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Unit 1: British Expansion

Importance of the Treaty: The importance of the Treaty of Bassein in the building up of British Notes
supremacy in India was variously estimated by the politician of the day. Lord Castlereagh, the
President of the Board of Control, in a minute entitled ‘Observations on the Treaty of Bassein’ criticised
the political wisdom of the policy and believed that Wellesley had exceeded his legal authority. He
characterized the policy as ‘critical and delicate’ and thought that it was “hopeless to attempt to
govern the Maratha Empire through a feeble and perhaps disaffected Peshwa”. He apprehended
that the Treaty would involve the English “in the endless and complicated distractions of that turbulent
Maratha Empire”.
Castlereagh’s contentions were answered by Major-General Wellesley and in October 1804 John
Malcolm prepared a rejoinder. Lord Wellesley believed that by the Treaty “the Company obtained
for the first time something like a rational security for the improvement and continuance of the peace
of India. A new power was thrown into the weight of its own scale; a lawful rights was established to
interfere in the preservation of the Peshwa’s authority, whenever it should be attacked; the intrigues
of the foreigners were excluded from his capital...Our own military resources were considerably
increased without expense to the Company; the army of the Peshwa likewise became bound at our
call on every occasion of emergency...” The treaty was more than a mere defensive alliance, as it was
described. The Governor-General himself wrote in 1804 that the flight of the Peshwa from Poona
“seemed to hold out a very favourable opportunity for establishing in the most complete manner the
interests of the British Power in the Maratha Empire”.
True, the Treaty of Bassein was signed with a ‘cypher’ but it gave great political advantages to the
English. The paramount British influence was established at Poona. The head of the Maratha
Confederacy had accepted a position of dependent relationship on the Company with its natural
corollary that the other Maratha chiefs (member of the Maratha Confederacy) were reduced to a
similar position of subordination to the Company— a relationship which they had feared and would
not accept without a fight.
By surrendering his foreign policy to the care of the Company, the Peshwa had made the Company
responsible for every war in which the Peshwa’s Government might be involved. Thus, the treaty
made the Company arbiter in the disputes between the Peshwa and other Maratha chiefs and the
Peshwa and other Indian rulers.
A specific clause in the treaty provided for the Company’s mediation in all cases of disputes between
the Peshwa and the Nizam. Thus, the Peshwa virtually surrendered all his claims over the Nizam.
This marked the achievement of another object of Wellesley’s policy, namely, that the state Hyderabad
definitely passed under the Company’s protection.
The Treaty of Bassein also put the Company in a very advantageous position in case of war with the
Marathas or any other Indian or foreign rivals. The Company’s subsidiary troops were encamped at
the capitals of the four Indian powers—at Mysore, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Poona. From these four
militarily focal points the Company’s troops could spread and meet any opponent.
The Treaty of Bassein did not establish the Company’s political supremacy in India but certainly was
an important milestone in that direction. Thus Sidney Owen’s remark that “the treaty by its direct
and indirect operations gave the Company the Empire of India” merely contains the exaggeration of
a true political phenomenon.
The national humiliation was too much for the Marathas. The Sindhia and the Bhonsle challenged
British power, while the Gaikwar and the Holkar kept aloof. Quick blows dealt by Arthur Wellesley
in the Deccan and by Lord Lake in Northern India shattered Maratha power and the two chiefs
accepted humiliating treaties. By the Treaty of Deogaon (17 December 1803) the Bhonsle Raja ceded
to the Company the province of Cuttuck and whole of the territory west of the river Warda. The
Sindhia concluded the Treaty of Surji-Arjangaon (30 December 1803) by which he surrendered to the
Company all his territories between the Jamuna and the Ganges, all territories situated to the north of
the principalities of Jaipur, Jodhpur and Gohud besides the fort of Ahmednagar, the harbour of
Broach and his possessions between the Ajanta Ghat and the river Godavri. Both the princes also
accepted British Residents at their courts.

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