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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Robert Clive
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(1725–74, baron 1762)
Soldier and administrator who laid the foundations of the British empire in *India. At the age of 18 he went out to Madras as a 'writer' (a superior form of clerk) in the *East India Company, but he was soon revealing a military talent in the Company's constant skirmishes with the French. The turning point of his career came in 1757 when he was sent to recover *Calcutta from the nawab of Bengal. He did so, and in the subsequent Battle of *Plassey (1757) defeated the nawab. He replaced him with a puppet ruler, introducing the system of British government from behind the scenes which later spread through most of India.
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Clive also set a pattern of personal corruption which stained the early years of the British raj. During 1757–60 he accepted a total of some £234,000 in cash together with land worth about £30,000 a year – a record which hardly helped him when, in a second term in Bengal (1765–7), he urged higher standards upon his subordinates. An attempt to convict him of corruption failed after he had defended himself before his peers in an all-night sitting in the House of Lords in 1772. But depression, exacerbated perhaps by an addiction to opium, led to his suicide two years later. His Indian collection is exhibited at *Powis Castle.
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