Joseph-François Dupleix e la prima espansione europea in India : le trone du Grand Mogol tremble au seul bruit de votre nom

This essay deals with the territorial expansion policy started during the second half of the 1740s by the French Governor in India, Joseph-François Dupleix (1697-1763). Dupleix was actually the main French player in the ten-year fight (1744-1754) against the English rivals. All studies of Dupleix's figure published from the 18th century to the late 20th century show the Governor as the precursor of the practices adopted by English colonialism in Bengal in the following years. By studying Dupleix's historical and political background, one can see the different theories proposed by scholars about European colonialism, especially in its development in India. So, the short-lived political control exerted by Dupleix in southern India (approximately from 1748 to 1753) is explained by historians in completely different ways. Some scholars deem Dupleix's achievements as the fruits of his previous careful planning, in the first period of his stay in India, in the 1720s [see, passim: H. BIONNE, Dupleix, Paris, 1881, and T. HAMONT, Dupleix d'après sa correspondance inédite: un essai d´empire français dans l´Inde au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1881; for more information about these two works see the first chapter]. According to other experts, instead, the short-lived French empire in India was born by chance [see P. Cultru's pioneering study, Dupleix, ses plans politiques, sa disgrâce, Paris, 1901]. A successful chain of military events between 1746 and 1750 gave indeed political power to French-supported Indian princes, and saw the rise of a French superior military might against the English. According to this second interpretation, Dupleix planned this territorial expansion only at the end of his governorship (1748-1749). So that Dupleix's Mémoire du 16 octobre 1753 [Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, naf, 9355, ff. 343-370] is regarded only as a later justification of his own behaviour during the war period. On one hand, imperialist strategist, on the other hand, living example of fortune and opportunism: but both definitions seem to be quite ill-fitting and partial, unable to actually fully describe Dupleix's figure. In this study, the private letters written by Dupleix to Governors of rival commercial companies, to Indian princes and to other officers of the French company are analysed. The main purpose of this close examination is not only to identify the origins of Dupleix's thought about how to manage and enlarge the settlements, but also to analyse and understand their development and growth over the years. Extant literature is actually based on the study of Dupleix´s two mémoires: first of all the one written in 1753 in India at the end of the struggle between England and France [cited], then the one published in 1759 [Mémoire pour le sieur Dupleix contre la Compagnie des Indes, avec pièces justificatives, Paris, 1759] when the Governor, back in Paris, was suing the French company he had worked for, a troublesome legal-action. In this instance these sources could have been tampered with and 'changed' by the author himself for the occasion. Thanks to a comparison with all of Dupleix's letters sent during his stay in India, I was able to properly analyse the historical and temporal context in which Dupleix's colonialist policy took place. My research on Dupleix has brought me to a kind of synthesis of the two opposite theories. Dupleix became aware of the volatile political and economic situation of the Mughal empire during his own directorship in Chandernagor (1731-1741) where he planned his first reaction against what European settlers in Bengal called the local nawabs' "unjustified demands" (tyrannies). At the same time Dupleix stopped regarding the Dutch merchants as simple commercial rivals and, even though with some natural doubts and contradictions, he started to consider them as a model to be followed in order to carry out a French territorial agrandissement in the subcontinent. So the Dutch successes in the Spices´ Islands, together with the awareness that neutrality towards rivals, especially the English ones, was altogether impossible (the Austrian Succession War was spreading to European settlements in Asia), made the Governor take into consideration the acquisition of some Indian rural districts. This action on the part of Dupleix was the way to free the French company from the need of waiting for poor financial aid provided by the mother country. In short, two huge advantages were brought by this wide territorial expansion: first, according to a practice inaugurated by the Dutch company in Indonesian islands, it allowed the control of the production sites of colonial commodities in a quasi-monopoly system; second, the new conquests ensured the raising of taxes in order to enlist and maintain native troops, the sepoys, against the English enemy. In this study I emphasise that Dupleix understood the usefulness of territorial conquests long before drawing up his famous mémoire in 1753. As a consequence, it can't be simply considered as a later justification of his own policy in India: Dupleix conceived his idea of bringing about the territorial expansion of the French company since 1735-1736, being aware of the weakness of Indian princes, who would give a lot to the French in exchange for their military support. He improved his plan in 1744-1745, after the English ceased to regard India as an area of neutrality, but long before 1748-1750, the two-year period mentioned by P. Cultru (who agrees with the better known A. Martineau) as the moment in which the Governor's expansion plan was born. Therefore my research is not only a new biography of Dupleix, but above all an in-depth analysis of the origin and development of his innovative colonialism, with results much more nuanced than in the picture provided by previous researchers. The purpose of my study is to analyse the structure and development of Dupleix's colonialism, outside the biases of those two historiographical currents mentioned above. The historical reconstruction of Dupleix's interventionist policy and the close examination of the period of the wars between the English, the French and the nawabs' forces, both based on unpublished documents, are the essential part of my research.