Author: Sushil Chaudhury
Publisher: Manohar
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8173043019
Description
The book puts forward a completely new explanation of the Plassey revolution of 1757 which helped in the growth and development of colonialism in India.
Based mainly on manuscript records preserved in various European and Indian archives, this book dispels the received wisdom that the Plassey revolution was an Indian born conspiracy. By making an in -depth analysis of the genesis of the circumstances leading to the Plassey conspiracy and the revolution, Prof. Sunil Chaudhury discounts the collaboration thesis and shows conclusively that it was the British who not only engineered and encouraged the conspiracy but tried their best till the last moment before the battle of Plassey to persuade the Indian conspirators to stick to the British project of a revolution.
It has been shown that the conspiracy took the final shape only under the aegis of the British and that without their active involvement it would not have matured enough to bring about the downfall of the Nawab. It has been argued that the British conquest of Bengal became an imperative for them for their retrieval of the battered private trade fortune of the company servants which was facing a severe crisis in the late 1740s and early 1750s.