Warren Hastings: The First Governor-General

Bengal had no real government when he arrived. Twelve years later, it had courts, taxes, and a Parliament trial waiting for him back home.

Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of Bengal in 1773, and he ran it until 1785. He ended a confused dual system of rule, and built courts and a revenue service. He also fought a war for a neighbour’s cash, and founded institutions that studied Indian learning. He also survived one of the most famous trials in British history, impeached by Parliament for corruption and cruelty, then acquitted seven years later.

1. The First Governor-General

1.1 Why did Britain create the office of Governor-General?

• The Regulating Act of 1773 created the post of Governor-General of Bengal, and Warren Hastings was the first to hold it, from 1773 to 1785.
• Before this, the Company’s men in India had no clear boss, and officials quarrelled without anyone answerable for mistakes.
• Parliament also worried that Company servants were getting rich through corruption, so it wanted one leader it could hold responsible.
• The Act gave Hastings a council of four members, but they were often his rivals and blocked much of what he tried.

1.2 Why did Hastings end the Dual Government?

• The Dual Government was Clive’s old arrangement: the Company collected Bengal’s revenue, while the Nawab was still supposed to rule.
• Nobody was accountable under it. The Company took the money, and the Nawab took the blame.
• The 1770 Bengal famine, which killed roughly a third of the population while taxes were still collected as usual, exposed this failure badly.
• Hastings ended the system in 1772, putting the Company directly in charge of revenue and administration, with the Nawab left as a pensioned figurehead.

2. War, Scandal, and Reform

2.1 Why is the Rohilla War remembered as a black mark?

• In 1774, Hastings sent Company troops to help the Nawab of Awadh crush the Rohillas, an Afghan-origin people settled in Rohilkhand.
• The Nawab owed the Rohillas money. Instead of paying, he paid the Company to destroy them.
• Many Rohillas were killed or driven from their homeland, and critics in Britain called it a war fought purely for cash.
• The charge stuck to Hastings for the rest of his career, and later fed straight into his impeachment.

2.2 What made the Nanda Kumar affair so troubling?

• In 1775, Bengali official Maharaja Nanda Kumar was tried and hanged for forgery, by a new British court in Calcutta.
• He had just publicly accused Hastings of taking bribes, so the timing looked like revenge, not justice.
• Forgery was rarely a capital offence under the court’s own rules, and the case damaged trust in British justice in India.
• The affair became part of the charge sheet used against Hastings at his impeachment.

3. Patron of Learning, and Impeachment

3.1 Why did Hastings fund Indian scholarship?

• Hastings founded the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781 for Islamic studies, and backed Sir William Jones in starting the Asiatic Society in 1784.
• He believed the British had to understand Indian culture and law to actually govern well.
• The Society’s scholars began the serious study of Indian languages, history, and ancient texts, work now called orientalism.
• This knowledge also served the Company’s own courts and tax systems, so scholarship and colonial control grew up tangled together.

3.2 Why was Hastings put on trial after leaving India?

• After leaving India in 1785, Hastings was impeached by the British Parliament, with the trial running from 1788 to 1795.
• Charges included the Rohilla War, the Nanda Kumar affair, and harsh revenue demands blamed for ruining Bengal’s peasants.
• Edmund Burke led the prosecution, turning the trial into a public drama about the morality of empire itself.
• The Lords acquitted Hastings in 1795, but the seven-year trial left him financially ruined.

4. Exam Angle