Images of the British raj in India are everywhere of late. On television reruns, the divided rulers of Paul Scott's Jewel in the Crown sip their tea in scented hill stations and swap idle gossip in the palaces of local princes. At movie houses, we can savor all the hot intensities that blast a decorous English visitor the moment she steps ashore after A Passage to India, to be engulfed in a whirlwind of mendicants, elephants, snake charmers and crowds. In New York, British director Peter Brook's nine-hour production of an ancient Hindu epic poem, The Mahabharata, has lately been playing to packed houses and considerable critical praise. Best-selling books like Freedom at Midnight re-create the struggle of two great cultures, mighty opposites with a twinned destiny, as they set about trying to disentangle themselves and their feelings before the Partition of 1947. Across the country, strolling visitors marveled a few years ago at all the silken saris and bright turbans of the Festival of India (SMITHSONIAN, June 1985) and, even more, at the exotic world they evoke: the bejeweled splendor of the Mogul courts; dusty, teeming streets; and all the dilemmas confronting the imperial

Commerce now formally gave way to empire. And despite the protestation of one of its chief executives, John Stuart Mill, the company that had been signed into being by Queen Elizabeth I was now signed into extinction by Queen Victoria. Its army was reorganized into the Indian Army; its Governor General, Lord Canning, became the first Viceroy of India. Thus began the last act of a drama that would culminate 90 years later in Gandhi's campaign of nonviolent resistance and in Paul Scott's heart-torn figures stranded in an imperial twilight. By the time India gained independence in 1947, it was hard for anyone to recall that the whole adventure had begun almost 350 years before with a group of merchants in search of nothing more than a "quiet trade."

But India was still part of the fading Mogul empire, which a century earlier had brought Muslim administrators and conquerors. Just to protect its ability to do business in a land already riddled with fierce animosities, the company found itself forced to defend trading posts with hired soldiers. Before long, the posts became cities (Calcutta, Bombay, Madras) and their soldier garrisons, small private armies. As assets and responsibilities mounted, the merchants, who had come out as supplicants bearing gifts to local princes for an inside track on trade, gradually became soldiers, and then became local rulers themselves.

Some topics in this essay:
William Bentinck, Governor Bombay, Afghan War, Urdu Sanskrit, Honorable Masters, Bombay Madras, Resident Delhi, Edmund Burke, SMITHSONIAN June, Mir Jafar, india company, east india, east india company, local princes, black hole, fort william, tipu sultan, mogul empire, british india, british government, ritual murder, fort william college,