There are any number of historical figures whose reputations are being reviewed nowadays in the light of modern susceptibilities. Clive of India was a controversial figure even in his own lifetime, as members of the Society learned from Max Keen on the evening of 29 October.

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Robert Clive, who became Governor of Bengal and who essentially founded the British Raj, was born in Shropshire in 1725 into a family of minor landowners.  His father was a lawyer, so the family was reasonably prosperous, but not aristocratic, a disadvantage which Clive felt acutely even in the period of his greatest fame.

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He led a wild youth, being totally fearless and “out of measure addicted to fighting”, and allegedly led a company of similarly wild youths running a protection racket in the town of Market Drayton. 

 

At the age of 16 he became a clerk in the East India Company, beginning his career at Fort St George (Madras). 

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Very early on, however, Clive decided on a military career and quickly built a reputation for skill and courage, distinguishing himself in 1748 at the siege of Pondicherry.  A series of military victories, often against much larger enemy forces, cemented Clive’s reputation at home.  At the Battle of Plassey in June 1757, Clive, with an army of 3,000 men, defeated the 50,000-strong forces of the Nawab of Bengal (by a combination of military daring and cunning suborning of the Nawab’s allies).  This led to the expulsion of the French and Dutch from India and marked the start of British domination.

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Even during his lifetime, however, Clive’s military reputation was sullied by a reputation for rapacity; he amassed a vast fortune, either by enormous sums received from local rulers or by looting (“loot” is a Hindi word). He is also credited by some historians with causing a disastrous famine in Bengal between the years 1769 and 1773, after he had returned to England, true, but having ruined the economy of the state and left it without effective government.

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Clive suffered from bouts of depression throughout his life. He attempted suicide twice in his youth, and was at last successful in his suicidal efforts in November 1774.  Papers of the time, however, reported his death as being due to an apoplectic fit or a stroke, and the family arranged his funeral normally. 

 

He is buried at St Margaret’s Church, Moreton Say.