Warren Hastings
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His Excellency The Right Honourable Warren Hastings |
|
|---|---|
 |
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| Governor of the Presidency of Fort William(Bengal) | |
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In office 28 April 1772 – 20 October 1774 |
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| Preceded by | John Cartier |
| Succeeded by | Position Abolished |
| Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William | |
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In office 20 October 1774 – 8 February 1785 |
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| Monarch | George III |
| Preceded by | Position Created |
| Succeeded by |
Sir John Macpherson, Bt As Acting Governor-General |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
6 December 1732 Churchill, Oxfordshire |
| Died | 22 August 1818 (aged 85) Daylesford, Gloucestershire |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Westminster School |
Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818), an English statesman, was the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and thereby the first de facto Governor-General of India from 1772 to 1785. He was accused of corruption and impeached in 1787, but after a long trial he was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Counsellor in 1814.
Hastings was born in Churchill, Oxfordshire in 1732 to a poor father, Penystone Hastings, and a mother, Hester Hastings, who died soon after he was born. He attended Westminster School where he was a contemporary of the future Prime Ministers Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Portland as well as the poet William Cowper. He joined the British East India Company in 1750 as a clerk and sailed out to India reaching Calcutta in August 1750. Hastings built up a reputation for hard work and diligence, and spent his free time learning about India and mastering Urdu and Persian. He was rewarded for his work in 1752 when he was promoted and sent to Kasimbazar, an important British trading post in Bengal where he worked for William Watts. While there he received further lessons about the nature of East Indian politics.
At the time, British traders still operated at the whim of local rulers, and so Hastings and his colleagues were unsettled by the political turmoil of Bengal, where the elderly moderate Nawab Alivardi Khan was likely to be succeeded by his grandson Siraj ud-Daulah, although several other rival claimants were eyeing the throne. This made British trading posts throughout Bengal increasingly insecure, as Siraj ud-Daulah was known to harbour anti-European views and be likely to launch an attack once he took power. When Alivardi Khan died in April 1756, the British traders and small garrison at Kasimbazar were left vulnerable. On 3 June, after being surrounded by a much larger force, the British were persuaded to surrender to prevent a massacre taking place. Hastings was imprisoned with others in the Bengali capital, Murshidabad, while the Nawab's forces marched on Calcutta and captured it. The garrison and civilians were then locked up under appalling conditions in the Black Hole of Calcutta.
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Wikipedia