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Robert Clive

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB, FRS (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India,[1][2][3] was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal.[4][5][6][7][8][9] He began as a writer (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the EIC in 1744 and established Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757.[10] In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £30,000 (equivalent to £4,300,000 in 2021) per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £180,000 (equivalent to £25,700,000 in 2021) which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.[11][12]

For other people named Robert Clive, see Robert Clive (disambiguation).

The Right Honourable
The Lord Clive
KB FRS

Roger Drake
as President

Henry Vansittart

Henry Vansittart

Harry Verelst

(1725-09-29)29 September 1725
Styche, Shropshire, England

22 November 1774(1774-11-22) (aged 49)
London, England

​
(m. 1753)​

9, including Edward

Merchant Taylors' School

Clive of India

Bengal Army

1746–1774

Major-general

British East India Company

Commander-in-Chief of India

War of the Austrian Succession
Battle of Madras
Siege of Cuddalore
Siege of Pondicherry
Tanjore Expedition
Second Carnatic War
Siege of Trichinopoly
Siege of Arcot
Battle of Arnee
Battle of Chingleput
Seven Years' War
Battle of Vijaydurg
Battle of Chandannagar
Battle of Plassey

Blocking impending French mastery of India, Clive improvised a 1751 military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the EIC to return (1755) to India, Clive conspired to secure the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England from 1760 to 1765, he used the wealth accumulated from India to secure (1762) an Irish barony from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).[13][14]


Clive's actions on behalf of the EIC have made him one of Britain's most controversial colonial figures. His achievements included checking French imperialist ambitions on the Coromandel Coast and establishing EIC control over Bengal, thereby furthering the establishment of the British Raj, though he worked only as an agent of the East India Company, not of the British government. Vilified by his political rivals in Britain, he went on trial (1772 and 1773) before Parliament, where he was absolved from every charge. Historians have criticised Clive's management of Bengal during his tenure with the EIC, in particular regarding responsibility in contributing to the Great Bengal Famine of 1770, which killed between one and ten million people.

(b. 7 March 1754, d. 16 May 1839)

Edward Clive, 1st Earl of Powis

Rebecca Clive (b. 15 September 1760, bapt 10 October 1760 Moreton Say, d. December 1795, married in 1780 to Lt-Gen John Robinson of Denston Hall Suffolk, MP (d. 1798.)

Charlotte Clive (b. 19 January 1762, d. unm 20 October 1795)

Margaret Clive (bapt 18 September 1763 , Shropshire, d. June 1814, married 11 April 1780 Lt-Col Lambert Theodore Walpole (d. in Wexford Rebellion 1798)

Condover

Elizabeth Clive (bapt 18 November 1764 Condover, d. young)

Richard Clive (d. young)

Robert Clive (d. young)

Robert Clive Jnr (b. 14 August 1769, d. unm 28 July 1833), Lt-Col.

Jane Clive (d. young)

On 18 February 1753 in Madras, Clive married Margaret Maskelyne (d. 28 December 1817[42]),[42] sister of the Rev. Dr Nevil Maskelyne, fifth Astronomer Royal. They had nine children:

Robert Clive's desk from his time at Grammar School is on display at Market Drayton museum complete with his carved initials. The town also has a Clive Road.

Market Drayton

Robert Clive's pet died on 23 March 2006 in the Kolkata zoo. The tortoise, whose name was "Adwaita" (meaning the "One and Only" in Bengali), appeared to be 150–250 years old. Adwaita had been in the zoo since the 1870s and the zoo's documentation showed that he came from Clive's estate in India.[82]

Aldabra giant tortoise

A statue of Clive stands in the main square in the market town of , as well as a later one in King Charles Street near St James's Park, London.

Shrewsbury

Clive is a Senior Girls house at the , where all houses are named after prominent military figures.

Duke of York's Royal Military School

Clive was a house at school in Newport, Shropshire which in 2021 was renamed Owen house, after the poet and soldier Wilfred Owen who was born near Oswestry in Shropshire. This follows criticism of Robert Clive in light of the George Floyd protests.

Haberdashers' Adams

Clive Road, in , London, commemorates Baron Clive[83] despite being so named close to a century after his death. Following the completion of the relocation of The Crystal Palace from Hyde Park to what is now Upper Norwood in 1854, the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway was opened on 10 June 1854 to cope with crowds visiting the Crystal Palace. This led to a huge increase in employment in the area and a subsequent increase in the building of residential properties. Many of the new roads were named after eminent figures in British imperial history, such as Robert Clive.

West Dulwich

There is a settlement named after Clive in the province of New Zealand.

Hawke's Bay

Clive's coat of arms can be seen ( with his wife's) in relief in the pediment at Claremont in Esher, Surrey, which Clive had rebuilt.

impaled

A bestselling children's novel, 's With Clive in India: Or, the Beginnings of an Empire (1884), celebrates Clive's life and career from a pro-British point of view.

G. A. Henty

's stage play Clive of India (1933) portrays the life of Clive, particularly focusing on his victory at the Battle of Plassey. It was based on a biography of Clive that Minney had written two years earlier.[84]

R. J. Minney

The 1935 film , based on Minney's play, starred Ronald Colman, Loretta Young, and Clive's descendant Colin Clive.[85]

Clive of India

"Clive" was a house at , where he was a student for seven years before his expulsion. Members were distinguished by their red striped ties. In January 2021 the house was renamed after former pupil and sportsman John Raphael.[86]

Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood

Robert Clive established the first slaughterhouse in India, in Calcutta in 1760.

[87]

"Clive of India" is a brand of manufactured in Australia by McKenzie's Foods.

curry powder

With the re-capture of Calcutta by Clive in 1756, the cultivation of poppies for the soon came to be the mainstay of the East India Trading Company's commerce with Imperial China.[88]

opium trade

Clive is responsible for opening the first organized brothel within the Army cantonment of Calcutta. He was not interested in eradication of but in regulation so that their own soldiers and sailors could be protected from venereal diseases. However, two properties in central Calcutta owned by women named Ishwari and Bhobi, whom the Company identified as prostitutes, were seized in 1753.[89]

prostitution

's 1880 poem Clive recounts a fictional episode in which Clive, as a young clerk, duels a card-sharping soldier. Clive shoots and misses; the cheat then admits his crime and spares Clive's life. The poem's narrator, and those watching the duel, initially believe that the episode shows Clive's courage in standing up honestly; but Clive rebukes them that the magnanimous cheat showed far more honour. The poem largely focuses on the relationship between courage and fear, and closes with an allusion to Clive's suicide ("Clive's worst deed – we'll hope condoned").

Robert Browning

(1974). Clive of India. Constable & Robinson Limited. ISBN 978-0-09-459830-0.

Bence-Jones, Mark

Chaudhuri, Nirad C. Robert Clive of India: A Political and Psychological Essay (1975).

Dodwell, Henry. Dupleix and Clive: The Beginning of Empire (1920).

Faught, C. Brad (2013). Clive: Founder of British India. (Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, Inc.).

Harrington, Jack (2010), Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India, ch. 6, New York: ., ISBN 978-0-230-10885-1

Palgrave Macmillan

Harvey, Robert. Clive: The Life and Death of a British Emperor. Hodder and Stoughton, 1998.

Davies, Alfred Mervyn (1939). . C. Scribner's sons. ISBN 9780598503046.

Clive of Plassey: A Biography

Edwardes, Michael The Battle of Plassey and the Conquest of Bengal (London) 1963

(1893). William Wilson Hunter (ed.). Lord Clive. Rulers of India. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Malleson, G. B.

Marshall, P. J. (1987). . Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-25330-7.

Bengal, The British Bridgehead: Eastern India 1740–1828

Treasure, Geoffrey (2002). Who's Who in Early Hanoverian Britain, 1714–1789. Stackpole Books.  0-8117-1643-0.

ISBN

Bowen, H. V. "Clive, Robert". (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5697. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Arbuthnot, Alexander John (1887). . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

"Clive, Robert" 

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the : Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Clive, Robert Clive, Baron". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 532–536.

public domain

Baynes, T. S., ed. (1875–1889). . Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed.). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

"Robert Clive" 

. UK National Archives.

"Archival material relating to Robert Clive"

"Lord Clive," an essay by Thomas Babington Macaulay (January 1840)