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had never quite made it at home, or who needed to be put
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
out to grass somewhere far away; would-be Prime Minis-
ters preferred to stay close to the seat of government at
Westminster, patrolling the corridors of power rather than
struggling with the often intractable problems of a poverty-
stricken, sweltering subcontinent.
Once appointed, the Viceroy could act the part of a
reformer, or of a conservative, during his period of office.
Between 1858 and 1905, however, it would be fair to say
that only two Viceroys tried to introduce important new
measures: Lord Ripon (1880–4), a Viceroy appointed by a
Liberal government; and Lord Curzon (1898–1905), who
was appointed by a Unionist-Conservative government. As
we have seen, the main reason why few reforms were made
during these years was that the British feared that they
would build up resentments similar to those that had
caused the Indian Mutiny. This meant that a Viceroy had
to be particularly forceful and resilient to push through
reforms of any substance.
By the end of the Victorian era in 1901, the Viceroy
had become one of the most powerful rulers in the world,
as powerful in his own way as the Emperor of China. He
seemed to possess unbridled power, although he could, in
theory, be at any time recalled by the British government.
He ruled over some 300 million subjects. At his disposal
was one of the finest armies in the world, the Indian Army.
Both the Indian Army and the Indian Civil Service were
paid for out of taxes gathered in India. In this way, the
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
Indian people paid for the forces that kept them as obedi-
ent subjects and India as part of the British Empire.
India was, in many ways, the most important compo-
nent part of the Victorian Empire. On average, nineteen
per cent of British exports went to India, and hundreds of
millions of pounds sterling were invested there. The Raj
was thought to be a superb example of the incorruptible
administration of a subject people by an imperial power.
Thus, for economic reasons, as well as for reasons of pres-
tige, India was described as the ‘brightest jewel in the impe-
rial Crown’. Few foreigners observing the spread and
might of the Empire in India could doubt that Britain was
the greatest power in the world.
As if to rub the point home, in 1877 Queen Victoria
was proclaimed Empress of India. This was the brainchild
of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81)—the Conservative Prime
Minister from 1874 to 1880. Always aware of the power of
image and propaganda (not least for himself ), Disraeli
believed that, if his government gave Queen Victoria the
new title, it would make the Indian princes, rulers of one-
third of India, even more loyal in their support of the Raj.
Despite her glittering title of Queen-Empress, Queen
Victoria never once visited India. Indeed, she visited none
of her major possessions, preferring the royal retreats of
Balmoral and the Isle of Wight to far-flung colonies. She
was, however, proclaimed Empress with great pomp and
ceremony. The heads of the Indian Civil Service, the
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
Indian princes, and thousands of troops attended the
celebrations. Not all the ceremonial went as smoothly as
clockwork.
The Indian princes brought their own troops and
military bands: ‘One venerable gentleman . . . had a man
grinding God Save the Queen on a hand organ, when we
entered his tent. [Another] had a band of bagpipes, and
gave us God Bless the Prince of Wales, played by pipers as
black as soot, but with pink leggings on their knees to
make them like their Highland originals.’1 When the new
Empress was proclaimed, brass bands and trumpeters
heralded the event as the Viceroy read out the proclama-
tion. The massed infantry then fired their rifles in the air:
‘This was splendidly executed and with excellent effect, for
it made the rajahs jump, and raised quite a stampede
among the elephants, who “skedaddled” in all directions,
and killed a few natives.’2
In order both to gratify and to group them, the
Indian princes were each given new coats of arms, which
were displayed on banners of heavy Chinese satin. Again,
there were unforeseen difficulties and the Viceroy, the
reactionary Conservative, Lord Lytton (1876–80), wrote to
Queen Victoria telling her that the fault of the banners was
‘that the brass poles, which are elaborately worked, make
them so heavy that it requires the united efforts of two stal-
wart Highlanders to carry one of them. . . . Consequently,
the native chiefs who have received them will, in future
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
processions, be obliged, I anticipate, to hoist them on the
backs of elephants.’3
Queen Victoria’s proclamation as Empress was, how-
ever, fundamentally a spectacular and symbolic ceremony
amid the never-ending, complex, and serious business
of ruling a teeming and overwhelmingly backward sub-
continent. The everyday preoccupation of the Raj was to
enforce law and order, to try to improve public health and
public education, to advance irrigation schemes, and to
deal with huge problems like famine control and agri-
cultural efficiency.
Inevitably, given the scale and depth of the tasks that
faced it, the British administration could make only rela-
tively slow progress. Even if the Raj had spent far more
money on the problems it faced, progress would have
remained slow. It is worth remembering that, even back
home in the United Kingdom, social and political reforms
only gradually and painfully emerged for much of the
nineteenth century.
Sometimes the British administration in India sought
to play down the problems. When Florence Nightingale
(1820–1910), the redoubtable nursing and medical
reformer, surveyed health conditions in the Indian Army
in 1863, she wrote, when questioned about drainage, that
‘the army in India was like the London woman who
replied, “No, thank God, we have none of them foul,
stinking things here”. . . . Bombay, it is true, has a better
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
water supply; but it has no drainage. Calcutta is being
drained but it has no water supply. Two of the seats of
Government have thus each one half of a sanitary improve-
ment, which halves ought never to be separated. Madras
has neither. . . . At Agra it is a proof of respectability to
have cess-pools. The inhabitants (152,000) generally resort
to fields.’4
Crises, when they came to India, were often on a
vast, almost unmanageable scale. For example, the country
was frequently gripped by terrible famines, affecting tens
of millions of people. Clearly the Raj had to provide famine
relief. Many Victorians, however, believed that charity
would undermine self-help, and thus did not want to give
too generously. Typically, the Famine Commission, set up
in 1880, stated that relief should be given so as ‘not to
check the growth of thrift and self-reliance among the
people. . . . The great object of saving life and giving pro-
tection from extreme suffering may not only be as well
secure but in fact will be far better secured, if proper care
be taken to prevent the abuse and demoralization which all
experience shows to be the consequence of ill-directed and
excessive distribution of charitable relief.’5
In 1900 Lord Curzon, from the comfort of the vice-
royalty, argued that: ‘In my judgement any government
which imperilled the financial position of India in the inter-
ests of a prodigal philanthropy would be open to serious
criticism. But any government which, by indiscriminate
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the raj at its zenith, 1858‒1905
almsgiving, weakened the fibre and demoralized the self-
reliance of the population would be guilty of a public
crime.’6
After the disastrous famine of 1899–1900, Curzon,
who had at least introduced a new famine policy in 1901, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]