Francis Rawdon-Hastings

Background and appointment

Rawdon-Hastings had an established military and political career in Britain, including service in North America during the American War of Independence and later senior army command, before his appointment as Governor-General of India in 1813. He arrived at a moment when the Company's territorial position in northern and central India remained contested by independent powers, notably the Gurkha kingdom of Nepal to the north and the still-substantial Maratha states across central India, and when Company finances and administration in Bengal required continued reorganisation following the Charter Act of 1813.

The Anglo-Nepalese War

Border disputes and Gurkha territorial expansion in the Himalayan foothills led to the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816. Company forces, after early setbacks against Gurkha positions, eventually prevailed, and the war ended with the Treaty of Sugauli in 1816, under which Nepal ceded the Terai lowlands and territories including Kumaon and Garhwal, fixing a border broadly similar to the modern India-Nepal boundary. The war also began the long British practice of recruiting Gurkha soldiers into its Indian and later Nepalese-origin regiments.

The Maratha and Pindari campaigns

Hastings then turned to the unresolved Maratha question. Citing the disorder caused by Pindari irregular raiders operating from Maratha territory, Company forces launched a large campaign in 1817 that combined suppression of the Pindaris with a decisive war against the Maratha Confederacy, defeating the forces of the Peshwa Baji Rao II and the other major Maratha rulers. The Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818) ended Maratha power as an independent force; the Peshwa was deposed and pensioned off, and the territories won were organised into what became the Bombay Presidency. Following this campaign, the Company held unrivalled paramountcy over the Indian subcontinent for the first time.

Later career and departure

Hastings extended the subsidiary alliance system, binding a number of Indian princely states more closely to Company oversight and further limiting their independent conduct of foreign relations, and is generally credited with a comparatively liberal press policy during his tenure, relaxing some of the restrictions his predecessors had placed on newspapers in Calcutta. By the end of his term, the East India Company held effective paramountcy over most of the Indian subcontinent, a position it would retain until 1857. His governor-generalship nonetheless ended amid controversy: allegations of financial impropriety connected to loans extended by the Hyderabad banking house of Palmer and Company, in which Hastings and his administration were implicated, contributed to his recall to Britain in 1823, though the full extent of his personal responsibility for the affair remains a matter of historical dispute. He later served as governor of Malta before his death in 1826.