by Thomas Archambaud
A London Thriller
On Monday, September 10, 1787, a 42-year-old gentleman on a stroll with a friend approached the entrance to Grosvenor Gate, a stately, tree-lined promenade through central London’s Hyde Park (see the featured image above). Soon, the pair witnessed another two men emerge from the path, exchange brief salutations, then reach for their pistols. At eleven o’clock, the first shot rang out, with a second and third following shortly thereafter. The offending parties exchanged a few words and left the grounds.
For Sir John Macpherson, it was a lucky escape. His pistol misfired the second time. Macpherson’s opponent, Major James Browne (ca. 1744–1792), had military experience and could handle a gun without trembling. Thanks only to chance and the quick arrangements made by Macpherson’s better-informed second, Colonel John Macgregor Murray, Macpherson survived (see Fig. 1).
After the duel, Macpherson retired to the Royal Pall Mall with his close friend Charles Greville, the son of the 1st Earl of Warwick. He found one of Browne’s bullets lodged in his notebook, which he always kept in his breast pocket. He kept the book as a precious relic until his death in 1821.
East Indian Officials
The dispute that made enemies of the two gentlemen originated not in London, but India, where both men had served in the British East India Company (EIC). Born on the Isle of Skye, Sir John Macpherson (ca. 1745–1821) studied at King’s College, Aberdeen before embarking to India on a ship commanded by his maternal uncle, Captain Alexander Macleod of Bernera (ca. 1715–1790). He landed in Madras (today Chennai) in 1767.
Macpherson’s social ascension was impressive. Carrying a letter of recommendation from the 1st Earl of Warwick, Macpherson met Josias Du Pré (1721–1780), governor of Madras, who took the young man under his protection. Supported by Du Pré, Macpherson worked closely with the governor-general of Bengal, Warren Hastings (1732–1818). After becoming an elected member of the supreme council of the Company in Bengal in 1781, Macpherson would eventually succeed Hastings as governor-general in February 1785 (see Fig. 2).
It was around that time that Macpherson met his future opponent, James Browne, a man of the same generation. Browne had joined the Company army in 1765, working as aide-de-camp to Hastings, who later appointed him revenue collector of the Jungle Terry district in 1773. In the 1780s, he became a representative at the court of the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II (1728–1806) in Delhi. Browne was a reputed Persian scholar and orientalist. He contributed to what Sanjay Subrahmanyam has famously called “Europe’s India,” a European scholarly discourse about the Indian subcontinent. His Indian Tracts, commissioned by the EIC in 1788, include a Treatise on the Sikhs. Largely based on a translation from an original text by Browne’s collaborator Lala Ajaib Singh Suraj, the Treatise was one of the first pieces of scholarships to engage directly with Sikhism and discuss its religious practices and philosophy for a European audience. As Browne explained in his introduction, his motivations were political and diplomatic. As conflicts with the Sikhs in Punjab threatened the stability of the Company’s control over northern India, Browne provided the EIC with crucial information on their army and politics as well as Sikh-Mughal relations in order to defend British interests in the region (see Fig. 3).
Despite their mutual hostility, Macpherson and Browne shared similar preoccupations. Interacting with the Sikhs and the Mughals, they were involved in what Christopher Bayly has called the “empire of information,” the construction of colonial knowledge on Indian people and societies undertaken by EIC servants working as intermediaries, translators and scholars. Contrary to the ‘Anglicist’ attitude aiming at converting the Indo-Persian elite to British and European values, Warren Hastings and the Company encouraged a form of conciliation and decentralized rule based on cultural mediation, as well as artistic and scholarly patronage. To legitimize their intrusion into the Indian subcontinent, EIC officers like Macpherson or Browne presented their mediation of Mughal culture as directly inspired by the “Universal Toleration” policy of the Emperor Jalal al-Din Muhammad Akbar at the end of the 15th century. Rather than appearing as intruders and conquerors, the EIC justified its territorial expansionism by borrowing codes of governance and rule from the Mughal emperors.
Yet this type of rule was coupled to rampant corruption, a practice to which these men were no strangers. Browne and Macpherson did far more than act as cultural mediators and go-betweens. Both were high-ranking officers of the British EIC in India who acquired substantial wealth by acting as “double agents”: British intermediaries at Mughal courts who nominally served the local population and the British crown alike. They were involved in diplomatic, financial and political activities as lobbyists of Indian princes and European traders, thus blurring the lines between private profits and official duties. Employed simultaneously by the EIC and Indian princes, they destabilized Mughal powers and exploited the local population. As such, they exemplified “geographical morality,” a contradictory code that accepted corruption in the Southern hemisphere, but not in Europe. It was hardly a coincidence that the concept of geographical morality first emerged in the philosopher and politician Edmund Burke’s vitriolic attacks against the EIC during Warren Hastings’s impeachment trial at the House of Commons between 1787 and 1797. Though operating on behalf of the British state, the EIC retained considerable independence from London and possessed its own army, currency, and flag. For Burke, the EIC had become a “state in the disguise of a merchant” whose predatory attitude and corruption of its employees had a disastrous financial and moral impact on Britain.
Diplomats and Bureaucrats
But how did Browne end up dueling with his former superior? Their mutual hatred originated in the definition of Browne’s role in Delhi. Contrary to Hastings, Macpherson did not believe that the Company should offer military assistance to Shah Alam (see Fig. 4). The latter’s territories were largely controlled by the powerful Maratha leader Mahadaji Scindia (1830–1794), who had fought against the British between 1775 and 1782. Eager to reduce spending and take distance from Scindia, the newly appointed governor Macpherson informed Browne of his desire to recall him to Calcutta in February 1785.
Browne refused, reminding Macpherson of Hastings’s high esteem for him and the necessity for the EIC’s counterbalancing of the influence of Scindia at the court of Shah Alam. Even after receiving a letter from Browne in April, Macpherson turned a deaf ear to the latter’s supplications and revoked his position. To justify Browne’s removal, Macpherson cited the India Act of 1784, which reinforced financial and bureaucratic control from Westminster and limited interactions with Mughal states. Having just taken over the position of governor-general Macpherson wanted to play the role of neutral British administrator. Above all, he aimed to affirm the power of the EIC’s “Company-State,” despite the fact that its direct sovereignty was confined to Bengal. Defying these orders from Calcutta, Browne continued to act as an intermediary between the Company and Shah Alam.
Things escalated quickly when Macpherson used his influence on journalists from the Calcutta Gazette to target Browne personally. The May 12, 1785 issue described Browne as a corrupt agent who, in exchange for accepting bribes, assisted Shah Alam in obstructing payments to the EIC. After the British victory at Bluxar (1764), Shah Alam retained the right to administer the territories of Kora and Allahabad. In August 1765, he granted extensive taxation rights to the British in Bengal, known as the Diwani (the feudal right to revenue collection). After a few years however, the EIC failed to pay its annual tribute of approximatively £325,000 to Shah Alam. Worse, the Company, unhappy with Shah Alam’s administration of Kora and Allahabad, decided to take them back by force. When Browne arrived in Delhi, he became sympathetic to Shah Alam’s grievances and channeled his petitions to the governor-general, protesting against the violation of the feudal relationship established by the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765 (see below). This action discredited Browne in the eyes of the new governor-general, John Macpherson, who suspected him of plotting against the interests of the Company. Browne was recalled to Calcutta in 1785 and left India shortly after. When Macpherson returned to England after his resignation in September 1786, Browne quickly challenged him to a duel. In Browne’s eyes, the accusations in the Calcutta Gazette were simply slanderous, and he could not leave the offense unpunished.
Profits and Proxies
The granting of the Diwani had turned the Company into a profitable and territorial power. But the EIC also managed to ruled India through more indirect means. Indian rulers borrowed considerable sums of money from EIC servants who, now turned into tax collectors, started to acquire lands in Arcot. The situation led to the creation of monopoly farms managed by the European traders and, ultimately, to the brutal exploitation of Indian farmers. As local Indian states’ dependence upon employees of the EIC and the demands of the British fiscal-military state both increased, their finances became increasingly precarious. The huge sums lent on high interest enabled the British to reinforce their control over lands which, unlike Bengal for example, were not put under their direct administration.
In Macpherson’s portrayal, Browne’s continued negotiations with Shah Alam implicitly challenged the Company’s Diwani rights and suzerainty. Ironically, Macpherson, even more so than Browne, exemplified the type of imperial intermediary who profitably operated in the ethical gray area connecting public duties and private agency. Before becoming governor-general, Macpherson had worked simultaneously as a Company servant and private agent for the Nawab of the Arcot state, the Muslim ruler Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah (1717–1795). Arcot was a province and successor state to the Mughal Empire in southeastern India that had become crucial to the Company’s commercial interests due to its proximity to the Madras presidency and its ports on the coast of Coromandel.
As a private agent of the Arcot state and an EIC servant, Macpherson therefore epitomized the success of the “nabobs,” a then-popular English loanword designating British returnees who had accumulated wealth in India. Since his arrival in Madras in 1767, Macpherson tirelessly defended the interests of his patron in Calcutta and London. As a reward, Macpherson received money from Arcot: his personal wealth amounted to £567 (today approximately £43,523.54). When he died in 1821, Macpherson left behind bonds amounting to a value of £2,500 in the Carnatic stock, managed privately by bankers in Calcutta and London. The money directly originated from his services to the Nawab of Arcot. Although such corruption led to his dismissal from the Company service in 1777, he continued his pro-Arcot lobbying from Britain, specifically London, until his death.
Rival Colonists
Despite sharing professional and financial ties with the Company-state system, the “nabobs” did not agree on how to respond to the EIC’s mounting challenges in India in the 1770s and 1780s. With the British state engaged in onerous wars with the colonists in America and the powerful Franco-Maratha confederation in India, the Company felt pressure to extract more revenue from the Mughal states, which had emerged after the collapse of the Mughal Empire in the first half of the eighteenth century.
Macpherson responded by attempting to avoid local conflicts, preserve the Mughal states’ autonomy, and establish durable diplomatic relations. He lobbied the Bengal Presidency in Calcutta and Hastings in particular to support a close alliance with Muhammed Ali Khan in Arcot. On paper, the idea was excellent. To remunerate the Company for its military protection, the Nawab borrowed heavily from Company servants. Saving the cost of a direct annexation of Arcot, the Company benefited from a large influx of money: this “indirect revenue” corresponded to the exorbitant interest on loans offered by EIC officers described above, which turned the Nawab into a client of the “Company-State.” In practice, however, the plan meant that Muhammed Ali Khan borrowed large sums of money from Company servants. Their capital, generated by the exuberant interest that the Nawab of Arcot had to pay on the money lent by his European creditors, did not always reach the Bengal treasury, and was often managed by EIC agents for their own benefit. The Indian population faced increased tax pressure to reimburse EIC loans given to the Indian elite. As a result, farmers suffered heavily from the Company’s unrestrained demands for agricultural productivity.
A System Under Threat
Intense political oppositions undergirded the quarrel between Macpherson and Browne. A similar duel in Calcutta preceded their own. In August 1780, Hastings and Sir Philip Francis (1740–1818) dueled after the former had publicly called Francis, his rival at the Supreme Council of the Company, a “liar and a braggard” in the press (see Fig. 5). A radical Whig in politics, Francis had criticized Hastings’s and Macpherson’s intrusion into the Nawabi state of Awadh in northern India. Francis accused them of plundering the treasure of Bahu Begam, the mother of the Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah (1748–1797). As Francis was even more uncomfortable with weapons than Macpherson, Hastings accepted the challenge. Both escaped with light injuries.
The British public was well aware of the corruption of EIC officials. In 1785, a vitriolic campaign led by the philosopher and politician Edmund Burke (1729–1797) forced Hastings to resign. Through Francis, Burke gathered confidential documents proving that Hastings had acted as an autocrat. By allowing employees like Macpherson to become lobbyists for Indian princes, Hastings had overstepped the boundaries of Company rule defined by the royal charter.
Unsurprisingly, Burke went on to target Macpherson’s record, publicizing the latter’s lobbying for Arcot in a speech in February 1785. For Burke, Macpherson’s supposedly decentralized rule of India amounted to pure despotism, manifest in the acceptation of presents and accumulation of money at the expense of both the British state and the Indian population. In this light, Macpherson’s targeting of Browne, who had actually shown greater loyalty to the Company, appears as little more than strategic, self-interested scapegoating. As public hostility to the company grew, sacrificing Browne diverted attention away from Macpherson’s own services to Muhammed Ali, which indeed escaped parliamentary scrutiny.
Escape to the Country
After his miraculous escape from Hyde Park on September 10, 1787, Macpherson traveled to Scotland to see his family and friends. The timing was felicitous. The future of the EIC had never looked bleaker. On May 10, 1787, the first charges of impeachment against Hastings were accepted, and the trial started with great publicity at the House of Commons in February 1788.
In September 1787, Hastings, too, apparently felt called to cooler, windier climes. Accompanied by two Scottish friends, he traveled to Scotland. His two-week journey combined Highland tourism with colonial politics. While Hastings consulted his most loyal supporters, such as the EIC soldier and Persian interpreter James Anderson (1757–1833) in anticipation of the impeachment proceedings, Macpherson showed indifference towards the proceedings in the House of Commons. He was absent for most of the trial, paying a second visit to his native country in September 1789. Browne, who never recovered from the accusations of bribery, died shortly after his last journey to India in 1792.
Macpherson and Hastings were luckier. Despite his lifelong association with Hastings, on whom the proceedings primarily focused, Macpherson’s name was rarely heard in Parliament. Much to Macpherson’s relief, Parliament acquitted Hastings in April 1795. The East India Company survived for another 53 years, until the civilian rebellion against EIC rule in India in 1857. Its information system of local and foreign intermediaries in India enabled, but eventually undermined, its exploitation of the Indian population. Despite their divergence regarding the Diwani, Browne and Macpherson both exemplified the intricacy of local finances and regional conflicts in Arcot, Bengal and in the British Empire. Their activities as mediators, which contributed to the EIC’s colonial information system, showed how a rather complex issue, that of land revenues and credit in Bengal and Arcot, had in fact far-reaching consequences for the general evolution of Britain’s Empire on the eve of the French Revolution. Their “geographical immorality” contributed to the EIC’s colonial information system but ultimately led to its demise in the nineteenth century.
Thomas Archambaud completed his doctorate at the University of Glasgow in 2024, co-supervised by the Centre Roland Mousnier (Université Paris-Sorbonne). His dissertation, entitled “Literary agents, patronage brokers and imperial administrators: the Macphersons and ancien régime global Empire in America and India,” examines the integration of the clan Macpherson into the British Empire, and the East India Company in particular, from the end of the Seven Years’ War to the eve of the French Revolution. His thesis was supported both by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Scottish Historical Review Trust. His research focuses on the intersection of global and European history, in particular Scottish history, the legacy of colonialism on academic and cultural institutions and the study of the East India Company at the time of the French Revolution.
Edited by Philippe Bernhard Schmid and Zac Endter
Featured Image: View of Grosvenor Gate in Hyde Park during the Encampment, 1780. RCIN 451586; pencil, pen and watercolour by Paul Sandby (1731–1809). Courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust.
