The Greatest Story in the World, Period 3 by Horace G. Hutchinson

Thus England's star went setting in the West; but in the East / coincidentally it rose continuously to greater glory. Plassey had / given Bengal into her hands; Wandewash had made her authority / dominant in Southern India. But as yet it was not England, the / nation and the King of England, that held this scarcely defined / authority. It was the great trading concern known as the East India / Company.

"Some have greatness thrust upon them"; and this was remarkably true / of the empire of India which Great Britain was really compelled by / the force of circumstances to assume. The trading company did not / desire to govern the country: they wished to fulfil their original / purpose of trade, of making money. It was the aggression of the / French and the oppression of the native ruler of Bengal, as we have / seen, which obliged them to fight for the very liberty to trade. / Further, they were compelled to maintain some kind of order in the / districts in which they thus became supreme. It was not easy for / them to do this under their charter as traders. The government of / the native princes of Bengal was inefficient and corrupt and the / people under them were in misery. An Act of the British Parliament / in 1773 appointed a Governor-General with powers over all the British / possessions in {146} India. Warren Hastings, a civilian in the / Company's service, was the first to hold that high post, and with a / strong hand he reduced to nothing the powers of the worst of the / native rulers and made the government of the better among them less / ineffective and corrupt. With the rulers of some of the independent / States he entered into treaties and alliances. The idea of Britain's / Indian Empire seems to have been born in the brain of Warren Hastings.