BRITISH JOURNAL OF MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, 2016
Foreign relations and semi-modernization during the reigns of Haidar ‘Ali and Tipu Sultan
Kaveh
Yazdani
Center
for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA), University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, South Africa
ABSTRACT
It was during the reigns of the late-eighteenth-century rulers of Mysore, Haidar ‘Ali (r.1761–82) and Tipu Sultan (r.1782–99), that one of the earliest eforts of semi-modernization in the regions of West, Central and South Asia, as well as North Africa was taking place. Some scholars have described Haidar and Tipu as premodern rulers, but continuity and tradition do not fully explain Mysore’s transitional character, which was embodied in these rulers’ reforms. Their encounter with European powers convinced and compelled them that a transformation of state and society was the most promising means to resist colonization and remain independent. The following will inquire into Mysore’s late-eighteenth-century foreign relations and recruitment of foreign artisans. It will be intended to assert that neither can these eforts be exclusively understood in terms of tradition nor do they relect the minds of modern rulers. Instead, they manifest a historical juncture that was neither dominantly traditional nor modern, but resided in a transitory phase.
Introduction
Whereas modernity is a long-term process that brought about radical epistemological, political, socio-economic etc. transformations and the emergence of bourgeois society, ‘modernization’ is a concept that—in hindsight—some economists and social scientists have ascribed to characterize developments beginning from the eighteenth century onwards.1 The late-eighteenth-century semi-modernization I am concerned with may be deined as endeavours to enhance developments of state and society and implement progress-oriented economic, techno-scientiic, military, political, administrative, judicial and educational insti tutions, ideas, culture and ethos. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries semi modernization was envisaged in diferent areas of the globe, but the most important impulses stemmed from Enlightenment thought, and the Scientiic and Industrial Revolutions.
It
was during the reigns of the late-eighteenth-century rulers of Mysore, Haidar ‘Ali
(r.1761– 82) and Tipu Sultan (r.1782–99), that one of the earliest eforts of
semi-modernization in the regions of
West, Central and South Asia, as well as North Africa was taking place.2 These endeavours were merely preceded by the
semi-modernization eforts that were launched
by the state of the Ottoman Empire.3
In
1997, historian Kate Brittlebank made an important contribution to the debate
in point ing out that Tipu Sultan was entrenched in traditions instead of being
a ‘modern thinker’. She argues that
Tipu’s recruitment of artisans and interest in European technology, his curi
osity for and acquirement of rarities and foreign products such as animals,
plants, textiles and even women,
relected his striving for universal kingship. As she observes, ‘the more you owned, the greater was your prestige, and
actually to be able to give them away as gifts
must have enhanced that prestige considerably […] bringing them under his
sway, contin ually augmented his claims to be Shadow of God on earth.’4 In
other words, Tipu’s:
innovations and reforms were not so much the result of caprice or the actions of ‘a modern thinker,’ but, rather, part of the expected role of the king as deined by the cultural traditions of the region. And for one whose legitimate position might not have been fully established, they would have formed an integral and important part of that role.5
Indeed, Brittlebank is right in emphasizing the continuities that were visible in late-eight eenth-century Mysore. However, continuity and tradition do not fully explain Mysore’s tran sitional character, which was embodied in Haidar’s and especially Tipu’s reforms. Their encounter with European powers like the Portuguese, Dutch and French and the life-threat ening confrontation with the British convinced and compelled them that a transformation of state and society was the most promising means to resist colonization and remain inde pendent. The unprecedented changes that took place in the realms of agriculture, commerce, manufacture and technology, the military, the administration and infrastructure have been examined elsewhere.6 The following will inquire into Mysore’s late-eighteenth-century for eign relations and recruitment of foreign artisans. As in the aforementioned domains, I intend to assert that neither can these eforts be exclusively understood in terms of tradition nor do they relect the minds of modern rulers. Instead, they manifest a historical juncture that was neither dominantly traditional nor modern, but resided in a transitory phase. Elsewhere, I have already discussed Haidar’s engagement of French experts in the 1750s in order to modernize his army.7 In the 1760s, Haidar continued to engage European mer cenaries, engineers, artisans, interpreters and doctors.8 Furthermore, Haidar ‘Ali also drew upon European prisoners of war and made use of forced labour. In 1768, for instance, two Englishmen who were captured at Erod were urged to become armourers in Mysore.9 In 1771, Haidar suggested to the Portuguese Governor of Goa, via his local ambassador, that he would restore former privileges in the Bednore region, providing that he would assist him. The chairman of the East India Company (EIC) mentioned that Haidar’s ‘situation is such, as induces him to leave no means untried, to procure assistance wherever he has the least prospect of obtaining it’.10 It is worth noting that Haidar even wrote a letter to the German Emperor Friedrich II around 1774.11 Haidar and Tipu also had diplomatic con tacts with Spain, Manila, the Danes and the Dutch.12 Similar to his father, Tipu equally set a high value on diplomatic relations with other countries. In his correspondence with the Ottomans, it is a matter of dispute whether Tipu addressed the sovereign as Caliph or rather regarded him as equal. In any case, he reinforced his ties with the Ottomans, France, Muscat, Persia and Afghanistan by dint of presents such as jewellery, robes of honour, perfumes, elephants etc. The four ships he sent on a mission to Turkey (Rum), France and England were loaded with commodities for sale (e.g. turmeric, sandalwood scent, carda mom, ginger, fans, sandalwood drums) and presents with a value of over Rs 20 lakh. Moreover, about 900 servants and functionaries were on board.13 Apart from strengthening diplomatic ties and recruiting soldiers,14 Tipu was especially eager to bring back a number of commodities and resources from other places—inside and outside of India. For instance, Tipu seems to have imported silkworms from Bengal and commissioned his envoys to bring seeds and saplings of almond, and diferent nuts (pistachio, walnut, ilbert), common pear, yam, dates and silkworms, as well as date and silkworm cultivators from Jeddah or Muscat.15 In the following, I shall delve into Tipu’s diplomatic missions and his craze for everything foreign.
Missions
to France and the Ottoman Empire
In
1779, Haidar ‘Ali and Ragunath Rao (1734–83), the former peshwa (prime
minister) of the Maratha Empire
(1773–74), seem to have made the earliest post-Mughal attempts to send emissaries to France and Turkey. Before this,
only the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II appears
to have sent a delegation to England in the mid-1760s in order to ensure
British military protection. At any
rate, the vessel, including two of Haidar’s envoys (one destined for
France and the other for Istanbul), one
Maratha emissary and the French Chevalier St. Lubin (who was accompanying the envoys), was attacked by
British forces and could not continue the
voyage.16 Thus, Mysore’s embassies to Paris and Istanbul had to wait
till the rule of Tipu Sultan. Indeed,
similar to his father, Tipu was equally interested and curious about what was
hap pening in other parts of the world, which was relected in his pronounced
thirst for European knowledge. In 1784,
he sent the irst embassy to Istanbul. There, the head of the legation, Mohammad Osman Khan, received the permission
for a second, more signiicant mission.17 As early as 1785, Tipu planned to send
a legation to Istanbul and entertained the idea of sending an embassy to France. The mission to
Istanbul was sent in 1786 and consisted of four
ships and a staf of 900 people, including secretaries, interpreters, attendants,
sweepers, cooks and soldiers. It had the
main purpose of arranging and strengthening trade relations with the Ottomans, Oman and Persia, as well as
obtaining military assistance against the British. The mission was supposed to go on to Paris and
then to London, but got stuck in Iraq.
Therefore, a separate legation of 45 persons—including the emissaries’
footmen, butlers, cooks and
bodyguards—was sent to France which was entirely inanced by the French gov
ernment.18 In a statement of instruction (hukmnamah), addressed to his three
pious Muslim envoys19 Mohammad Dervish
Khan, Abbas ‘Ali Khan and Mohammad Osman Khan leaving for Europe in mid-1787, he commanded that
information about ‘the industries and rarities of each city and territory and the account of
the afairs of the cities’ should be written down.20 Tipu wholeheartedly
searched for additional astronomers, geomancers, physicians as well as craftsmen (e.g. carpenters and ironsmiths)
who were able to produce muskets, cannon-pieces, matchlocks, clocks (gharial), glass,
chinaware and mirrors, in order to bring them to Mysore. He looked for specialists who could locate
mines of sulphur, silver and gold. Tipu even thought that he could obtain mineral coal in the
Ottoman domain and instructed his oicials to bring large quantities of ‘stone coal’ (sang-i
angisht) along with them from Jeddah or Muscat, despite the fact that Mysore had forests and was
capable of producing cheap charcoal. Most
signiicantly, Tipu ordered his embassies in Turkey and France to engage
four experts who were willing to come to
Mysore in order to explore the presence of coal ores.21 Therefore, the eminent historian Irfan Habib is of the
opinion that ‘Tipu was […] perhaps the irst Indian potentate (if not the irst Indian) to
apprehend the value of coal and try to obtain it.’22
Tipu’s
diplomatic eforts to strengthen his ties with the Ottomans had several
purposes. On the one hand, he commanded
the recruitment of Ottoman (and Mughal) soldiers (jawans) and captains (sardars) for the combat against
British forces.23 Furthermore, with the objective of constructing a powerful navy, Tipu aspired
to lease (ijara) the port of Basra—which was
under Ottoman control—through a inancial remuneration and ofering a port
in Mysore (e.g. Mangalore) to the
Ottoman ruler in exchange. As Irfan Habib emphasizes, Tipu ‘wished to act like the European Companies by
establishing an overseas settlement of his own’.24 Indeed, Basra would have
provided shelter from monsoons to Tipu’s leet. Similar to his father Haidar ‘Ali, Tipu was aware of the fact that
he needed a strong navy in order to counter the
British forces. His ships were already trading throughout the Gulf and
to some extent also in the Red Sea and
he had agents located in places like Muscat. But Tipu’s diplomatic endeav ours
failed since merely 68 out of 900 people returned from the mission. Colonel
Wilks, who even assumed that 1100
persons had been sent on the legation, reported that the ‘secretary estimated the total expence [sic!] of this
embassy, including the pay of the escort, the value of the ship lost, and the merchandize
embezzled at Muscat, at twenty lacs of rupees
[c.£200,000]’.25 Moreover, the Ottoman court was not willing to support
Mysore’s struggle against the British
and refused to farm out the port of Basra.26 Indeed, the Ottomans were ighting against Russia and Austria at that
time. Therefore, they were not willing to confed erate with the enemies of the
British, whose support they needed for their wars.27
With
regard to France, Tipu had originally desired to send a ship with 400 Indians
on board. According to Monneron, this
would have been ‘the irst Indian ship to appear in European waters’.28 But the Treaty of Paris
(1783)—which sealed a peace treaty between Britain and France—made such endeavours impossible.29 In
any case, Tipu’s legation to France arrived
in Toulon in mid-1788, over 10 months after its departure from
Pondicherry. The main purpose of his
embassy was to reach an anti-British alliance with Louis XVI. He further wished
to employ 10,000 French soldiers, but ‘insisted
that the French commanders with their troops
should be under his authority in all matters of war strategy, march and
halt’.30 Signiicantly, the French were
not in a position to develop serious colonial ambitions in India, such as
they had shown in North America or the
Caribbean. In early 1786, M De Cossigny said the following to Tipu: ‘I can assure you, Prince, that the
Emperor […] does not have any desire to possess
lands in Hindustan; he needs some merchandise for his people; the Indian
cities he has in his possession suice
for this purpose.’31 Archival evidence is available to conirm that between 1750 and 1799, the French’s main aim
was to expel the British from India.32 Nonetheless, in order to defeat the
British forces, Tipu was even willing to give away the fort of Pondicherry, Chennapattan (Madras) and
other ports of the eastern littoral to the French, as well as former British territory such as
Calcutta, the Presidency of Bombay and ‘the old
territory attached to them’, in case he would have overwhelmed the
British.33 As the French Colonel Russel,
who knew Tipu personally, wrote, ‘He is perfectly aware of the importance for an Indian ruler that no European nation
near him grows too powerful.’34 However, Tipu’s
ambition to attain a treaty with France was shattered. As Joseph Michaud
summarized:
The
unhappy Louis XVI, just out of a ruinous war and troubled by the fear of
internal diiculties, could not bring
himself to give again a fresh signal for hostilities. He contented himself with strengthening the alliance already
established between France and Tippoo.35
Concurrently,
the French were very cooperative with regard to exhibiting their
manufactures, machines, magazines
(warehouses) and ships, as well as providing experts who were willing to temporarily work in Mysore. As one of the
emissaries wrote:
We
have visited all the Imperial factories of France. We arrived at Brest and we
were made to visit the whole port;
machines, shops and ships, were all opened and exposed to our curiosity. We were greatly satisied by this interesting
spectacle. We owe all this to the kind attention of the Emperor whose orders would have made all
this possible.36
The
curiosity of the envoys was considerable. The French clerks Ruin and Piverot de
Morlat attested that Osman Khan desired
‘to see everything’ and knew ‘how to inspire the Count d’ Hector to show him everything’.37 Another
of Tipu’s emissaries examined ‘every piece of
the mechanism’ of a vessel and the General M Guignance and the Constructor
of the Dugue Truin ‘explained it to him
in detail’.38 Afterwards, he ‘visited the diferent workshops and visited all the small workshops till the
arrival of his colleagues’.39 In a book, published in 1822, J. B. Gentil writes that the envoys
were most interested in the royal manufacture of wallpaper, especially in the ‘chemical
operations relating to the manufacture of colours and dyes’.40 Tipu also wished to procure French
craftspeople capable of making novel kinds of
muskets and iron cannon-pieces (cast-iron guns), as well as foremen for
casting incendiary bombs and bullet
castors. Moreover, he pushed for the recruitment of clock-makers, pro ducers of
chinaware (Sèvre porcelain), glass, mirrors, wool-carders, textile-makers,
weavers, printers (in the ‘oriental’
language) and other unspeciied craftsmen—10 of each guild. Furthermore, already in late 1786, he had
requested one skilled physician, a pharmacist,
‘thoroughly acquainted with, and capable of preparing, every kind of
medicine known in Europe’ and an able
surgeon. In 1788, he further requested an engineer, in addition to spice plants, seeds and fruit trees particular to
Europe as well as workers for their cultivation.41 It is interesting to note
that he ordered the purchase of barometers, thermometers (Cossigny sent him one in 1786), spectacles, clocks, a
map and a printer of books (chhapasaz). The
latter is corroborated by Gentil, who wrote that Tipu’s emissaries, when
visiting the Imprimerie Royale in 1788,
were ‘especially interested in the ones [types] in foreign lan guages,
particularly Arabic, Persian, Syriac, etc.’ As a matter of fact, Tipu’s
ambitions bore some fruit, even though
his success was limited. According to the existing literature, we know of at least three French experts in the
production of cannons and guns, as well as
two French master-artisans, a carpenter, a turner, an optician and two
glass-makers, who had agreed to leave
for Mysore in late 1788.42 I have detected some further evidence that French professionals made their way to Mysore
along with Tipu’s envoys. In the early 1790s,
30 or 32 French experts belonging to diferent professions were residing
in Mysore. Indeed, Tipu’s war captive
James Bristow mentioned ‘the arrival of thirty artists from France […] with a view to instruct Tippoo’s subjects in
manufactures, and aiding this Asiatic ally of
France with mechanical knowledge’.43 Accordingly, I have identiied that,
in late 1788, Tipu’s emissaries signed
contracts—that generally had a duration of up to four years—to bring along six ‘artisans’ from Paris, three from
Brest, six from Nantes, as well as ive professionals from an unnamed place. They engaged to
transport them and their belongings free of
charge to the place where Tipu desired them to reside. Among these
professionals, there was a doctor from
the hospitals of the French emperor (M Villemet); a master-surgeon from Paris (M Barrault); two master clockmakers
from Paris (M Debay and M Sandor Gendre); a
gardener from the Château Impérial de Bellevue (M Mullot); and a
gardener from the garden of the king.
The professionals from Brest were composed of an optician/mechanic (M Monnot)44 from the Marine Impériale and two
glassmakers (M Antoine and M Descrivan).
Apart from that, an arms manufacturer from the Académie de la Marine (M
le Brun) and a master armourer (Jean
Francois le Melloc), both of whom specialized in cannons and mus kets, were
engaged to follow the envoys to India. With the help of French oicers, the emissaries also found three carpet weavers
who agreed to join them. What is more, a crafts man from the imperial foundries
at Nantes (M Mouyset or Mouriset) also consented to work in Mysore. He was allowed to bring along four
employees (two foremen, a carpenter and a
turner). However, M Mouyset eventually cancelled his contract because he
had presumably obtained a letter from
his father advising him that he had fallen ill. But another castor from Nantes (M Bégos) agreed to come along instead
of Mouyset.45 Nonetheless, when the envoys
returned to Srirangapatna in May 1789—which was around the same time that
the French Revolution unfolded—Tipu was
not content with the results: the emissaries had not arranged a treaty based on an ofensive and
defensive alliance; they had not been capable
of securing French soldiers; and the number of artisans was equally less
than expected. As a possible consequence
of his discontentment or maybe because the envoys spread strictly forbidden rumours of France’s superiority
vis-à-vis Mysore, the despot had two of his emis saries executed, namely, Akbar
‘Ali Khan and Mohammed Osman Khan. But sparse docu mentary evidence does not
yet permit us to specify Tipu’s underlying motives for the murders.46
According
to Irfan Habib, the indication was that Tipu was not successful in
engaging porcelain-makers and
shipwrights or a skilled astronomer, geomancer and physician. However, some of the sought-after experts
were indeed secured: apart from a doctor called
M Villemet, a note from the French Governor de Fresne conirmed that a
surgeon called Barrault arrived in
Mysore. But soon after his arrival, he broke away to Pondicherry because he was not needed, except for teaching the
native doctors in Srirangapatna ‘the European
practices that were unknown to them’.47 At the same time, Barrault
mentioned that—apart from two marine
oicers (M d’Outreville and M Sarbourg), two watchmakers, two engineers and a surgeon—all remaining French experts
were sent to Srirangapatna under the guidance
of Osman Khan in mid-1789.48
What
efects did the French Revolution have on the Franco-Mysorean relations? First
of all, the French commitment never had
been very pronounced: in 1783 they arranged a peace treaty with Britain without consulting Tipu;
in 1786 they remained neutral during the Mysore– Maratha War; in 1788 they were
unwilling to ally with Mysore, and moreover incapable of doing so. Shortly after the outbreak of the
revolution, in 1790, France was not in a position to support Tipu in the Third Anglo-Mysore War.
Only when an Anglo-French war was on the
horizon, did the French search for Tipu’s assistance in 1792. At that
time, Britain had just defeated Mysore
in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and Tipu was forced to sign the Treaty of Seringapatam. However, he desired to arrange
a treaty of co-operation and once again
solicited 10,000 French soldiers. But when he proposed to send an
embassy to France in order to discuss
further details and conclude a treaty, de Fresne, the French Governor of Pondicherry, disapproved. De Fresne does not
seem to have had any deinite orders with
respect to the desired policy towards Mysore. However, he wanted to
avoid a negative British reaction and
the move was also reminiscent of the failed embassy of 1787. Finally,
Leger, the Civil Administrator of French
India, came back from France. He had a letter from the Executive Council expressing that the current
turbulences in Europe did not permit an alli ance with Mysore. As a result,
Tipu did not assist the French when Britain conquered Pondicherry in August 1793. In late 1794, the
Civil Commissioner of Pondicherry, Lescallier,
tried to secure Tipu’s friendship with the new French government. Tipu
renewed his demands and a treaty was
agreed upon and signed by the Deputy Extraordinary of the French Establishments in India, Louis Monneron, in
April 1796. Nonetheless, the French kept aloof
from any anti-British activities in South Asia, apart from the impostor
Ripaud who tricked Tipu. He pretended to
be an oicial French delegate who would arrange for the transfer of 10,000 French and 20,000 to 30,000 Africans
from Mauritius to Mysore. Although there were
hardly any troops on the Isle of France, the British found out about the
conspiracy. Thus, the fraud accelerated
Tipu’s overthrow through providing a context for a British attack.49
As early as 1792, Tipu complained to M de Fresne that a cannon-maker and glass-maker whom the king had sent to Mysore from France, had broken away to Pondicherry, despite being well-treated. He expected the two workers to be punished and concurrently asked for more professionals from France.50 According to French sources stemming from the mid 1790s, merely four French professionals were left, who, presumably, asked to be freed from oppression and the insupportable despotism of Tipu Sultan. Indeed, one of these experts alluded to the fact that Tipu’s measures to promote semi-modernization were primarily based on compulsion and the recruitment of forced labour. He complained that: each of us, through seeing the tyranny that surrounds us, regrets having left his home country in order to serve a despot for 4 years who merely follows his own will or that of his primary Minister Mir Sadiq. The chagrin to have erred, the desperation of having been deprived of one’s liberty crept over the majority of us in such a way that a great number of us died after the arrival on this foreign land which is so far from our beloved home! […] by fear of desertion [… Tipu] nearly always kept us conined in his workshops […] all the working hours were exactly counted […] he does not allow us to work for others […] he allowed three of us to retire because he did not need them anymore. He incessantly keeps us under surveillance […] please give us orders to retire from this bondage in which we ind ourselves since 9 years.51
Indeed, we know that one of these French professionals by the name of Debay had already been living in Mysore for about nine years. In 1797, he was engaged as a translator to the Isle of France. He wrote that he had to promise not to desert and accepted for the sake of serving his country and because he believed that Tipu may have taken revenge on his three remaining compatriots if he did not come back.52 Due to diminished numbers of remaining French artisans, in 1797 Tipu desired to employ additional cannon founders, shipbuilders, manufacturers of chinaware, glass and mirror makers, makers of ship blocks (literally wheels) and wheels (or engines) for raising water and other sorts of wheel-work as well as artisans versed in ine gold plating. He wished to engage 10 of each profession. In mid-1798, he wrote a note of proposal to be made by his envoys to the Executive Directory at Paris where he asked for the procurement of 4 brass founders; 4 iron and cannon founders; 4 paper makers; 12 manufacturers of glass; 2 naval engineers; and 2 ‘good’ shipbuilders.53
It
has been shown that Haidar and Tipu both made use of forced labour. They
mistreated their prisoners of war, as
well as the foreign artisans they had engaged. These were strictly supervised and devoid of basic human rights
and liberties in order to exploit them to the
fullest and also because the late-eighteenth-century rulers of Mysore
feared their escape. Indeed, the war
prisoners and foreign craftsmen contributed to the improvement of pro duction
and their recruitment also manifests that Mysore’s semi-modernization was
largely imitative.
Interestingly,
M. Athar Ali—who belongs to the ‘Aligarh School’ of South Asian historiog raphy—agreed
with Mohibbul Hasan that Mysore:
was the irst state in India to make a beginning towards modernization, irst and foremost in the realm of the army and arms manufacture, but also even in commerce, where the English East India Company’s practices were sought to be imitated.54
Even
Athar Ali’s colleague Irfan Habib—who is one of the most proicient
representatives of the position that
post-Mughal India was in a state of decline—has recently claimed that ‘Tipu’s eforts, in another age, would have been
seen as a signiicant step towards
industrialization.’55
Afghanistan,
Persia and the conspiracies of European powers
During
the eighteenth century, Afghan and Persian invasions seriously threatened the
sov ereignty of the Mughals and other regional powers in India. The most famous
one was Nader Shah’s (d. 1747) invasion
of North India and the sacking of Delhi in 1739. During Tipu’s reign, the Afghans were a perilous threat. In both
late 1793 and early 1794, Zaman Shah Durrani
(c.1770–1844) had to give up the invasion of Peshawar because upheavals
in Afghanistan forced him to return
home.56 In 1795, when he invaded the Punjab, the Persian king Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar (1742–97) marched into
the west of Khorasan and obliged Zaman
Shah to return to Afghanistan. But in late 1796, he once again left for
India with an army of about 32,000
cavalry and 1400 infantry.57 In order to defeat the British, Tipu Sultan
intensiied his diplomatic relations with
the Afghan rulers. Tipu’s letters to Timur Shah Durrani (1748–93) can be traced back to the year 1789 and the
letters to his son, Zaman Shah, as far back as
1793. Zaman Shah—who, according to an obviously lawed contemporary
source, had a battle-tested army of
100,000 men—was visited by Tipu’s emissaries in 1796.58 According to Reza ‘Ali Khan, one of Tipu’s envoys to
Afghanistan, Tipu’s embassy of 1796 had the purpose of engaging the Afghan ruler in a war against
the British allies: the Marathas and the Nizam
of Hyderabad. Gifts valued at greater than Rs 50,000 were presumably
delivered to Zaman Shah, who seems to
have made clear that inancial deiciencies were the only obstacle to an invasion of north India. According to Reza
‘Ali Khan, Tipu agreed to pay him Rs 20 million
for covering the preparatory costs and another Rs 20 million for the return
expenses.59 As late as 1797, the British
do not appear to have been aware of Tipu’s conspiracies with the Afghan ruler. It was only in early 1798 that
the British considered such a connection when
Wellesley wrote that:
it
is not impossible that the late intercourse between Tipu and Zaman Shah had for
its object, on the part of the former at
least, some such plan of joint operation […] I can not consider the idea of an invasion from Kabul as a mere
visionary danger.60
Meanwhile,
in 1799, Tipu conveyed valuable presents to Zaman Shah and ofered him a lucrative deal: in the case that he succeeded
in expelling the British from India, he would
give him one lakh of rupees (c.£10,000) for every day’s march as well as
Rs 30,000 (c.£3000) for every day’s
encampment till his return to Kabul. Shams ud-Daula, Shuja ud-Daula’s61 grandson
and brother-in-law of the nawab of Bengal, equally ofered Zaman Shah a
great sum of money, amounting to three
crores of rupees (c.£3 million) and a yearly revenue of 55 lakhs of rupees (c.£550,000) if he would
lift him to the throne. What is more, vazir ‘Ali Khan (c.1780–c.1817), the former nawab of Awadh
(1797–98), equally may have had connections
to Zaman Shah and by September 1799 the British also discovered links
between Ambajee, Mahadji Sindhia’s
commander, and the Afghan ruler.62 In short, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in July 1798, ostensible French intentions to
attack British India and the Malartic proclama tion,63 in conjunction with the
intrigues of Indian conspirators with Zaman Shah, especially Sindhia and Tipu Sultan, unsettled the British
and convinced them to incite Russia and Persia
against the Afghan ruler.64
Tipu himself equally held diplomatic relations with the Qajar king of Persia, Fat’h ‘Ali Shah (1772–1834). Indeed, Haidar ‘Ali had already sent two embassies to the former Persian ruler Karim Khan Zand (c. 1705–75). A French source conirms that ‘this brilliant reputation of Karim Khan brought Haidar to send him envoys with rich presents and to manifest his desire to confederate with him.’65 In fact, in 1766 Haidar desired to maintain overseas trading establishments in Persia in return for similar ‘factories’ in Mysore. In 1770 Haidar sought military assistance and in 1774 he repeatedly aimed for establishing a trading outpost in the Persian Gulf. According to some British sources, he also proposed the intermarriage between their children and, in return, promised to help Karim Khan in the construction of ships. The marriage proposal was dismissed, but Karim Khan is said to have promised to grant Haidar ‘Ali the port of Bandar Abbas. The promise does not seem to have ever been realized. However, Haidar ‘Ali’s envoy Shah Nurullah, the son of a native of Persia, was successful in recruiting 1000 soldiers (horsemen) from Shiraz, the capital of Persia at that time.66 In any case, Tipu’s ties with Tehran were probably less intensive than the ones with Kabul. Interestingly, Tipu’s courtier Mir Hussein ‘Ali Khan Kirmani notes that, in 1797, one of Fat’h Ali Shah’s sons made a trip to Srirangapatna because of a dispute with his father and resided in the ‘suburbs’ of Srirangapatna (Shahar Ganjam).67 As a matter of fact, Tipu sent emissaries—equipped with presents such as elephants, birds, jewels, ivory, dresses, spices, sandalwood, weapons, steel etc.—to the court of the king of Persia in order to acquire 4000 to 5000 Persian soldiers for the war against the British. He also advised his envoys to procure the rarities and choice products of the country. Furthermore, he intended to exchange a sea port of equal value ‘so that the people of either state, residing at these places respectively, might facilitate a commercial intercourse’. The legation departed from Mangalore in March 1798 and was accom panied by Mirza Karim Beg Tabrizi, who was at Srirangapatna as an envoy of Rabia Khan, the maternal uncle of the Qajar king Fat’h ‘Ali Shah. They arrived in Bushehr in July, left for Shiraz in September and went to Tehran in December. Fat’h ‘Ali Shah gave them presents and also appointed the emissary Fath ‘Ali Beg to be sent to Mysore in conjunction with Tipu’s vakils, but cancelled the voyage after hearing of Tipu Sultan’s death.68
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