247th Death Anniversary of Controversial Colonial Figure Robert Clive

Born on 29 September 1725 in Styche Hall in the UK, Robert Clive, also known as Clive of India or simply as Lord Clive, was the first British Governor of the then Bengal Presidency.

He, along with Warren Hastings, played a crucial role in laying the foundation of British rule in India. He was instrumental in establishing the military and political supremacy of the East India Company on the Indian subcontinent by winning the Battle of Plassey.

He managed to contain the impending French influence in the Indian subcontinent. Clive improvised a military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. He was hired by the EIC to return to India for the second time.

This time around, he conspired to secure the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. 

His other achievements included checking French Imperial ambitions on the Coromandel Coast and establishing EIC control over Bengal. It is important to note that he worked as an agent of the EIC and not of the British Government.

He has also been the subject of criticism by historians for his alleged mishandling of the Great Bengal Famine of 1770 wherein more than one million people lost their lives. His actions have made him one of the most if not the most controversial colonial figures in Britain.

He had accumulated a massive fortune of £180,000 (equivalent to £24,300,000 in 2019) from India and he used this wealth to secure an Irish baronet 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.

Clive died on 22 November 1774 at the age of forty-nine at his Berkeley Square home in London. He slid his throat with a paper knife and there was no investigation regarding his death. Few newspapers reported his death as due to an apoplectic fit or stroke while one 20th-century biographer, John Watney, concluded: "He did not die from a self-inflicted wound ... He died as he severed his jugular with a blunt paper-knife brought on by an overdose of drugs." Clive left no suicide note but Samuel Johnson wrote that he "had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat."

Though Clive's demise has been linked to his history of depression and to opium addiction, the likely immediate impetus was excruciating pain resulting from illness (he was known to suffer from gallstones) which he had been attempting to abate with opium.

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