Francis Sykes has never been other than a controversial figure in the
history of the East India Company during the period of its seizure and
consolidation of both political and commercial control in Bengal. Sykes’
role as the close and trusted associate of both Robert Clive and Warren
Hastings would alone make him a significant figure in early Anglo-Indian
history. This biography of Sykes reveals just how significant a part he
played. Sykes’s lifelong friendship with Hastings had been forged on their
first tour in Bengal in 1750 where they joined together over the next decade
in profitable private trading ventures in diamonds, timber and salt. They
also shared real hardships and dangers as volunteers in Clive’s forces at the
critical period when Siraj ud daulah seized the Company’s trading bases at
Cossimbazar and Calcutta. After the battle of Plassey, fought in reprisal,
the two young men were too junior to receive a share of the controversial
disproportionate cash ‘presents’ received by Clive and his senior civil and
military colleagues from the new Nawab, Mir Jafar. For Sykes the first
hand witness of what wealth he might aspire to, clearly made a lasting
impression. After Plassey, Sykes was appointed to serve under his friend
Hastings in Cossimbazar and they continued their profitable private trade.
Sykes returned to England in 1761 with a fortune sufficient to buy a fine
house, Ackworth Park in his native Yorkshire. He gave his support to
Robert Clive, now battling in London for control of the East India
Company. Clive recognized Sykes’s often ruthless efficiency, and determined to have him as a member of Council in Calcutta when he was
asked to return to Bengal in 1764 to restore the Company’s fortunes. Clive
also appointed Sykes to the dual roles of Resident at the Court in
Murshidabad and Chief at nearby Cossimbazar. Following Munro’s
victory at Buxar the Company was granted the diwani by the Mughal
Emperor Shah Jahan in 1765 giving them control of the tax income of the
provinces of Bengal and Orissa and it was Sykes, the member of Council to
whom Clive turned to organise its collection. This task Sykes set about
with his customary efficiency. In so doing there is good evidence to
demonstrate Sykes’s claims to have been the architect, not only of the
operation of the Company’s administrative organisation in Bengal, but also
the political system of indirect rule, through indigenous executives advised
by British administrators, which became the blueprint during the hegemony
of British government throughout much of its colonial empire for the next
two centuries.
His triple responsibilities as Council member. Resident at the Nawab’s
Court in Murshidabad and commercial chief at Cossimbazar gave Sykes
unprecedented opportunities to extend his own fortune. He seized these
with both hands, and in so doing attracted much of the bad reputation
which has remained associated with his name. He was the organising brain
behind Clive’s disgraceful Society of Trade which retained for specific
senior colleagues the profits on the monopoly trade in salt, betel nut and
tobacco which the Company itself had banned. Sykes also was to be
heavily criticised for personally benefiting from a new tax which he
introduced. It was, however, as a private trader, in association with his
baniya Cantu Babu, that Sykes made the majority of his fortune. He
outmanoeuvred the equally ruthless Richard Barwell to take from him
control of the profitable timber trade in Purnea and he continued to trade in
the lucrative but debarred salt trade and even in the Company’s own
‘investment’ trade of silks. He was adroit in keeping his name out of
transactions negotiated in Cantu’s name.
Sykes returned home from his second and final tour in 1769 with one of the
largest fortunes of any nabob, estimated at possibly £700,000 (about £70
million in modern values). He was still only thirty-nine. He retained
Ackworth Park in Yorkshire, acquired Pensbury House in Dorset and then
built a grand new Palladian house on the Basildon estate in Berkshire. He
bought heavily into Company stock, controversially splitting and reassigning
it in order to increase his votes, and he proved a strong supporter
of the appointment of his friend Hastings as governor general in 1772. In
true nabob style he also bought a seat in Parliament, characteristically in a
manner attracting critical attention even in an age when it was almost
universal practice. In the 1774 election he was disenfranchised for bribery
and required to pay damages to his opponent of £11,000 (£1.1 million in
today’s values).
The picture of Sykes, the man, which emerges from this book is that of an
energetic and efficient, but ruthless and greedy individual, his actions
devoted, to an unusual degree, to his own financial interests. His present
biographer and latter day kinsman does not seek, as he says ‘to defend his
actions but to explain them’. Sykes was a man of his age, often facing
dangerous situations where the outcome could not be known, who should
not be judged by today’s values. His reputation suffers because that of the
East India Company and the British Empire itself has suffered at the hands
and pens of today’s academic historians. One can echo Sir John’s call for
the need for a revisionist view of the history of the British Empire and his
plea for a more balanced assessment of the nabobs, but it has to be
acknowledged that the case history of Sir Francis Sykes is unlikely to be
cited in that cause. This does not diminish the value of the present
biography which underlines the fact that history is not only made by
idealists. By immersing himself in the experiences of his ancestor’s
generation of nabobs in Bengal Sir John has provided much new
fascinating detail on the factual realities of private trade and of everyday
life. He has written an absorbing, highly readable, and important study.
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