Robert Clive: The conman whose plunder built the British India Empire
While Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh, and Abdul Telgi were criminals, Robert Clive was knighted and feted.
Move over Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh, and Abdul Telgi. For sheer white-collar crime, no one in Indian history can compare to Robert Clive, who made looting a fine art and whose spoils would leave contemporary financial crooks looking like small-time thieves.
Clive came to India in 1744 as a depressed, suicidal 18-year-old clerk of the East India Company (EIC) on a modest wage. Over the next 20 years, he went on to mastermind one of the biggest financial frauds in history, in the process becoming one of Britain's richest men.
The tipping point came in the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which was not so much a battle as a transaction. Clive bribed Mir Jafar, the commander of the Nawab of Bengal, to let him take over India's wealthiest province.
‘Corporate predator’
In William Dalrymple's The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire, Clive is portrayed as a “violent, utterly ruthless and intermittently mentally unstable corporate predator", whose victories in war were bought more than achieved.
Following Plassey, Clive's enrichment began in earnest. As de facto ruler of Bengal, he didn't merely accept gifts; he demanded tribute. The puppet nawab showered him with cash, jewels, and land revenues as the line between public servant and private profiteer dissolved swiftly.
The arithmetic of his avarice dwarfs modern scams. When Clive departed India in 1767, he carried away a personal fortune of £401,102 (roughly equivalent to £68 million today). Some estimates place the figure closer to £1.2 million in cash, bills, and jewels, or about £286 million in contemporary value. These were spoils extracted through institutionalized extortion.
By contrast, Mehta's securities fraud netted approximately ₹4,000 crore while Parekh's stock manipulation involved similar amounts. Abdul Telgi’s stamp paper fraud reached ₹20,000 crore. While enormous, these sums look like rounding errors next to Clive’s haul. The difference isn't just scale. Mehta, Parekh, and Telgi were criminals. Clive was knighted and feted.
What’s more, Clive's private bonanza is dwarfed by the institutional looting he facilitated. In 1765, he signed the Treaty of Allahabad, securing tax-revenue rights to the tune of £33 million per year from the Mughal emperor for the Company. With that, the GDP of one of the world's wealthiest areas passed into a private company's hands.
Clive set the model for the “nabob" (an anglicization of nawab), referring to EIC gentlemen returning from India with obscene amounts of money. They were hated and envied equally, and regarded as coarse upstarts polluting British politics with Indian lucre. A 1984 paper by Philip Lawson & Jim Phillips is aptly titled: “Our Execrable Banditti": Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain. Once back in Britain, they proceeded to construct palace residences, purchased seats in parliament, married into old-money households, and washed dirty money in aristocratic respectability.
Clive did just that. Back in England, he bought several estates and was invested with an Irish peerage in 1762. But the wealth had its price. He became addicted to opium and suffered through bouts of severe depression.
In 1772-73, the British legislators initiated an investigation into the behaviour of the EIC. Clive, defending himself against a hostile Parliament, deflected their recriminations with a line that expressed both his arrogance and the magnitude of opportunity: “I stand astonished at my own moderation." However, the defence wore him out. On 22 November 1774, aged 49, Robert Clive died by suicide.
Corporate colonialism
It’s important to remember that Clive was no rogue agent. The EIC, ostensibly a private entity, was in fact an imperial tool. Clive's governorship was legitimized by the Crown, his campaigns celebrated in London, and his peerage awarded by the King. He did not just pilfer Indian cash; he established the template for corporate colonialism.
Following Clive, the EIC became a colonial power unto itself, with standing armies, a minted currency, and sovereign rights over tens of millions of people. The Company State, as scholars now refer to it, started with Clive’s skillfully orchestrated betrayal.
Today, his statue continues to stand outside the Foreign Office in London while Plassey is remembered as a glorious imperial triumph. The crime was so integral to British riches that it has been reframed as patriotism.
Outrageous as it sounds, contemporary fraudsters appear amateurish and low-key when contrasted against the high art of imperial plunder, which Robert Clive orchestrated with a musket in one hand and an abacus in the other.
Oh, and Britain still hasn't returned what he stole.
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