town by sunset on pain of having noses and ears cut off if they stayed; and drums beat a message to all who could hear, that Calcutta should henceforth be known as Allinagore. Holwell and three others were held for over a fortnight in case they could lead the way to treasure. The survivors took off to the ships and were received with much care and attention by the Dutch settlers up at Chinsurah. And Holwell lived to be eighty-seven in England, where they called him Governor by courtesy (though he hadbriefly been a deputy Governor), having first put up in Calcutta a monument, at his own expense, to those who were in the Black Hole with him.
This story is still circulated with his details in English history books, though there is reason to believe that some of it is fabrication ; that, at the most, sixty-four people went into the Black Hole with no Mrs Carey among them, and that twenty-one survived. Not that the legend is likely to be disturbed in Europe by reduced figures. Holwell’s monument having collapsed with neglect, Lord Curzon had another one built when he was Viceroy in the twentieth century. But today there is merely a tablet in an arch next to the General Post Office, which the visitor has difficulty in locating; it is surrounded by crowds of pavement tradesmen in lottery tickets, suspenders, sunglasses and ballpoint pens; and they grin and chant ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ in the most mocking fashion.
Six months later RobertClive, now returned from the acclamations of England, led a punitive expedition from Madras. He recaptured Calcutta without difficulty in one sortie at night and then went on, for he was conscious of a larger strategy, to take Chandernagore from the French. Siraj-ud-Daula now found himself enmeshed in intrigue, the British openly wringing concessions and compensations from him while covertly negotiating to replace him with his uncle, Mir Jafar. The cards were at least cleanly laid down on 23 June, 1757 at Plassey, twenty miles from Murshidabad. The monsoon damped down the Nawab’s ammunition , Clive’s soldiers did the rest, and Siraj-ud-Daula was led off to the provincial capital and assassination; after a seemly interval Clive followed and made a state entry into Murshidabad.
He now began to exact much more than retribution for the sack of Calcutta the year before. Within a month, a hundred boats were sent downstream to the British city, laden with 7,500,000 silver rupees; six weeks later another four million rupees went coasting into the Calcutta treasury, to be received with flags flying and bands blaring. This was the compensation money. Clive was no longer content with that. On behalf of the Company he annexed nearly nine hundred square miles of land south of Calcutta, known as the 24 Parganas; the Company nowbecame the zamindars, the landlords, of this area but dive had been kingpin in the operation and he proceeded to take the king’s share of the rents. It was to yield him £ 30,000 a year till the day he died and a grudging Company had no option but to wait balefully for his funeral and a reversion of the annual windfall to Leadenhall Street. On top of this, Clive extracted a spot payment of £ 234,000 compensation for all the trouble he’d been put to in Bengal. Then he wrote to his old father in Shropshire, telling him to repair the family home and make ready a seat in Parliament.
At Plassey, some historians suggest, Clive had laid the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It is an arguable point What he certainly did was to start something inseparable from Empire and more sinister in itself. As Percival Spear says, ‘the financial bleeding of Bengal had begun’. The British had so far secured their position with varieties of trade, quiet and violent, fair and extortionate. Now they began to rob the bank. When Mir Kasim superseded Mir Jafar as Nawab in 1760, he was obliged to hand over £ 200,000 to the Council in Calcutta. When Mir Kasim was replaced three
This story is still circulated with his details in English history books, though there is reason to believe that some of it is fabrication ; that, at the most, sixty-four people went into the Black Hole with no Mrs Carey among them, and that twenty-one survived. Not that the legend is likely to be disturbed in Europe by reduced figures. Holwell’s monument having collapsed with neglect, Lord Curzon had another one built when he was Viceroy in the twentieth century. But today there is merely a tablet in an arch next to the General Post Office, which the visitor has difficulty in locating; it is surrounded by crowds of pavement tradesmen in lottery tickets, suspenders, sunglasses and ballpoint pens; and they grin and chant ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ in the most mocking fashion.
Six months later RobertClive, now returned from the acclamations of England, led a punitive expedition from Madras. He recaptured Calcutta without difficulty in one sortie at night and then went on, for he was conscious of a larger strategy, to take Chandernagore from the French. Siraj-ud-Daula now found himself enmeshed in intrigue, the British openly wringing concessions and compensations from him while covertly negotiating to replace him with his uncle, Mir Jafar. The cards were at least cleanly laid down on 23 June, 1757 at Plassey, twenty miles from Murshidabad. The monsoon damped down the Nawab’s ammunition , Clive’s soldiers did the rest, and Siraj-ud-Daula was led off to the provincial capital and assassination; after a seemly interval Clive followed and made a state entry into Murshidabad.
He now began to exact much more than retribution for the sack of Calcutta the year before. Within a month, a hundred boats were sent downstream to the British city, laden with 7,500,000 silver rupees; six weeks later another four million rupees went coasting into the Calcutta treasury, to be received with flags flying and bands blaring. This was the compensation money. Clive was no longer content with that. On behalf of the Company he annexed nearly nine hundred square miles of land south of Calcutta, known as the 24 Parganas; the Company nowbecame the zamindars, the landlords, of this area but dive had been kingpin in the operation and he proceeded to take the king’s share of the rents. It was to yield him £ 30,000 a year till the day he died and a grudging Company had no option but to wait balefully for his funeral and a reversion of the annual windfall to Leadenhall Street. On top of this, Clive extracted a spot payment of £ 234,000 compensation for all the trouble he’d been put to in Bengal. Then he wrote to his old father in Shropshire, telling him to repair the family home and make ready a seat in Parliament.
At Plassey, some historians suggest, Clive had laid the foundation stone of the British Empire in India. It is an arguable point What he certainly did was to start something inseparable from Empire and more sinister in itself. As Percival Spear says, ‘the financial bleeding of Bengal had begun’. The British had so far secured their position with varieties of trade, quiet and violent, fair and extortionate. Now they began to rob the bank. When Mir Kasim superseded Mir Jafar as Nawab in 1760, he was obliged to hand over £ 200,000 to the Council in Calcutta. When Mir Kasim was replaced three
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