A History of British India-by Sir William Wilson Vol.I, 1899

Abstract

n this book I endeavour to complete a task which has occupied a large part of my life. Thirty-four years ago my attention was drawn .to the historical materials in the record rooms of Bengal, and the inquiries then commenced have been continued from the archives of England, Portugal and Holland. I found that what had passed for Indian history dealt but little with the staple work done by the founders of British rule in the East, or with its effects on the native races. The vision of our Indian Empire as a marvel of destiny, scarcely wrought by human hands, faded away. Nor did thfe’ vacuum theory, of the inrush of the British power into an Asiatic void, correspond more closely with the facts. Yet if we bring down England’s work in India from the regions of wonder and hypothesis to the realm of reality, and if the Jonah’s gourd growth of a night must give place for a time to the story t)f the Industrious Apprentice, enough of greatness remains. The popular presentment of the East India Company as a sovereign ruler, with vast provinces and tributary kingdoms under its command, obscures the most characteristic achievement of our nation in Asia. That achievement was no eudden triumph, but an indomitable endurance during a century and a half of frustration and defeat^ As the English were to wield a power in the Ejkst greater than that of any other European people, so was their training for the task to be harder and more prolonged. We have been too much accustomed*to regajd our Indian Empire as an isolated fact in the world’s history. This view does injustice to the Continental nations, and in some degree explains the slight esteem in which they hold our narratives of Anglo- Asiatic rule. In one sense, indeed, England is the residuary legatee of an inheritance painfully amassed by Europe in Asia during the past four centuries, In that long labour, now one Christian nation, then another, came to the front. But their progress as a whole was continuous. It formed the sequel to the immemorial conflict between the East and the West, which dyed red the waves of Salamis and brought Zenobia a captive to Eome. During each successive period, the struggle reflected the spirit of the times : military and territorial in the ancient world; military and religious in the middle ages; military and mercantile in the new Europe which then awoke; developing into the military* commercial, and political combinations of the complex modern world.