Taylorian

News

Clive Reconsidered

Clive Reconsidered

unveil the Clive memorial at Charterhouse Square before an adoring crowd of onlookers. The tablet bears the following inscription: Robert Lord Clive Born 29 September 1725. Merchant Taylors’ School 1737-39. Died 22 Nov. 1774. Entering the service of the East India Company as a civilian, he outshone all his contemporaries in military genius, and by his victory at Plassey in 1757, laid the foundation of the British Empire in India. Twice Governor of Fort William in Bengal, he won the love of the native peoples, and left the administration pure. The memorial, therefore, tells us a great deal about Merchant Taylors’ in the early years of the Twentieth Century and offers a small insight into the world of Edwardian Britain. It represents an idea of how the School and perhaps the nation in 1907 perceived what was considered a ‘buccaneering’ past. It is, therefore, a remarkable reminder of a moment in time that is now both unusual and unsettling. Monuments can teach us about history because they do not suggest a constant and enduring truth from the past. There was no desire to airbrush Clive from the history of the School by removing the

Deep in the heart of the main building of the School resides a great bronze plaque in memory of one of the most infamous old boys, Robert Clive OMT. After a fraught and rather truncated education at Merchant Taylors’, he joined the East India Company in 1744. This was an unregulated private company that was founded in 1600 and traded in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. It had seized control of vast swathes of the Indian subcontinent in the mid eighteenth century and yet answered solely to its shareholders. Upon arrival in India, Clive rose swiftly through the ranks. His generalship and victories over the Mughals, most notably at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, initiated what became British rule in India. Under Clive’s stewardship the company pillaged Bengal, and he accumulated a personal fortune that made him the wealthiest self-made man in Europe. However, such exploitation precipitated the Bengal famine of 1769-70 as his severe and unforgiving governorship dismantled the institutions in the state that would have prevented millions starving. When the London press were alerted to the methods that had been used to accrue the Company’s gargantuan profits, the acquisitive Clive was rightly castigated for his turpitude and was dubbed ‘Lord Vulture’. He subsequently defended his actions in a speech to Parliament and took no responsibility for the Bengal famine. In 1773, Clive was cleared by a parliamentary vote on account of ‘great and meritorious services to his country’. With all that in mind, the school felt that there was an urgent need to address the Clive memorial. It had been placed in the Great Hall in Charterhouse Square in 1907 by the Merchant Taylors’ Company to honour the memory of a man whom many in Britain and the Empire considered a hero. The school even invited Lord Curzon, the fastidious and finicky former Viceroy of India, to

memorial. However, it could not remain unexamined. It was also felt that simply looking at such a controversial monument was an ineffective way of learning about history. It was for this reason that the Head Master commissioned Kardo Beck, Eben Terry, Alexander and Dominic Tillotson, and Ali Yaqoob (Class of 2022) to research the life of Robert Clive and compose the following rebuttal: An Alternative Perspective of Clive Clive attended Merchant Taylors’ School for one year, before he was expelled for fighting. As a functionary of the East India Company, he experienced great military success; he secured British control of the subcontinent at significant cost to both those he subjugated and his own reputation. Clive’s governance codified an exploitative and oppressive system, which caused suffering to the people of India. In doing so, Clive abused his position to amass great personal wealth. Thus, Clive was neither a paragon of virtue nor the embodiment of a contemporary British ideal. That history is complicated and malleable and prone to revision is not unsurprising. The exigencies of the modern world, however, necessitated a reappraisal of Clive. Although it does speak to us about the past, what it declares ought not be accepted mutely or inflexibly. Whilst the memorial is unequivocal about how Edwardian Britain viewed Robert Clive, the rebuttal does much to explain the position of the School today on their

infamous old boy. Mr M. W. S. Hale

42

Taylorian 2023