The Scandal of Empire

Nicholas B. Dirks, author of The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain, is a prominent scholar of British India. He writes on the impact of British colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent. Dirks studied under Bernard Cohn, and in-line with Cohn, publishes works of history and anthropology. Dirks also published Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, which delves into the establishment and institutionalization of the caste system on the Indian subcontinent. In Castes of Mind, Dirks argues that the caste system is a product of the encounter between India and British colonial rule, and that the caste system effectively organized Indian society while creating a cultural identity.

The Scandal of Empire seeks to explain how well known scandals of the East India Company in the eighteenth century were either overlooked or incorporated within the larger and more compelling imperial narrative of a land that laid itself bare for the British to conquer. Dirks maintains that scandals are the foundation for the creation of British imperialism, and that scandals led to “modern understandings of corruption, sovereignty, public virtue, market economy, bureaucratic state, history, and tradition” (5). Based on these nine themes, Dirks organizes his book accordingly. The first three chapters chronologically build up to the Warren Hastings impeachment trial and Dirks arranges each of the other six chapters around a single thematic concept. While the opening chapters flow in a chronological manner, the remaining chapters bounce around and seem jumbled in their organization. I think The Scandal of Empire would have flowed better and read less repetitious if all chapters followed a chronological arrangement.  

The Scandal of Empire is informative about the origins of British corruption in India. Dirks argues that the right to private trade by East India Company officials is the “alleged scourge of Company integrity and managerial probity” (37). When Mughal authorities granted the right of trading privileges to the Company for private purposes, the Company servants accumulated great fortunes. The Company grew in domestic importance and influence in Parliament increased. This allowed Company servants in India to, essentially, “pay off” the Crown with the spoils of India.

As evidence of the profitability of corruption in British India Dirks turns to Robert Clive. The son of lower-level gentry in Britain, Clive went to India at age seventeen to augment his family’s social and financial position. He earned the distinction of valor on the battlefield at the Battle of Plassey and eventually rose to a position of high rank in the Mughal court. There Clive accepted land grants, secured plunder, captured military spoils, and accepted gifts. When detractors in England soffed at his growing fortune Clive argued on behalf of himself that it was acceptable to receive gifts voluntarily given for genuine purposes and posed no harm to the Company or England (44).

I think Dirks is correct to affirm that private trade in India by British officials marked the beginning of corruption for the British Empire. As long as the Crown received revenues, a blind-eye would, for a time, be turned from the enrichment of British officials in India. The rights of private trade and the implications of the Hastings scandal that would follow launched the British Empire into the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Without these scandals, it is possible to argue that the empire would not have emerged as so dominant a force (31).

Dirks focuses much attention to the build-up and eventual impeachment trial of Warren Hastings. Following Clive’s example, Hastings served as governor-general of Bengal and took in presents and gifts that amassed his great wealth. Hastings role in the judicial murder of an Indian maharaja, Nandakumar, would also be brought to light at trial. Edmund Burke, who had served on secret and select committees to investigate “the capricious abuse of British power and position” (89-90) of British India, spearheaded the impeachment trial. The ferocity of Burke’s pursuit of impeachment of Hastings is interesting, and Dirks hints at the reasoning behind the vehement pursuit. This aspect was most interesting for me and a slant that I believe Dirks could have explored further. Dirks mentions that Hastings was much less corrupt than either of his two predecessors, Clive and Paul Benfield, but Burke still pursued Hastings for over seven years. That Edmund Burke’s brother, William, had previously been injured in a duel with Hastings probably had a great deal to do with Burke’s impassioned quest to impeach Hastings.

The impeachment trial of Hastings did bring to light many instances of imperial abuse, but the trial failed to reform British activities in India. Dirks convincingly argues that the Raj that emerged after the Hastings trial was largely implementations of measures “of which Hastings had been the primary architect” (237). “The trial produced conditions not just for empire’s success, but also for its transformation into a patriotic enterprise” (125). Hastings’s reputation was ruined and he complained that the seven-year-long trial sent him into bankruptcy. Lord Cornwallis replaced Hastings as governor-general and it was Cornwallis who would be seen as the savior of India.

Dirks addresses an important topic regarding sovereignty in British India. Initially the Company was a mercantile company with an eastern monopoly guarantee by Parliament (13). Eventually, through the Company, India had become a rogue state and the precise nature of sovereignty was unclear. Dirks is able to explain the transition to a rogue state, and this is most interesting to me. The Company was engaged in almost constant warfare against the French and native Indians. The 1765 Bengali Diwani transferred the right of revenue to be collected directly from Bengali landowners, in what Dirks terms part of a massive bribe to Parliament to maintain the Company’s eastern monopoly (14). Company officials used bribery to propagate sovereign rights over conquered territories. 

The East India Company came to be in possession of India, economically, politically, and financially. The Company had several expanding characteristics that make clear the true sovereign status, including waging war, peacemaking, tax assessment, coin minting, and the administration of justice (168). Dirks is able to convince readers that the Company was a “fully functioning state that was sovereign and autonomous,” in essence, an independent entity (169). Dirks quotes Clive concisely summarizing the Company’s position in India, “We can never be less without ceasing to be at all” (174).     

Another interesting aspect of The Scandal of Empire is how Dirks ties together the British imperial project with modern-day American occupation in the Middle East. He compares the way the British sought to justify their own imperial project by saving Indians from their sins to the way in which “the United States has more recently represented its primary role in Afghanistan as the liberation of women from the oppression of the fundamentalist Taliban and the protection of all Afghanis from the ruthless warlords who controlled the highways and trading routes of the region” (310). If Dirks’s claim that empire is built with scandal, then the scandals in British India should serve the United States as a warning of the effects of empire.

In line with the title, The Scandal of Empire, I would have liked to read more about individual scandals faced on the Indian subcontinent. Dirks framed the book around the Hastings impeachment trial, but more comment could have been given to the “Black Hole” of Calcutta or the “Sepoy Mutiny.” The Hastings trial captivated Britain and created a spectacle, especially when speeches and descriptions centered on the most harrowing, most horrific, and most inhuman treatments were brought to light. The “Black Hole of Calcutta and the “Sepoy Mutiny” would have been perfect examples in which to examine the macabre. The veracity of the “Black Hole” of Calcutta event has been called into question, but I think Dirks could have spent more time calling to question the eyewitness account and verification of the supposed event.   

One significant way The Scandal of Empire to Cohn’s work, Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge concerns codification of language. Cohn highlights the role of codification in imperial expansion and rule, and according to Dirks, would have found a comrade in Warren Hastings. Hastings “inaugurated the British colonial interest in codification” of the Indian legal system (232). At his impeachment trial, Hastings made special effort to draw attention to his record in India for his institution of new codes and procedures, and for civil and criminal justice in compliance with Indian constitutional traditions and norms.

Dirks successfully argues that scandals did not cause empire to be abandoned, but instead led to reform so that excesses would be attached nationally to Britain, instead of individually, as was the case with Hastings. He illuminates the scandal surrounding the Hastings impeachment trial and shows how the scandal proved to be the prerequisite for the British restructuring, acquiescence, and institutionalization of empire. In addition, Dirks expertly draws important comparisons to our modern world by noting the American occupation in the Middle East. For me, this historical warning was my biggest take-away. In conjunction with Cohn’s Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge, The Scandal of Empire is essential reading for those interested in British India or imperialism.