The East India Company conspired to hijack one of the world’s most opulent concentrations of silver: that of India’s provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, where a world-beating cotton industry drew in bullion from all over Asia, as well as from European traders. In 1757, Company forces defeated the Nawab of Bengal and replaced him with a candidate of their own, who was expected to share the contents of the treasury; “however, it contained only a fraction of the forty million pounds [they] had reckoned on.”
In the following years, the hostage ruler managed to hand over as much as £3 million worth of silver, but the Company was not satisfied. In 1765, Company officers pushed for a settlement that would grant them the entire tax revenue from the territory in return for an annual tribute to the Mughal emperor. This Asian prize – the “diwani” – would relieve the pressure to find silver elsewhere, reduce the number of treasure ships taking the long and dangerous route around the Cape of Good Hope, and enhance the Company’s account in Canton. The extortion was secured by Robert Clive, Governor of the Company’s Bengal presidency, who boasted to his superiors in London that...
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