Warren Hastings

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Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings (* 6. December 1732 in Churchill , Oxfordshire ; † 22. August 1818 in Daylesford ) was Governor General in British East Indies .

Life

The young Hastings was educated at Westminster and Oxford . In 1750 he got a clerk's position with the East India Company in Bengal . After serving in the army of Colonel Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive in 1756 , and having proven himself there, he was a member of the council in Calcutta from 1761 to 1764 .

Returning to England in 1764, he lost his fortune and therefore returned to the service of the East India Company and in 1769 became a member of the government in Madras . He was appointed Governor of Bengal in 1772 and the first Governor General of the East Indies in 1773. During this time he expanded the company's power, reformed the administration and increased the income the company generated for the crown from £ 3 million to £ 5 million . Hastings turned away from the system of his predecessor Robert Clive , who had left the local rulers in their offices. Under Hastings, the company immediately took control of India; Calcutta was developed into an administrative center. Hastings was, however, also in conflict with the British government, which wanted to limit the East India Company to its purely commercial function and to take over administration and military rule over India itself. Militarily he had to assert himself against the empire of the Marathas , as well as against the attempts of France to gain a foothold in India.

When his patron, Lord North , left the government, Hastings was recalled in 1785 and indicted by Edmund Burke before the House of Commons, of having acted with tyrannical arbitrariness in East India, extorted excessive sums of money and caused the overthrow of several Indian princes. The indictment was referred to the House of Lords and the state trial began February 13, 1788 at the Palace of Westminster . Hastings was acquitted in April 1795, but lost his fortune due to the legal costs. He was compensated by a Company-approved pension of £ 4,000.

Since then he lived in seclusion, was made a member of the Privy Council by the Prince Regent in May 1814 and died on August 22, 1818 in Daylesford.

Even in the 19th century there was a dispute among historians ( James Fitzjames Stephen , Thomas Babbington Macaulay ) whether he had committed a judicial murder of an Indian tax collector in association with the chief judge in Bengal Elijah Impey ( Maharaja Nandakumar , also called Nuncomar, around 1705 -1775).

family

In 1756 Warren Hastings married Mary Buchanan (? -1759) and in 1777 his long-time lover Anna Maria Apollonia Chapuset de St. Valentin (1747–1837), a native of Stuttgart, whom he married to her first husband Christoph Adam Carl von Imhoff (1734–1788) in 1769 allegedly bought. The marriage status of Imhoff when he remarried to Louise von Schardt in 1775 is still unclear, as the divorce papers are dated to 1777. The daughter Elizabeth came from a relationship with Philadelphia Hancock in 1761.

Fonts

• Narrative of the late transaction at Benares . Calcutta 1782.
• Revle W of the state of Bengal . Calcutta 1786.
• The present state of the East Indies . Calcutta 1786 ( online ).
• Speech in the high court of justice at Westminsterhall . London 1791 ( online ).

His correspondence with Stephen Lushington was published in 1795. See Gleig, Memoirs of the life of WH (London 1841, 3 vols.); Macaulay in the "Essays"; Bond, Speeches of the Managers and Counsel in the Trial of WH (London 1859-61, 4 vols.); Trotter, WH, abiography (ibid. 1879).

The city of Hastings in New Zealand was named after him.

Warren Hastings appears as a character in Sarnath Banerjee's graphic novel The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers (2007).

literature

• GW Forrest (1892): The Administration Of Warren Hastings (1772-1785) ( online at Archive.org )
• John Scott (1784): A narrative of the transactions in Bengal, during the administration of Mr. Hastings ( online )
• LJ Trotter (1890): Warren Hastings ( Rulers of India series ) ( online )

Web links

Commons : Warren Hastings  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Newspaper article about Warren Hastings in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Footnotes

1. ↑ The background of the rumor, which is related to the English divorce law of the time, can be read in Gerhard Koch (ed.): Imhoff India driver. A travel report from the 18th century in letters and pictures . Göttingen 2001
2. ^ GW Forrest was the first director of the National Archives of India

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Governor General of the East Indies 1773–1785	John Macpherson