceive itself as its independent ruler.

13 Legally, most of the inhabitants of India continued to be subjects of the Mughal Shahs until 1857, but for convenience I do not use the term "subjects" in the legal sense.

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abusive treatment and extortion of funds for the war with his cousin [Marshall, 1987, p. 56, 75-76]. In general, the armed conflict between the OIC and Siraj affected a significant part of the Bengali merchant class. Local merchants worked closely with the Europeans, acting as their creditors and trading partners, using (illegally) their dastak, using their ships. Jagat Seth himself, although he occupied "commanding heights" in the financial life of the country (for example, through the channels of his firm, the zamindars transferred taxes to the Nawab), was dependent on imports of British silver14. Many merchants simply preferred to live in Calcutta: the extraterritorial enclave attracted them with a completely different attitude of its owners to property-understanding it as private, protected from encroachments of the authorities. So when the Nawab sacked Calcutta, those who rejoiced at their punishment were opposed by those who saw it as a threat to the country's vibrant economy (Marshall, 1987, p.67).

The third component of the British success in Bengal was the threat of invasion from the West hanging over it: in 1756, the Afghan Shah Abdali made a fourth campaign to India. So Siraj was caught between three fires: two explicit (British and Afghans) and one secret (conspirators), not counting the potential threat from the French: after all, their goals in relation to Bengal generally coincided with the British - there would have been force 15.

As a result, Siraj overestimated the traditional threat - an invasion from Afghanistan along the usual route of all conquerors entering India - and underestimated the unconventional one - the possibility of a European merchant corporation taking power from him. In January 1757, the OIC forces under Lieutenant Colonel R. Clive and the Royal Squadron of Admiral Ch. Watson was easily recaptured from Calcutta. Mistakenly considering the Afghan danger a priority, the Nawab quickly made peace, accepting almost all the demands of the OIC [Aitchison, 1909, p. 181-182] and urgently asking Clive for military assistance against Abdali. Of course, this was already a recognition of the changing role of the OIC, its emergence as a land power, and had far-reaching consequences.

The Nawab's appeal for help was interpreted by the British as permission to attack the French city of Shandernagore, and they lost no time in taking it. The fall of Shandernagore undermined KI's position throughout the East, as it was the Bengal trade that gave it the resources to maintain bases in Pondicherry and the Indian Ocean (Keau, 1991, pp. 314-315). Having lost the French counterbalance to the British, Siraj tried to restore the balance by entering into correspondence with the French Colonel S. J. Bussy, who was still in control of the Dean's Office (Prasad, 1973, p. 92). However, in this way, the Nawab linked in the eyes of the British the problem of completely excluding the French presence in Bengal with the problem of his own overthrow. Therefore, in April 1757, Calcutta decided to organize a palace coup in Murshidabad (the capital of the nawab) - and immediately met with understanding at the court.

When the OIC and Jagat Seth agreed on an acceptable figure - the warlord Mir Jafar, the British secretly concluded an extremely favorable agreement with the latter, the content of which shows that the OIC ceased to be primarily a trading corporation. It was a treaty between two polities rather than between a polity and a merchant association. The applicant pledged to enter into a military alliance with the OIC (by renouncing all Frenchmen and forbidding them to settle in Bengal), to pay it 100lac-

14 In the first half of the 1750s, the English DEC imported £ 200,000 worth of silver annually to Bengal [Marshall, 1987, p. 65].

15 Back in 1751. Duplex planned to throw troops from Central India into Bengal to bring it under control. The attention of the French was then diverted by the Marathas [Martineau, 1929, p. 135].

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khov 16 rupees in compensation for losses, grant her the rights of Zamindari region south of Calcutta and do not build fortifications below the city of Hooghly [Speeches..., 1922, p.10-11].

On June 23, 1757, at the battle of Palashi, Siraj was completely defeated by Clive, while 3/4 of his army (commanded by Mir Jafar and other conspirators)was inactive17. An important role in the victory of the British, of course, was played by the military superiority of the OIC, but, as all researchers emphasize, its money, and Indian money, determined it. On the eve of the Broadsword, almost the entire court of the Nawab was bribed by Bengali merchants [Gopal, 1963, p. 190]. "On the surface, the Broadsword guaranteed the success of the plot; in reality, it was the plot that guaranteed the success of the Broadsword. The battle ritual simply legitimized the transition of power" (Keay, 1991, p. 319).

After defeating Siraj, it was Clive who proclaimed Mir Jafar as his successor, which signaled a shift in the balance of power in Bengal. However, at the same time, the lieutenant colonel assured the new nawab that the OIC was not going to interfere in the administration and that its concern in Bengal was only trade, its "proper field of activity and its sole purpose" [Indian Constitutional Documents, 1948, p. 2]. It should be noted that Clive was not hypocritical: not only the OIC director, but also the head of the organization. but even the coup participants did not realize at first that the foundation of the British Empire in India was laid under Palashi. The intention of the Calcutta Select Committee (headed by Clive) in July 1757 was only to replace one nawab with another in order to "get more favorable conditions for the Company (for trade), and also to live without being threatened by the government of the country" (Muir, 1969, p. 48]. In other words, Clive's goal was almost identical to that set by the OIC in 1686, when it first seriously challenged the Mughal Indian power (and lost). However, the process of turning the OIC into the sovereign of Bengal was already underway, no matter what modest goals the British themselves set for Palashi. Having become the shock force of the coup, the OIC objectively could no longer stay away from the sphere of power in Bengal. The very logic of events dictated further British intervention in the affairs of the Nawab. In Calcutta, they understood that having obtained trade privileges by force, only in the same way the Company can retain them, which means that it is impossible to leave the acquired positions by a military force closely involved in power relations. It is no coincidence that Governor Drake and his advisers urged the directors to keep a "large contingent of troops" in Bengal to ensure the privileges they received after the coup [Muir, 1969, p. 52].

As in the Carnatic, with the only combat-ready army in the country, the British were able to begin the process of gradually bending the Nawab to their will. Under the pretext of protecting the Nawab from a possible invasion by neighboring Awadh, Clive camped his army near Murshidabad, and maintained it by the government of the country. So Clive did not allow Mir Jafar to grow stronger as a nawab and generally pushed him to the background. For the landed nobility and military leaders, Clive became the real nawab, from whom they sought protection [Gopal, 1963, p. 229-230].

Thus, the Palashi coup actually turned out to be a revolution: the power of the Nawabs began to flow smoothly into the hands of the European trade corporation. By 1757. The OIC lacked only real power in Bengal, commensurate with its economic influence and military might. So when the conspirators at court decided

Lakh 16 - 100k. in the Indian mathematical system.

17 The words of his great-uncle and predecessor, Alivardi, were prophetic: Europeans are like bees, "whose honey may benefit you, but if you disturb their swarm, they will sting you to death" (Gupta, 1962, p.45). If Alivardi, who had already seen the transformation of European companies into powers (so far only in the distant Carnatic), still managed to contain them in his own country, then Siraj failed completely.

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to take advantage of the Company, it has taken a lot more power into its hands than they expected. It turned out that the preservation of the Nawab's power, which was the goal of the British under Palashi, prevents them from taking advantage of the mass of opportunities that they now clearly saw [Marshall, 1987, p.80, 92].

The opportunities offered to the OIC were ultimately limited to access to the treasury of Bengal. The company received a source of revenue that was qualitatively and quantitatively very different from all previous ones. First, it began to draw amounts directly from the country's tax revenues, not only in the form of lump sums, but also in the form of regular payments. 18 As early as 1758, the British obliged Mir Jafar, who continued to need their military support, to pay them 1.1 lakh rupees per month (Marshall, 1987, p.83), i.e., in effect entered into a subsidiary relationship with him. Whereas formerly the OIC had to pay for its military expenses from trade profits, now it was paid for by Indian taxpayers. Clive estimated that Bengal's total revenue was £ 4 million, almost equal to the DEC's capital. Not surprisingly, the British were not going to lose their positions. The resources siphoned out of Bengal were used by the OIC for various purposes: to pay for a growing army, to strengthen Calcutta, to finance military operations against the French in the south, and, of course, to maximize trade profits. The acquisition of a non-commercial source of income allowed the British to sharply reduce the import of precious metals to Bengal after 1757: the Company began to spend its own money on buying the country's goods.19

The second (semi-commercial) method of enriching the British at the expense of the treasury was the widespread abuse of dastak by the Company and its employees and their undisguised coercion of many merchants and manufacturers: they were forced to sell goods at a price lower than the market price. Bengali officials who doubted the legality of dastak were immediately seized by sepoys and imprisoned [Antonova, 1958, p. 92]. By the early 1760s, the OIC had opened 400-500 trading posts across the country, causing an annual loss of Rs 25 lakhs to the treasury [Sinha, 1956, p. 11].

Relying on military superiority, the OIC imposed new financial obligations on the nawab (in violation of the treaty), and his debt constantly increased. When Mir Jafar refused to concede further, the British made a new coup-this time on their own: The Company put on masnad - Kompany and drove him from it. The new Nawab Mir Qasim (1760-1764) gave her the three most profitable districts and paid off all the debt to her.

However, the OIC did not become the undivided owner of Bengal immediately after Palashi. The period of transition from Nawab Bengal to British Bengal lasted for 15 years, and it can be divided into two segments. Until 1765, the Company asserted its political power in the country, and only in the second segment (1765 - 1772) - purely administrative. First, until 1765, there was another center of power in Bengal in parallel with the Company - Jagat Seth, an equal partner in the conspiracy against Siraj. The extent of his power (and the limited capabilities of the Company) can be judged at least by the fact that even after the Broadsword, the British did not manage to get the right to accept their silver from the Nawab mints for minting rupees [Sinha, 1956, p.121].

Secondly, the Nawab himself was not completely subordinate to the DEC's will. Of course, the British created a number of levers of influence on him - a military presence, their own clientele in his apparatus (support in contrast to the nawab of a number of undesirable air defense systems).-

18 Large sums were received not only by the DEC itself, but also by its employees as private individuals - in the form of gifts from the nawab and the nobility. Between 1757 and 1772, the total value of these gifts was about £ 2.5 million. [Marshall, 1976, p. 179].

19 If in 1729-1758. The OIC imported precious metals worth an average of £ 611,000 a year to the East, but in 1759 their imports fell to ? 173 thousand [Chaudhuri, 1978, Table 4, p. 512].

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appointed officials). However, neither the World of Jafar before 1760 nor the World of Qasim can be called a British puppet. The latter generally tried to reverse the process of the Nawab's loss of power in favor of the Company. To do this, Mir Qasim sacrificed part of the country: essentially giving the British lower Bengal, upper Bengal and Bihar, he tried to reduce their influence to nothing by creating a highly centralized principality (centered in Monghir). Gradually, the Nawab succeeded in removing pro-British officials, reorganizing the army on the European model, subjugating major zamindars, and even arresting Jagat Seth (Marshall, 1987, p. 85-86). Since the OIC continued to claim the resources of the entire principality (and its claims were constantly growing), the Nawab's "policy of self-reinforcement" could not but lead to a decisive clash with the OIC. At first Mir Qasim protested against the Company's demands, then became a fool 20, and finally lost patience. The clash occurred in 1763, when Mir Qasim abolished all domestic trade duties, making the British dastak meaningless. A hard line prevailed in the Calcutta council, and a war broke out in which the British completely defeated Mir Qasim and drove him to Awadh, returning Mir Jafar to Masnad.

If the victory at Palashi only allowed the OIC to establish itself in power in Bengal, the campaign of 1763-1764 brought it already undisputed dominance. Dissatisfied with the British presence, the forces were eliminated, and the Nawab came under the absolute control of the OIC. At the same time, its other rival in the struggle for power was weakened: after the defeat, Mir Qasim (unlike Siraj) did not stop at the physical elimination of Jagat Seth, his actual prisoner [Ghulam Husein, 1898, p.385]. In a situation of open armed conflict, the banker again bet on the DEC, but this time he lost, and objectively his murder was in the Company's hands.

Soon, the OIC legally secured the transformation of the Nawab into its puppet. Under agreements with the restored Mir Jafar, it limited the size of his army to 12,000 horsemen and the same number of infantry [Collection..., 1812, p.33], and increased his payments for the maintenance of his own army to 5 lakhs per month. In February 1765, the British concluded a treaty with Mir Ja'far's successor, his son Najm-ud-daula (1765-1770).

Under the agreement, the OIC, first of all, essentially retired the Nawab: the Najm agreed to hand over all matters to Muhammad Reza Khan, whom Calcutta "recommended" for the post of naib nazim (deputy Nawab). At the same time, Reza Khan immediately came under close British control: to oversee his activities in Murshidabad, the first post in India was created as a resident envoy-a representative of the OIC at the court of an Indian prince. Later, the OIC will create a whole system of residencies, which will serve it as a tool for indirect management of Indian policies. Secondly, the OIC established full control over the external defense of Bengal, and thirdly, over its taxes: the appointment and removal of district mutasaddi (tax officials) became subject to the approval of the Governor and Council of Calcutta. In addition, rupees of Calcutta coinage were given the right to freely move around the country on a par with Murshidabad ones (blow to Jagat Sets) [Collection..., 1812, p.40-42].

20. The Nawab wrote to Calcutta about the duties: "You... you're going to give me something for tobacco... and allow me to charge 2.5% for salt. Why do you take on such burdens?". As the British were constantly complaining about his viceroy in Dhaka, Mir Qasim reported: "I displaced him... you can choose whomever you want from the Europeans to take over the management of Dhaka." In 1763, the Nawab wrote:: "I have decided to concede to you on all these points. Now I am waiting for your answer to the question: is my life safe? Or should we do something else?" [Gopal, 1963, p. 286].

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Thus, the British commercial corporation began to turn into an Indian territorial power21, which was facilitated by the combination of two logics: the logic of the development of the OIC itself, ready to use any sources of income to increase profits, and the logic of the intra-Indian course of events. We are talking about the process of "commercialization of power" (the term of the English indologist K. Bailey), which has been gaining momentum since the end of the XVII century, in which not only trade monopolies, but also tax collection (buyback) and other administrative functions became the object of purchase and sale. Trade, power, and taxes became so intertwined that any large entrepreneur needed to operate in all of these areas to succeed (Bayly, 1988, p. 46). The OIC has been very well integrated into this process due to its hybrid power-trade nature, being better adapted to the situation than the Indian participants themselves. In the military and organizational sphere, it still had an indisputable superiority (only by the end of the 1760s would the first worthy opponent of the British appear in India-Mysore). In the commercial sphere, the Company was the only political factor in India with sources of income outside the subcontinent (being a global trading corporation).

Of course, the new, powerful role has become an additional source not only of money, but also of worries for DECs. Once in the new coordinate system, the DEC was forced to play by its rules. If the incorporation of a Company a century and a half earlier meant that it entered into competition with similar organizations - other trading companies, then the change in the nature of the Company in India meant that it entered into competition with polities. After Mir Qasim's exile to Awadh, the British had to repel an invasion by the Nawab of that country, Shuji-ud-daul (1754-1775). After defeating the latter, the OIC forced him to conclude a military alliance, i.e. entered into relations with the neighboring polity as the same polity (albeit hiding behind the name of the Bengal Nawab for the time being). In addition, the OIC deprived Shuja of physical control over the Great Mughal Shah Alam II (1759-1806), who, while still the crown Prince, fled Delhi due to the machinations of enemies. Since the Mughal Shah legally remained the ruler of India and his nominal power continued to be recognized by all the princes (who formally remained his deputies), the radical change in Anglo-Mughal relations was an important milestone in the formation of the Company as a polity.

The transformation of the OIC into a power was a direct consequence of the demise of the Mughal state: the quality of power "flowed" from the Mughals to the British, as if by the law of communicating vessels. It is not surprising that, having captured the Shah himself, the British did not miss the opportunity to legitimize the achieved breakthrough to power. Under the dictation of the same Clive, Shah Alam in 1765 officially approved British proteges in the Masnad of Bengal and Karnataka and confirmed the transfer of a number of lands to the OIC. Moreover, since the OIC has become the undivided master in Bengal, the agenda of the meeting will include:

21 There is a point of view that from the same time (since the 1750s), under the influence of successful wars with France, the character of the British Empire as a whole (meaning the American colonies of Great Britain) began to change in a similar way - its commercial character began to give way to the political one. However, supporters of this point of view (L. G. Gipson, C. M. Andrews) remain in the minority, most historians insist on the continuity of the development of the empire before and after the Seven Years ' War (Marshall, 1999, p. 49). Nevertheless, such an episode, cited by the German historian L. Dehiyo, attracts attention. In 1762, when discussing the terms of the peace treaty in Great Britain, opinions were expressed that it would be preferable to take away from the French not Canada, but their commercially valuable West Indian colonies. However, the point of view of Secretary of War W. Pitt Sr., who was in favor of expansion in North America, prevailed. Output of l. Dehiyo is quite convincing: "This short-sighted calculation was defeated by a powerful new imperialist tendency, which won a convincing victory over the idea of simple commercial and tax exploitation of the colonies. The concept of a world maritime empire emerged " [Dehio, 1962, p. 120].

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there was a question of her acquiring a position in the Mughal hierarchy herself. Therefore, the main award of the Mughal was the appointment of the Company as the Diwan of Bengal [Collection..., 1812, p. 43, 48 - 51, 361 - 363]. The law of diwani provided for the collection of taxes and the administration of civil justice, while the nawab (nazim) had the nizamat-military power (long a formality) and the administration of criminal justice. Since then, the DECs no longer have to use intimidation to extract the required amount from the Nawab every time. As a diwan, the Company legally began to receive10, and the nawab - the remaining 6 [Ghulam Husein, 1898, p. 386]. Thanks to Diwani, the OIC officially took a prominent place in the formally still existing imperial system, which in the new conditions was equivalent to obtaining the status of one of the powers of India.23

As a divan, the DEC had the right to put its own people in charge of tax collection. It would seem that this is exactly what she was preparing the ground for, entering into agreements with Najm and the Shah. However, instead, the British introduced a system of "double management": using the former tax apparatus, they were content for seven years with the final result of what they collected. The current situation was a vivid example of societas leonina24: the diwan did not perform its functions (but enjoyed all the advantages of its formal status), the nawab was retired, and Reza Khan worked for both.

It was not by chance that the DEC did not immediately assume responsibility. First, it feared an international (European) conflict. In 1767, Clive wrote to the Calcutta Select Committee that the Nawab "has nothing left but his name and the shadow of his power. However, it is absolutely necessary that we appear to honor this name, this shadow... Appointing employees of the Company as collectors or performing any action by applying English authority, which can equally be performed by the nawab at our request, would mean throwing off the mask-declaring the Company a Suba (nawab. - K. F.) of the provinces. Foreign nations would immediately be offended, and complaints made to the British court would have very difficult consequences" [Indian Constitutional Documents, 1948, p. 9].

Secondly, 1765-1772 became a necessary transition period for the British - from a merchant Company to a ruler Company. It is not by chance that Murshidabad resident F. Saike (1765-1768) was simultaneously the head of the Qasimbazar trading post, i.e. he combined the functions of an ambassador and a merchant agent (Khan, 1969, p.170). In the 1760s, the DECs did not yet have enough employees in Bengal to fill the administrative office.

22 1/16 part of Rs.

23 It should be noted that the initial reaction of DEC directors to Clive Divani's acquisition was negative. The Company's management continued to think in terms of short-term profits and did not approve of the activities of its employees in India, which did not give immediate financial returns. In general, due to the lack of communication with the homeland, local DEC officials "led" the directors behind them, constantly putting them in front of a fait accompli (up to a year and a half elapsed between sending izvestia to London and receiving the directors ' response instructions in India). In the literature, the DEC's expansion, which is autonomous from London, is called "sub-imperialism" (Marshall, 1987, p.91), based on the initiative of its local officials.

Nevertheless, this subimperialism was directly influenced by the global economic situation. One very important factor contributed to the introduction of DECs into the Mughal tax system. After 1760, gold production in Brazil fell sharply (from 15 to 5 tons per year), and the increase in silver production in an alternative source of precious metals - Mexico - resumed only from 1775. It is in this world economic context that the British expansion in India in the second half of the XVIII century as a whole should be considered [Frank, 1978, p. 116, 150]. Since the OIC was a world-class economic phenomenon, it is not surprising that economic fluctuations in the opposite part of the world pushed it to seize power in a single country. It should be emphasized once again that the funds received in Bengal were spent by the OIC not only on the needs of its functioning as a polity, but also on the needs of its Asian commerce.

24 Lion community (Latin) - a union from which one party receives all the benefits, and the other bears all the hardships. By the way, three lions were depicted on the coat of arms of the OIC.

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the staff of the polity, and these employees have managerial qualifications and knowledge of the population. The main thing was that the OIC was not yet fully aware of itself as a Power. Because of this, as the most far-sighted representatives of the Company in Bengal have rightly pointed out (the resident in Murshidabad, R. Becher (1768-1771), the merchant U. Bolte), two components of its essence were in conflict: the interests of the OIC as the sovereign of Bengal and its interests as a trade monopolist in this country were opposite, which was fraught with the ruin of both the Company and the country [Indian Constitutional Documents, 1948, p.10-12]. Since Bengal was the most important source of funds for the DEC, these interests had to be reconciled at least partially - otherwise the Company would have cut down the branch on which it was sitting.

Reconciliation of interests presupposed the Company's refusal to simply withdraw tribute and the transition to a more responsible attitude to the economy in the essence of its own ownership. This necessarily meant the final abolition of the Nawab authority.

The first step towards this was the appointment in 1769 by the Governor of Calcutta, G. Verelst, of district observers (from among the DECs) to oversee the performance of the diwani functions, which were sent to the Company by Reza Khan's officials. However, this half-hearted measure did more harm than good: observers saw their posts only as an opportunity for bribery and private trade (to the detriment of DEC trade) [Moon, 1999, p.148]. Therefore, in 1772, the board of directors eliminated the system of "double management" altogether. By order of Governor W. Hastings (1772-1774), Reza Khan and two of his deputies were arrested on charges of embezzlement and tried, but acquitted: the accusation served the British only as a pretext for a radical reform of government [Vidyavachaspati, 1956, p.47]. From that time on, British officials took over the collection of taxes and the administration of civil justice. It is significant that in the same year Hastings abolished dastak.

However, the DEC did not stop there. Having decided to take over the administrative functions, she took them all, ending the fictitious power of the nawab. The Company simply appropriated the Nizamat, deviating from the practice of legitimizing its power with Mughal grants. As a result, the highest judicial authority for both the civil and criminal courts of Bengal was the Governor of Calcutta and his council.

The Company's assumption of all administrative functions in Bengal as a whole ended its establishment as an Indian power (further, the OIC only reformed the system). By 1772, the Company had recruited the necessary 25 employees, and they had acquired managerial competence. Perhaps the most important thing was that by this time the OIC had become accustomed to the very role of the Bengali ruler.

In addition, DECs have no competitors left in this area. The Nawabs were its own pensioners, and the size of their pension was gradually reduced by the British to 16 lakhs in 1773 [Select Documents, 1958, p. 79]. After 1770, the Company no longer honored the nawabs with bilateral treaties, openly ignoring their formal authority. As for the main sponsors of the 1757 Jagat Seth conspiracy, it turned out that in the short term they won, and in the long term they called the British to their misfortune. Jagat Setham was dealt an irreparable blow by Mir Qasim, who, in an attempt to get rid of the Company, plunged his hand deep into their wallet. But his overthrow did not bring relief to the company either. After becoming a divan, the DEC gradually got rid of its banking services [Sinha, 1956, p.139-142].

In historiography, there are different points of view on the problem of turning the OIC into an Indian power. British imperial historians consider the conquest of the British-

25 Whereas in the 1750s there were about 70 DECs in Bengal, by 1773 their number had reached 250 [Marshall, 1976, p. 151.

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The myth of India is an accident. In their opinion, the OIC entered the path of conquering India solely for the purpose of self-defense against aggressive French and local princes (such as Siraj) [see: Moon, 1999; Reid, 1947]. Nationalist Indian and Soviet historians go to the other extreme: the British (as well as the French) were aggressive invaders who attacked the Indians from the very beginning [see: A Comprehensive History of India, 1978; Antonova, 1958]. The truth here lies in the middle: chance helped the prepared. The OIC used the chance to extend its existing power over its own employees to an entire Asian region, and independently transform the self-government granted to it by the English crown and Parliament into political power over the population of an entire Asian country. This chance was the war with the French, who had indeed shown imperial initiative in South India, 26 and the need to protect their business interests from the Bengal Nawab. A company that already had the characteristics of a sovereign had only to get a boost to turn into a real power. With such a boost, her accumulated power potential was revealed by this time.27

The process of transformation of the OIC into a power was initiated in the Carnatic, but the deepening of this process took place in Bengal, where the first British possession in India appeared. This is not an accident. In the Carnatic, the British had an equal relationship with the Nawab mainly over the French, in the context of the war with the KI. Initially, the confrontation here was an OIC-KI confrontation, and control over the Nawab was more a means of achieving victory over a European competitor. After defeating him, the British were satisfied for a long time (until 1801) in the Carnatic as the recipient of a military subsidy from the Nawab. In Bengal, they entered the sphere of power for its own sake (although the war with the French served as a catalyst). Initially, there was a confrontation between the DEC and the nawab, the authorities (objectively) it has become a goal for the British, not a means. The reason for this very situation was the different degree of centralization of power in the two principalities-fragments of the Mughal Empire. If in the Carnatic the Nawab regime was weak and tried not to offend the Europeans, in Bengal it was much stronger and claimed a monopoly of power. Hence the clash between the British and Siraj, which gave an additional impetus to the process of transformation of the OIC that had already begun in the Carnatic.

This transformation was notable for its unintentional nature. Even when they decided to respond to Siraj by force, the British did not set out to revolutionize the very essence of the Company. However, this revolution took place because an internal factor was added to the external factor - the powerful land army of the OIC. We are talking about the shakiness of the Nawab's position due to the specifics of his relations with the landed nobility and the orientation of a significant part of the merchants towards the British. In the DEC, many merchants saw not only a profitable trading partner, but also a force capable of protecting their property and business interests from encroachments of the authorities.

26 Perhaps, the essence of France as a primarily continental power affected. Another thing is that the British turned out to be worthy students of Duplex, quickly finding their way in an unusual element - on land.

27 The center of gravity in the process of transforming the OIC into a Power was in its Madras Presidency, and then shifted to the Bengal Presidency. However, it is appropriate to say a few words about the Bombay Presidency. The unprecedented military support provided to the OIC by the State during the wars with the French brought it military dominance on the west coast of India. First, in 1755, with the support of the royal squadron and in alliance with the largest Maratha ruler, the Peshwa, the Company defeated the local Maratha ruler Angre, with whose family it fought a naval war for the right not to pay tolls during the first half of the XVIII century. Secondly, in 1759, the British established military control over the main port of the Mughal Empire, Surat, knocking out the Sidi, who were in charge of the city of Muslims from Ethiopia. All this demonstrates that even in the Bombay Presidency - the weakest in military terms - the OIC's expansion beyond trade activities was already clear.

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The coup of 1757 was carried out primarily with Indian money, but its striking force was British weapons. Having begun to use its military power in a power struggle to get a more compliant Nawab, the OIC - against its own intentions - set in motion the mechanism of its transformation into a ruler - as soon as it gained access to the Bengal treasury. The opportunity to draw funds from an external source (without giving anything in return) was too great a temptation for both the DEC and its employees to allow themselves to withdraw from the sphere of power in which they began to establish themselves in 1757. If the conspirators had intended to use the Company as an armoured fist against Siraj, the new nawab was actually caught in that fist with an iron grip after the massacre. Power began to flow smoothly from him to the DEC, which greatly benefited from its hybrid nature: it had not only an impressive military machine, but also a serious financial and economic weight in the country. The Nawab's attempt to imitate the military machine of the OIC was fruitless and only accelerated his complete retreat into the shadows. The Diwani grant ended the period when the Company established its political power in Bengal (1757-1765) and began the period when it established its administrative power (1765-1772). This led to the reorientation of all branches of government by the British. The Company's sharp shift from commercial sources of income to tax sources was also supported by a weakening of the inflow of precious metals from America.

By 1772, the OIC had become a land power in India (without losing its merchant nature). The Carnatic was under its full military control, and in Bengal it became a proper polity with all the proper attributes: the army, the collection of taxes, the administration of justice, and an independent foreign policy. There was already a precedent for the transformation of a European trading company into an eastern polity by this time - the Dutch OIC, which began building its empire in Java as early as 1619, during the period of Dutch hegemony in the world capitalist system. Having embarked on the same path a century and a half later, at a time when the candidacy of the next hegemon was being decided in a sharp Anglo-French struggle, the English DEC not only put its French "colleague" out of the game, but also left the Dutch one far behind in a short time. However, in the middle of the XVIII century. The OIC was only at the beginning of its imperial career: Bengal was only the core from which, by the middle of the next century, the British Empire in India had grown - the core of the British World Empire.

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