The Rise of Mysore
- The Battle of Talikota (1565) dealt a deadly blow to the great Vijayanagara Kingdom, and many small kingdoms emerged from its remnants. In 1612, a Hindu kingdom under the Wodeyar dynasty emerged in the region of Mysore.
- Mysore’s centralised military power began to grow from the late 17th century under Chikkadevaraja Wodeyar (1672–1704), but it reached its real period of glory under Haidar Ali.
- In the early 18th century, two brothers — Nanjaraj (the sarvadhikari) and Devaraj (the Dulwai) — had reduced Chikka Krishnaraja Wodeyar (1734–1766) to a mere puppet.
- During the second half of the 18th century, Mysore emerged as a formidable power under the leadership of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.
Haidar Ali
- A man of humble origin, Haidar began his career as a junior officer in the Mysore army and gradually rose to prominence. Though uneducated, he possessed a keen intellect and was a man of great energy and determination.
- By 1761, he took over political power in Mysore by ousting the corrupt Nanjraj (prime minister), who had meanwhile usurped real power in the kingdom by reducing the Wodeyar king to a mere titular head.
- Repeated incursions of the Marathas and the Nizam’s troops into Mysore’s territories resulted in heavy financial demands from these aggressors, leaving Mysore financially and politically weak. The need of the hour was a leader combining military power with diplomatic skill.
- Haidar Ali fulfilled that need, usurping royal authority and becoming the de facto ruler of Mysore in 1761.
- Haidar modernised his army with French experts, who trained an efficient infantry and artillery and infused European discipline into the Mysore army.
- He realised that the exceedingly mobile Marathas could be contained only by a swift cavalry, that the cannons of the French-trained Nizami army could be silenced only by effective artillery, and that superior Western arms could only be matched by arms manufactured with the same know-how. With French help, he set up an arms factory at Dindigul (now in Tamil Nadu) and introduced Western training methods for his army.
- His army was organised on a European model through the system of risalas, with a clear chain of command running up to the ruler.
- Each risala had a fixed number of soldiers, provision for weaponry and transport, and a commander appointed directly by Haidar himself.
- His power was further consolidated by the subjugation of local warrior chiefs or hereditary overlords, such as deshmukhs and palegars (poligars).
- Recovering from their defeat at Panipat, the Marathas under Madhavrao attacked Mysore and defeated Haidar Ali in 1764, 1766, and 1771; to buy peace, Haidar had to pay them large sums of money.
- After Madhavrao’s death in 1772, Haidar raided the Marathas repeatedly during 1774–76, recovering all territories previously lost and capturing new areas besides — increasingly relying on his considerable diplomatic skill to outmanoeuvre opponents.
- Haidar, and later his son Tipu Sultan, introduced the system of imposing land taxes directly on the peasants, collected through salaried officials and in cash, greatly enhancing the state’s resource base.
- This land revenue system was based on a detailed survey and classification of land; depending on the category — wet or dry land — either fixed rents or a share of the produce were collected, the rate varying with soil productivity.
- The system did not entirely dispense with the Mughal institution of jagir, but restricted it to a very small proportion of available land.
Tipu Sultan
Revenue System
- Historian Burton Stein has termed Tipu’s revenue system a form of “military fiscalism”, where taxes were collected from a wide base directly by state officials in order to mobilise resources for building and maintaining a large army.
- This formed part of a broader political project to establish centralised military hegemony by eliminating the intermediaries who had been co-sharers of power under the earlier segmentary state of the Vijayanagara empire.
Agriculture
- Tipu encouraged the development of agriculture — for instance, through tax remission for the reclamation of wasteland — and sought to protect peasants from the rapacity of tax collectors.
- Even his arch-enemies conceded that “his country was the best cultivated and its population the most flourishing in India.”
- He was also interested in modernising the agricultural economy by:
- repairing old irrigation systems and constructing new ones;
- promoting agricultural manufacturing; and
- introducing sericulture in Mysore.
Navy and State Trade
- Tipu sent ambassadors to France to bring in European technology and went on to build a navy, with ambitions of participating in oceanic trade.
- In 1793, he launched what can be described as a “state commercial corporation”, with plans to set up factories outside Mysore.
- Over time, the Mysore state began participating in lucrative trade in valuable goods such as sandalwood, rice, silk, coconut, and sulphur, establishing thirty trading centres in and outside Mysore, in other parts of western India, and overseas, as in Muscat.
- However, his plans of modernisation went far beyond his resources, and, as Irfan Habib argues, Mysore remained “far away from a real opening to modern civilization.”
Mysore’s Territorial Expansion and Regional Conflicts
- The state of Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan was engaged in establishing a centralised military hegemony; its territorial ambitions and trading interests kept it in a state of near-constant warfare, which overshadowed all other aspects of its history in this period.
- Haidar Ali invaded and annexed Malabar and Calicut in 1766, significantly expanding Mysore’s frontiers. The boundaries of the Maratha kingdom, meanwhile, extended over the coastal areas of Konkan and Malabar, making conflict with Mysore inevitable.
- There was also conflict with other regional powers, such as Hyderabad, and subsequently with the English, on whom Haidar Ali inflicted a heavy defeat near Madras in 1769.
- After his death in 1782, his son Tipu Sultan continued his father’s policies; Tipu’s rule ended with defeat at English hands in 1799, when he died defending his capital, Srirangapatnam.
Links with the Mughals
- In a significant sense, Tipu’s reign represented a discontinuity in eighteenth-century Indian politics, as his kingship was rooted firmly in a strong regional tradition. Unlike other eighteenth-century states, which did not challenge the political legitimacy of the Mughal emperor, Tipu made symbolic gestures proclaiming his independence:
- he issued coins without any reference to the Mughal emperor;
- he inserted his own name in the khutba (Friday sermons at mosques), in place of Emperor Shah Alam’s; and
- he sought a sanad from the Ottoman Khalif to legitimise his rule.
- Yet he too “did not completely sever links” with the Mughal monarch, who still commanded respect across the subcontinent — being a “realist,” Tipu recognised Mughal authority when it suited him and defied it when it did not.
Reasons for Conflict with the British
- The English felt their political and commercial interests in south India were threatened, owing to:
- Mysore’s proximity to the French, and Haidar Ali and Tipu’s control over the rich trade of the Malabar coast; and
- Mysore’s power being seen as a threat to English control over Madras.
- Mysore’s boundaries had stretched from the Krishna in the north to the Malabar coast in the west, inevitably bringing it into conflict with its Indian neighbours, notably Hyderabad and the Marathas — both of whom were often in collusion with the English, who in turn suspected Mysore’s friendship with the French.
- This threat perception, however, was more an “illusion” than reality, since there was very little chance of a French revival in India (after the Carnatic Wars) or a French attack from outside.
- Mysore’s control over the Malabar coast’s trade was also seen as a threat to English trade in pepper and cardamom.
- In 1785, Tipu declared an embargo on the export of pepper, sandalwood, and cardamom through ports within his kingdom; in 1788, he explicitly forbade dealings with English traders.
- This directly threatened the interests of private Company merchants, who now inevitably pushed for a policy of direct political intervention to protect their commercial interests.
- Most significantly, Tipu Sultan was building in Mysore a strong, centralised, militarised state, with ambitious territorial designs and political aspirations to control south Indian politics — making him the most potent danger to the still-vulnerable Company state in the south.
- Young army officers like Thomas Munro and Alexander Read recognised that the “mercantilist state” of Mysore represented the same kind of hegemonic ambition as the Company state itself, and could therefore never be relied upon in any arrangement of indirect rule based on the principle of balance of power among Indian states.
- Hence, although the civilian administration in Madras vacillated, it concurred with Governor-Generals Lord Cornwallis and later Lord Wellesley that Mysore needed to be eliminated. At the end of the relevant war, the Company annexed Dindigul, Baramahal, and Malabar.
- A few years later, the spectre of a French resurgence and Tipu’s secret negotiations with them gave Lord Wellesley a pretext to move decisively for the final round of colonial aggression.
- Mysore, once again placed under the former Wodeyar dynasty, was brought under Lord Wellesley’s “Subsidiary Alliance” system — marking the end of Mysore’s independent existence.
Anglo-Mysore Wars
First Anglo-Mysore War (1767–69)
Background
- After their easy success in Bengal, the English were confident of their military strength. They concluded a treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad (1766), persuading him to cede the Northern Circars in return for a promise to protect him from Haidar Ali.
- Haidar already had territorial disputes with the Nawab of Arcot and differences with the Marathas.
Changing Alliances
- The Nizam, the Marathas, and the English allied together against Haidar Ali.
- Haidar, acting with considerable tact and diplomatic skill, paid the Marathas to secure their neutrality and won over the Nizam as an ally by promising to share conquered territories with him. He then joined the Nizam in attacking the Nawab of Arcot.
Course of the War
- The war continued for a year and a half without conclusion. Haidar then changed strategy and suddenly appeared before the gates of Madras, causing complete chaos and panic there.
- This forced the English into concluding a very humiliating agreement with Haidar on 4 April 1769 — the Treaty of Madras.
- The treaty provided for the exchange of prisoners and mutual restitution of conquests.
- Haidar Ali was promised English help should he be attacked by any other power.
- This forced the English into concluding a very humiliating agreement with Haidar on 4 April 1769 — the Treaty of Madras.
Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780–84)
Background
- Haidar Ali accused the English of breach of faith and non-observance of the Treaty of Madras, since, when he was attacked by the Marathas in 1771, the English failed to come to his aid.
- He also found the French far more helpful than the English in meeting his army’s requirements of guns, saltpetre, and lead — some French war material reached Mysore through Mahe, a French possession on the Malabar coast.
- Meanwhile, the American War of Independence had broken out, with the French siding with the rebels against the English.
- Under these circumstances, Haidar’s friendship with the French caused the English even greater concern, and they attempted to capture Mahe, which Haidar regarded as being under his protection — he considered this attempt a direct challenge to his authority.
Course of the War
- Haidar forged an anti-English alliance with the Marathas and the Nizam, following it up with an attack in the Carnatic, capturing Arcot and defeating the English army under Colonel Baillie in 1781.
- Meanwhile, the English (under Sir Eyre Coote) detached both the Marathas and the Nizam from Haidar’s side, but the undeterred Haidar, though defeated at Porto Novo in November 1781, regrouped his forces, defeated the English, and captured their commander, Braithwaite.
Treaty of Mangalore
- Haidar Ali died of cancer on 7 December 1782. His son Tipu Sultan carried on the war for another year without a decisive outcome.
- Fed up with an inconclusive war, both sides opted for peace, negotiating the Treaty of Mangalore (March 1784), under which each party restored the territories it had taken from the other.
Third Anglo-Mysore War
Circumstances Leading to the War
- Lord Cornwallis worked upon the anti-Tipu suspicions of the Nizam and the Marathas, arranging a Triple Alliance (1790) with them against Tipu.
- Convinced of the inevitability of war with the English, Tipu sought help from the Turks, sending embassies to Constantinople in 1784 and 1785, and to the French King in 1787.
- The kingdom of Travancore had long been a target of Tipu’s ambitions. Indirect attempts to take it over had failed in 1788, and Archibald Campbell, the Madras president at the time, had warned Tipu that an attack on Travancore would be treated as a declaration of war on the Company — a warning Cornwallis later reiterated.
- The King of Travancore angered Tipu by:
- extending fortifications along the border with Cochin into territory Mysore claimed as belonging to its vassal state; and
- purchasing two forts in the Kingdom of Cochin from the Dutch East India Company.
- Since Tipu considered Cochin his tributary state, he viewed the Travancore Raja’s actions as a violation of his sovereign rights.
- The King of Travancore angered Tipu by:
- Tipu attacked Travancore in April 1790; the English sided with Travancore, and the Third Anglo-Mysore War began.
Course of the War
- The English, siding with Travancore, attacked Tipu; in 1790, Tipu defeated the English under General Meadows.
- In 1791, Cornwallis took over leadership, with the Marathas and the Nizam also supporting the British. Tipu offered stiff resistance, but the odds were against him, and he was forced to pay heavily under the Treaty of Seringapatam.
Treaty of Seringapatam
- Under this 1792 treaty, nearly half of Mysorean territory was taken over by the victors:
- Baramahal, Dindigul, and Malabar went to the English;
- the Marathas received the regions surrounding the Tungabhadra and its tributaries; and
- the Nizam acquired the areas from the Krishna to beyond the Pennar.
- Additionally, a war indemnity of three crore rupees was imposed on Tipu — half payable immediately, the rest in instalments, for which Tipu’s two sons were taken as hostages by the English.
Could Cornwallis Have Avoided the Third Mysore War?
- Cornwallis could have avoided the war, since Tipu had not attacked the British and the dispute was strictly between Travancore and Mysore; English involvement was, in fact, a clear breach of the Treaty of Mangalore (1784).
- Tipu’s appeal for French help was itself only a reaction to Cornwallis’s anti-Tipu alliance, which had violated the terms of Mangalore.
- The real motive behind the war was the fulfilment of British imperial designs, for which the British were, in effect, itching to fight Tipu.
- Avoiding this particular war, however, did not mean war could be avoided altogether, since Tipu himself was preparing for conflict — harbouring a deep hatred of the British, he had declared soon after signing the 1784 Mangalore treaty that he intended to resume battle with them given the opportunity.
- Since the British had already warned that an attack on Travancore would be treated as an attack on the Company, war became inevitable once Tipu attacked Travancore.
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War
Background
- Both the English and Tipu Sultan used the period 1792 to 1799 to recoup their losses; Tipu fulfilled all the terms of the Treaty of Seringapatam and secured his sons’ release.
- In 1796, when the Hindu ruler of the Wodeyar dynasty died, Tipu refused to place the minor Wodeyar heir on the throne and instead declared himself sultan, also resolving to avenge his humiliating defeat and the terms of the Treaty of Seringapatam.
- In 1798, Lord Wellesley succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor-General. An imperialist to the core, Wellesley grew concerned over Tipu’s growing friendship with the French, aiming to annihilate Tipu’s independent existence or force his submission through the Subsidiary Alliance system.
- The charge-sheet against Tipu alleged that he was plotting against the English with the Nizam and the Marathas, and had sent emissaries to Arabia, Afghanistan, Kabul, and Zaman Shah, as well as to the Isle of France (Mauritius) and Versailles, with treasonable intent. Tipu’s explanation failed to satisfy Wellesley.
Course of the War
- The war began on 17 April 1799 and ended on 4 May 1799 with the fall of Seringapatam.
- The English were again aided by the Marathas and the Nizam — the Marathas having been promised half of Tipu’s territory, and the Nizam having already signed the Subsidiary Alliance.
- Tipu laid down his life fighting bravely; his family members were interned at Vellore, and his treasures were confiscated by the English.
- The English chose a boy from the earlier Hindu royal family, the Wodeyars, as the new Maharaja of Mysore, also imposing on him the Subsidiary Alliance system — bringing Mysore’s independent existence to a definitive end.
