India 1756–1805

In 1756, the British, under Lieutenant Colonel Robert Clive, ended the Nawab of Bengal’s siege of Calcutta. After his victory at the Battle of Plassey (1757), he fought against the Nawab and his French allies. Clive, sponsored by the British East India Company, became governor of Bengal, beginning two centuries of British domination. By the end of the 18th century, the East India Company, under Warren Hastings, British General Cornwallis and Viscount Wellesley, consolidated and expanded British dominions within India. In 1798, Wellesley eradicated the French presence in Hyderabad and placed its dominions under British protection, with its prince forced to sign a subsidiary alliance agreement; the same process happened in Mysore in 1799. Other kingdoms followed, leaving the Maratha Confederacy alone in resisting British control. In 1775–1805, there was the first of a series of wars between the British East India Company and the Marathas, who refused to submit to British colonial authority.