The Transition in Bengal, 1756-75: A Study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan

by Abdul Majed Khan

Overview

Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan held the office of Naib Nazim and Naib Diwan of Bengal from 1765 to 1772. This study includes the early life of the Khan, but concentrates particularly upon the years from 1756, when the Khan first held public office, to 1775. There was much greater continuity and overlapping between the British and Mughal administrations than has been supposed. Company servants like Clive seemed to the local public to be simply Mughal grandees in British uniforms and the innovations supposed to have arrived with British rule actually occurred much later. Instead of the British gradually taking over the local administration under the urge to eliminate corruption, there was an administration carried on competently in traditional style by Reza Khan under attack from the East India Company's officers who were not so much concerned with rooting out this alleged corruption in the interest of justice and efficiency as increasing the revenues of the Company and adding the by-products to themselves.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521049825
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/03/2007
Series:	Cambridge South Asian Studies , #7
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.91(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; List of Company servants with their Mughal titles; List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction: the twilight of Mughal Bengal; 2. The early life of Reza Khan and his first public office in 1756; 3. The involvement in politics, 1760–1763; 4. The Naibat at Dacca, 1763–1765; 5. The Naibat Subahdari at Murshidabad, 1765; 6. Reza Khan at the zenith of his power, 1765–1767; 7. The early reverses, 1767–1768; 8. Conflict of interests: opposition to trade monopolies and proposal for supervisorships, 1769; 9. The conflict deepens, 1769–1770; 10. The rearguard action and Reza Khan's arrest, 1770–1772; 11. The 'Inquisition', 1772–1775; Select bibliography; Index.