British East India Company Acquires Control
Maharaja Dharendra Narayan appealed to the British, rulers of Bengal, for assistance in regaining his kingdom in exchange for a large payment. However, the Governor General Warren Hastings rejected the terms and insisted on an agreement by which the Maharaja would pay an annual tribute to the Company in exchange for protection - in effect an agreement to accept the supremacy of the British. The British then sent a regiment commanded by Mr. Paling from Kalikata (Calcutta/Kolkata) who marched through Rangpur towards Mughalhat, joined on their route by Behar forces. After a series of sharp encounters with the Bhutanese forces, the British captured the capital (1772) and moved forward into southern Bhutan.
Unwilling to go further into the difficult hill country, the British negotiated a peace agreement (April 25, 1774) with Bhutan in exchange for surrender of Bihar royal captives, Bhutan agreeing to return to its pre-1730 boundaries, and a symbolic tribute of five horses. The British left a small garrison in Behar, and withdrew the main army to Rangpur. When Dhairjendra Narayan realized that he had exchanged one master for another, and had permanently lost independence of his ancestral land, he abdicated in favor of Dharendra Narayan, who reigned until his death in 1775, when Dhairjendra Narayan resumed the throne (1775-1783 C.E.)
From now on, until the transfer of control to the State of India in 1949, Koch Behar was a princely state subject to overall British Suzerainty. In 1949, it was merged with the Union of India and later became a part of West Bengal state. .
Subsequent princely rulers under the British East India company were Harendra Narayan (1783 - 1839 C.E.), followed by Shivendra Narayan (1839 - 1847 C.E.) and then by Narendra Narayan (1847 - 1863 C.E.). At first the rulers had a measure of independent authority, but increasingly the British Commissioners became the effective rulers, stamping out abuses such as slavery and Dacoity, and gradually improving infrastructure and general prosperity and the rule of law.
Read more about this topic: Koch Bihar
Famous quotes containing the words british, east, india, company, acquires and/or control:
“They have to prove their superiority every day. It’s their one tremendous weakness.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)
“We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken. Maugre all the selfishness that chills like east winds the world, the whole human family is bathed with an element of love like a fine ether.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“All I can tell you with certainty is that I, for one, have no self, and that I am unwilling or unable to perpetrate upon myself the joke of a self.... What I have instead is a variety of impersonations I can do, and not only of myself—a troupe of players that I have internalised, a permanent company of actors that I can call upon when a self is required.... I am a theater and nothing more than a theater.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“To try to control a nine-month-old’s clinginess by forcing him away is a mistake, because it counteracts a normal part of the child’s development. To think that the child is clinging to you because he is spoiled is nonsense. Clinginess is not a discipline issue, at least not in the sense of correcting a wrongdoing.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)