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British Imperialism in India

MAIN IDEA WHY IT MATTERS NOW TERMS & NAMES

EMPIRE BUILDING As the India, the second most • sepoy • Sepoy

Mughal Empire declined, Britain populated nation in the world, • “jewel in Mutiny
seized Indian territory and soon has its political roots in this the crown” • Raj
controlled almost the whole colony.
subcontinent.

SETTING THE STAGE British economic interest in India began in the 1600s, CALIFORNIA STANDARDS
when the British East India Company set up trading posts at Bombay, Madras, 10.4.1 Describe the rise of industrial
and Calcutta. At first, India’s ruling Mughal Dynasty kept European traders economies and their link to imperialism and
colonialism (e.g., the role played by national
under control. By 1707, however, the Mughal Empire was collapsing. Dozens of security and strategic advantage; moral
small states, each headed by a ruler or maharajah, broke away from Mughal con- issues raised by the search for national
hegemony, Social Darwinism, and the mis-
trol. In 1757, Robert Clive led East India Company troops in a decisive victory sionary impulse; material issues such as land,
over Indian forces allied with the French at the Battle of Plassey. From that time resources, and technology).
until 1858, the East India Company was the leading power in India. 10.4.3 Explain imperialism from the
perspective of the colonizers and the
colonized and the varied immediate and
British Expand Control over India long-term responses by the people under
colonial rule.
The area controlled by the East India Company grew over time. Eventually, it 10.4.4 Describe the independence struggles
governed directly or indirectly an area that included modern Bangladesh, most of the colonized regions of the world,
including the roles of leaders, such as Sun
of southern India, and nearly all the territory along the Ganges River in the north. Yat-sen in China, and the roles of ideology
and religion.
East India Company Dominates Officially, the British government regulated
the East India Company’s efforts both in London and in India. Until the begin-
ning of the 19th century, the company ruled India with little interference from
the British government. The company even had its own army, led by British offi-
cers and staffed by sepoys, or Indian soldiers. The governor of Bombay,
TAKING NOTES
Mountstuart Elphinstone, referred to the sepoy army as “a delicate and danger-
Recognizing Effects Use
ous machine, which a little mismanagement may easily turn against us.” a diagram to identify the
Britain’s “Jewel in the Crown” At first, the British treasured India more for its effects of the three causes
listed.
potential than its actual profit. The Industrial Revolution had turned Britain into
the world’s workshop, and India was a major supplier of raw materials for that
Cause Effect
workshop. Its 300 million people were also a large potential market for British-
made goods. It is not surprising, then, that the British considered India the bright- 1. Decline of
the Mughal
est “jewel in the crown,” the most valuable of all of Britain’s colonies. Empire
The British set up restrictions that prevented the Indian economy from oper-
ating on its own. British policies called for India to produce raw materials for 2. Colonial
policies
British manufacturing and to buy British goods. In addition, Indian competition
with British goods was prohibited. For example, India’s own handloom textile 3. Sepoy
industry was almost put out of business by imported British textiles. Cheap cloth Mutiny
and ready-made clothes from England flooded the Indian market and drove out
local producers.
The Age of Imperialism 357
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British Transport Trade Goods India became increasingly valuable to the British
after they established a railroad network there. Railroads transported raw products
from the interior to the ports and manufactured goods back again. Most of the raw
materials were agricultural products produced on plantations. Plantation crops Vocabulary
included tea, indigo, coffee, cotton, and jute. Another crop was opium. The British jute: a fiber used for
shipped opium to China and exchanged it for tea, which they then sold in England. sacks and cord
Trade in these crops was closely tied to international events. For example, the
Crimean War in the 1850s cut off the supply of Russian jute to Scottish jute mills.
This boosted the export of raw jute from Bengal, a province in India. Likewise, cot-
ton production in India increased when the Civil War in the United States cut off Summarizing
supplies of cotton for British textile mills. On which conti-
nents were Indian
Impact of Colonialism India both benefited from and was harmed by British colo-
goods being
nialism. On the negative side, the British held much of the political and economic traded?
power. The British restricted Indian-owned industries such as cotton textiles. The
emphasis on cash crops resulted in a loss of self-sufficiency for many villagers. The
conversion to cash crops reduced food production, causing famines in the late
1800s. The British officially adopted a hands-off policy regarding Indian religious
and social customs. Even so, the increased presence of missionaries and the racist
attitude of most British officials threatened traditional Indian life.
On the positive side, the laying of the world’s third largest railroad network was
a major British achievement. When completed, the railroads enabled India to
develop a modern economy and brought unity to the connected regions. Along with
the railroads, a modern road network, telephone and telegraph lines, dams, bridges,
and irrigation canals enabled India to modernize. Sanitation and public health
improved. Schools and colleges were founded, and literacy increased. Also, British
troops cleared central India of bandits and put an end to local warfare among com-
peting local rulers.
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GEOGRAPHY SKILLBUILDER: Interpreting Maps (Britain) Borneo 0° Equator
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1. Region Which nation in 1910 held the most land in colonies? U
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Batavia INDIE New Guinea
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358
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Social Class in India

In the photograph at right, a British officer is waited on by
Indian servants. This reflects the class system in India.

British Army
Social class determined the way of life for the British Army
in India. Upper-class men served as officers. Lower-class
British served at lesser rank and did not advance past the
rank of sergeant. Only men with the rank of sergeant and
above were allowed to bring their wives to India.
Each English officer’s wife attempted to re-create
England in the home setting. Like a general, she
directed an army of 20 to 30 servants.

Indian Servants
Caste determined Indian occupations. Castes were divided
into four broad categories called varna. Indian civil servants
were of the third varna. House and personal servants were
of the fourth varna.
Even within the varna, jobs were strictly regulated,
which is why such large servant staffs were required. For
example, in the picture here, both servants were of the
same varna. However, the person washing the British
officer’s feet was of a different caste than the person
doing the fanning.

The Sepoy Mutiny

By 1850, the British controlled most of the Indian subcontinent. However, there
were many pockets of discontent. Many Indians believed that in addition to con-
trolling their land, the British were trying to convert them to Christianity. The Indian
people also resented the constant racism that the British expressed toward them.
Indians Rebel As economic problems increased for Indians, so did their feelings of
resentment and nationalism. In 1857, gossip spread among the sepoys, the Indian sol-
diers, that the cartridges of their new Enfield rifles were greased with beef and pork
fat. To use the cartridges, soldiers had to bite off the ends. Both Hindus, who con-
sider the cow sacred, and Muslims, who do not eat pork, were outraged by the news.
A garrison commander was shocked when 85 of the 90 sepoys refused to accept
the cartridges. The British handled the crisis badly. The soldiers who had disobeyed
were jailed. The next day, on May 10, 1857, the sepoys rebelled. They marched to
Delhi, where they were joined by Indian soldiers stationed there. They captured the
city of Delhi. From Delhi, the rebellion spread to northern and central India.
Some historians have called this outbreak the Sepoy Mutiny. The uprising spread
Recognizing over much of northern India. Fierce fighting took place. Both British and sepoys tried
Effects to slaughter each other’s armies. The East India Company took more than a year to
Look back at regain control of the country. The British government sent troops to help them.
Elphinstone’s com- The Indians could not unite against the British due to weak leadership and seri-
ment on page 357.
ous splits between Hindus and Muslims. Hindus did not want the Muslim Mughal
Did the Sepoy
Mutiny prove him Empire restored. Indeed, many Hindus preferred British rule to Muslim rule. Most
correct? of the princes and maharajahs who had made alliances with the East India

The Age of Imperialism 359

 Page 4 of 5

Company did not take part in the rebellion. The Sikhs, a religious group that had
been hostile to the Mughals, also remained loyal to the British. Indeed, from then
on, the bearded and turbaned Sikhs became the mainstay of Britain’s army in India.
Turning Point The mutiny marked a turning point in Indian history. As a result of
the mutiny, in 1858 the British government took direct command of India. The part
of India that was under direct British rule was called the Raj. The term Raj referred
to British rule over India from 1757 until 1947. A cabinet minister in London
directed policy, and a British governor-general in India carried out the govern-
ment’s orders. After 1877, this official held the title of viceroy.
To reward the many princes who had remained loyal to Britain, the British
promised to respect all treaties the East India Company had made with them. They
also promised that the Indian states that were still free would remain independent.
Unofficially, however, Britain won greater and greater control of those states.
The Sepoy Mutiny fueled the racist attitudes of the British. The British attitude
is illustrated in the following quote by Lord Kitchener, British commander in chief
of the army in India:

PRIMARY SOURCE
It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won for us
India. However well educated and clever a native may be, and however brave he may
prove himself, I believe that no rank we can bestow on him would cause him to be
considered an equal of the British officer. Recognizing
▼ This engraving Effects
LORD KITCHENER, quoted in K. M. Panikkar, Asia and Western Dominance
shows sepoys In what ways
attacking the did the Sepoy
British infantry The mutiny increased distrust between the British and the Indians. A political Mutiny change the
at the Battle of pamphlet suggested that both Hindus and Muslims “are being ruined under the political climate of
Cawnpore in tyranny and oppression of the . . . treacherous English.” India?
1857.

360 Chapter 11
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Nationalism Surfaces in India

In the early 1800s, some Indians began demanding more modernization and a
greater role in governing themselves. Ram Mohun Roy, a modern-thinking, well-
educated Indian, began a campaign to move India away from traditional practices
and ideas. Sometimes called the “Father of Modern India,” Ram Mohun Roy saw
arranged child marriages and the rigid caste separation as parts of religious life that
needed to be changed. He believed that if the practices were not changed, India
would continue to be controlled by outsiders. Roy’s writings inspired other Indian
reformers to call for adoption of Western ways. Roy also founded a social reform
movement that worked for change in India.
Besides modernization and Westernization, nationalist feelings started to surface
in India. Indians hated a system that made them second-class citizens in their own
country. They were barred from top posts in the Indian Civil Service. Those who
managed to get middle-level jobs were paid less than Europeans. A British engineer
on the East India Railway, for example, made nearly 20 times as much money as an
Indian engineer.
Nationalist Groups Form This growing nationalism led to the founding of two
nationalist groups, the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the Muslim League
in 1906. At first, such groups concentrated on specific concerns for Indians. By the
early 1900s, however, they were calling for self-government.
The nationalists were further inflamed in 1905 by the partition of Bengal. The
province was too large for administrative purposes, so the British divided it into a
Hindu section and a Muslim section. As a result, acts of terrorism broke out. In
Analyzing Motives 1911, yielding to pressure, the British took back the order and divided the province
Why would the in a different way.
British think that Conflict over the control of India continued to develop between the Indians and
dividing the Hindus
the British in the following years. Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the same struggles
and Muslims into
separate sections for control of land took place between local groups and the major European pow-
would be good? ers that dominated them. You will learn about them in Section 5.

SECTION 4 ASSESSMENT

TERMS & NAMES 1. For each term or name, write a sentence explaining its significance.
• sepoy • “jewel in the crown” • Sepoy Mutiny • Raj

USING YOUR NOTES MAIN IDEAS CRITICAL THINKING & WRITING

2. Which of the effects you listed 3. Why did Britain consider India 6. MAKING INFERENCES How did economic imperialism
later became causes? (10.4.4) its “jewel in the crown”? (10.4.3) lead to India’s becoming a British colony? (10.4.1)
Cause Effect 4. Why didn’t Indians unite 7. EVALUATING DECISIONS What might the decision to
against the British in the Sepoy grease the sepoys’ cartridges with beef and pork fat
1. Decline of Mutiny? (10.4.3)
the Mughal reveal about the British attitude toward Indians? (10.4.3)
Empire 5. What form did British rule take 8. SYNTHESIZING How did imperialism contribute to unity
under the Raj? (10.4.3) and to the growth of nationalism in India? (10.4.4)
2. Colonial
policies 9. WRITING ACTIVITY EMPIRE BUILDING Write an editorial
3. Sepoy to an underground Indian newspaper, detailing
Mutiny grievances against the British and calling for self-
government. (Writing 2.5.a)

CONNECT TO TODAY CREATING A POLITICAL CARTOON

In 1947, India was divided into two countries: mostly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan.
However, the two countries maintain a tense relationship today. Research to learn about the
cause of this tension and illustrate it in a political cartoon. (10.4.4)

The Age of Imperialism 361

 UNIT 23 IDEOLOGIES OW THE RAJ
Structure
Introduction
The Orientalist Images: The Genesis of the Ideology of Empire
Evangelicalism and The Civilising Mission
The Utilitarian Scale of 'Happiness'
The Romantic Spell
The Liberal Project: Re-making India as the Replica of Britain
Positivism as a Tool of Knowing the Colonial Society
Humanism and the Colonial World
summary
Glossary
Exercises

23.1 INTRODUCTION
, The process of territorial acquisition in India by a body of British merchants
,had transformed the East India Company into a ruling power. The resultant
'colonial encounter was not a simple process as a large number of indigenous
rulers lost their power. At the same time, the cultural elements present in the
coloniser's society per&eated the recipient colonial society in the context of a
superordinate-subordinate relation. The colonisers possessed superior technology
and military force, which could be used to crush any form of opposition.
However, the sordid and seamy side of colonialism necessitated that an
ideological justification of the colonial rule also be provided. The co-relation
between ideology and policy-making had further complications because of the
size and diversity of India. Political exigencies and the fact that the British
preferred to utilise their energies in gathering information than immediately
pursuing their grand designs of political domination added to the complications.
In this Unit, an attempt has been made to investigate the direct and indirect
ways in which the imperial ideologies influenced the Indian political scene.

23.2 THE ORIENTALIST IMAGES: THE GENESIS OF

THE IDEOLOGY OF EMPIRE
The 'East' or 'Orient' was described in the medieval Christian iconography as
an exotic land of miracles and monsters. The rationalist and secular conceptions
of Enlightenment modified these images of the 'East' as the land of monsters
and demons. But still these lands and people were perceived as different, from a
secular category of development and civilisation. They were seen as 'inferior'
and 'culturally backward' as compared to the European societies. This
perception became the basis of categorising the colonisers as well as their
colonial subjects.. According to Thomas R. Metcalf, "As the British
endeavoured to define themselves as 'British', and thus 'not Indians', they had
to make of the Indian whatever they chose not to make of themselves" (The
New Cambridge History of India: Ideologies of the Raj). Thus, the British
defined themselves as honest, laborious, masculine, rational and the enlightened
5
I
Colonisation (Part 11) ones. As a natural corollary Indians were depicted as deceitful, lazy, feminine,
irrational, superstitious and so on. By and large, these early orientalist images
persisted for long. Yet, to govern and rule such a different land and its people
required sufficient knowledge of the colonial society. As a result, Warren
Hastings directed considerable energies and resources towards building such
institutions of learning that would help in understanding India's past. He
believed that such knowledge would be very useful to the needs of the colonial
state. The aim was to create an orientalised elite competent in Indian languages
and responsive to Indian traditions. Motivated by such a vision, orientalist-
scholars-cum-administrators like William Jones, H.T. Colebrooke, William
Carey, H.H. Wilson and James Princep made their contribution in the field of
philology, archaeology and history. They 'invented' a golden age and
dramatically and metaphorically contrasted it with the degeneration and
stagnation of contemporary Indian society, which fostered Sati, female-
infanticide, caste - prejudices, idolatry and superstitions of all kinds. This is
apparent from what William Jones wrote, "... how degenerate and abased so
ever the Hindus may now appear, that in some early age they were splendid in
arts and arms, happy in government, wise in legislation and eminent in various
knowledges". Learning of indigenous languages - both classical (Persian,
Arabic, Sanskrit) and 'Vernaculars' became a prerequisite for gaining
knowledge in all other fields. This linguistic competence, according to Bernard
S. C o h , was essential "to issue commands, collect taxes, maintain law and
order and to create other forms of knowledge about the people they were ruling.
This howledge was to enable the British to classify, categorise and bound the
vast social world that was India so that it could be controlled" (Colonialism and
its Fo~mationof Knowledge). In short, running the colonial-administration
efficiently required a command over i ndigenous languages and some
knowledge of the history and culture of the people. Asiatic Society of Bengal
(1784) took a major leap in this direction by translating Indian works and by
doing research on Indian society and religion. Some of the early dictionaries,
works related to grammar and teaching aids were William Jones' Grammar of
the Persian Language (1771), William Carey's grammar of Vernaculars, and .
Natheniel Halhed's Grammar of Bengali (1788). John B. Gilchrist, a medical
practitioner became professor of Hindustani literature and Languages
department at Fort William College.
Hastings's principle of governance was that India should be governed by the
Indian principles, particularly in relation to law. William Jones,
H.T. Colebrooke, Halhed and other legal scholars all shared a suspicion about
the integrity of Indian scholars and wished to develop a direct understanding of
the canons of authoritative texts. This, they believed, would help in the:
codification of Indian law and enable the British officials in the task of
governing India. Knowledge contained in a Law digest (such as that of Jones,
1798) would effectively, they believed, keep a check on the Indian subordinates
and Pundits or Maula~isso that they would not lead the British astray.
However, Hindu and Muslim Legal advisors remained attached to the British
Indian Courts until the 1860s.
The knowledge of Indian languages facilitated intervention in the social sphere!.
This is evident from the career of Jonathan Duncan, who had persuaded the Raj
Kurnars of Benaras to stop female infanticide when he was the Resident there i n
1789, Later on he rose to the position of Governor of Bombay (1795-181 1) on
the basis his linguistic proficiency. The foundation of Fort William College
(1806) at Calcutta by Lord Wellesley served the practical task of training and
orienting would-be-administrators. This was done by providing them skills in Ideologies of the Raj
Indian languages and making them familiar with Indian culture and history in a
more concrete fashion. This function was subsequently taken up by the
Haileybury College.
The category of 'oriental despotism', the idea of unchecked, absolute power of
a despotic emperor, ruling through an administrative elite and supported by the
labour of slaves, was used by orientalists to comprehend Indian states of the
past. Alexander Dow (History of Hindustan, 1770) and Robert Orme
(Government and People of lndostan, 1753) used such notions to understand
pre-colonial Indian state-structures. The British found, paradoxically, implicit
justification for their own authoritarian rule in the subcontinent through the use
of such analytical categories. The tropical climate, religions of India especially
Islam were cited by them as the reasons that had their own formative influence
in fostering such despotism. For them "Muslim family structure too represented
'private species of despotism; Muslim rule derived its strength fiom the sword;
and the native Hindus were represented as ineffectual, submissive and
effeminate in character." The process of giving coherence to a congeries of
religious practices is well marked in J.Z. Holwell's (Tenets of Gentoos, 1767)
and in Jones' and Colebrooke's description of the Indian belief systems.
N.B. Halhed tried to decipher the precise legal prescriptions from the Sanskrit
sacred texts with the help of the Brahmin pandits and published them as A Code
of Gentoo Laws, 1776.
The Orientalists further differentiated Iridia from Europe by their insistence
upon the primacy of religion as a pre-eminent marker of Indian identity. Art
and architecture were also conceived as being derived from and expressing the
religious ethos. Hence we find the conflation of all Ancient art with Hindu or
Buddhist category and description of all medieval art as Islamic art. In the field
of law also, separate realms of Hindu and Muslim laws were established.

23.3 EVANGELICALISM AND THE CIVILISING

MISSION
In the last decades of the eighteenth century, evangelicalism emerged as a
strong Protestant Christian movement in England emphasising improvement in
the moral values of the communities in Britain. It coincided with the advancing
industrialism and the rise of new middle class in England. Evangelicalism
became the moral agency that disciplined rampant individualism and provided
'respectability' with its stress on personal experience and individual reading of
the gospel. Evangelicalism as a faith relied upon in dividual resurrection, a
process of conversion, a kind of 're-birth', instead of depending on the agency
of priests and performance of religious rites. The experience of being saved 1
from sin was to be one of sudden illumination. They also emphasised on work,
frugality, and perseverance as concrete means of furthering the kingdom of God
on earth. Evangelicalism also laid stress on education as a pre-requisite for
conversion and salvation because the knowledge of God was possible only
through individual reading of the revealed word or the Bible. ,
t

John Shore and Charles Grant, who were part of the East India Company's 1
at
establishment in India, after their return to England, founded the Clapham sect , A

along with Wilberforce, Zachery, MacauIay, Henry Thorton and John Venn. It 7
$I
41
Colonisation (Part 11) had great influence on the Evangelical opinion. The Clapham sect demanded
the abolition of slave trade and opening of India to missionary enterprise. Some
Evangelical missionaries such as David Brown, Claudius Buchanan, Henry
Martyv and Thomas Thompson were sent to India. A large measure of freedom
for missionary activity was provided in the Charter Act of 1813. The
Evangelical missionaries demanded legal protection for Christian converts, the
abolition of Sati and female - infanticide. They also demanded that British
government in India should not support Hindu and Muslim shrines.
Charles Grant's treatise entitled Observations On the State of Society Among
the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with respect to Morals; and
on the Means oflmproving it, was a severe condemnation of Indian society and
culture;, which was seen as superstitious, barbaric and despotic. He believed that
mere legislation would be powerless to change human character. Grant's
remedy for the ills of India was the liberation of Indians from the tyranny of
Brahmanical priesthood. This could' be achieved by a process of
"Evangelicalising or proselytising" through education. He believed that
civilising the 'barbarians' would also bring about their material prosperity,
which %vill, in turn, serve the original British design of extension of commerce.
The Evangelicals were generally hostile to Indian religions and culture. This is
apparent from Wilberforce's speech on June 22, 1813 in the British parliament:
"The Hindu divinities were absolute monsters of lust, injustice, wickedness and
cruelty. In short, their religious system is one grand abomination." (Quoted in
Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India, p.31) The Serampore
missionaries, as cited by Kopf (British Orientalism, p. 53) also wanted to end
"the current degeneration" of Indian society but they wanted to do it quietly,
respecting Indian traditions through "cultivation of friendship."
The Evangelicals were not alone in devaluing Indian languages, customs,
sentiments and religions. The Liberals and Utilitarians also shared the belief of
the need for the upliftment of the Indians. A powerful alliance of free trade,
other ideological currents and Christianity all stood together for an ultimate
transformation of Indian society in the image and likeness of England. To
'civilis&' and 'improve' the 'half-devil' and 'half-child' Indian, i.e., to anglicise
Indian society, it was felt, would serve the colonial interests better in the
country. Warren Hastings and Lord Cornwallis did not intend to interfere in the
religious traditions of the Indians. However, Evangelicals took a lead in the
campaign against Sati and they exposed its horrors to force the British in India
to support Evangelicalism. The suppression of the 'barbaric' and 'inhuman'
practice of Sati could make an affirmation of British superiority, and with it,
that of Christian civilisation. The ideological basis of Sati was an extreme form
of 'self-renunciation' on the part of women by burning themselves on their
husbands' pyre. The Evangelicals and those believing in Victorian ideology
also stressed on similar virtues of 'self-renunciation' among the women. Moral
purity and self-sacrifice were twin virtues of the British ideology at home. But
for them, as described by Metcalf (Ideologies of the Raj, p. 98) the appropriate
mode of self-sacrifice was as 'angels in the house', not as 'victims updn the
pyre.' Moreover, it is interesting to note that Bentinck disavowed ~ v h ~ e l i c a l
intent to convert Indians to Christianity and sought authority for the
suppression of Sati in the Brahmanical scriptures. The British approached
various pandits, and from them secured interpretations of select Sanskrit texts,
which were evoked to support the claim, that the irrational practice of Sati was
not an integral part of Hindu social system. In fact, the colonial state generally
demonstrated the posture of neutrality and non-interference in the religious
matters of its Indian subjects. The Christian missions saw caste as a major Ideologies of theRaj
obstacle in their task of conversion. They, therefore, urged the state to adopt an
interventionist line v i s - h i s caste. However, the events of 1857 and its
aftermath compelled the colonial state to re-affirm its non-interventionist stance
and support caste-distinctions. The success of the missionaries came in the
1860s and 1870s when there was an upsurge in the number of converts due to
group-conversions among the so called 'untouchable' castes. The powerful
incentives for conversions was material relief provided by the missions during
famines, a& above all restoration of dignity and self-respect by Christian
patrons who treated the lower-caste persons as equals and instilled a sense of
ability to choose one's own destiny among them (Duncan B. Forrester, "The
Depressed Classes and Conversion to Christianity", in G.A. Oddie, (ed.),
Religion in South Asia, p. 65-94).

23.4 THE UTILITARIAN SCALE OF 'HAPPINESS'

Utilitarianism as developed particularly by Jermy Bentham defined utility as
pleasure or happiness, and everything that turn on these mental satisfactions.
This statistics of pleasure ignored individual freedom, the fulfilment or
violation of recognised rights and other non-utility concerns such as quality of
life. They stressed the sum total of utilities and showed no sensitivity to the '
actual distribution of utilities, the emphasis was on the aggregate utilities or the
happiness of everyone taken together as is evident from the phrase 'the greatest
happiness of the greatest number.' The Utilitarians were intimately connected
with Indian affairs. James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill were part of East
India Company's establishment. Like Evangelicals, they were critical of Indian
society at the root of which they saw 'primitive barbarism', 'despotism' and an
encompassing religious tyranny. However, whereas Evangelicals laid stress on
the role of education and self-revelation in a changing society, the Utilitarian
emphasis was on legislation, the might of law and its commands. James Mill
made happiness of Indians contingent upon the nature of laws, the form of
government, and the mode of taxation. The Utilitarians rejected the liberal
conception of separation of powers and wanted to make the legislature as the
sovereign body with the judiciary and executive as mere executants of its will.
The Utilitarian idea that happiness and not liberty was the end of government,
and that happiness was promoted solely by protection of individual in his
person and property, suited the colonial establishment. It found expression in
the' maxim that good government and laws were a substitute for self-
government. While they believed that the means to ensure good government
was representative democracy, they would not accept it in Indian conditions.
The Utilitarians criticised the Permanent Settlement of Cornwallis for not
defining and recording the proprietary rights of cultivators. They favoured a
detailed recording of landholdings and rights in the form of 'records of rights'
as part of the settlement procedure. This, they believed would give a fixed,
written, and legal status to the property rights in soil in place of existing vague,
unwritten, customary, and ambiguous rights. The peasant would acquire a clear
title to property, which he could freely sell, mortgage, or transfer by
inheritance. The security of this private property in land was to be achieved
through laws, scientifically designed, and embodied in a written form of codes.
However, this could only be attained in a system like ryotwari where the state
entered into direct administrative relations with the mass of cultivators. The law
Colonisation (Part 11) of rent, first propounded by Malthus in 1b; 15, and subsequently refined by
Ricardo and Say, became the basis of Utilitarian remoulding of Indian revenue
system. As Eric Stokes in his book The English Utilitarians in India points out
that 'Rent constituted the differential advantage enjoyed by all soils of higher
fertility than the last taken into cultivation. On the last quality of lands, at the
margin of cultivation, the capital employed merely replaced itself and yielded
the normal prevailing rate of profit. But lands of higher fertility yielded a
surplus or rent beyond this. Rent could, therefore, be exactly calculated by
subtracting the cost of cultivation and the ordinary rate of profit on the capital
employed from the total or gross produce. An alternative term for rent was the
net produce". Ricudo, the propounder of Utilitarian economic doctrine,
demonstiated that rent is a monopoly value, which arose because land was
limited in quantity and variable in quality and could be appropriated by
landlords as private property. The landlords performed no useful service and
lived as parasites. In England, rent property was in the hands of the powerful
aristocracy and it was not possible to advocate even taxing this rentier class. In
India, the East India Company acting as the supreme landlord, however, could
claim the entire economic rent. There were, however, other. practical problems
in implementing this Utilitarian idea in India. It required a minute and efficient
enquiry into the yields of the different soils, the cost of production, and the
history of agricultural prices. It also pre-supposed a highly efficient system of
administration, and information about the local agrarian conditions.

23.5 THE ROMANTIC SPELL

The Romantics in India included administrators like Thomas Munro, John
Malcolm, Mountstuart Elphinstone and Charles Metcdlfe. They were opposed
to the Cornwallis system of impersonal laws and limited government. They
stressed on a personal style of rule and believed in conserving the long-lasting
social-institutions of India's past. The Romantics favoured a simple.
paternalistic government for the Indian peasants. They wished to make the
collector, in place of Cornwallis' judge, the key figure in Indian administration,
who would act as the compassionate father and mother for the peasants. Such a
notion meant rejection of landed intermediaries between the state and peasants.
Stressing the need to preserve the age-old institutions, Munro wrote:

"It is time that we should learn that neither the face of the country, its
property, nor its society, are things that can be suddenly improved by any
contrivance of ours, though they may be greatly injured by what we mean for
their good; that we should take every country as we find .it." (Quoted i-
Stokes, p. 19).

This, however, contradicted the type of land settlement Munro hinlself

advocated. Ryotwari settlement required more detailed surveys, more state
officials, and a more interventionist form of government. Moreover, thf
Romantics were also committed to the values of the rule of law, property anc
notions of 'improvement' like other British administrators. For example
Charles Metcalfe tried to preserve around Delhi the distinctive features of the
idealisqd village community, derived from his romantic imagination. In 1830,
defending the award of revenue collecting right to the village communities,
rather than to landlords or cultivators, he wrote:
 "The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything that Ideologies of the Raj
they can want within themselves, or almost independent of any foreign .
relations. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty
tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution; Hindu, Pathan, Mogul,
Maratha, Sikh, English, are all masters in turn; but the village community
remains the same." (Quoted in Metcalfe, p.25).

Later on Henry Maine used this image of the Indian 'self-sufficient' village, .
existing as a kind of living fossil in a timeless zone, in his evolutionary scheme.
The 'unchanging' Indian villages with their patriarchal clans and 'communal
land-holdings' were marked out as the earliest phase of an evolutionary
process. This reinforced the earlier notion of a 'backward' and 'stagnant' Indian
' society.

23.6 THE LIBERAL PROJECT: RE-MAKING INDIA AS

THE REPLICA OF BRITAIN
The early Whig conception of separation of powers that would secure the
liberties of individual and check arbitrary power found expression in
Cornwallis' appointment of a separate district judge and collector. For most of
the liberals, however, private property in land was necessary for an enduring
social order. Cornwallis, guided by the piinciple which sought to make private
property secure, transformed the zamindars into owners of their estates. The
zamindars @ere only the revenue-collecting intermediaries in the earlier times.
The purpose was to make them 'progressive' landlords who would indulge in
productive investments. The results were just opposite. The zamindars, their
revenues fixed permanently, emerged as a rentier class exacting ever-greater
rent from their tenants.
Under the intellectual influence of people like Adam Smith and Jermy
Bentham, liberalism remoulded English society. Its main aim was to secure the
'liberties' of the individuals and their fundamental natural rights to property
and life. As a manifesto of reform, it did not have any coherent ideological
position. But broadly it wanted to free individuals from their bondage to the
clergy, despotic rulers and feudal aristocracy. This social change was to be
achieved gradually by the establishment of free trade, rule of law, reforms in
.education and administration and establishment of elective principle and
parliamentary democracy. They wanted to transform a society, which conferred
patronage and status on the basis of birth into a society where individual .
achievemen1 became the sole criterion of a person's competence and status. In
English society, liberalism found expression through the Reform Acts of 1832
and 1867, the repeal of Corn Laws, reform of labour legislation, establishment
of new local administrative bodies such as municipal corporations and elected
county councils, reform of civil laws, 'and the introduction of modern 'secular'
education, etc.
The liberal view of Indian society found its fullest expression in James Mill's
History of British India (18 18). In this book, he envisaged a programme to free
India from stagnation and decay and set it on the road to progress. This aim was
to be achieved through 'light taxes and good laws'. The liberal programme
meant flowering on Indian soil of such institutions, which were representative
of English society and culture. The chief among these were private property, the
Colonisation (Part 11) rule of law, the liberty of the individual, education in the western scientific
knowledge and at the core of it all the representative institutions and modern
politics of mobilisation. The principle of private property was made sacroscant
in India. The spirit of 'rule of law' found expression in the codes of civil ane
criminal procedure proposed by Macauly's Law commission and enacted in the
1860s. Codification of the procedural law introduced predictability and
transparency in the sphere of law. The legal system of colonial India, however.
accommodated both the assimilative ideals of liberalism (through the codes of
procedures) and the insistence upon variation in Indian personal laws (defined
in terms of being a part of Hindu or Muslim community).
In the field of education, Macauly's minute on education (1835) tried to
transform an Indian into an Englishman, or to create not just a category of
Indians educated in the English language, who might help the British in
administration, but one "English in taste, in opinions, in moral and in intellect".
However, this project of Anglicisation had its limitations. There was shortage of
funds for education. The colonial state's fiscal constraints meant that only a few
selected natives could reap the benefits of this education and it was believed
that from these elitist groups education might "filter down" and 'percolate' to
the lower ranks. The basis of imparting the new education remained 'selective',
elitist throughout the colonial rule. Secondly, schooling in early Victorian
England was religious in nature. The Christian sects generally ran the schools,
though endowed with grants-in aids from the government. The mission societies
in India followed the same pattern of education as religious conversion was a
part of their strategy. The colonial state, however, never introduced the teaching
of Christianity in the state-sponsored schools due to fear of intense hostility it
would have provoked. The ideal of secularism and neutrality, however, did not
prevent the colonial state to play an active, interventionist role in re-making
religious and caste-identities through the use of sectarian and communal
electorates.
Thus, daspite liberal attempts to re-model India in the image of England so as to
create 'so many happy England's (This in fact was the aim of colonialism as per
Gladstone in 1855), the empire itself was a negation of the liberal ideals. The
inconsistencies in the liberal design foi India and other colonies resurfaced
again arvd again. James Mill denied the representative government to India on
the utilitarian ground that happiness and not liberty was the end of government.
John Stuart Mill, son of James Mill, while recognising the intrinsic value of
liberty per se, also made it clear that representative government was not
appropriate to all people. Moreover, there was a conviction that in colonies and
their governance a strong and decisive executive action was necessary in order
to secure order. Many rebels were summarily shot dead, blown from the guns
and hanged to crush the Kuka uprising in the Punjab (1872). This was a sort of
precursar to the infamous Amritsar massacre (1919). India was also provided,
on the model of Irish police organisation (1836), a quasi-military instrument of
policing in the 1840s for maintaining order and assisting a fragile political
authority. Easy mobility, a clear and firm hierarchy, a direct and formal link
with the military and a highly centralised command marked this police
organisation. Sir Charles Napier provided the lead in creating such a force in
Sind pruvince. This was a time when the lonely, untrained village constable was
still the instrument of law enforcement over most of rural England.
The Vernacular Press Act of India (1878) was a piece of repressive legislation
to muzzle the critical Jndian Press. It contained provisions for proceedings
against 'seditious papers' with a minimum of legal fuss, a certainty of being Ideologies of the Raj
convicted and almost universal censorship. Such legislation could never be
visualised in a liberal England.
The Liberal ideology was institutionalised in India during 1860s and 1870s in
the municipalities and district boards with elected members. Seats in these local
bodies, however, were allotted between precisely defined trading and religious
communities. They increased the government's revenue by raising local taxes.
The colonial state was also able to integrate powerful local groups in the
governance. Although the aim of these reforms was to train Indians in 'self-
rule'; it led to proliferation of communal electorates. Despite these weaknesses,
the English-educated Indians did take advantage of these political reforms. The
Ilbert Bill Controversy (1882-83) around the piece of legislation that sought to
empower the Indian Magistrates in the rural areas to try British subjects, also
brought out inconsistencies in the imperial governance. The Bill itself was
based on the liberal idea of equality before law. The opponents of the law
argued that India's social and legal institutions being different from Europe,
such legal equality could not be ensured.

23.7 POSITIVISM AS A TOOL OF KNOWING THE

COLONIAL SOCIETY
The British usually steered clear of grand political theories in favour of
methods based on empirical observation. John Locke had insisted upon the
experimental modes of understanding and this became handy and convenient in
investigating the conquered lands and their people. Empiricism is the
knowledge acquisition through the use of senses as we observe and experience
life. Such observation and measurement of facets of social life, of course, can
never be neutral as we mentally process information deploying already existing
notions, concepts and ideas. Positivism as a theory of knowledge, as it grew in
the nineteenth century Europe, was merely an extension of the established
notions of empiricism. It was characterised by .the verifiable or empirical
measurement and the notion of predictability of the relationship between the
measurable discrete phenomena.
The colonial state and its officials used in their operations what Bernard S.
Cohn calls 'investigative modalities'. An 'investigative modality' is used to
obtain the information that is needed. It includes the procedures to gather this
information, its ordering and classification, and then how it is transformed into
usable forms such as published reports, statistical tables, histories, gazetteers,
legal codes and encyclopaedias. The colonial rulers required help of the Indians :
in this "conquest" through knowledge. These Indianswere known by such titles
as akund, dalal, gomastah, dubashi, pandit, vakil, etc.
The first type of historical modality were the 'enquires' in the 1770s about land
revenue assessment and collection, and later land settlement reports, which also
contained information about the customs and local histories related to land-
revenue. The second type of historical modality included the British writings on
the Indian past and civilisation, of writers such as Alexander Dow, Robert
Orme, William Jones, James Todd, etc. The third type of writings were about
the activities of the British in India. The results that were produced can be
categorised as: 13'
Colonisation (Part 11) 1) The observational-cum-travel modality produced images of India that
casual travellers recorded and found significant.
2) The Survey modality explored the natural and social landscape of India. It
included the mapping of India, measurement of its lands, collection of
botanical specimens, etc. Colin Mackenzie, Francis Buchanan Hamilton
and William Lambton conducted some of the important surveys in India.

3) The Enumerative modality sought to see India as a vast collection of

numbers expressed in lists of products, prices of products, duties, weights
and measures. An important categoiy of the enumerative project were the
censuses conducted at regular intervals after 1857 and designed to reveal
the population number, its demographic and social indexes, economic data
of all kind and so many other things. The censuses also objectified social,
cultural, religious and linguistic differences among the people of India.

4) The Museological modality treated India as a vast museum, a source of

collectibles. Colin Mackenzie collected a large number of artefacts, texts
and manuscripts during his survey of South India. Alexander Cunningham,
an army engineer, urged Lord Canning to establish the Archaeological
Survey of India, which recorded the past by excavating and preserving sites
and collecting archaeological specimens.

5) The Surveillance modality was an instrument to control those defined as

beyond' the civil bounds. A special Thagi and Dacoit department was
established in 1835 to investigate and punish gang-robberies and murders.
W.H. Sleeman's The Ramaseena or Vocabulary of Thug literature,
exemplified this modality. Later on an increasing number of people,
groups, tribes, communities were stigmatised as the 'criminal tribes' or
'criminal castes' following the model of Sleeman.

2 3.8 HUMANISM AND THE COLONIAL WORLD

Humanism placed 'mari'^ at the centre of everything. Such an intellectual trend
was a product of Enlightenment in Europe and its victory was assured by the rise
of industrial capitalism and scientific discoveries. Popular 'representative
governments, equality of opportunity, the free market &id the ability to control
the creation of knowledge accompanied the rise of such a "rational man".
Humanism as a philosophy developed, therefore, within the context of an
emergent capitalism, new class relations, a new human-centred framework for
comprehension of reality. Now, man was privileged and seen as a unified,
stable, coherent, self-acting human agent. This 'human' subject was supposed to
be endowed with the will, the ability, and the freedom to make rational choices,
i.e., he was a 'rational autonomous subject' in the words of Immanuel Kant.
Liberal humanism also defined man as the engineer, the maker of history, the
creator of empires, the founder of modern nations, and the conqueror of
backward people, the Master of Science and technology. Question arises where
would this humanism place the people who did not make progress, who lagged
behind time, who were technologically backward and who did not develop
modern nations and democracies? Such colonial subjects were written out of
historical evolution, out of modernity and into a timeless primitivism, i.e.,
nndemic, simple and fixed.
 --
Initially, India was construed as a land of 'unchanging village communities' Ideologies of the Raj
and feudal principalities. I'ndia's decline was traced to Aryan decline.
Technological supremacy of West was proclaimed. The 'effeminacy' of India
was stressed. Men were depicted as strong, active, intellectual possessing self-
control and discipline while females were fragile, passive, sentimental
exhibiting tenderness of feelings according to the British ideology of gender
distinction. British imperial experience, therefore, brought into prominence the
'masculine' virtues of the master race and devalued 'feminised' colonial
subjects.
Moreover, the categories that denoted India's distinctiveness such as those of
caste, community and tribe were given undue weightage in shaping the Indian
identities. Having no place in the process of historical evolution, the people of
India were described as possessing unchanging racial and cultural identities.
The most important of these was caste which was defined by a set of
characteristics such as endogamy, commensality rules, fixed profession, and
common ritual practices. India was depicted as an ethnographic museum. As
time went on Indian ethnography, as evolved by the British, asserted its
rigorous scientific claims. Its categories, embedded in censuses, gazetteers and
revenue records, became ever more closely tied to the administrative concerns
of the colonial state. The valorisation of castes which were considered as fixed
md immutable found its most striking expression in the creation of the notion
of 'criminal tribes' and 'martial races'. The nation that certain castes and tribes
practiced crime as a hereditary profession stigmatised those outside sedentary
society, hence they were believed to challenge British efforts to order and
control their Indian dominions. Its final outcome was the Criminal Tribes Act
(1 871). Similarly, in the years after the 'mutiny' (1 857), a perceived sense of
distinctive martial fitness came to distinguish certain people of the northern
India as imbued with martial skills from others. The army in India was
organised into units based on caste or ethnicity by the 1880s.

23.9 SUMMARY
We have seen how the multiple strands of imperial ideology converged to
justify and legitimate the British rule in India. Edward W Said has given this I
collective ideological formation the name of 'Orientalism'. According to him,
the various western techniques of representation that make the 'orient' visible
and subordinate it to the west had some common features despite subtle
variations. The way the 'orient' was created, it encompassed a complex
phenomena of power, of domination, and of varying degrees of hegemony. The
'orient' was created as a kind of collective abstraction, which was unequal with
the west, and endured without existential human-identities. Therefore a
reassessment of the 'others' was essential to define their own western identities
and also this served as an accessory to sustain the empire. However, we should
not neglect the historical context of the changing political and administrative
policies and ideologies that shaped them. The justification of the colonial rule
was not sought in monolithic, unitary terms but found expression in multiple
ideological discourses. Moreover, the colonised people did not accept the
western domination without overt or covert resistance. The multiple voices of
the colonised people, which sometimes subverted the discursive mode,
amended it and re-applied the amended stereotypes of this discourse to the
British rule in India.
Colonisation (Part 11)
.
23 10 GLOSSARY .

Edemic : Paradise

Iconography : Representing subject matter through symbols, images, visual

arts.

Philology : Comparative study of languages.

Rentier : A person who has fixed income from land.

Valorisation : To fix

23.11 EXERCISES

1) Discqss the Orientalist and Evangelical understanding of the Indian socio-

political system.

2) Liberal project in India was full of contradictions and inconsistencies.

Explain.
UNIT 4 THE REVOLT OF 1857
Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Causes
4.2.1 Exploitation of the Peasantry
4.2.2 Alienation of the Middle and Upper Strata of Indians
4.2.3 Annexation of Princely States
4.2.4 'The Alien Kulc
4.2.5 Impact on the Sepoys
4.2.6 Threat to Religion
4.2.7 The Immediate Cause
4.3 Organisation .
4.4 The Rebellion
4.5 Leadership
4.6 Defeat
4.7 Causes of Failures
4.7. I Lack of a Unified Programme and Ideology
4.7.2 Lack of Unity Among Indians
4.7.3 Lack of Support from the Educated Indians
4.7.4 Disunity Among the Leaders
4.7.5 Military Superiority of the British
4.8 Impact
4.8.1 Transfer of Power
4.8.2 Changes in Military Organisation
4.8.3 Divide and Rule
4.8.4 New Policy Towards the Princess
4.8.5 Search for New Fricnds
4.9 Assessment
4.10 Let Us Sum U p
4.11 Key Words
4.12 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

In the earlier Units you have aIready been familiarised with the various aspects relating
to Imperialism and CoIoniaIism. You are aware that during the period of its rule over
the country the East India Company expIoited and harrased the Indian people.
Although various sections of Indian people defied the English supremacy at different
times, it was the great uprising of 1857, often termed as the First War of Independence,
that posed a serious challenge to the English supremacy at an all India level. After
reading this unit you wilI be able to:
trace the causes of the uprising of 1857,
know about the various events and conflicts and about the role of various sections of
people as well as their leaders,
identify the regions where the English authority was most severely challenged during
1857,
determine the reasons for the failure of the revolt, and
understand its impact and form an opinion about the nature of the revolt.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
The revolt of 1857 forms one of the most important chapters in the history of the
struggle of the Indian people for liberation from the British rule. It shook the
foundations of the British empire in India and at some points it seemed as though the
British rule would end for all time to come. What started merely as a sepoy mutiny soon
engulfed the peasantry and other civilian population over wide areas in northern India.
The upsurge was so widespread that some of the contemporary observers called it- a-
~mprlllsm.c o b i d i s m and "national revolt". The hatred of the people for the ferangis was so intense and bitter
~atlondlem
that one observer, W.H. Russell, was forced to write:
In no instance is a friendly glance directed to the white man's carriage.. ..Oh! that
language of the eye! Who can doubt! Who can misinterpret it? It is by it alone that
I have learnt our race is not even feared at times by many and that by all it is
disliked.
In this Unit we will tell you about the various aspects relating to this great uprising.

4.2 CAUSES
How did the Revolt break out? What were its causes? The main reason fofthis was the
ruthless exploitation of the Indian people by the British. The British rule which was
formally established after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 in Bengal, strove to fill the
coffersof the East India Company at the expense of the Indians. The East lndia
Company was governed by greedy merchants and traders who could go to any extent to
enrich themselves. The Company was formed in 1600, and was given a Royal Charter
by Queen Elizabeth which conferred on it the exclusive privilege to trade with the East.
Its main aim was to assume the trade monopoly in India. It was not an ordinary
merchant company formed for trade but had its train of soldiers who fought battles with
the Portugues and the French trading companies in the 17th and 18th centuries in order
to establish its trade monopoly. After these rival powers had been defeated it also tried
to humble the Indian traders who offered competition. When the Battle of Plassey was
won in 1757, the British successfully imposed their trade monopoly over the area under
their control, eliminated competition from the Indian traders and forced the artisans to
sell their products to them. The artisans were now paid so low that they could hardly
survive. The legend has it that the weavers of Dhakacut their thumbs toprotest against
such low payments by the East India Company for their superb work on muslin
renowned for its fine texture.

4.2.1 Exploitation of the reasantry

Although the trade monopoly enriched the East India Company considerably, its main
source of income was now derived from the land. After entrenching itself in Bengal, it
spread its power in India through wars and treaties. To extract as much money as
possible it devised new systems of land settlements - Permanent, Ryotwari and
Mahalwari -each more oppressive than the other. The Permanent Settlement which
was effective in Bengal Presidency and in large parts of north India did not recognise
the hereditary rights of the peasants on land, which they had earlier enjoyed. The loyal
zamindars and revenue-collectors were now given the propietory rights on land. The
cultivators were reduced to the status of simple tenants. But even the newly created
landlords were not given absolute rights. Their situation was also deliberately left very
precarious. They had to pay to the Company 10/1lth of the entire rent derived from the
cultivators and if they failed to do so. their property was sold to others.
The other land settlements were no better. In all of these the peasants had to pay
beyond their means and any adverse natural shifts like droughts or flood compelled
them to go for loans to the money lenders who charged exorbitant interest. This made
the peasants so heavily indebted that they were ultimately forced to sell their land to
these money lenders. It is because of this that the money lenders were so hated in rural
society. The peasantry was also oppressed by petty officials in administration who
extracted money on the slightest pretexts. If the peasants went to the law court toseek
redress of their grievances, they were bound to be totally ruined. When the crop was
good the peasants had to pay back their past debts; if it was bad, they were further
indebted. This nexus between the lower officials, law courts and money lenders created
a vicious circle which made the peasantry desparate and ready to welcome any
opportunity for change of regime.

4.2.2 Alienation of the Middle and Upper Strata of Indians

It was not merely the peasntry that got alienated from the British rule, the middle and
upper strata Indians also felt oppressed. During the period of the Mughals or even in
the administration of the local princes and chieftains, the Indians served at all the places
-both lower and higher. The disappearance of these Indian states and their replacement
 The Revolt of 1857
by the British administration deprived the Indians of higher posts which were now
taken mainly by the British. The Indians now servedonly as subordinates andon other
petty positions in the administration. Even the most brilliant of Indians were
subordinated to the second or third-rate Britishers who as a matter of right, grabbed all
the higher paid positions. Further more, the cultural personnel like poets, dramatists,
writers, musicians etc. who were earlier employed by the native states were now thrown
out. The religious men like Pandits and Maulvis also lost all their former power and
prestige.

4.2.3 Annexation of Princely States

The East India Company did not spare even its former allies. The native state of Awadh
was annexed by Dalhousie in 1856 on the pretext that Nawab Wazid Ali Shah was
mismanaging the state. Even before this he had annexed Satara in 1848 and Nagpur and
Jhansi in 1854on the pretext that the rulers of these states had no natural heir to succeed
them after their death. These annexations embittered the rulers of these states, making
Rani of Jhansi and Begums of Awadh staunch enemies of the British. Further the
British refusal to pay pension to Nana Sahib, the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao I1
worsened the situation. The annexation of Awadh was also resented by the sepoys as
most of whom came from there.This action hurt their patriotic loyalty and sense of
dignity. Moreover, since their relatives had now to pay more taxes on land, it adversely
affected the purses of the sepoys themselves.

4.2.4 The Alien Rule

Another important reason of th'e unpopularity of the British was the alien nature of
their rule. They never mixed with the Indian people and treated even the upper class
Indians with contempt. They had not come to settle in India but only to take money
home. So the Indians could never develop any affinity towards them.

4.2.5 Impact on the Sepoys

The revolt of 1857 originated with the mutiny of the Sepoys. These Sepoys were drawn
mainly from the peasant population of North and North-West India. As we have seen,
the rapacious policies followed by the East India Company were impoverishing and
ruining the peasantry. This must have affected the Sepoys also. Infact, most of them
had joined the military service in order to supplement their fast declining agricultural
income. But as the years passed, they realised that their capacity for doing so declined.
They were paid a monthly salary of 7 to 9 Rupees out of which they had to pay for their
food, uniform and transport of their private baggage. The cost of maintaining an Indian
Sepoy was only one-third of his British counterpart in India. Moreover, the Indian
Sepoy was treated roughly by the British officers. They were frequently abused and
humiliated. The Indian Sepoy, despite his valour and great fighting capacity. could
never rise above the rank of a Subedar while a fresh recruit from England v:as often
appointed his superior overnight.

4.2.6 Threat to Religion

Apart from degrading service conditions, another factor inflamed the feelings of the
sepoys. An impression was created among them that their religion was being attacked
by the British. This belief was also shared by the general civilian population. The
proselytizing zeal of the missionaries and some of the British officials instilled fear in
the minds of the people that their religion was in danger. At several places conversions
to Christianity were reported to be made. The Government maintained the chaplains
at its own cost and in some cases also provided police protection to the missionaries.
Even the army maintained chaplains at state cost and Christian propaganda was carried
among the sepoys. Furthermore, the sepoys were forbidden to wear their castemarks,
and in 1856an Act was passed under which every new recruit had to qive an undertaking
to serve overseas, if required. The conservative beliefs of the sepoys were thus shaken
and they sometimes reacted strongly. For example in 1824, the 47th Regiment of sepoys
at Barrackpore refused to go to Burma by sea-route because their religion forbade
them to cross "black water". The British reacted ruthlessly, disbanded the Regiment,
and put some of its leaders to death.
In 1844, seven battalions revolted on the question of salaries and batta (allowance). Even
during the Afghan War from 1839 to 1842 the soldiers were almost on the verge of rrvnlt
Like sepoys, the people of India had also risen in revolt against the oppressive British
rule. The most important of these uprisings were the Kutcha rebellion (1816-32), the Kol
uprising in 1831 and the Santhal uprising in 1855-56. The main point with regard to the
1857challenge, however, was that both the military and civilian revolts merged and this
made it really formidable.

4.2.7 The Immediate Cause

The atmosphere was so surcharged that even a small issue could lead to revolt. The
episode of greased cartridges, however, was a big enough issue to start the rebellion on
its own. Dry tinder-box was there and only a spark was needed to set it ablaze.
Cartridges of the new Enfield rifle which had recently been introduced in the army had
a greased paper cover whose end had to be bitten off-before the cartridge was loaded
into rifle. The grease was in some instances made of beef and pig fat. This completely
enraged the Hindu and Muslim sepoys a_nd made them believe that the government was
deliberately trying to destroy their religion. It was the immediate cause of the revolt.

1. lamat ti on issued by Nana Saheb from Kanpur mentioning the use of new eutridgp.

4.3 ORGANISATION
What kind of organisation did the rebels employ in order to raise their banner against
the British? On this question there has been a good deal of controversy among
historians. One view is that there was a widespread and well-organised conspiracy,
while another view maintains that it was completely spontaneous. The fact seems to be The Revolt of 1857
that some kind of organised plan was in existence but it had not matured sufficiently
when the revolt broke out.
As the rebels formed a clandestine set-up they did not keep any records also about the
nature, functions and structure of their secret organisation. But the stories which have
come down to us talk about the red lotuses and chappatis, symbolising freedom and
bread, being passed from village t o village and from one regiment to another. Besides
these means speeches were also delivered and quite preaching conducted by the
roaming sanyasis and fakirs to mobilise and rally anti-colonial forces. All these stirred
the sepoys to revolt.

4.4 THE REBELLION

On 29th March, 1857, a young soldier, Mangal Pandey, stationed at Barrackpore,
revolted single-handedly attacking his British officers. H e was hanged, and not much
notice was taken of this event. But it showed the resentment and anger aroused among
the sepoys. Less than a month later, on 24th April, ninety men of the Third Native
Cavalary, stationed at Meerut, refused to use the greased cartridges. Eighty-five of
them were dismissed and sentenced to ten years imprisonment on 9th May. The rest of .
the Indian sepoys reacted strongly to this, and the next day, on 10th May, the entire
Indian garrison revolted. After freeing their comrades and killing the British officers,
they decided to march on to Delhi. This shows that they did have in mind some sort of
alternative t o the British.
Another thing which makes it clear that it was not merely army mutiny was that the
people from surrounding areas began to loot the military bazaars and attacked and
burnt the bungalows of the British as soon as they heard the shots fired by the sepoys
on their officers. The Gujars from the surrounding villages poured into the city and
joirled the revolt. Telegraph wires were cut and horsemen with warning messages to
Delhi were intercepted. As soon as thc sepoys from Meerut reached Delhi, the Indian
garrison also rcvolted and joined the rebels. They now proclaimed the old Bahadur
Shah, as the Emperor of India. l h u s in twenty-four hours. what began as a simple
mutiny had swelled into full-scale political rebellion.
In the next one month thc entire Bengal Army rose in revolt. Whole of North and North
West India was up in arms against the British. In Aligarh, Mainpuri, Bulandshahr,
Etwah, Mathura. Agra. Lucknow, Allahabad, Banaras, Shahabad, Danapur and East
Punjab, wherever there were Indian troops, they revolted. With the revolt in army, the
police and local administration also collapsed. These revolts were also immediately
followed by a rebellion in the city and countryside. But in several places the people rose
in revolt even before the sepoys. Wherever revolt broke out, the government treasury
was plundered, the magazine sacked, bar'racks and court houses were burnt and prison
gates flung open. In the countryside, the peasants and dispossessed zamindars attacked
the money lenders and new zamindars who had displaced them from the land. They
destroyed the government records and money lenders' account books. They attacked
the British established law courts, revenue offices, revenue records and thanas (police
stations). Thus the rebels tried to destroy all the symbols of colonial power.
Even when the people of particular areas did not rise in revolt. they offered their help
and sympathies to the rebels. It was said that the rebellious sepoys did not have to carry
food with them as they were fed by the villagers. O n the other hand, their hostility t o
the British forces was pronounced. They refused to give them any help or information
and on many occasions they misled the British troops by giving wrong information.
In central India also, where the rulers remained loyal to the British, the army revolted
and joined the rebels. Thousands of Indore's troops joined in Indore the rebellious
sepoys. Similarly, over 20,000 of Gwalior's troops went over to Tantya Tope and Rani
of Jhansi. In the whole of north and c e n t ~ aIndia
l the British power was limited only to
the towns of Agra, and Lucknow. Elsewhere the entire British army and administration
fell like a house of cards.
One of the most remarkable thing about the rebellion was its solid Hindu-Muslim unity.
The Hindu sepoys of Meerut and Delhi, unanimously proclaimed Bahadur Shah as
their Emperor. All the sepoys, whether Hindu o r Muslim. accepted the suzeranity of
 mm-' the Emperor and gave the call "chalo Delhi" (onward to Delhi) after their revolt.
-w Hindus and Muslims fought together and died together. Wherever the sepoys reached,
cow-slaughter was banned as a mark of respect to the sentiments of the Hindus.

Check Your Pmgress 1

1) How and by which sections was the Peasantry exploited? Write in ten lines.

2) Read the following statements and mark them right ( d )or wrong ( X ) .
i) The Peasants joined the ~ a m i n d a r in
s fighting the British.
ii) The Sepoys perceived a threat to their religion by the British rule.
iii) The middle and upper class Indians were the beneficiaries of British rule.
iv) The exploitation of the most sections of the Indians was the long standing reason
but the episode of greased cartridges provided the immediate reason for the
revolt to break out.
3) Write in about fifty words when, where and how the uprising started.

4.5 LEADERSHIP
The storm-centres of the revolt 'were Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Bareilly, Jhansi and
Arrah. All these places threw up their own leaders who for all practical purposes.
remained independent, even though they accepted the suzerainty of Emperor Bahadur
Shah.
t
Bakht Khan

' In Delhi Bahadur Shah was the leader. But the real power lay with the soldiers. Bakht
Khan, who had led the revolt of the soldiers at Bareilly, arrived in Delhi bn 3rd July,

.P'
' 185'7. From that date on he exercised the real authority. He formed a Court of soldiers
composed of both Hindu and Muslim rebels. But even before that the soldiers showed
little regard for the authority of the Emperor. Bahadur Shah deplored the army officers
for their "practice of coming into the Court carelessly dressed and in utter disregard to
the forms of respect to the royalty"
C

Nana Saheb and Tantya Tope

At Kanpur the revolt was led by Nana Saheb, the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao 11.
2. Tantya Tope.
The rebellious sepoys also supported Nana Saheb andunder his leadership both the
44 military and civilian elements were united. They expelled the British from Kanpur and
 The Rwdt of 1857.
declared Nana Saheb as Peshwa who acknowledged Baliadur Shah as the Emperor of
India. Most of the fighting was, however, carried on by Tantya Tope on his behalf, and
it was Tantya Tope who passed into the popular legend as a great patriot and
anti-British leader.
The Begum of A y ~ d h
/

At Lucknow the Begum of Awadh provided the leadership and proclaimed her son,
Birjis Kadr, as the Nawab of Awadh. But here again, the more popular leader was
Maulavi Ahmadullah of Faizabad, who organised rebellions and fought the British.

Rani Lakshmi Bai

Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi was another great popular leader. She believed that she had
been robbed of her ruling rights in defiance of recognised Hindu law. Though she
showed some hesitation at the initial stage, she fought valiantly once she joined the
ranks of the rebels.

Kunwar Singh
But the most representative and outstanding leader was Kunwar Singh of Arrah. Under 3. Kunwar Shgh.
his leadership the military and civil rebellion were so completely fused that the British
dreaded him most. With a war band of about 5,000, including about 600 Danapur
sepoys and the rebellious Ramgarh state battalion he marched across hundreds of miles
to reach Mirzapur, Banda and the vicinity of Kanpur. He reached up to Rewa state and
it was thought that as soon as Rewa fell to the rebels, the British would be forced to
move to the south. But, for some reasons, Kunwar Singh did not move southwards. H e
returned to Banda and then back to Arrah where he engaged and defeated the British
troops. He was seriously injured and died on 27th April, 1858 in his ancestral house in
the village of Jagdishpur.

The Unknown Martyrs

Apart from these acknowledged leaders who are remembered for their patriotism and
courage, there were many unknown and unacknowledged but no less valiant leaders
among the sepoys, peasantry and petty zamindars. They also fought the British with
exemplary courage to expel them from India. Peasants and sepoys laid down their lives
for the cause of their country, forgetting their religious and caste differences and rising
above their narrow personal interests.

4.6 DEFEAT
The British captured Delhi on 20 September, 1857. Even before this the rebels had
suffered many reverses in Kanpur, Agra, Lucknow and some other places. These
earlier reverses did not dampen the rebel's spirits. But the fall of Delhi, on the other
hand, struck a heavy blow to them. It now became clear why the British concentrated
with so much attention to retain Delhi at all cost. And for this they suffered heavily both

4. Surrender of Emperor Bahadur Shah.

 5. Villagers being ejected by English troops.

in men and material. In Delhi, Emperor Bahadur Shah was taken a prisoner and the
royal princes were captured, and butchered. One by one, all the great leaders of the
revolt fell. Nana Sahe), was defeated at Kanpur after which the escaped to Nepiil early
in 1859 and nothing was heard of him afterwards.
Tatya Tope escaped into the jungles of central India where he carried on bitter guerrilla
warfare until April 1859when he was betrayed by a zamindar friend and captured while
asleep. H e was hurriedly tried and put to death on 15th April, 1859. The Rani of Jhansi
died on the field of battle oh 17th June, 1858. By 1859, Kunwar Singh, Bakht Khan,
Khan Bahadur Khan of Bareilly, Maulavi Ahmadullah were all dead, while the Begum
of Awadh escaped to Nepal. By the end of 1859, the British authority over India was
reestablished, fully and firmly.

6. Autograph of Tantya Tope.

4.7 CAUSES OF FAILURE

There were many causes,which led to the collapse of this mighty rebellion. Here we list
some of them to you.

4.7.1 Lack of a Unified Programme and Ideology

The rebellion swept off the British system of government and administration in India.
But the rebels did not know what to create in its place! They had no forward-looking
plan in mind. This made them rely on the outmoded feudal system with Bahadur Shah
at its head. The other prominent leaders of rebellion like, Nana Saheb, Begum of
Awadh, Rani of Jhansi, etc., were also representatives of the old feudal world. This
system had lost its vitality and was unable to withstand the onslaught of the British. It
was because of the failure of these rulers, that the British had earlier been able to
conquer almost the whole of India. Reliance on these elements made it difficult for the
rebel forces tt;\ rreate a new sense of unity among the Indian people which alone could
have created a viable alternative to the British rule.

4.7.2 Lack of Unity Among Indians

As mentioned above, no broad based unity among the Indian people could emerge.
While sepoys of the Bengal army were revolting, some soldiers in Panjab and south
India fought on the side of the British to crush these rebellions. Similarly, there were
no accompanying rebellions in most of eastern and southern India. The Sikhs also did
not support the rebels. All these groups had their reasons to do so. The possibility of
the revival of Mughal authority created a fear among the Sikhs who had faced so much
oppression at the hands of the Mughals. Similarly, the Rajput chieftains in Rajasthan
and Nizam in Hyderabad were so much harrassed by the Marathas that they dreaded
the revival of Maratha power. Besides this, there were some elements of the peasantry
that had profited from the British rule. They supported the British during the revolt.
The zadndars of Bengal Presidency were the creation of the British; and had all the
reasons to support them. The same applied to the big merchants of Calcutta, Bombay
and Madras who did not go over to the rebels but supported the British.

4.7.3 Lack of Support from the Educated Indians

The modern educated Indians also did not support the revolt because, in their view, the .
revolt was backward-looking. This educated middle class was the product of the British
system of education and they believed mistakenly that the British would lead the
country towards modernisation.

4.7.4 Disunity Among the Leaders

The main problem however, was lack of unity in the ranks of rebels themselves. Their
leaders were suspicious and jealous of each other and often indulged in petty quarrels.
The Begum of Awadh, for example, quarrelled with Maulavi Ahmadullah, and the
Mughal princes with the sepoy-generals. Azimullah, the political adviser of the Nana
Saheb, asked him not to visit Delhi lest he be overshadowed by the Emperor Bahadur
Shah. Thus, selfishness and narrow perspective of the leaders sapped the strength of the
revolt and prevented its consolidation.

4.7.5 Military Superiority of the British

Another major factor for the defeat of the rebels was the British superiority in arms.
The British imperialism, at the height of its power the world over and supported by
most of the Indian princes and chiefs, proved militarily too strong for the rebels. While
the rebels were lacking in discipline and a central command, the British continued to
have a constant supply of disciplined soldiers, war materials and money from British.
Sheer courage could not win against a powerful and determined enemy who planned its
strategy skillfully. Because of illdiscipline the rebels lost more men and material than
the British in every encounter. Manysepoys, seeing that the British had an upper hand.
left for their villages.
These were the main factors responsible for the failure of the revolt.

4.8 IMPACT
Despite the fact that the revolt of 1857 failed, it gave a severe jolt to the British
administration in India. The structure and policies of the re-established British rule
were, in many respect, drastically changed.

4.8.1 Transfecof Power

The first major change was that the power to govern lndia passed from the East India
Company to the British Crown through an Act of 1858. Wow a Secretary of State for
India aidedby a Council was to be responsibldor the governance of India. Earlier this
authoritywas wielded by the Directors of t'he Company.

4.8.2 Changes in Military Organisation

The second drastic change was effected in the army Steps were taken to prevent any
further revolt by the Indian soldiers. Firstly, the number of European soldiers was
increased and fixed at one European to two Indian soldiers in Bengal Army and two to
five in Bombay and Madras armies. Moreover, the European troops were kept in key
geographical and military positions. The crucial branches of the army like artillery were
p u t ~ e ~ l u s i v e in
l y European hands. Secondly, the organisation of the Indian section of
the arfrtyms now based on the policy of "divide and rule". Regiments were created on
the basisx>f caste, cotnmunity and region to prevent the development of any
nationalistic fceling among t h c \oldicr\.

7. Disarming ofsepoys at Burackport.

4.8.3 Divide and Rule

This policy of "divide and rule" was also introduced in the civilian population. Since the
British thought that the tevolt was a conspiracy hatched by the Muslims the latter
were severely punished and discriminations made against them in public appointme.its
and in other areas. This policy was later reversed and a belated appeasement of Muslims
began. Pi policy of preferential treatment of the Muslims was adopted towards the end
of the 19th century. These polici'es created problems for Indian freedom struggle, and
contributed to the growth of communalism.

4.8.4 New Policy towards the Princes

Another important change was in the British policies towards the Princely states. The
earlier policy of annexation was now abandoned and the rulersof these states were now
authorised to adopt heirs. This was done as a reward to those native rulers who had
remained loyal to the British during the revolt. However, this authority of the Indian
rulers over particular territories was completely subordinated to the authority of the
British and they were converted into a Board of privileged dependents.

4.8.5 Search for New Friends

Besides these changes, the British now turned to the most reactionary groups among
the Indians, like the zamlndars, princes and landlords, for strengthening their fortune
in the country. In fact, the revolt of 1857 brought to the surface the real reactionary
nature of the British rule in India. It made most of the Indians realise that the British
rule in India was essentially anti people and it was bound to be oppressive and hostile
to their national interest.

8. Extortion of money from the Citizens of Delhi.

1.9 ASSESSMENT
Havingdiscussed various aspects of the rebellion, let us, in the end, see how the events
of 1857 have been interpreted by the contemporary officials as well as by subsequent
scholars.
The nature of the 1857 uprising aroused fierce controversy from the very outset. The
official British explanation was that only the Bengal army had mutinied and civil
disturbances were caused by the breakdown of law and order machinery,Many officials
thought that it was only a mutiny. But this view was challenged by Benjamin Disraeli,
the conservative leader, in July 1857. H e said:
"The decline and fall of empires are not affairsof greased cartridges. Such results
are occasioned by adequate causes, and by the accumulation of adequate causes"
Them he querried:
"Is it a military mutiny or is it ,a national revolt?"
The official view was challenged by a section of the British community in India also.
Colonel G.B. Malleson, who later completed J.W. Kaye's History of the Sepoy War,
challenged the official theory of simple mutiny: "The crisis came: At first apparently a
mere military mutiny, it speedily changed its character, and became a national
insurrection."
V.D. Savarkar, who gave a nationalist interpretation to the uprising asserted in 1909
that it was the "Indian War of Independence."
Savarkar's views were supported by S.B. Chaudhary, who in his writings demonstrated
that 1857was a "rising of the people". In fact, the historiographic tradition in Inida soon
at:ccprcd this line of argument.
A discordant note was however, struck by R.C. Majumdar. He refused to rccog~lisc.
1857 as a w a r o f Independence. His view was that "to regard the outbreak of 1857 as
either national in character or a war of independence of India betrays a lack of true
knowledge of the histo j of Indian people in the nineteenth century".
Some historians have held that the Muslim elite was responsible for inciting the trouble.
Outrum regarded the revolt as a "Muslim conspiracy exploiting Hindu grievances". Yet
another school of thought believes that during the revolt the people were fighting not
only against the British but also against the feudal structure. The backsliding of these
feudal chiefs led to the collapse of the revolt. Talmiz Khaldun wrote: "It was crushed
so easily because of betrayal by the propertied classes"
Later Historiography, tqough accepting the popular character of the Revolt, laid
P
emphasis on its backwar -looking character. Bipin Chandra has stressed this point:
"The entire movement lacked a unified and forward looking programme to be
implemented after the capture of power"
Tara Chand was more explicit when he wrote that the "Revolt of 1857 was the last
attempt of an effete order to recover its departed glory"
Percival Spear added, "And it has been asserted to have been a purely military
outbreak produced jointly by the grievances and ipdiscipline of the Indian troops and
the folly of the British military authorities. It is in fact an anchronism to describe the
mutiny as the first essay towards modem independence. It was rather, in'its political
aspect, the last effort of (he old conversative India".
These, however, are only some of the interpretations offered. The debate is still going
on. We hope to beenriched and enlightened by future research on the rebellion of 1857.

1) Write a small note, oh the space given below, on the leaders of the Rebellion.
I
I

2) What were some of the main reasons for the defeat of such a mighty rebellion? Write
in about 100 words.
.3) Did the events of 1857 leave any impact on the Indian society? Write in the space
given below.

4.10 LET US SUM UP

The events of 1857, which we have discussed in the Unit are important not only because
they represented the crystallisation of popular feelings against the alien rule but also
because of the many changes that they produced in the country. These changes
pertained not only to the policy formulation and the political structure but also to
popular beliefs, ideas, and attitude regarding the nature of British rule. The invincibility
of the British rule was shattered once for all and the stage was set for an organised and
long drawn out struggle against the alien rule. This led to the beginning of the National
\
Movement which ultimately, ended the foreign rule and brought independence to the
coyntry in 1947.

4.11 KEY WORDS

Appeasement: Act or practice of trying to prevent someone from harming you by giving
them what -they want, pacification.
Communalism: An ideology of a group which aims at advancing the interest of a
religious community or caste at the expense of another caste or religious community.
Crystalisation: A process by which an idea or opinion becomes fixed and definite in
one's mind.
Mobilise: To briqg people together for achieving a definite objective.
Perspective: Aparticular way of thidking about or viewing something esp. one tbat is
influenced by one's beliefs and experiences.
Reactionary: Something opposed to progress.
Suzerainty- Predominance.
Uprising: A violent outburst against established authority.
Vicious Circle: A difficult situation that has an effect which create new problems which
in turn recreate the original problems.

4.12 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES ,

Check Your Progress 1

1) See Sub-section 4.2.1
2) (i) X (ii) V (iii) X (iv) V
3) Find out from Section 4.3

Chegk Your Progress 2

1) See Section 4.5
2) See Section 4.7
3) See Section 4.8
UNIT 18 NON-COOPERATION AND
KHILAFAT MOVEMENTS :
1919-1922

Structure
18.0 Objectives
18.1 Introduction
18.2 Background
18.3 The Issue of Khilafat
18.4 Towards Non-Cdoperation: Calcutta to Nagpur
18.5 Main Phases of the on-cooperation Movement
18.6 Peoples' Response to the Movement
18.7 Spread of the Movement, Local Variations
18.8 The Last Phase
18.9 Causes of Withdrawal
18.10 Impact
18.11 LetUsSurnUp
18.12 Key Words
18.13 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises
I

18.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit you will be able to:
discuss the reasons for launching the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat movements,
familiarise yourself with the programme of action adopted in these movements, ,
learn about the response of the Indian people towards these movements,
learn about the impact of these movements.

18.1 INTRODUCTION
During 1920-21 the Indian National Movement entered into a new phase, i.e. a phase of
mass politics and mass mobilisation. The British rule was opposed through two mass
movements, Khilafat and Non-Cooperation. Though emerging out of separate issues both
these movements adopted a common programme of action. The technique of non-violent
struggle was adopted at a national level. In this Unit we discuss the reasons for the
launching of these movements; the course of the movements; role of leadership and the
people. This Unit also analyses the regional variations and the impact of these movements.

w
18.2 BACKGROUND
The background to the movements was provided by the impact of the First World War, the
Rowlatt Act, the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.
i) During the post-First World War period the prices of daily commodities increased
sharply and the worst sufferers were the common people. The volume of imports which
declined during the First World War again increased towards the end of the war. As a
result the Indian industries suffered, production fell, many factories were closed and
the workers became its natural victims. The peasantry was also under the heavy burden
of rents and taxes. So the economic situation of the country in the post-war years
became alarming. In the political field the nationalists were disillusioned when the
British did not keep their promise of bringing in a new era of democracy and
 self-determination for the people. This strengthened the anti-British attitude of the Non-Cooperation and Khilafat
Movements: 1919-1922
Indians.
i) The next important landmark of this period was the passing of the Rowlatt Act in
March 1919. This Act empowered the Government to imprison any person without trial
and conviction in a court of law. Its basic aim was to imprison the nationalists without
giving them the opportunity to defend themselves. Gandhi decided to oppose it through
Satyagraha. March and April 1919 witnessed a remarkable political awakening in
India. There were hur.tuls (strikes) and demonstrations against the Rowlatt Act.
iii) T h e same period witnessed the naked brutality of the British Imperialists at
Jallianwala Bagh, in Amritsar. An unarmed but large crowd had gathered on 13 April
- 1919 at Jallianwala Bagh to protest against the arrest of their popular leaders,

Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlu and Dr. Satyapal. General Dyer, the military commander of
Amritsar, ordired his troops to bpen fire without warning on the unarmed crowd, in a
park from which there was n o way out. Thousands were killed and wounded. This
shocked the whole world. The famous poet Rabindranath Tagore renounced his
Knighthood in protest.
iv) T h e introduction of another constitutional reform act which is known a s the
Government of India Act, 1919 further disillusioned the nationalists. The reform
proposals (we have discussed it in unit 17) failed to satisfy the rising demand of the
Indians for self-government. The majority of the leaders condemned it as
"disappointing and unsatisfactory."
All these developments prepared the ground for a popular upsurge against the British
Government. T h e Khilafat issue gave an added advantage to get the Muslim support and
the final touch to it was given by Gandhi's leadership. W e will discuss now the Khilafat
issue which provided the immediate background to the movement.

1. A Cartoon Showing the Beginning

of Non-Cooperation and Khilafat

18.3 THE ISSUE OF KHILAFAT

During the First World W a r Turkey allied with Germany and Austria against the British.
The Indian Muslims regarded the Sultan of Turkey as tbeir spiritual leader Khalifa, s o
 s
Nationalism: The Inter War naturally the~rsympathies were with Turkey. After the war, the British removed the
Years-I Khalifa from power in Turkey. Hence, the Muslims started the Khilafat movement in India
for the restoration of the Khalifa's position. Their main demands were: \,

Khalifa's control should be retained over the Muslim sacred places,

territories. \
Itl territorial adjustments after the war the Khalifa should be left with sufficient

In early 1919 a Khilafat Committee was formed in Bombay. The initiative was taken by
\

Muslim merchants and their actions were confined to meetings, petitions and deputations
in favour of the Mhalifa. However, there soon emerged a militant trend within the
movement. The leaders of this trend were not satisfied with a moderate approach. Instead
they preached for the launching of a countrywide movement. They advocated, for the first
time, at the All India Khilafat Conference in Delhi (22-23 November 1919) non-
cooperation with the British Government in India. It was in this conference that Hasrat
Mohani made a call for the boycott of British goods. The Khilafat leadership clearly spelt
out that in case the peace terms after the war were unfavourable to Muslims they would
stop all cooperation with the Government. In April 1920, Shaukat Ali warned the British
that in case the Government failed to pacify Indian Muslims, "we would start a joint
Hindu-Muslim movement of non-cooperation." Shaukat Ali further stressed that the
movement would start "under the guidance of Mahatma Gandhi, a man who commands the
respect of both Hindus and Muslims".

2- hil la fat Volunteers

3 Khilafat Band
The Khilafat issue was not directly linked 'with politics in India but the Khilafat leaders
were eager in enlisting the support of Hindus. Gandhi saw in this. an opportunity to bring .-
~ol~~ooparkamdw-
1919-1922
about Hindu-Muslim unity against the British. But in spite of his support to the Khilafat
issue and being the president of the All India Khilafat Committee, Gandhi till May 1920-
had adopted a moderate appmach. However, the publication of the terns of 'the Treaty
with Turkey which were very hmh towards Turkey. and the Publication of the Hunter
M t k e Repart on 'Punjab disturbances' in May 1920 infuriated the Indians. and
Gandhi now took an open position.
The Central Khi.MuCommittee met at Allahabad from 1st to 3rd June i920. The meeting
was attended by a number of Congress and Khilafat leaders. In this meeting a programme
of non-coopcmtion towards the Govemment was declared. This was to include:
boycott of titles conferred by the Govemment,
boycott of civil services, army aad police, i.e. all governmentjobs,and
non payment of taxes to the Govemment.
August 1st. 1920 was fixed as the date to start the movement. Gandhi insisted that unless the
Punjab and Khilafat wrongs were undone. there was to be non-cooperation with the
Government. However, for the success of this movement, Congress support was essential.
Therefore, Gandhi's efforts now were to make the Congress adopt the non-cooperation
programme.

4 Mohd. Ali and M A: Ansari -KhUafat Loaders

Check Your Progress 1

v or x ).
1 Which of the following statements are correct or wrong (~v~sun
 3 ',
NatiocrPlh: T k Inter War ii) The Rowlatt Act w b passed mainly to suppress the Indian nationalists.
Yam-1
iii) The Jallianwala Bagh massacre exposed the true character of the British
Imperialism.
iv) The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms f w l l e d the expectations of the Indian
I
Nationalists.
v) Gandhi became the President of the All India Khilafat Committee.
2 What was the Khilafat issue ? Write in five lines. .

............................
........................................................................................................... .

18.4 .TOWARDS NON-COOPERATION: CA,LCUTTATO

NAGPUR
It was not an easy task for Gandhi to get the entire Congress to approve his programme of
political action. According to Prof. Ravinder Kumar Gandhi "made a concerted bid to
convince Tilak of the virtues of Satyagraha and of the expediency of an alliance with the
Muslim community over Khilafat". However, Tilak was "sceptical of Satyagraha as an
instrument of politics." He was also not in favour of having an alliance "with Muslim leader?
over a religious issue." The basis of cooperation between Hjndus and Muslims, argued Tilak,
should be a secular one like the Lucknow Pact (1916). A lot2qended on T j l w -
whether hostile or neutral - but unfortunately he passed away on 1st August '1920. L&
Lajpat Rai and C.R. Das vehemently opposed the Gandhian idea of boycottingcouncil
elections. Jawaharlal Nehru wrote in his autobiography that "almost the entire old Guard of
the Congress opposed Gandhi's resolution of non-cooperation."
The programme of nom-cooperation and boycott was then placed before the Rovipcial
Congress Committees((PCC)for their opinions. The PCC of the United Provinces after
prolonged debate app$oved of the principle of non-cwperation, gradual boycott of
govemment schools and colleges, govemment offices, British goods. But there were
reservations about the,boycott of the legislative councils.
The Bombay PCC. approved of non-cooperation as the legitimate method of agitation, but it
objected to boycott ot:council and only recommended boycott of British goods as a first
stage. The Bengal PCC. agreed to accept the principle of non-cooperation but disagreed with
the idea of council boiycott. The Madras PCC approved the policies of non-cooperation but
rejected Gandhi's prqgramme.

3
While this was the a 'tude of the 'traditional' bases of Indian politics to Gandhi's
programme, the corn aratively 'non-traditional' areas in Indian politics like Gujarat and
Bihar fully backed Gbdhi's programme. The Andhra and h j a b PCC's approved of non-
cooperation but deferred a decision on Gandhi's programme until the special Congress
session. The dilemma of some of the provincial Congress leaders in supporting Gandhi's
programme was because of the future uncertainty of Gandhi's movemvt and their
unwillingness to bosott the council elections.
It was under these cit.cumstanc& that a special session of the All India Cbngress Committee -
, was held at Calcuttalin September 1920. Lala Lajpat Rai was its president. A strong
opposition to Gandhi's programme was expected at this session. But contrary to the
intentions of most established political leaders before the sessions began, Gandhi managed to
get his proposals accepted at the open session of the Congress by the majority of 1000 vote.
Among Gandhi's suppofiers were Motilal Nehru, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Jitendralal Banerjee,
Shaukat Ali, Yakub Hasan and Dr. Ansari; while his opponents included Pandit Madan ,
Mohan Malaviya, Annie Besant, etc. Gandhi's success came mainly because of the support
from the business groups and the Muslims.
The Calcutta Congress approved a programme of: Non-Cooperationand Khilafat
Movements: 1919-1922
surrender of titles,
the boycott of schools, courts, foreign goods and councils, and
,encouragement of national schools, arbitration courts and Khadi.
The Congress supported Gandhi's plan for non-cooperation with Government till the Punjab
and Khilafat wrongs were removed and Swaraj established. The final decision was left for
the Nagpur session of the Congress to be held in December 1920. However, the precise
nature of the Swaraj at which andh hi aimed was not clear to contemporaries. Although
Gandhi said that it was "Parliamentary Swaraj in accordance with the wishes of the people of
India". Jawaharlal Nehru admitted that it was a "vague swaraj with no clear ideology behind
it."
In November 1920, following the reformed franchise the council elections were held. All the
Congress candidates boycotted the elections. Gandhi's call for boycotting elections got
massive response from different Indian provinces. This was an alarming sign for the British
Government. Only 27.3 per cent of the Hindu voters and 12.1 per cent of the Muslim
electorate participated in urban areas. In the rural areas 41.8 per cent of the Hindus and 28.3
per cent of the Muslims voted.

\
In the mi t of lot of controversies and debates over the Gandhian programme, the Congress
session s d at Nagpur from 26 December 1920. The Nagpur Congress saw the dramatic
change of C.R. Das of Bengal from a critic of Gandhi's programme to the mover of the non-
cooperation resolution at Nagpur. It endorsed the non-cooperation resolution which declared
that the entire scheme, beginning with the renunciation of all voluntary association with the
Government at one end and refusal to pay taxes at the other, should be put into force at a
time to be decided by the Congress. Resignation from the councils, renunciation of legal
practice, nationalization of education, economic boycott, organization of workers for
national service, raising of a national fund and Hindu-Muslim unity were suggested as steps
in the programme. The Nagpur session also brought a revolutionary change in the congress
organization. The changes were:
formation of a working committee of 15 members,
formation of an All India Committee of 350 members,
formation of Congress Committees from town to village level,
reorganization of Provincial Congress Committees on a linguistic basis, and
opening of Congress membership to all men and women of the age of 21 or more on
payment of 4 annas as annual subscription.
.
I

This was the first positive move on the part of the Congress to make it a real mass based
political party.'U'his period also witnessed a fundamental change in the social composition of
the party as well as in its outlook and policies. Gandhi with a novel weapon of Satyagraha
emerged as the mass leader in the Congress party.
From the above dis9ussion it becomes clear that the programme of the Non-Cooperation
Movement had two' main aspects:
i) constructive and
ii) destructive.,
Under the first category came:
the nationalization of education,
the promotion of indigenous goods,
the popularisation oPeharkha and Khadi, and
the enrolyent of a volunteer corps.
In the later category figured the boycott of: .

law courts,
educational institutions,
elections to the legislature,
official functions,
British goods as well as the surrender of honours and titles conferred by the British.
Nationalism: The Inter War
yean-I 18.5 MAIN PHASES OF THE NON-COOPERATION
MOVEMENT
The campaign for non-cooperation and boycott started with great enthusiasm from early
1921. However, we find some changes in the central emphasis of the movement from one
phase to other. In the first phase from January to March 1921, the main emphasis was on the
boycott of schools, colleges, law courts and the use of Charkha. There was widespread
student unrest and top lawyers like C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru gave up their legal practice.
This phase was followed by the second phase starting from April 1921. In this phase the
basic objectiveswere the ccaIlection of Rs. one crore for the Tilak Swaraj Fund by August
1921, enrolling one crore Congress members and installing 20 lakh Charkhas by 30 June. In
the third phase, starting from July, the stress was on boycott of foreign cloth, boycott of the
forth coming visit of the Prince of Wales in November, 1921, popularisation of ~ h r k h and a
Khadi and Jail Bharo by Congress volunteers.
In the last phase, between November 1921, a shift towards radicalism was visible. The
Congress volunteers rallied the people and the country was on the verge of a revolt. Gandhi
decided to launch a no revenue campaign at Bardoli, and also a mass civil disobedience
movement for freedom of speech, press and association. But the attack on a local police
station by angry peasants at Chauri Chaura, in Gorakhpur district of U.P., on 5th February
1922, changed the whole situation. Gandhi, shocked by this incident, withdrew the Non-
cooperation Movement.

18.6 PEOPLESSRESPONSE TO THE MOVEMENT

The leadership of this movement in the initial stages came from the middle class. But the
middle class had a lot of reservations about Gandhi's programme. In places like Calcutta,
Bombay, Madras which were centres of elite politicians, the response to Gandhi's movement
was very limited. Their response to the call for resignation from government service,
surrendering of titles, etc.-was not very encouraging. However, the economic boycott
received support from the Indian business group, because the textile industry had benefited
from the nationalists emphsis on the use of Swadeshi. Still a section of the big business
remained critical of the Non-Cooperation Movement. They were particularly afraid of labour
unrest in the factories following the Non-Cooperation Movement.
Besides the elite politicians, the comparative new comers in Indian politics found expression
of their interests and aspirations in the Gandhian movement. Leaders like Rajendra mad - - is
Bihar, Sardar Vallabh bhai Pate1 in Ciujarat, provided solid support to Gandhian movement.
In fact, they found non-cooperation as a viable political alternative to terrorism in ord6r to
fight against a colonial government.
The response from the students and women was very effective. Thousands of students left
government schools and colleges and joined national schools and colleges. The newly started
national institutions like the Kashi Vidyapeeth, the Gujarat Vidyapeeth and the Jamia Millia
Islamia and others accommodated many students although several others were disappointed. .
Students became active volunteers of the movement. Women also came forward. They gave
up Purdah and offered their jewellery for the Tilak Fund. They joined the movement in large
members and took active part in picketing before the shops selling foreign cloth and liquor.
The most important landmark of this movement was the massive participation of the
peasants A d workers in it. The long-standing grievances of the toiling masses against the
British, as w l l as the Indian masters got an opportunity through this movement to express
their real feelings. Although the Congress leadership was against class war, the masses broke
this restraint. In nual areas and some other places, the peasants turned against the landlords
and the traders. This gave a new dimension to the movement of 1921-22.
 Non-Cooperationand Khilafat
18.7 SPREAD OF THE MOVEMEN*, LOCAL Mwements: 1919-1922

VARIATIONS
The call for non-cooperation and boycott no doubt got massive response from different parts
of India. The years 1921 and 1922 were marked by massive popular protests against the
British Raj in India. However, the movement was shaped in most places according to local
conditions. It was the local grievances of the people which found expression through this
movement, and the instructions of the Congress leadership were not always followed. Let us
take a brief look at different regions in relation to the Non-Cooperation Movement.
Bengal: Mass participation in the Gandhian method of protest was less enthusiastic in
Bengal. Rabindranath Tagore appreciated Gandhi for bringing to the masses a new
consciousness. But he attacked his 'narrowness, obscurantism' and Char-kha.Elites of
,Calcutta were critical of some Gandhian ways. But the non-cooperation movement
nevertheless brought about unique communal unity and awakening in the urban and rural
masses. Hartals, ?trikes and mass courting of arrest greatly pressurized the British
Government to csange its attitude towards India.
5. Rabindran

In the countryside, an intense propaganda was carried on and as a Govern~iientreport said,

"The things that are said and done in Gandhi's name would make that gentleman shudder. if
ever he heard of fraction of them." The villagers in Midnapur district opposed the newly
created Union Boards and the tax imposed by them. The people refused to pay taxes or
agricultural rent to the Government or private landlords in the outlying district5 of North
Bengal.
Bihar: In Bihar the local issue of the right to graze cattle on common government
wastelands and the confrontation between the "lower and upper castes" on the issue of the
former taking the sacred thread got merged with the Non-Cooperation Movement. The
issues of cow protection and the rights of Kisans were also focused upon. Because of this
' linkage, North Bihar, especially Champaran, Saran, Muzaffarpur and Purnia districts,

became the storm centres of the movement by November 1921. Hut (village market) looting
and confrontation with the police became frequent.
U.P.: The United Pt.ovinces became a strong base of the Gandhian Non-Cooperation
Movement. Qrganised non-cooperation was an affair of cities and small towns. In the
countryside it took a different foml. Here the movement got entangled with the kisan
movement. Despite the repeated appeal for non-violence from the congress leadership, the
peasants rose in revolt not only against Talukdara but also, against merchants. Between
January and March 1921 the districts of Rae Bareli, Pratapgarh, Fyzabad and Sultanpur
witnessed widespread agrarian riots under the leadership of Baba Ram Chandra. The major a

demands were:
no nazarana (extra premium on rent)
no eviction from holdings, and
no h ~ ~ (forkkd
a r labour) and rasad (forced sunnlies). etc.
In late 1921 there was another strong peasant outburst which is known as the 'Eka' Non-Cooperation and Khilafat
Movements: 1919-1922
movement under a radical leader Madari Pasi. The basic demand here was rhe conversion of
produce rents into cash. Another significant event was the destruction of thousands of acres
of reserved forests in the Kumaon Division in July 1921 by the hill-tribes as they disliked
the forest regulations.
Punjab: In Punjab the response to this movement was not very remarkable in the city areas.
But here the powerful Akali movement for reform and control of the Gurudwaras got
closely identified with non-cooperation. Although Gandhi gave it only guarded approval, his
non-cooperation.tactic was consistently used by the Akalis. It showed a remarkable
communal unity between the Sikhs, the Muslims and the Hindus.
Maharashtra: In Maharashtra non-cooperation remained relatively week because the
Tilakites were unenthusiastic about Gandhi, and Non-Brahmins felt that the Congrzss was a
Chitpavan-led affair. The higher castes disliked Gandhi's emphasis on the elevation of the
depressed classes and their participation in the Non-Cooperation Movement. However, there
were sone sporadic local outbursts. At Malagaon in Nasik district a few policemen were
burnt to death following the arrest of some local leaders. In the Poona area some peasants
tried to defend their landrights though Sa~agraha.
Assam: Non-Cooperation received massive support in the distant province of Assam. In the
gardens of Assam the coolies rose in revolt with shouts of "Gandhi Maharaj Ki Jai"; for
higher wages and better condition of work. There were also signs of a non-revenue
movement among peasants.
Rajasthan: Peasant movements in the princely states of Rajasthan strengthened the Non-
cooperation Movement, as they did in Bihar and U.P.. The peasants protested against cesses
and begar. The Bijolia Movement in Mewar and the Bhil Movement under Motilal Tejawat
acquired impetus from the Non-Cooperation Movement.
Andhra: In Andhra the grievances of tribal and other peasants against forest laws got linked
to the Non-Cooperation Movement. A large number of these people met Gandhi in Cudappa
in September 1921 to get their taxes reduced and forest restrictions removed. Forest officials
were boycotted. To assert their right they sent their cattle forcibly,into the forests without
paying the grazing tax. In the Paland area on the periphery of forests, Swaraj was declared
and police parties were attacked. Gandhi-Raj, the protesters believed, was about to come. A
powerful movement for non-payment of land revenue also developed in Andhra between
December 1921 and February 1922. The Non-Cooperation Movement attained great success
in the Andhra delta area. In the same period Alluri Sitaram Raju organised the tribals in
~ n d h i aand combined their demands with those of the Non-Cooperation Movement.
8. Alluri Sitaram Raju
Karnataka: Karnataka areas remained comparatively unaffected by the movement and the
initial response of the upper and middle class professional groups in several areas of the
Madras presidency was limited. Out of 682 title holders only 6 returned their honours and 36 .
lawyers gave up their legal practice. In the entire presidency 92 national schools with 5,000
pupils were stasted. The labour in the Buckingham and Carnatic textile mills went on strike
from July to October 1921. They were given moral support by the local Non-Cooperation
leaders.
Similar responses were there in many other regions. For example in Orissa the tenants of the
Kanika Raj refused to pay Ahwahs. But in Gujarat the movement went on purely Gandhian
lines.

Check Your Progress 2

1 What was the programme of the Non-Cooperation Movement? Write in 50 words.
 Nationalism: The Inter War
. Years-I
2 Discuss in brief the response of the peasantry to the Non-Cooperation Movement.
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................

.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
........................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................
.......................................................................................................................................

3 Which of the following statements are correct or wrong (Mark \I or x ).

i) The Nagpur session of the AICC brought some revolutionary dhanges in the
Congress organization.
ii) Gandhi's programme got no response from rural areas.
iii) The Non-Cooperation Movement was shaped in most places according to local
conditions.

18.8 THE LAST PHASE

The Government very carefully observed the developments and collected secret reports from
the provinces about the progress of the movement. When the movement ultimately started, ,
the Government took recourse to repression. The Congress and the Khilafat volunteer
organizations were declared unlawful. Public assemblies and processions were banned. At
many places the police fired on the satyagrahis. Arrests and Lathi charge became a common
scene. By the end of 1921 all important leaders except Gandhi were imprisoned. Alarmed by
Hindu-Muslim unity, the Government also tried tb create a split between the Congress and
the Khilafatists. Thus the Government machinery was fully geared to crush the movement.

& € C O N D PHASE OF N O N C O O P E R A T I O N MOVE

30 9. A Cartoon showing the withdrawal of the Mocement

 The repression by the British strengthened the determination of the Indians to continue the NoaC
Khilrfat
MovcPcrb: 1919-1922
movement with greater vigour. Meanwhile the viceroy tried to negotiate with the Congress
leaders through Madan Mohan Malaviya and offered to recognise the National volunteers
and to release the political prisoners. In mid-January 1922 Gandhi explained the position of
the Non-Cooperation Movement at the All Parties Conference and there was a general
agreement on his assessments. On 1 st February he sent an ultimatum to the viceroy that he
could start mass civil disobedience if the political prisoners were not released and repressive
measures not abandoned. Since the whole country was not fit for civil disobedience he
decided to launch it on 5th February. Congress volunteers were fired at by the police at
Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district in U.P. In &taliation the infuriated mob killed 21
policemen. This violent incident shocked Gandhi and he suspended the Non-
cooperation Movement. He also postponed the proposed civil disobedience at Bardoli.
Many Congressmen were shocked and surprised by Gandhi's decision. They vehemently
protested against it. Subhas Chandra Bose called it a "national calam;tyw. Jawaharlal Nehm
expressed his "amazement and consternationwat the decision. Explaining his position
Gandhi replied to Jawaharlal Nehm:
"The movement had unconsciously drifted from the right path. We have come back to
our moorings, and we can again go straight ahead."
I On 12 February 1922 the Congress Working Committee meeting at Bardoli condemned the
I
inhuman conduct of the mob at Chauri Chaura. It endorsed the suspension of the mass civil
disobedience movement. The same day Gandhi started his five day fast as a penance. Thus,
the first non-cooperation virtually came to an end. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March, 1922
and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment.

-
PL-
Am.&*&, &-4 JZ,J-,
$
,f (+-
HI;
8. ?

10. Order of Gandhi's Imprisonment

Nationalism: The Inter War
Years-I

11. Gandhi going to Jail (1922)

The Khilafat issues also lost its relevance when Kemal Pasha came to power in Turkey. The
Sultan of Turkey was stripped of all political power. Kemal Pasha wanted to modernize
Turkey and to make it a secular state. The Caliphate was abolished. Naturally it led to an end
of Khilafat movement.

18.9 CAUSES OF WITHDRAWAL

Explaining the causes of withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation Movement, Gandhi said that
the Chauri Chaura incident had forced him to withdraw the movement. The incident proved
that the country still had not learnt the lesson from the non-violence. To quote Gandhi, "I
would suffer every humiliation, every torture, absolute ostracism and death itself to prevent
the movement from becoming violent."
As far as the peasants were concerned the Non-Cooperation Movement was gradually
turning into a no-rent movement against the Zamindars. But the Congress leadership was in
no way interested in attacking the legal rights of the Zamindars. Gandhi's aim was of a .
"controlled mass movement" involving different Indian classes, and not a class revolution.
So he was against the continuation of this movement which might turn into a class
revolution. He made it quite clear that he was against any kind of violent or radical
movement at that stage. In spite of an objective revolutionary situation existing in India there
was no alternative revolutionary leadership. If the movement was not suspended it might
have led to chaos because the leadership had no control over local movements.
 Non-Cooperation and Khilafat
18.10 IMPACT i (.
Movements: 1919-1922

4
In spite of its failure the Non-Cooperation Move#ent has great significance in 1ndian history
facial
not only in relation to political spheres but in t e r q s of Gandhi
emphasised the need of removing evils like ca$te communalism, untouchability*
etc. In the processions, meetings and in jails castes and communities worked
together and even ate together. This and accelerated the
pace of social mobility and reform. The-l s cduld raise their head high without
fear. This movement showed rema n \he Hindus and the Muslims. At
many it was difficult to distifigu& non-cooperation, Khilafat and Kisan
Sabha meeting.
. .
The economic boycott in 1920-22 was more Swadeshi Movement in 1905-
08 after the partition of Bengal. As again.st 1 , of British cotton price goods
imported in 1905-08, only 955 million yards in 1921-22. This naturally
created panic among the British capitalists. The kd industry had immensely
influence increased
1 benefited by the boycott of foreign good
considerably. On theother hand, recurrent 1
millowners. Tjle popularisation of Charkha
1 created panic among these
lage reconstruction
programme through self-help and through bout economic revival, and

I handloom cloth production went up.

In the political field the Non-Cooperation and Khila ents involving all the
communities and all classes added a new dimension ional Movement. The
National movement had been strengthene A new nationalist
awareness was generated and the National Movement otest comers of the
land. The common people for the first time became an of the main stream of the
National Movement. Self-confidence and ian people developed
tremendously. It brought a real feeling of
boosted the morale of the people and rais

Check Your Progress 3

1 Discuss the impact of Non-Cooperation Movement in tory. Write in about 100
-.+
words. I
I
1

2 Why was the movement suspended ? Answer in five lines.

'i

3 Mark the statements correct ( d ) or wrong (x).

\
i The British Government tried to create a snlit hetween the Cnhneress and the
Nationalism: The Inter War ii) The Chauri Chaura incident h
Years4
iii) The Khilafat Movement was
iv) The Non-Cooperation Move
mainstream of Indian politics.

18.11 LET US SUM ug

The Non-Cooperation Movement d
struggle for independence. The intr
Reforms, the Jallianwala Bagh Ma
Non-Cooperation Movement.
Gandhi wanted to use the
British Government. In
the Khilafat issue with t
non-cooperation move
The programme of the
massive support from diffe
participation of the common
movement.
btedly a landmark in the history of Indian
f the Rowlatt Act, the Montagu-S+elmsford
the Khilafat issue provided the background of
nited Hindu-Muslim movement against the
ns by some Congress leaders to the merger of
nt, Gandhi finally persuaded them to launch a
government and educational
arkha and Khadi, etc. The movement got
. The most remarkable feature was the
large scale for the first time in the national
out of control of the Congress leadership,
of 1921. Finally the Chaur. Chaura incident

True, the movement failed t n objectives: The restitution of the Caliphate

le between what Gandhi called 'the soul force'
and 'the material force' b t o ~ g ening to the masses for their political rights.
ad achieved in one year what could not be done in
ations made about the Non-
two years constituted a stormy period of
the first time stood up agai~stthe
mighty British Raj.
I
L

18.12 KEY WORDS' '(1

A.I.C.C. : All India Con-s
Charkha : Spinning wheel .
Katgha : Handloom
Khadi :Hand-spun cloth
Khalifa ;Successor to the
Non-Cooperation : rating with the British manifested through boycott of
educational institutions,
Panchayat :

vement based on the philosophy of truth and non-

violence.

Swaraj :Self- rule

!
 Phon-cooperation and Khilafat
M,oj%rnentsr 1919-1922
18.13 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS
EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
1 i) x ii) d iii) d iv) x v) d
2 Your answef should include humiliation of the KMifa by the British. Major demands
were restoration of Khalifa's control, retention of Khalifa's temtory, etc.
See Section 18.3.

Check Your Progress 2

1 Boycott of schools, colleges, councils, ctc, and use of Charkha, Khadi,etc.
See Sec. 18.4.
2 You havdto write about the spontaneous response of the peasantry giving reasons for
their participation and the refemce~of two or three areas like U.P., Bihar, etc.
'
See Sec. 18.6 and 18.7.
3 i) d ii) x iii) d
Check Your Progress 3
1 Your answer should
,-
include the social, economic and political impact of this movement.
See Sec. 18.11
2 You have to write about the explanations given by Gandhi and others
See Sec. 18.10
3 i) d ii) x iii) x iv) d
 Civil Disobedience Movement
UNIT 15 CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
MOVEMENT*
Structure
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Background
15.3 The Lahore Session
15.4 Spread of the Movement: Popular Response and Regional Pattern
15.5 Social Base of the Movement
15.6 Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the Second Round Table Conference
15.7 Back to Agitation
15.8 Critical Assessment of the Civil Disobedience Movement
15.9 Summary
15.10 Exercises

15.1 INTRODUCTION
This chapter aims at critically analysing and locating the Civil Disobedience
Movement (1930-34) and evaluating its significance in the context of the broader
anti-imperialist movement coordinated under the leadership of Gandhi since
1920s in India. The Civil Disobedience Movement, considered as the second
major Gandhian mass movement, popularly labelled as the Salt Satyagraha, made
a distinct advance in broadening the social reach of the anti-imperialist struggle
compared to the Non-cooperation Movement, launched during the early 1920s.
In this Unit, we shall discuss the backdrop under which the movement was
launched, the issues addressed in its programme, the pattern and trend of popular
response at various regional levels and thereby mapping its achievements and
limitations.

15.2 BACKGROUND
The Indian National Congress suffered a sharp decline in its membership soon
after the suspension of Non-cooperation Movement by Gandhiji in 1922. It also
made a large section of the people feel let down and demoralized. Many in the
Congress lost faith in the efficacy of the Gandhian strategy and a section of the
youth turned to revolutionary violence to achieve their political objectives. The
‘No-changer’ group focused on the Gandhian constructive programme in rural
areas whereas the ‘Pro-changers’, especially the Swarajists, got involved in
council politics. Significantly, the mid-1920s also witnessed the alienation of
the Muslims from the national movement and the resultant occurrence of communal
riots at several places, such as Calcutta, Dacca, Patna, Delhi, United Provinces and
the North Western Frontier Province. The perceptible demoralisation within the
anti-imperialist movement however sought to be overcome with the revival of
momentum for evocative nationalist politics around 1927.

*
Resource Person: Prof. Chandi Prasad Nanda
5
National Movement – The The immediate cause was the announcement and formation of an all-White Simon
Mass Phase-II
Commission in November 1927, tasked with the responsibility to decide and
recommend whether India was ready for further measure of constitutional progress
or not. Being an emotive issue, this radically affected the political mood of the
country. The Commission had already become a suspect in the eyes of the people
by not representing a single Indian and this had the opposite effect to the one
intended. Therefore its arrival in India during February 1927 proved to be a
political disaster. It was subjected to hostile demonstrations and boycotts,
wherever Congress influence was strong enough.

This period also saw the Hindu-Muslim chasm grow as the Hindu critics of
nationalism’s espousal of Khilafat on the one hand, and the Muslim leaders’
outcry against the alleged betrayal of the same Khilafat, on the other, undermined
the platform of communal unity which the Non-Cooperation Movement in early
1920s had so splendidly built up.

The anti-Simon boycotts heralded the revival of anti-imperialistic movements

from 1928 onwards. Middle-class students and youth dominated the urban
demonstrations during the years 1928 and 1929. This period also witnessed
student and youth conferences and associations, raising demands for complete
independence and socio-economic change. Bombay and Calcutta witnessed
militant communist-led workers movement, which alarmed Indian businessmen
and British officials alike. Bhagat Singh’s Hindustan Socialist Republican
Association introduced a new secular and socialistic tone, leading to a revival of
revolutionary groups in Bengal and Northern India. Added to these developments,
Vallabhbhai Patel’s Bardoli Satyagraha in Gujarat in 1928 against the
enhancement of land revenue spawned peasant movements in various regions.
This was also the time when Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose, strongly
influenced by socialist ideas and a politically restive population, raised the demand
for Purna Swaraj or Complete Independence replacing the usual demand for
Dominion status. Simultaneously the rise and impact of left wingers within the
Congress led Gandhiji to support the demand for complete independence at Lahore
session of the Congress in 1929.

In the meantime, the popular resentment against Simon Commission made it

apparent that the future constitution of India should be framed by the Indians
themselves. The Congress convened an all-party conference in February 1928
and constituted a committee to draft a constitution under Motilal Nehru in May
1928. In fact, the Nehru Committee was the nationalists’ response to the
appointment of Simon Commission. Lord Birkenhead, the Secretary of State,
had challenged the Indians asking them to frame a constitution acceptable to all
political groups in the country. The Indian opinion on this vital issue was united.
The Nehru Committee Report suggested a constitution based on the principles
of dominion status. The Congress, which met in December 1928, declared that if
the British government did not accept the Nehru Report by the end of 1929, it
would give a call for a new civil disobedience campaign at its next session to be
held at Lahore.

Another development that had far-reaching effects on the national movement

was the World Economic Depression of 1929-33. Political and economic tensions
steadily aggravated under the British colonial setup as it failed to accommodate
emerging Indian interests during the late 1920s and early 1930s. British tariff
6
policy was lopsided and led to large scale discontent amongst the various business Civil Disobedience Movement
groups. Textile imports from Lancashire increased the anxiety and concerns of
the local manufacturers; the British jute interests and the Birlas were at
loggerheads in Calcutta; while in Bombay coastal shipping was a source of
friction. Large scale retrenchment of the workers spawned agitations with
unprecedented virulence and organisation.

15.3 THE LAHORE SESSION

The launch of a programme of civil disobedience including non-payment of taxes
was the tactic the Congress authorized at the Lahore session in 1929 along with
a request to all members of legislatures to resign their seats. Although Gandhi
was empowered to launch the agitation at a time and place of his choice, he was
desperately in search of an effective formula. He submitted a minimum demand
of 11 points among which the major ones were: the demand for the reduction of
rupee-sterling ratio to 1s4d, reduction of agricultural tax by 50% and making it a
subject of legislative control, abolition of salt tax and salt monopoly of the
government, reduction of military expenditure and salaries of highest grade
services, release of all political prisoners, protection for Indian textiles and
reservation of costal shipping for Indians and so on. The demands were ignored.
Jawaharlal Nehru regarded these demands as ‘a climb down from Purna Swaraj’
and Gandhi was still in two minds.

It was in February 1930 that Gandhi began to talk about salt: ‘There is no article
like salt outside water by taxing which the State can reach even the starving
millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. The tax constitutes
therefore the most inhuman poll tax the ingenuity of man can devise.’ He informed
the Viceroy Irwin that on the 11th of March he would proceed with the co-workers
of his Ashram at Sabarmati to violate the salt law. It was a brilliantly conceived
plan though a few could grasp its significance when it was announced. With
seventy-eight members, among whom were men belonging to almost every region
and religion of India, Gandhi decided to march from Ahmedabad to Dandi through
the villages of Gujarat for about 240 miles. He declared that upon reaching the
Dandi coast, he would break the salt laws. It was, as turned out later, a deceptively
innocuous and devastatingly effective move. As people began to converge at
Sabarmati Ashram in thousands, before the movement began, to witness the
dramatic events that would unfold. Gandhiji painstakingly explained his plans,
gave directions for future actions, impressed on the people about the necessity
for non-violence and prepared them for the Government’s response. Gandhiji
said ‘Wherever possible, civil disobedience of salt laws should be started… Liquor
and foreign cloth shops should be picketed. We can refuse to pay taxes if we
have requisite strength. The lawyers can give up practice; the public can boycott
the courts by refraining from litigation. Government servants can resign their
posts… I prescribe only one condition, viz., let our pledge for truth and non-
violence as the only means for the attainment of Swaraj be faithfully kept.’

The proposal of making the issue of salt central to the launching a mass civil
disobedience movement proved quite decisive. ‘You planned a fine strategy round
the issue of salt’, Irwin told Gandhi later. A concrete and universal grievance of
the rural poor, the salt laws had no socially divisive implications. The breaking
of the salt law by Gandhi meant a rejection of the government’s claim on the
allegiance of the people. Furthermore, in coastal areas, illegal manufacture of
7
National Movement – The salt could provide the people with a small income which was no less significant.
Mass Phase-II
Above everything, the Dandi March and the widespread violation of the salt
laws over large areas of the country subsequently demonstrated the tremendous
power of a non-violent mass struggle. While Gandhi was marching to Dandi his
comrades took up the far more difficult task of organisation, fund collection and
touring towns and villages to spread the nationalistic message among the people.

15.4 SPREAD OF THE MOVEMENT: POPULAR

RESPONSE AND REGIONAL PATTERN
Once the way was cleared by Gandhi’s extraordinary political ritual at Dandi,
defiance of the salt laws started all over the country. The Satyagrahis held salt
marches in Assam, Bengal, and Madras, Sindh, Orissa and at many other places.
In Tamil Nadu, C. Rajagopalchari led a march from Tiruchirapally to
Vedaranniyam. In Malabar, K. Kelappan led a march from Calicut to Poyannur.
Noted Gandhian leader Gopabandhu Choudhury led the first batch of Satyagrahis
from Cuttack to Inchudi in Balasore sea-coast in Orissa. In Assam, Satyagrahis
walked from Sylhet to Noakhali (Bengal) to make salt. In Andhra, a number of
Sibirams (camps) came up in different districts as headquarters of salt Satyagraha.

This period also witnessed a new kind of no tax campaign – the refusal to pay
the chowkidari tax. The chowkidars as village guards, supplemented the small
contingent of rural police, were paid out of the tax levied specially on the villages.
The popular antipathy for chowkidars had continued as they were often perceived
as spies acting in favour of the Government and also as retainers for the local
landlords. The movement against this tax, calling for the resignation of
chowkidars, and of the influential members of chowkidari panchayats first started
in Bihar in May 1930, in lieu of salt agitation due to the land-locked nature of
the province. The tax was refused in the Monghyr, Saran and Bhagalpur districts:
‘Chowkidars were induced to resign, and a social boycott used against those
who resisted. The Government retaliated by confiscation of property worth
hundreds and thousands in lieu of a few rupees of tax and by beatings and torture.
Matters came to a head in Bihpur in Bhagalpur on May 31 when the police,
desperate to assert its fast-eroding authority, occupied the Congress ashram which
was the headquarters of nationalist activity in the area. The occupation triggered
off daily demonstrations outside the ashram. The visit by Rajendra Prasad and
Abdul Bari from Patna became the occasion for a huge mass rally, which was
broken up by a lathi charge injuring Rajendra Prasad. As elsewhere, repression
further increased the nationalist’ strength and prevented the police from entering
the rural areas.’

In Bengal, as salt manufacturing became difficult with the onset of the monsoon,
the shift to anti-chowkidari and anti-Union Board agitation emerged as distinct
options. As in other places, villagers here braved and ‘withstood severe repression,
losing thousands of rupees worth of property through confiscation and destruction,
and having to hide for days in forests to escape the wrath of the police.’ The non-
payment of chowkidari tax and demand for its abolition marked a new high in
coastal districts of Orissa particularly in Balasore with the petering out of salt
Satyagraha around June in view of advent of rains. People refused to pay the tax
under the belief that the very payment of tax had been ‘forbidden by the Congress
people’. Collective forms of protest as well as assault on police surfaced when
8
the authorities attempted to attach the property of the people who refused to pay Civil Disobedience Movement
chowkidari tax.

No-tax movement in the shape of refusal of land revenue also surfaced in Kheda,
Bardoli taluqa of Surat district, and Jambusar in Broach of Gujrat. It saw
remarkable exodus of thousands of people, with family, cattle and household
goods, from British India into the neighbouring princely states such as Baroda
where they camped for months together in the open fields. On the other hand,
the British authorities retaliated by breaking open their houses, destroying their
belongings and confiscating their lands. The police did not even ‘spare Vallabhbhai
Patel’s eighty-years-old mother, who sat cooking in her village house in Karamsad;
her cooking utensils were kicked about and filled with kerosene and stone.’
Vallabhbhai continued to provide encouragement and solace to the hard-pressed
peasants of his native land. In the face of terrible oddities compounded by meagre
resources and demoralisation, ‘they stuck it out in the wilderness till the truce in
March 1931 made it possible for them to return to their respective homes.’

Forest laws were defied and it assumed mass proportions in Maharashtra,

Karnataka and the Central Provinces, ‘especially in areas with large tribal
populations who had been the most seriously affected by the colonial
Government’s restrictions on the use of the forest.’ At some places, the size of
the crowd that broke the forest laws swelled to 70,000 and above. The infamous
‘Cunningham circular’ evoked powerful agitation led by students in Assam. The
circular unjustly had forced students and their guardians to furnish assurances of
good behaviour to the colonial government.

The popular response all over the country to Jawaharlal Nehru’s message delivered
at Lahore in December 1929 has been ecstatic. Nehru had reminded his
countrymen: ‘Remember once again, now that this flag is unfurled, it must not
be lowered as long as a single Indian, man, woman, or child lives in India.’ It is
in this context, ‘attempts to defend the honour of the national flag in the face of
severe brutalities often turned into heroism of the most spectacular variety.’ The
exemplary courage of Tota Narasaiah Naidu who preferred to be beaten
unconscious by a fifteen-member police force rather than give up the national
flag at Bundur, on the Andhra Coast had an electrifying effect all over the country.
This was followed with similar determination displayed by P. Krishna Pillai, a
Calicut based nationalist who later on became a prominent communist, in
suffering lathi blows. In a novel idea of defying the repeated attempts by police
to snatch away the national flag from their hands, a group of children in Surat
would stitch khadi dresses in the three colours of the national flag, and thus
these little, ‘living flags’ triumphantly paraded the streets and made the police
utterly helpless to snatch the national flag anymore. The national flag which
came to be spotted in the nook and corner of the rural India now onward came to
symbolise the unprecedented sprit of nationalism.

The Civil Disobedience Movement evoked remarkable response in the initial

months in U.P., but got quietened as colonial repression stepped up. But it led to
the call for a movement combining both no-revenue, no-rent campaign. The
no-revenue part was a call to the zamindars to refuse to pay revenue to the
Government, the no-rent a call to the tenants not to pay rent to the zamindars. As
the zamindars were largely loyal to the Government, this became primarily a
no-rent struggle. Though no-rent was in the air, it was only in October the
9
National Movement – The campaign picked up again when Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘out of jail for a brief period,
Mass Phase-II
got the U.P. Congress Committee to sanction the no-rent campaign’. Based on
intensive propaganda for two months, the campaign came to be launched in
December; by January however, severe repression had forced many peasants to
flee the villages. The two districts of Agra and Rae Bareli remained the nerve
centres of this campaign.

A variety of forms of mobilization came to be popularized as Civil Disobedience

Movement crystallized as a major nationalist form of anti-colonial politics. For
instance, formation of volunteer corps, organisation of sankirtan processions to
move around towns and villages to popularise the message of swaraj or prabhat
pheris, wherein people including women and children in the villages and towns
went around at dawn singing nationalist songs, tours by activists and leaders
organizing public meetings in the rural and urban areas, organisation of magic
lanterns shows and secret circulation of booklets containing nationalist literature
in the villages to spread nationalist ideas amongst people and setting up of
underground Congress ashrams became the familiar modes of nationalist
activities. Interestingly, rural market places, temples and Gandhian ashrams
became significantly new sites of nationalist activities. Besides, widespread
circulation of ‘illegal’ news-sheets or ‘congress bulletins’ or patrikas either
handwritten or cyclostyled even sometimes by ‘mango sellers and girl inmates
of orphanage’ not only sought to contest the legitimacy of obnoxious Press Act
but also emerged as the innovative ways of mobilizing people. Children
volunteered to organise them into vanara sena or monkey squads and ‘at least at
one place the girls decided they wanted their own separate manjari sena or cat
army!’

Nehru’s arrest in April 1930 for defiance of the salt law evoked huge demonstrations
in Madras, Calcutta and Karachi. Gandhi’s arrest came on May 4, 1930 when he
had announced that he would lead a raid on Dharsana salt works on the west
coast. Gandhi’s arrest was followed by massive protests in Bombay, Delhi,
Calcutta and Sholapur, where the response was the fiercest. After Gandhi’s arrest,
the Congress Working Committee sanctioned three significant measures: (i) Non-
payment of revenue in Ryotwari areas; (ii) No-chowkidari-tax campaign in
Zamindari areas; and (iii) Violation of forest laws in the central provinces.

Under pressure and social boycott, many lower-level government officials

including police men resigned from their services. As the agitation gathered
momentum, the government, in retaliation, let loose a reign of brutality,
methodically bashing unresisting men to a bloody pulp, as the American journalist
Webb Miller observed. Such repression and its heroic defiance evoked admiration
and sympathy which quickly turned into active participation, releasing the
movement from its initially narrow confines. But then the movement turned
violent, weakening the Gandhian restraint because his followers were already
behind the bars.

When the Salt Satyagraha attained a critical high, three major developments
occurred which went beyond the confines of Gandhian Civil Disobedience. Firstly,
Revolutionary nationalism in Bengal considerably deepened British alarm. For
example, the Chittagong armoury was captured by the Bengal revolutionaries on
April 18, 1930 after which they fought a pitched battle on Jalalabad hill on April
22. Civil disobedience in Bengal was accompanied by revolutionary nationalism,
10
with 56 incidents in 1930 (as compared to 47 in 1919-29). Secondly, in Peshawar, Civil Disobedience Movement
the arrest of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan on April 23, 1930 gave rise to a massive
upsurge when Hindu soldiers refused to open fire on a Muslim crowd in a fine
instance of patriotic self-sacrifice, non-violence and communal amity. Thirdly, a
textile workers’ strike in Sholapur led to attacks on liquor shops, police outposts
and government buildings, giving rise to something like a parallel government
for a few days in early May. However, illegal salt manufacture became difficult
due to the onset of monsoon, and the Congress took to other forms of mass
struggle like non-payment of land revenue, refusal to pay chowkidari tax and
Satyagraha in forest areas. Though the government retaliated with force, the
peasants held firm and resorted to violent confrontations with the police in many
places.

However, some regional studies on the Civil Disobedience Movement reveals

that Gujarat and the Gujarati business-cum-professional community of Bombay
city became the classic heartland of Gandhian controlled mass mobilization
through Satyagraha. The interests of substantial landholding peasants like the
Patidars of Bardoli and Kheda fitted in well with Gandhian strategies and controls,
because rent was not much of an issue. In the areas where the Congress was
weaker or where internal zamindar-peasant divide was quite pronounced, rural
movements tended to be much more uninhibited. This was seen in Central
Provinces, Maharashtra or Karnataka, where non-cooperation had little impact
and Gandhian ideas came to be associated with a near millenarian flavor and
novelty, mostly absent in the well-established strongholds like Gujarat, coastal
Andhra or Bihar. This inverse relationship between organization and militancy
had been brought out in district-level comparisons in U.P. A strong organisation
and a few big zamindars in parts of Agra district followed the Bardoli pattern,
while in taluqdar-dominated Rae Baraeli, peasants’ exerted pressure. In Bengal,
the Congress was weak and faction-ridden, there was a communal divide in the
eastern districts and the presence of a left alternative made matters complicated.

15.5 SOCIAL BASE OF THE MOVEMENT

In the urban areas, the support for Gandhian nationalism around 1930 was less
than what it had been during the Non-Cooperation Movement and only a few
lawyers gave up their practice and a few students joined ‘national schools’ instead
of government controlled institutions. Revolutionary nationalism attracted the
educated youth more in Bengal, and for a brief period Bhagat Singh became
more popular than Gandhi in the north Indian towns. Muslim participation was
low, and there was communal discontent in Dhaka town and Kishoreganj village
in May and July 1930. There were frequent hartals in towns, but to the relief of
British officials the Congress did not include industrial or communication strikes
in its programme. That lacuna was largely made up by the massive peasant
mobilization and considerable support from the business groups, at least during
the initial stages. As the movement implied violations of law, the number of jail-
goers was more than three times the 1921-22 figures. There was solidarity with
the nationalist movement by the Calcutta Marwaris headed by G.D. Birla at this
stage, and merchants in many towns gave up imports of foreign goods for some
months. Due to picketing and the overall impact of the Depression worldwide,
there was a spectacular collapse of British cloth imports from 1248 million yards
in 1929-30 to only 523 million yard in 1930-31.
11
National Movement – The Another important feature of the Civil disobedience Movement was the widespread
Mass Phase-II
participation of women. Women from socially conservative professional, business
or peasant families picketed shops, faced lathis and went to jail. This, however,
did not entail any drastic change in the traditional image of women. But women’s
participation in revolutionary nationalism, especially in Bengal, did come under
sharp attack. Even Rabindranath Tagore with his impeccable progressive outlook
wrote a novel Char Adhyay criticizing such ‘unfeminine’ behaviour.

15.6 GANDHI-IRWIN PACT AND THE SECOND

ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE
Civil Disobedience passed on to an apparently contradictory phase in the last
few months of 1930. The effect of the Depression increased the pressures for no
rent, which the UP Congress reluctantly sanctioned. Though incidents of peasant
and tribal militancy increased, official reports indicated a marked decline of
enthusiasm and support among urban traders, many of whom started selling
foreign goods on the sly. Industrialists grumbled about the limits of patience
while Homi Mody complained of the frequent hartals dislocating trade and
industry. The ruthless seizure of property by the government reduced the
nationalistic ardour of the rich peasants. Gandhi had to retreat probably due to
all this as also owing to the fact that almost all leading congress leaders were in
jail. He had a talk with Irwin, ending in the Delhi Pact or Gandhi-Irwin Pact of
March 5 1931. The pact proposed another round table conference to discuss the
agreements reached in the first; the immediate withdrawal of Civil Disobedience;
the discontinuation of boycott of British goods; the withdrawal of ordinances
promulgated, release of prisoners and remission of penalties; and with the
exception of people living by the seashore, no breach of the salt law. There was
feeling of unhappiness all over, more so when Gandhi’s request was ignored and
three revolutionaries – Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru – were executed on
March 23. Nehru wrote that Civil Disobedience had died, ‘not with a bang but a
whimper’. People felt let down, especially the peasants who had sacrificed their
land.

The compromise in the form of Gandhi-Irwin pact has been a subject of debate
among some historians. R.J. Moore who first pointed out that bourgeois pressure
was a significant factor behind the compromise, a point which Sumit Sarkar
developed later to argue that the Indian bourgeoisie played a ‘crucial’ role both
in the initial success of the movement as well as in its subsequent withdrawal.
This position has also been accepted by other historians across the ideological
spectrum like Judith Brown, Claude Markovits and Basudev Chaterjee. It is argued
that the alliance between the Congress and the capitalists was uneasy and
vulnerable from the very beginning and now uncontrolled mass movement
unnerved the business classes who wanted to give peace a chance. Hence, the
pressure was on Gandhi to return to constitutional politics which ultimately
resulted in the Gandhi-Irwin pact. But the problem with this thesis is that the
business groups hardly represented a homogeneous class in 1931 and did not
speak with one voice. As A.D.D. Gordon puts it, the enthusiasm of the
industrialists was dampened by the Depression, boycott, hartals and the social
disruption, and they wanted either to destroy Civil disobedience or broker a
peace between Congress and the Government. But on the other hand, the
marketers and the traders still remained staunch supporters of Gandhi, and their
12
radicalism even increased as Civil disobedience made progress. More Civil Disobedience Movement
significantly, as other critics of this theory point out, although business community
supported the movement and could partly claim credit for its early success, they
were never in a position to pressurise Gandhi to withdraw the movement.
Gandhian Congress was projecting itself as an umbrella organisation, which
would incorporate all the different classes and communities. So it was highly
unlikely that Gandhi would take such a vital decision only to satisfy the interests
of one particular class. However, it is important to remember that the CDM had
helped to the growing radicalisation of certain lower classes that often refused to
remain under the official control of local congress leaders. Against this larger
backdrop, Gandhi had assessed the appropriateness of suspending the movement
by agreeing to effect an understanding with Irwin lest the movement should turn
violent and thereby spark off colonial repression. But by then the movement had
registered remarkable success in terms of moral-ideological victory over the
enemy!

The Second Round Table Conference (September-December 1931) proved to be

a fiasco with Gandhi squabbling endlessly with Ambedkar and Muslim leaders
who had asked for separate electorates, which the British watched with
unconcealed glee. The session was a pointless exercise primarily because Gandhi
had given up during the Delhi negotiations the demand for majority representation
for his party which had led to the rejection of Irwin’s offer in December 1929.

15.7 BACK TO AGITATION

The failure of the Second Round Table Conference and the empty-handed return
of Gandhiji from it resulted in the resumption of the Civil Disobedience
Movement in early 1932. Despite severe repressive measures taken by the British
Government to crush the agitation, the movement continued with vigour for
about a year and half. In April 1932, Lord Wellingdon described Bengal and
Bombay as the ‘two black spots’. In Bengal militant activities increased with
vigour along sporadic agrarian unrest. The popular response to Gandhi-Irwin
pact in Orissa was remarkably celebratory: the pact was seen as victory for Gandhi
and the Congress as well as people in general in many parts of the province. It
was this sense of victory that scored against the British rule and emboldened the
people to carry forward the struggle in the face of repression and arrest of leaders
in the 1932-34 phase. Local-level leaders and Satyagrahis in the coastal Orissa
during this phase, tried out diverse and innovative methods of struggle to keep
up the movement. These methods included resistance to the police, rescue of
arrested Satyagrahis, recapture of the already-seized Congress ashrams
(sometimes by women volunteers) and the attempt to sell contraband salt in the
court premises.

Attempts at attacking colonial symbols, such as tearing off the uniforms of the
policemen and chowkidars, damaging of postboxes and disruption of court
proceedings during revenue sales also surfaced. The small traders of Gujarat
strongly supported the Congress. However, in rural areas, the movement evoked
less enthusiasm than it was in the earlier phase. The rich peasants groups, who
had showed greater militancy during the first phase of the Movement (1930-32)
felt betrayed by the movement’s withdrawal and remained unstirred in many
places, such as Coastal Andhra, Gujarat or UP, when the Congress leaders wanted
to mobilise them the second time. Some aspects of the Gandhian social
13
National Movement – The programme such as his crusade against untouchability simply did not appeal to
Mass Phase-II
them belonging mostly to the higher caste, and even above hostile response. On
the other hand, Gandhiji’s Harijan campaign failed to impress the Harijans
themselves. In Marathi-speaking Nagpur and Berar, which had been the
strongholds of Ambedkar’s Dalit (Untouchable) politics, the Untouchables refused
to switch their allegiance to the Congress.

In the urban areas, the relationship between the business groups and the Congress
was marked by a certain degree of ambivalence. There was an open estrangement
between the Congress and Bombay Mill owners, who under the leadership of
Homi Mody, asked Gandhiji not to resume the movement. The other sections of
the Indian big business were also in a dilemma. As Claude Markovits argues,
under the strain of this ambivalence, the unity of the Indian capitalist class broke
down. By 1933, the weakening economy and growing violence even crushed the
enthusiasm of the staunchest of Gandhian supporters – the Gujarati and Marwari
merchants. The urban intelligentsia also felt less inclined to follow the Gandhian
path since the picketing of shops was frequently punctuated by the use of bombs
which Gandhi failed to stop. The labour remained apathetic and the Muslims
often antagonistic. Severe Government repression led to the imprisonment of
thousands of Congress volunteers. Under these circumstances, Gandhi who
himself was in prison, decided to temporarily suspend the Movement in May1933.
The movement was formally withdrawn in April 1934.

15.8 CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE CIVIL

DISOBEDIENCE MOVEMENT
The Civil disobedience movement for the Congress was by no means a failure.
By 1934, the Congress had mobilised great political support and gained a moral
authority, which were converted into a massive electoral victory in 1937. Though
the Congress was forced to withdraw the movement, its prestige among the masses
remained high. In fact, the vertical and horizontal reach of Congress had grown
stronger in 1930s as compared to its position in early 1920s.

From the logic of Civil disobedience itself, many left alternatives emerged which
emphasised the need for combining nationalism with radical social and economic
programmes. Hereafter, the Congress drifted towards greater radicalisation. For
example, the land reforms directed towards curbing and eventually abolishing
Zamindari were coming to be included in the official Congress programme by
the mid-1930s, in total contrast to its earlier pronouncements. This shift in the
orientation of the Congress was earlier indicated in the Karachi Resolution (1931)
on Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy that came just after the Gandhi-
Irwin pact.

Though some scholars opine that Gandhi’s decision to suspend the civil
disobedience movement as agreed under the Gandhi-Irwin pact was a retreat, it
was not really so. The move was warranted due to some practical reasons. Firstly,
it is important to understand that mass movements are necessarily short lived
and the capacity of the masses to make sacrifice unlike that of the activists is
limited. Secondly, there were clear signs of exhaustions after September 1930
especially among shopkeepers and merchants who had participated so
enthusiastically. Besides, the sporadic incidents of anti-police resistance which
14
continued in Bengal, Bihar, Andhra, and Gujarat or the no-rent campaign which Civil Disobedience Movement
picked up in late 1930s should not be seen as a scenario indicating still a vibrant
and energetic mood on the part of the masses all over the country to carry on
further with the anti-colonial struggle when Gandhi decided to cry halt to the
movement. Gandhi had realised that the ‘vast reserves of energy’ expected to
flow into the movement were instead fast petering out. No wonder the colonial
government ruthlessly suppressed the movement soon in 1932. It was against
this backdrop, the viable option was to suspend the movement and consolidate
whatever gains have been scored so far. In an anti-colonial mass movement what
matters most is the ‘moral-ideological’ victory on the part of the colonised subjects
and a resultant hegemonic weight vis-à-vis the colonial state.

It is also true that many Congress supporters on the whole, especially the youth
were considerably disappointed. Peasants of Gujarat were disappointed because
their lands were not restored immediately (they got back their lands during the
rule of the subsequent Congress Ministry in the province). But vast masses of
people were undoubtedly jubilant that the British Government had to regard
their movement as significant and treat their leader as an equal thereby signing a
pact with him. In fact, in many parts of the country the political prisoners were
given a hero’s welcome upon their release from jails.

15.9 SUMMARY
The Civil Disobedience movement was a milestone in India’s struggle for
independence. It was formally launched in 1930 with the Dandi March by
Mahatma Gandhi and his followers. It immediately spread in most parts of the
country. The colonial rulers responded by initiating severe police action and by
imprisoning a large number of protesters. But they failed to suppress the
movement. The movement was temporarily withdrawn in the wake of Gandhi-
Irwin pact. However, after the failure of the Second Round Table Conference in
1932, the movement was resumed. It was finally fully withdrawn in 1934.

15.10 EXERCISES
1) What were the factors responsible for the launch of the Civil Disobedience
Movement?
2) Describe the various activities undertaken during the course of the movement.
3) Analyse the successes and failures of the movement.

15
UNIT 11 GANDHI AND THE QUIT INDIA
MOVEMENT
Structure
11.1 Introduction
Aims and Objectives

11.2 The Impact of the World War II

11.3 Indian National Movement
11.4 The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan
11.5 Quit India Movement
11.5.1 Consequences of the Quit India Movement

11.6 Gandhi and the Quit India Movement

11.7 Summary
11.8 Terminal Questions
Suggested Readings

11.1 INTRODUCTION
The Quit India movement in India in 1942 cannot be understood without a basic
understanding of the impact of the Second World War. Developments during the war not
only influenced Britain and India but also the relationship between the colonial powers and
their subject people throughout the world. It is also important to keep in mind the
evolution of the Indian national movement up to the outbreak of the war in 1939 and the
anti-colonial upheaval in 1942. Finally, since the focus of this course is on the role of
Gandhi and his thought, the political ideals and practice of Mahatma Gandhi as the leader
of the national movement need to be looked at closely.
Aims and Objectives
After reading this unit, you would be able to:
 Understand the impact of World War II on India
 The course of Indian National Movement
 Examine the developments that led to the Quit India Movement.

11.2 THE IMPACT OF THE WORLD WAR II

The Second World War was an event that many commentators had been predicting for
sometime before the outbreak of hostilities. Nevertheless, the scale of the German and
Japanese victories and the rapidity with which the Axis powers expanded was not
anticipated by most observers. The War affected the former imperial powers in that
Britain became dependent on the financial and military support of the USA and faced
severe economic hardships. Its exports virtually disappeared and its debts mounted. It
120 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

was apparent that the world would be a very different place even if Britain and its allies
were to win the war. Eventually the war would compel Britain to loosen its grip on South
Asia and change its attitude towards the African and Asian colonies; but the British
political leadership, specially the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, was unwilling to
accept the ‘dismemberment’ of the British Empire. It was Clement Attlee who presided
over the dismemberment of Empire in India. Churchill did his utmost to defend Britain and
preserve the Empire and by all accounts scuttled efforts in 1942 to create a National
government in India that would be willing to participate in the war on Britain’s behalf (R.J.
Moore). The war was transforming the economic and political relationship between Britain
and India but by 1942 many of these changes had not occurred and political decision
makers could not or would not accept the changes that had happened.
When the war ended in 1945, Britain had been reduced to the status of a second rate
power although it still held sway over large parts of the world. It was a power in decline
and needed the support of the USA in the Cold War era that began a few years after
the defeat of the Axis powers. It owed huge sums of money to the USA and also to
India in the form of sterling balances. These were sums of money that Britain owed to
India for the raw materials and finished goods the British government in India bought
during the war years. The rise of the USA as creditor and the world’s most productive
economy meant that Britain would be unable to play the role in the colonial world that
it had during the interwar period. The transformation of Britain also took place owing to
the churning of society that occurred because of the war. Full employment and economic
welfare became more important objectives of policy than the preservation of the Empire
(Floud and Johnson). The Labour party victory at the end of the war in that sense made
the final decision to withdraw from India easier although Labour’s anti-imperialism was
always faint-hearted (P.S. Gupta, Bayly and Harper). The victory of Labour, inspite of the
significant role of the Conservative Winston Churchill during the war, indicated the
changing political climate of Britain. The war changed the expectations of voters and the
fortunes of political parties. It is not surprising that it had a significant impact on the nature
of Indian nationalism and the freedom struggle.

11.3 INDIAN NATIONAL MOVEMENT

The Indian National Congress had opposed the Government of India Act of 1935 that
had introduced certain unacceptable features while granting Provincial autonomy with
considerable expansion of the electorate. The object of the British government was to
grant considerable freedom at the provincial level while retaining substantial power at the
level of the Central government; the central government intended to have substantial
powers over finance and the distribution of resources. There was a proposal for an All
India Federation that would bring together the representatives of the Princely States of
India and of British India into a single assembly that would represent the British Indian
Empire as a whole. The representatives of Indian India were to be chosen by the Princely
States and they were not to be coerced into joining the Federation. Only if a substantial
number of Princely states voluntarily accepted federation would the Union with British
India take place (Robin Jeffrey, Ian Copland). By the time the war broke out in 1939
this process had not made much headway. As a result of the dramatic changes that came
about due to the war, this plan of constitutional development was abandoned altogether.
It was alleged by militant nationalists and the left wing nationalists that the conservative
and moderate wing of the Congress was willing to accept the idea of an Indian
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 121

Federation despite the fact that the representatives of Princely States were to be chosen
by the Princes rather than the people of the state. On the other hand the struggle for
freedom and representative government in the Indian states, led by the States’ Peoples’
Congress, intensified soon after the union of British India and Princely India was mooted
in the early 1930s. The Congress opposed the Federation because the Princes were
beholden to the British and were likely to side with them. If they chose their representatives
they would be spokesmen of the rulers and not the common people. The left wing of
Congress had numerous differences of opinion with the moderate sections within the
Congress and the willingness to compromise with the British on this question became one
of them. The conflict between Subhas Chandra Bose and the Gandhian leadership of the
congress was partly because of this (Gowher Rizvi).
It was also connected to the Congress attitude towards the impending war. The militant
nationalists thought that the outbreak of a war in Europe would provide Indian nationalists
an opportunity to strike at the foundations of British rule in India. The left wing of the
Congress had been arguing that Indians should refuse to support the British during the
war and opposed participation in the war effort. Militant nationalists had been opposed
to military recruitment in the years before the war began. The anti-war and anti-
recruitment propaganda in the years before the war in the Punjab, which was a major
source of manpower for the British Indian Army, worried the British government. Although
there were very large numbers of nationalists who remained opposed to the war effort
right through the war years, the British had little difficulty in finding recruits for their army.
The educated unemployed were willing to join as officers and those who sought a secure
pay and benefits joined as soldiers. It has been proposed that recruits came substantially
from the non-martial groups partly because the increase in the demand and price of
agricultural commodities from the Punjab made military service less attractive. There was
also recruitment of more educated soldiers for the more specialised branches of the army.
The British may have had reservations about the quality of the recruits that they got but
there was no shortage of manpower during the war years despite the rise of nationalist
feeling and the Quit India movement (Indivar Kamtekar).
Soon after the Second World War broke out the Congress ministries resigned from office
in the Provinces where they had been in power for over two years since 1937. The
ministries had not been consulted when the Viceroy pledged Indian support to Britain after
the outbreak of war. The Congress did not wish to embarrass the British during the war
although it refused to cooperate with the war effort. Gandhi supported the idea of
individual satyagraha and not a mass struggle against the British. It was the rapidity of the
Japanese advance towards India in 1942- the fall of Singapore, Malaya and then Burma
that changed the Indian perceptions of the war. The Japanese victories shattered the myth
about the might and invincibility of the British Empire. The fall of France in the summer
of 1940 and the Battle of Britain did not have the same impact on Indian perceptions,
but the early defeats of the British did create considerable ferment in political circles in
the country. Revolutionary and militant nationalists thought that the predicament of Britain
was an opportunity to end the British rule and this sentiment began to enter the
calculations of Congress leaders as well.
The fall of the ‘impregnable’ naval base at Singapore and the Japanese advance towards
Burma in early 1942, led to a serious bid by the USA to get Britain to negotiate with
the Indian nationalists. President Roosevelt and Chiang Kai Sheik of China urged Winston
Churchill to win the support of Indian political parties to mobilise resources and
122 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

manpower more effectively against the Axis powers. In response Churchill did send Sir
Stafford Cripps to India in March 1942 to negotiate with the Congress and the League.
The Congress leaders demanded responsible government and the ‘substance’ of
independence during the war. The control over the Ministry of Defence was one of the
important points for the Congress CWMG, Vol. LXXVI, pp. 28-29). The conservative
Viceroy Lord Linlithgow was hostile to the idea of making concessions to the Congress
during the war and he showed little interest in winning the support of the Congress. He
collaborated with Winston Churchill in ensuring that the negotiations did not succeed (RJ
Moore). The British officials in India felt relieved that the Congress ministries had resigned
in late 1939 and did not have any desire to have them on board at the national level.
The presence of the Congress at the centre would only hamper the war effort which was
going ahead smoothly despite the ideological hostility of the Congress.
Gandhi was seriously disturbed by the military advance of the Japanese towards India. In
April 1942 he argued that the British should “leave India now in an orderly manner and
not run the risk that they did in Singapore and Malaya and Burma. Britain cannot defend
India, much less herself on Indian soil with any strength. The best thing she can do is to
leave India to her fate.” (CWMG, Vol-LXXVI, pp.60-61). The distressed Indian refugees
fleeing Burma and the scorched earth policies of the government in parts of eastern India
upset Gandhi. The language of Gandhi during this period indicates his immense anxiety
about the implications of the Japanese advance for the people of India. Gandhi argued
that the “British presence is the incentive for the Japanese attack. If the British wisely
decided to withdraw and leave India to manage her own affairs in the best way she
could, the Japanese would be bound to reconsider their plans.” (CWMG, vol. LXXVI,
pp. 67-68). He called the Cripps proposals a ‘post-dated cheque on a crashing bank.’

11.4 THE MUSLIM LEAGUE AND THE DEMAND FOR

PAKISTAN
The growth of communalism during the 1920s and 1930s was an important problem for
the Congress’ national leaders. For Gandhi, this was a major political issue as he was
greatly concerned with Hindu-Muslim unity and communal harmony. The Khilafat movement
had brought large numbers of Muslims in a common struggle with the Hindus against
British rule and policies in India but this feat could not be repeated later. Muslims on the
whole stayed away from the civil disobedience movement in many regions. The Congress
rule in seven provinces enabled the Muslim League to claim that it was oppressing the
Muslims and that the future of Indian Muslims in a country dominated by the Hindu
Congress would be very bleak. In March 1940, the Muslim League passed a resolution
demanding self-determination for the Muslim majority regions of the North West and East
of India. It did not use the word Pakistan but the Lahore Resolution indicated the
determination of the League to represent the Muslims of India and a refusal to accept a
subordinate position to that of the Congress. The British welcomed the Lahore Resolution
because it gave them a reason for rejecting the claim of the Congress to represent all
Indians and their demand for independence. If important sections of Indian society were
not satisfied with the Congress then the constitutional future of India could not be
determined by the Congress alone.
The Congress leaders initially considered the Lahore resolution of the League as a
bargaining counter and that the problem could be overcome. Gandhi was perturbed by
the support for the demands of the Muslim League by the British government in India.
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 123

He believed that the British were deliberately promoting the ambitions of the Muslim
League to promote their interests in India and that the communal problem would not be
resolved as long as the British ruled India. The Congress had long blamed the British for
a policy of divide and rule and the third party was always held responsible for promoting
communal conflict and discord. The British endorsement of Jinnah’s intransigent attitude
meant that they would not let the Indians resolve the communal problem as long as they
were the rulers. As the British lost their ability to even provide protection against external
threats Gandhi became more upset. After the failure of the Cripps Mission in April 1942
Gandhi grew increasingly restive and his language reflected that. Finally, Gandhi and the
Congress decided to launch the Quit India Movement. It was a rejection of British rule
in India even if it was not a bid for power by the Congress in the middle of the war.
Many historians today do not believe that the League had asked for a separate country
in March 1940. Yet few doubt that the Muslim community did not participate in the Quit
India movement in any significant way. This could be attributed to the distrust of the
Congress among many Muslims regardless of the differences between Muslims of different
regions of India. The League’s propaganda against the Congress ministries during the
period 1937-39 also played a role in this process. Secondly, Muslim endorsement of the
Civil disobedience movement was also limited and the fear of a Hindu dominated centre
had grown after the British had introduced the idea of an All India Federation under the
Government of India Act of 1935 (Ayesha Jalal, David Page). Finally, Muslim politicians
as well as sections of the community feared that the Congress might use their political
clout to force the British government to make concessions to them during the war. These
three reasons could account for the poor participation of the Muslims of the subcontinent
in the Quit India movement. Those who believe that the League was indeed demanding
a separate state believe that this was a devious attempt by the Congress to wrench
power from an embattled colonial power in order to bypass the League demand for a
separate nation state. It has been noted that even during the Civil Disobedience
movement, the boycott of foreign goods was not endorsed by Muslim shopkeepers in
several towns of United Provinces and they resented Congress pressures to observe
hartals and stop trade in imported cloth. Even the Harijan welfare programme was
perceived as an attempt to consolidate the position of the Hindu community and weaken
the position of the Muslim community (William Gould).

11.5 QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

The Quit India movement was different from the other two movements associated with
Gandhian leadership of the Congress. The resolution was passed by Gandhi without the
usual policy of slow escalation following the declaration to break the law in order to
achieve political goals. The movement was a product of the steady disillusionment of
Gandhi with British policies during 1942 and the gravity of the Japanese threat to the
security of the country. Gandhi did not advocate violence but he gave a powerful slogan
“Do or Die” that in the period of war and growing nationalist resentment was bound to
have grave consequences. Gandhi believed in ahimsa but preferred violence to cowardice.
The philosophical position of Gandhi can be debated but the launching of a mass
movement during wartime was bound to involve violence both by the nationalists and the
colonial rulers. Gandhi could not have been unaware of the consequences of his slogans
and programme for domestic order and he declared that the British should quit India
immediately even if it led to anarchy. Gandhi observed that the British withdrawal from
India “may induce unity or it may lead to chaos. There is also the risk of another power
124 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

filling in the vacancy if it is there” (CWMG, Vol. LXXVI, p. 121). A revolutionary

periodical from Tamluk, in Midnapur district of Bengal, claimed to have a message from
Gandhi that although he believed in non-violence he could not condemn the violent
resistance to the bestial repression by the government since it was “just like the violence
of the mouse against the cat.” (Biplabi, 26th March, 1943, Greenough).
The scale of the mass movement, at least in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, was
unprecedented. Even in other parts of the country the movement was marked by acts of
violence, strikes, student protests and disruption of civic life. The Quit India movement did
not have a strong agrarian dimension because the duration of the struggle was cut short
by the massive repression that was unleashed by the colonial state. While the Non-
Cooperation and Civil Disobedience movements had involved the peasantry, both because
of Congress initiative and that of the peasants themselves, this did not happen in 1942.
It was more focused on nationalism and had less peasant participation (Gyan Pandey).
The Government had been waiting for the Congress to launch the Quit India movement
and had prepared itself to suppress the movement under draconian laws. Days after the
Quit India resolution was passed on 8th August 1942, the majority of the front ranking
Congress leaders were arrested throughout the country. The movement was therefore
taken over by the younger and more militant nationalists both within and outside the
Congress.
Militant students of Benares University and even schools played a significant role in this
movement. While there were workers, students and middle class radicals involved in most
parts of the country in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh the movement spread to the
villages. Socialists like Jayaprakash Narayan played an important role in the Quit India
movement in eastern UP and Bihar. Popular opinion in the region had been disturbed by
the movement of wounded soldiers who passed through in trains. The fall of Burma and
the end of remittances from that country had created much anxiety about the very survival
of British rule. Rumours about the impending collapse of British rule led to the withdrawal
of money from banks and post offices and the loss of respect for British authority. The
Quit India movement in this region was marked by the pulling down of telegraph lines and
the removal of fish plates and rails to disrupt the movement of trains. The ferment was
higher than in the regions that were closer to the advancing Japanese armies (Kamtekar).
The existing millenarian tradition of protest in the Koraput region of Orissa combined with
the exactions because of the war to bring the peasants and tribals into a struggle against
the British during the Quit India movement. In Malkangiri the leadership of the local
Congress activist Laxman Naiko linked local protest with the ideas of Gandhi Raj and
Swaraj (Biswamoy Pati). In Midnapur in Bengal the Tamluk National Government was set
up by the Congress inspired revolutionaries. The resistance continued unabated until 1944
(Greenough, Chakravarty). In many parts of Bengal, the worker, tribal and peasant
movements picked up momentum by linking up with the Quit India movement. In
Dinajpur, Birbhum and Bankura districts Rajbangshis, Santals, Oraons and Mundas
participated in the struggle (Suranjan Das). The peasant movement in Bihar had become
vibrant much earlier under leaders like Swami Sahajanand but it emerged in full force
during the period 1942-43. Azad Dastas were created and they played a significant role
during this period when large tracts went completely out of British control. Several
divisions of the Indian army had to be deployed to suppress the rebellion in regions like
Azamgarh (Vinita Damodaran, Hutchins).
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 125

The British government survived the Quit India movement because it had vast resources
to suppress the movement. Although in the villages of eastern UP and Bihar, the British
power seemed to be on its last legs, in 1942; this was an erroneous assessment. The
Japanese offensive had bogged down in Burma and support from the United States had
begun to play a critical role in World War II by this time. The American Navy had
managed to secure a victory just about this time (Milan Hauner). Although the momentum
of the Japanese advance had broken by mid 1942, the outcome of the war was still
uncertain. The Quit India movement was launched because the leadership of the Congress
and Gandhi in particular felt that there was a need to protect India from a Japanese
invasion that was imminent. Gandhi argued that he wanted independence during the war
“so that no Indian worth the name would then think of going over to the Japanese side.”
In an interview with foreign correspondents he said that independent India would have an
interest in fighting the Japanese (CWMG, Vol-LXXVI, pp. 300, p. 298-303).
The Indian public opinion was growing increasingly hostile and restive and Gandhi’s
perceptions about British ineffectiveness were quite widely shared. The surrender of Indian
forces in Singapore and the disorganised retreat from Burma affected Indian public
opinion. Stories about the discrimination faced by Indians in the evacuation from Burma
aroused anti- British sentiment. For the most part, scarce resources were used to protect
European lives and interests and the majority of Indians had to fend for themselves.
Gandhi told Horace Alexander that the British left “Burma and Malaya neither to God,
nor to anarchy, but to the Japanese.” He did not want the story to be repeated in India
(Harijan, 5th July, 1942, CWMG, Vol-LXXVI, pp. 244-45). A whole host of resentments
against the British led to a violent upheaval after the Quit India movement was launched
but the fear of Japanese invasion was a primary factor in the decision to challenge British
rule during the war.
The Quit India movement was launched at one of the worst moments of the Second
World War in the East as far as the British were concerned. They were aware that a
movement was to be launched and they took swift and decisive actions to suppress the
movement. They tried to charge the Congress and Gandhi of harbouring sympathy for the
Japanese and of trying to arrive at a separate agreement with them. An enquiry by
Tottenham however could find no evidence of any direct link between the Congress and
the Japanese or of fifth column activities. Gandhi had declared that there was no quarrel
between the Indians and the Japanese but he had made no overtures for a separate
peace. In fact he had declared that he would resist a Japanese invasion by non-violent
means. In a letter to President Roosevelt of the USA, Gandhi had assured him that he
had no objection if Allied troops were stationed in India to fight the Japanese aggression
or in order to aid China but not for the maintenance of internal order. A treaty with a
free Indian Government could be drawn up for this purpose (Letter of July 1, 1942,
CWMG, Vol-LXXVI, pp. 264-265). A few days before the Quit India movement was
launched, Gandhi observed, “We know that if India does not become free now the
hidden discontent will burst forth into a welcome to the Japanese should they affect a
landing. We feel that such an event would be a calamity of the first magnitude. We can
avoid it if India gains her freedom” (Harijan, 2 August 1942, Pyarelal).
According to the British intelligence assessments there was a growing fear among the
moderate Congressmen that their leadership of the national movement and the Congress
party would be undermined if they failed to launch a movement against the British during
the middle of the war. Gandhi had been reluctant to embarrass the British during the early
stages of the Second World War but his attitude changed after the Japanese approached
126 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

the borders of India. The constant pressure from the left wing and militant nationalist
groups also shaped Gandhian strategy during the late 1930s and it is likely it did so in
1942 as well. The fight for control of the Congress party during 1938-39 had led to the
resignation of Subhas Chandra Bose as the Congress President and Gandhi had managed
to retain control. The growing discontent among sections of the population and the
frequent calls for a revolt against British rule at a time when its power had declined
probably indirectly influenced Gandhi and the moderate leaders of the Congress. The
broadcasts by Subhas Bose from exile in Germany and the creation of the first Indian
National Army began to influence public opinion in India.
The launching of the Quit India movement brought different sections of the Congress
together and represented a major effort to gain freedom. The August Kranti in 1942
became a major force unifying different sections of Indian nationalist opinion. Its value lay
not in achieving independence during the war but in shaking the foundations of British
power in India. It was a nationwide movement that established once again the credentials
of the Congress party to represent a wide swathe of Indian opinion. The growing
challenge from Jinnah’s Muslim League and the need to find a solution to the communal
problem increasingly made the ideological conflict within the Congress a less pressing
political concern. The Quit India movement and the demand for Pakistan made the Left
wing and militant challenge to the Gandhian leadership of the Congress a less significant
issue.
The movement was more of an outcome of the failure of the Cripps Mission in March-
April 1942 that changed the situation and led to the Quit India movement in August 1942.
If the British government had offered India the assurance of independence after the war,
as the United States of America had done in the case of the Philippines, the cooperation
of the Indian National Congress during the war could have been possible. There was, of
course, the view of the Muslim League to consider but substantial acceptance of the
demands of the Congress for cooperation during the war could have led to the setting
up of a National Government in 1942.
There was a section of Indian society that was cooperating with the British because of
economic reasons because the British demand for commodities and manpower had
opened up opportunities for employment and profit. While this was no guarantee of
support to British power in India, it did not signify a total rejection of British power
during the war. Farmers with a surplus to sell, traders and industrialists found it worth
their while to cooperate and so the discontent in the country was not inexorably leading
to a mass movement. While this trend was more pronounced in the Punjab, it was not
confined exclusively to this region. While an outburst against the wartime hardships was
probably inevitable and the military defeats of the British made some upheaval highly
likely, the scale of the spontaneous outbursts would have been much less had the
Congress decided to cooperate with the British during the war. It could have cooperated
with Britain had it got an assurance of freedom after the war and the basis for an
honourable cooperation with the British in April 1942 in the struggle against the Axis
powers.

11.5.1 Consequences of the Quit India Movement

The Quit India movement was the last of the great nationwide movements launched by
the Congress and established the nationalist credentials of a whole range of leaders for
years to come. This was not inevitable but as the demand for Pakistan gained momentum,
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 127

the communal question overshadowed the social question. The Congress became
preoccupied with the question of partition rather than a mass struggle to promote a
popular and secular national movement. The post-war British willingness to consider
withdrawal from India also made another nation-wide struggle for independence unnecessary.
The belief of the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, that the opinions and aspirations of
the Muslim community ought to be respected, meant that a mass struggle that sought to
challenge the right of the Muslim League to represent the Muslims of India would not be
considered (Sucheta Mahajan). The post-war ferment and communitarian or communal
polarisation probably ruled out such a movement.
The outbreak of popular protest- the Tebhaga movement in Bengal, the cross communal
support for the Indian National Army officers put up for trial at the Red Fort, the
discontent that led to the mutiny by the naval ratings at Bombay and Karachi and other
stations in 1946- have been regarded as signs that indicate the possibility of a broad
national movement cutting across communal lines. However, the mass support for the
Pakistan movement, the killings during the Direct Action day in 1946 especially in
Calcutta, followed by rioting in parts of East Bengal, Bihar and Punjab are indications of
a contrary development (Ian Talbot, Suranjan Das). The support for communalism and
Muslim separatism or nationalism was also quite evident in the postwar period. This
movement could have been followed by another mass movement after the war had ended
but this did not happen. It has acquired greater significance in India’s freedom struggle
because it was not followed by another mass movement against British rule.
The Quit India movement was a rejection of British rule in the middle of the war and
the British suppressed it ruthlessly. Gandhi was imprisoned in the Aga Khan palace and
the British were prepared to let him die rather than make concessions when he went on
a fast during February-March 1943. It marked a low point in the relationship of the
British rulers and Gandhi as well as Viceroy Linlithgow’s and Prime Minister Churchill’s
distrust of and dislike for Gandhi. The British animosity towards the Congress and their
support for the League led to the spread of communal propaganda during the period
1942-45. The imprisonment of most of the top Congress leaders ensured that the League
was at complete freedom to propagate its views about Hindu domination and the rights
of Muslims to live in autonomous zones or an undefined realm called Pakistan. The Quit
India movement and the repression that followed enabled the League to mobilise Muslims.
In Gandhi’s view, the revolutionary violence of 1942 led to the communal violence of
1946 in Bihar. Referring to the role of the revolutionaries and socialists like Jayaprakash
Narayan, Gandhi said, “If the Bihar masses had not had the lesson which they had at
your hands in 1942, the excesses witnessed last year would never have occurred…. All
violence inevitably tends to excess.” (Discussion with Aruna Asaf Ali and Ashok Mehta,
May 6, 1947, CWMG, Vol-LXXXVII, pp. 421-425).
Perhaps the August Kranti strengthened Muslim fears about the Congress attempt to
bypass them and wrest concessions from the British. In that sense the Quit India
movement weakened the capacity of the Congress to mobilise the masses on a secular
nationalist programme. This can be overstated since the weakness of the Congress to
mobilize the masses through the Muslim Mass contact programme arose from the inability
of the Congress to overcome the influence of local magnates and defenders of the status
quo during periods of mobilization (Gyan Pandey). If the Muslim anxiety about Hindu
domination depended on vague feelings rather than the actual behaviour of the Congress,
then even a National Government during the war might not have been able to create a
128 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

modus vivendi between the Congress and the League. Gandhi launched the Quit India
movement to save India from Japanese occupation but it helped the League to expand
its influence. It is arguable that regardless of what Gandhi and the Congress did during
the war, the League could have mobilised Muslim opinion against a Hindu-dominated
centre based on a unitary form of government in a country that had a permanent Hindu
majority.

11.6 GANDHI AND THE QUIT INDIA MOVEMENT

Gandhi was a firm believer in ahimsa and in the use of non-violent forms of protest and
civil disobedience to achieve independence. This was an article of faith and also a strategy
of struggle according to his closest supporters. Gandhi had defeated the challenge to his
leadership from militant nationalists and a section of the Left within the Congress party in
1938-1939 but with the outbreak of war, the political equations had changed dramatically.
While the All India Federation had been a feasible political scheme before the outbreak
of war, it had become redundant by the time the Quit India movement was launched. The
demand for Pakistan, which emerged in March 1940, itself was for some time
overshadowed by the advance of Japanese armies towards India. The failure of the
Cripps Mission has been attributed to various reasons but Gandhi’s hostility is an
important factor. It is unclear whether Gandhi would have been willing to accept a
National Government during the war if he had not taken such a dim view of British rule
in early 1942. Maybe the British policy of divide and rule- the encouragement to the
Muslim League inspite of the inability to protect India from external invasion- added to
Gandhi’s anxiety about the need to break free from British domination.
Nevertheless it was his rejection of British offers in March-April 1942 that led to his
growing hostility towards British rule in India. The demand for an Indian Defence Member
in a Viceroy’s Council or Indian control over defence during the war was not the only
issue for Gandhi. It is unclear whether Gandhi’s rejection of cooperation in the British war
effort was due to his commitment to non-violence or had more to do with the fear of
Japanese occupation of India than a moral rejection of Congress participation in war, with
the futility of violent resistance to Japan and the intransigence of the British government
than the rejection of Indian participation in a world war. His reluctance to disrupt the war
effort until the summer of 1942 indicates that his attitude on this question was shaped far
more decisively by the military tragedy facing India than any moral outrage at the thought
of the willing cooperation of the Congress in a military conflict. He certainly did not
denounce the negotiations over the question of the Indian control over defence during the
discussions with Sir Stafford Cripps. The commitment of Gandhi to non-violence had led
to the withdrawal of the Non-Cooperation movement in 1922 after the violence of Chauri
Chaura in Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh. Yet Gandhi had resorted only to individual
Satyagraha against the British Indian government’s participation in the Second World War
without consulting Indian opinion.
Finally, Gandhi rejected violence and war but he did not impose his views on the
Congress party. Although Gandhi did not accept partition in principle, he did not
denounce the Congress willingness to reluctantly accept the partition of the subcontinent.
Gandhi was not just powerless in the face of cataclysmic changes; he also was against
the imposition of views on people or the denial of the right to choose. He did not believe
that the majority was right and said so quite categorically in Hind Swaraj in 1909. He
did not have faith in the Westminster parliamentary democracy or in a simple notion of
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 129

the ‘will’ of the people. Yet he sought to persuade people to accept his point of view
by setting an example and trying to arouse the conscience of the people (Parel, Dalton,
Habib, Brown). When he was faced with rejection of his views within the Congress party
or the national movement he would focus on social reforms or his constructive programme;
he would sometime claim that he was not even a four anna member of the Congress; and
he would argue that his search for truth was an ongoing one and that he was striving
towards his goals.
Those who argue that Gandhi did not believe in absolute principles – and commend the
anti-foundationalism of his ideas-must also concede that this poses problems for those
who want to judge him exclusively in terms of satya and ahimsa or even sarvodaya.
Ultimately, owing to the lack of very precise statements by Gandhi on a whole range of
questions that present day scholars and philosophers ask, it is not possible to come to
any definitive view about Gandhi’s position on some vital matters. It is arguable that even
in the case of those philosophers who write down their views in a systematic manner
there are gaps and silences that confound scholars subsequently. If as Gandhi claimed he
was trying to develop the science of satyagraha then it is an ongoing process and its
greatest practitioner might not have had all the answers. Not only did Gandhi not claim
to have all the answers he would not have liked people to think that he could supply
them with appropriate answers. He observed, “I do not consider myself a Mahatma.”
[Speech at Prayer meeting Patna, March 7, 1947, CWMG, Vol-LXXXVII, pp. 51-53.]
So the role of the satyagrahi in periods of war and communal polarisation will remain
open to interpretation for some time to come; this is even truer for those who would like
to fashion strategies for non-violent struggles for freedom in war and in peace.

11.7 SUMMARY
The Quit India Movement came at a time when the British supremacy was crumbling with
the approach of Japanese forces towards the Indian sub-continent and the British’s
apparent inability to defend Indian territory. At the backdrop of the Second World War,
the British found themselves losing grip over the Indian affairs but holding on to it firmly
inspite of adverse situations. The League’s demand for a separate state, the failure of
Cripps’ proposals, the Indian public unrest and Gandhi’s own skepticism about the ability
of the British to defend India-have all led towards the calling of the Quit India Movement.
It is termed as the last great movement that awakened the masses to take up cudgels
against the colonial rule.

11.8 TERMINAL QUESTIONS

1. The Indian National Movement gained momentum during the World War II years.
Substantiate.
2. Discuss at length the launching of the Quit Indian Movement.
3. Write short notes on:
a) The Impact of World War II on the Indian National Movement.
b) Consequences of the Quit India Movement.
130 Gandhi: The Man and His Times

SUGGESTED READINGS
1. Jalal, Ayesha., The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the demand for
Pakistan, Cambridge, 1985.
2. Tomlinson, B.R., The Political Economy of the Raj: The Economics of Decolonization
in India, London, 1979.
3. Chakrabarty, Bidyut., ‘Defiance and Confrontation: The 1942 Quit India Movement
in Midnapur,’ Social Scientist, Vol 20, No.7/8, July-August, 1992, pp. 75-93.
4. Chandra, Bipan., ‘Struggle for the Ideological Transformation of the National Congress
in the 1930s,’ Social Scientist, Vol 14, No 8/9, August-September, 1986, pp.18-39.
5. Pati, Biswamoy., ‘Storm over Malkangiri: A Note on Laxman Naiko’s Revolt
(1942),’ Social Scientist, Vol 15, No 8/9, August-September1987, pp. 47-66.
6. Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Ahmedabad. Vol -76, 86 and 87.
7. Low, David., (ed), Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917-1947,
New Delhi. 1977
8. Dalton, Dennis., ‘Gandhi: Ideology and Authority,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol 3, no
4, Gandhi Centenary Number, 1969, pp. 377-393.
9. Gandhi, Devdas., (ed), India Unreconciled, Hindustan Times Press, New Delhi,
1944.
10. Hutchins, Francis., Spontaneous Revolution: The Quit India Movement, Delhi, 1971.
11. Pandey, Gyanendra., (ed), Indian Nation in 1942, Calcutta, 1988.
12. Toye, Hugh., ‘ The First Indian National Army, 1941-42,’ Journal of Southeast Asian
Studies, Vol 15, No2, September, 1984, pp.365-381.
13. Copland, Ian., The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire, 1917-1947,
Cambridge, 1997.
14. Kamtekar, Indivar., ‘The Shiver of 1942,’ Studies in History, Vo. No. 18, 1, 2002,
pp. 81-102.
15. Kamtekar, Indivar., ‘A Different War Dance: State and Class in India, 1939-1945,’
Past & Present, 176, 1, 2002, pp. 187-221.
16. Habib, Irfan., ‘Gandhi and the National Movement,’ Social Scientist, Vol 23, No 4/
6 April-June, 1995, pp. 3-15.
17. Nair, Janaki., ‘The Unspeakable Violence of Isoor, 1942,’ in Mathew John and
Sitharamam Kakarala (eds), Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy,
New Delhi, Tulika, 2007, pp. 97-116.
18. Brown, Judith., ‘The Mahatma and Modern India,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol 3, No
4, Gandhi Centenary Number, 1969, pp. 321-342.
19. Roy,Kaushik., ‘Axis Satellite Armies of World War II: A Case Study of the Azad
Hind Fauj, 1942-45,’ The Indian Historical Review, Vol. No. 35, 1, 2008
pp.144-172.
Gandhi and the Quit India Movement 131

20. Hauner, Milan., India in Axis Strategy: Germany, Japan, and Indian Nationalists in the
Second World War, Klett Cotta, Stuttgart, 1981.
21. Chopra, P.N., (ed), Quit India Movement: British Secret Report, Delhi, 1976.
22. Greenough, Paul., ‘Political Mobilization and the Underground Literature of the Quit
India Movement, 1942-44,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol 17, No 3, 1983, pp. 353-
386.
23. Pyarelal, (ed), Gandhiji’s Correspondence with the Government, 1942-44, Ahmedabad,
1945.
24. Moore, R.J., Churchill, Cripps and India, 1939-1945, Oxford, 1979.
25. Floud, Roderick., and Paul Johnson (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of
Modern Britain, Vol 2, Economic Maturity, 1860-1939 and Vol 3, Structural Change
and Growth, 1939-2000, Cambridge press, 2004.
26. Jeffrey, Robin., (ed), People, Princes and Paramount Power: Society and Politics in
the Indian Princely States, OUP, Delhi, 1978.
27. Henningham, Stephen., ‘Quit India in Bihar and Eastern United Provinces: The Dual
Revolt,’ in Guha, (ed), Subaltern Studies II: Writings on South Asian History and
Politics, Delhi, OUP, 1983.
28. Amin, Shahid,’ Gandhi as Mahatma: Gorakhpur district, Eastern U.P., 1921-22,’ in
Ranajit Guha (ed), Subaltern Studies, Vol 3, Delhi, 1984.
29. Das, Suranjan., ‘Nationalism and Popular Consciousness: Bengal 1942,’ Social
Scientist, Vol 23, No 4/ 6, April-June, 1995, pp. 58-68.
30. Damodaran, Vinita., Broken Promises: Popular Protest, Indian Nationalism and the
Congress Party in Bihar, 1935-1946, Delhi, 1992.
31. Damodaran, Vinita., ‘Azad Dastas and Dacoit Gangs: The Congress and Underground
Activity in Bihar, 1942-44,’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol 26, No 3, July 1992, pp
417-450.
32. Menon, Visalakshi., From Movement to Government: The Congress in the United
Provinces, 1937-42, Sage, Delhi, 2003
33. Gould, William., Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial
India, Foundation Books, Delhi, 2005.
UNIT 15 THE NEW LAND REVENUE
I
SETTLEMENTS

Structure

15.0 Objectives
15.I Introduction
15.2 First Experiments in Land Revenue Management
15.3 The Permanent Settlement in Bengal
15.3.1 A Settlement with Zamindars
15.3.2 The Position o f the Cultivators
15.3.3 Effects o f the Permanent Settlement
15.4 Disillusionment with Permanent Settlement
15.5 The Emergence of Alternative Systems
15.5.1 Land Assessment Under Ryotwari
15.5.2 The Adoption of Ryotwari in Madras
15.5.3 Ryotwari Theory and Practice
15.5.4 Effects of the Ryotwari System in Madras
15.5.5 The Ryotwari Settlement in Bombay
15.5,6 Effects of the Ryotwari System in Madras and Bombay
15.6 The Other Alternative Settlement: The Mahalwari System
15.63 Mahalwari Theory and Practice
15.6.2 Effects of the Mahalwari Settlement
15.7 Let Us Sum Up
15.8 Andwers T o Check.Your Progress Exercises

15.0 OBJECTIVES

In this Unit we shall study the land revenue settlements made by the British in
different parts of India up to 1857. After studying this Unit you will be able to
undetstanki:
the' 3eaning of the term 'revenue settlement',
0 the aknis of the British in their various 'settlements',
the Important features of the three main types of settlement. and
the important effects of each settlement on the rural economy and on the
relatilon of different classes in the country side.

15.1 INTRODUCTION

Agriculture has been the most important economic activity of the Indian people for
many centuries. Naturally, therefore, kings and rulers have always drawn a large
part of their taxes from agriculture. The British government, as it established itself
in variou,~parts of India also imposed very heavy taxes on agriculture. In order to
assess and collect these taxes, it instituted various land revenue settlements.

Let us try and understand what this means. Imagine that the British East India
Company has just defeated some Indian ruler, and annexed his territories. Now
they wanlt to collect taxes from these lands. You may think that this could be done
by lootiqg and plundering-and this was in fact often the first thing that was done
in newly conquered territory. But it is not possible to continue like this: F~rstof
all, because loot is usually kept by the looter, and does not find its way into the
 government treasury, and secordly, because this sort of activity is likely to cause The New Land
Settlemen's
Rr>c,~ue
people to flee to other areas, or to so impoverish them that nothing can be got
later on. So it is necessary to institute some regular system of taxation.

such a system has two requirements: the government has to fix what or how much
will be paid - this amount is called the 'assessment; and it has to fix who will have
to pay. Now the person who is called on to pay a certain amount must have some
connection with, some control over the land from which the tax is to be collected'
because he will otherwise be incapable of paying anything from it. So when the
government places the burden of payment on somebody, it must also see that ne
has some control over the land so that he gets an income from which the tax can
be paid. If, ,he does not get anything from the land, he can obviously not pay
anything to the government.
Now, when the government had fixed (or 'settled') how the land tax (or land
ievenue) 'was to be 'assessed', and who was to pay it, and what was to be paid.
the essential steps in a land revenue settlement were complete. In this Unit our
focus is on the various land revenue settlements introduced by the British in India,
their features and the impact they had on Indian economy and society.

15.2 FIRST EXPERIMENTS IN LAND REVENUE

MANAGEMENT

I After gaining control of Bengal in 1757, the British thought that they would retain
the administration established by the Nawabs of Bengal. but would use it to collect
an ever-growing amount for themselves. However, the rapacity and corruption of
the Company's employees, and their continua1 interference in the administration
led to complete disorganisation, and was one of the causes of the terrible famine
of 1769-70, in which it was estimated that one-third of the people of Bengal died.
i
From 1772 therefore, a new system was introduced: this was the farming system.
Under this system the government gave out the collection of land revenue on a
contract basis. The contractor who offered to pay the largest adount from a
certain district or sub-division was given full powers for a certain number of years.
Obviously, such contractors (they were called 'farmers' in those days), would try
and extort as much as possible during the period that they held the contract; it
would not matter to them if the people were ruined and the production in the later
years declined. After all, they would have made their profit. Extortion and
opprcssion were the obvious results of such a system. Furthermore, many of the
contractors had offered to pay very large amounts, and later found that they could
not collect so much, even with great qpression. Finally, the system also led to
corruption. As with many government contracts even today, profitable contracts
on very easy terms were given to the friends and favourites and 'benamidars' of
men in power, leading to loss to the government. In 1786 Lord Cornwallis was
sent out to India with orders t o clean up and reorganise the administration.

15.3 THE PERMANENT SETTLEMENT IN BENGAL

Cornwallis realised that the existing system was impoverishing the country -its
agriculture was in decline. Furthermore, it was failing to produce the large and
regular surplus that the Company hoped for. And it was also becoming difficult
for the Company to get the large quantities of Indian goods that it planned to
export to Europe, because, as Cornwallis observed, the production of silk, cotton.
etc. all depended on agriculture. When agriculture was decaying, handicrafts could
hardly be prosperous. And both the London authorities and Cornwallis were
agreed that much of the corruption and oppression originated in the fact that the
taxation had the character of an 'uncertain, arbitrary imposition'.
It was decided therefore, that the laridltax would now be permanently fixed: the
government would promise never to increase it in future. Several effects were
expected from this measure. It would reduce the scope for corruption that existad
when officials could alter the assessment at will. Furthermore, now that the state!
would not demand anything extra if the production increased it was hoped that
landholders would invest money in improving the land as the whole of the benefit
would come to them. Production and trade would increase, and the government
would also get its taxes regularly. Finally, Cornwallis believed that even if the Ian4
tax was fixed, government could always levy taxes on trade and commerce in order
to raise more money if it was needed. In any case, the land revenue was now fixed
at a very high level - an absolute maximum -of Rs. 2 crore and 65 lakhs.

15.3.1 A Settlement With Zamindars

So we see that the land revenue was fixed permanently. But from whom was it to
be collected? The Nawabs of Bengal had collected taxes from the zamindars. These
zamindars were usually in control of large areas: sometimes entire districts. They
had their own armed forces, and were termed Rajas. But there were also
zamindars who held smaller areas, and either paid directly to the State, or paid
through some big zamindar. The actual cultivation was carried on by peasants who
paid the zamindars at customary rates fixed in every sub-division (or pargana).
Oppressive zamindars often added extra charges called 'abwabs' on top of the
regular land revenue rates,

By 1730 British rule had greatly confused this picture. Some Zamindars were
retained - others were replaced by contractors or officials. The old customary rates
were ignored, and every abuse permitted, if it led to an increase in the revenues.
By the time Cornwallis arrived on the scene, the situation was one of the complete
confusion. The new Governor-General belonged to the landed aristocracy of
Britain and was in favour of a settlement that gave the right of ownership to the
zamindars, who, he hoped, would improve the land as English landlords did. But
apart from this perference on his part, it was difficult for the government to make
the settlement with any other class.

T o understand this you must bear in mind that there must have been about four or
five million cultivating families in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa at that time. CoUecting
from them would have involved the preparation of detailed records of all their
holdings, and the calculation of a tax on this basis. This would take several years
and a large staff to execute. In addition it would give great opportunities for
corruption. It was obviously much simpler to collect the revenue from a small
'
number of big zamindars- and this was the arrangement made under the
Permanent Settlement that was introduced in Bengal and Bihar in 1793. Every bit
of agricultural land in these provinces therefore became part of some zamindari.
The zamindar had to pay the tax fixed upon it: if he did so then he was the
pwprietor, the owner of his zamindari. He could sell, mortgage or transfer it. The
land would be inherited by heirs in due course. If however, the tamindar failed to
pay the tax due, then the Government would take. the zamindari and sell it by
auction. and all the rights would vest in the new owner.

15.3.2 The Position of the Cultivators

The actual cultivatiqn of the Land was of course, carried on by the lakhs of
peasants who weie dqw reduced to the status of tenants of the zamindars;
Cornwallis had also decreed that the zamindars should issue written agreements
(cajled pattas) to each cultivator, and these should specify what the tenant was to
pay. He zpparently believed that this would prevent -oppression by the zamindars.
111 practice, however, no such pattas were issued, and the peasants were wholly at
the mercy of the zamindars.

This was not accidental. As we have noted earlier, the permanent assessment was
the largest sum that could be got from the land. It was a heavy and oppressive
assessment. According to the estimate of a knoyiedgeable official. John Shore, if a
piece of land produced crops worth Rs. 100. then Rs. 45 went to the government.
as. 15 to the zamindar and Only Rs. 40 was left to the cultivator. Such oppressive
taxes could only be collected by oppressive methods. If the zamindars were not
allowed to oppress the peasants then they would not be ~ b l eto meet the demands
of the State. B y regulations made in 1793. 1799 and 1812, the zamindar could'
 seize, that is, carry away the tenants' property if the rent had not been paid. He TheNewLmd
did not need the permission of any court of law to do this. This was a legal Revenue Settlements
method of harassment. In addition to this the zamindars often resorted to iliegal
. methods, such as locking up or beating tenants who did not pay whatever was
demanded. The immediate effect of the Settlement was, therefore, to greatly
I
worsen the position of the actual cultivators of the soil, in order to benefit the
/ zamindars and the British Government.

15.3.3 Effects of the Permanent Settlement

It may seem that the settlement was greatly in favour of the zamindars but we
should not forget that they were also now obliged to pay a fiied amount by fixed
dates eveiy year, and any failure on their part meant the sale of the zarnindari.
I
Furthermore, many of the zamindaris were rated for large sums that left no
I margin for shortfalls due to flood, drought or other calamity. As a result, many
t
zamindars had their zamindaris taken away and sold in the decades immediately
after the permanent Settlement. In Bengal alone it is estimated that 68 per cent, of
the zamindari land was sold between 1794 and 1819. Merchants, government
officials, and other zamindars bought these lands. The new buyers would then set
about trying to increase the rents paid by the tenants in order to make a profit
from their purchases. Raja Rammohan Roy remarked that:
under the premanent settlement since 1793, the landholders have adoptsci
every measure to raise the rents, by means of the power put into their hands.

However, many zamindars still found it difficult to pay the amount demanded b)
the British. One such zamindar, the Raja of Burdwan then divided most of his
estate into 'lots' or fractions called parni taluqs. Each such unit was permanently
rented to a holder called a patnidar, who promised t o pay a fixed rent. If he did
not pay, his patni could be taken away and sold. Other zamindars also ~esortedto
this: thus .a process of subinfeudation commenced.

Gradually the population of Bengal increased, waste and jungle land came under
cultivation. Rents also increased. On the other hand, the tax payable to
government was fixed, so the position of the zamindars improved, and they were
able to lead lives of indolence and luxury at the expense of their tenants. Only in
1859 did the State take some step to protect the rights of tenant: a law passed that
year bestowed a limited protection on old tenants, who were now termed
occupancy tenants.

15.4 DISILLUSIONMENT WITH PERMANENT

SETTLEMENT

When Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement in Bengal he expected that

the same system would be established in the other British territories as well. And
the Government of Madras in fact began to introduce it in the lands under its
control. However, British officiab soon began to doubt the virtues of this system,
while its defects became more prominent.

A very important defect, as far as they were concerned, was that it left no scope
for increases in taxation, while the expenditure of the Company, fuelled by
repeated wars, continued to expand. Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798
to 1806 actually diverted funds sent from England for the purchase of trade goods
and used them for his military expenditures. So officials began to think of ways
and means of increasing the government's income. Some of the officials thought
that in 1793 the zamindars had got off too easily, and this mistake should not be
repeated in future. As early as 1811 the London authorities warned against the
introduction of permanent settlements without 'a minute and detailed survey' of
the land.
Colonial
1) What are the two esser!:iz! step; that k 1 . 2 to be :::>el! !r! mz' iicg a larad
revenue re:tlen;cnt? An'3urr in t o i ~ tlincc

2) What were the mor:vrT bchlnd the ~nrroductionof the Permanent Seltlerlaent
in Bengal? !&'!?at wau tt.; effect on the position of the cultivators? Answer in
100 words.

........................................................................................................
.....................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
........................................................................................................

3) Write a short note on the farming sysrem.

THE EMERGENCE OF ALTERNATIVE SYSTEMS

Meanwhile other ways of' assessing and collecting the land-tax were being devised
by British officials. Two officers, Munro and Read were sent to administer a newly
uonquered region of Madras in 1792. Instead of collecting from the zamindars,
they began to collect directly from the villages, fixing the amount that each village
had to pay. After this they proceeded to assess each cultivatbr or ryot
separately - and thus evolved what came to be known as the 'Ryotwari' system.
This early ryotwari was ,a field assessment system. This means that the tax payable
on each field was fixed by a government officer, and then the cultivator had the
choice of cultivating that field and paying that amount, or not cultivating it. If no
Other cultivator could be found; then the field would not be cultivated: it would lie
ballow.

15.5.1 Land Assessment Zjnder Ryotwari

You can see that the officer fixing the tax, or settling the revenue, has a difficult
mask. He has to fix the tax on thousands of fields in a sub-division or district, and
GO fix it in such a way that the burden on each such field is approximately equal.
If the burden is not equally distributed, then the cultivators will not occupy the
heavily assessed fields, and cultivate only those with a light assessment.

Mow, in fixing the assessment of a field, the revenue officer had t o consider two
things: one was the quality of the soil - whether it was r.ocky or rich, irrigated or
-
dry etc.; the other was area of the field. It followed, therefore, that this system The New Land
depended on a survey, that is, a classification of it. Thus one acre of first class Revenue Settkmento

rice land should pay the same amount regardless of whether it was located in this
village or that one. But how was this amount to be fixed?

Munro usually fixed it by estimating what the usual product of the land was- for
example - 2600 Ibs. of paddy per acre. He would then claim that the State share of
this amounted to one third of this, or two-fifths of [his, and thus calculate the
amount that the cultivator had to pay the State. This, of course is the theory of
ryotwari -in practice, the estimates were largely guesswork, and the amounts
demanded so high that they could be collected with great difficuhy , and sometimes
could not be collected at all.

15.5.2 The Adoption of Ryotwari in Madras

After some experiments with other ways of managing the land revenue, the Madras
authorities were by 1820 converted to the ryoti:ari system, and its triumph was
indicated by the appointment of Munro as Governor of Madras. Munro advanced
many arguments in favour of this system. He argued that it was the original -
Indian land tenure, and the one best suited to Indian conditions. Its adoption was
due, however, to one main reason - it resulted in a larger revenue than any other
system could have produced. This was because there were no zamindars or other
intermediaries who received any part of the agricultural surplus - whatever could be
squeezed from the cultivator went directly to the State. The Madras government
was chronically short of funds, and such a system would naturally appeal to it. So.
taking advantage of the rejection of the Permanent Settlement, it introduced the
temporary ryotwari settlement.

15.5.3 Ryotwari Theory and Practice

We have-outlined the ryotwari system as it was developed by Munro in the districts
under his charge. After 1820 however, ryotwari was extended to most of the
Madras Presidency in forms quite different from those visualised by Munro. His
ryotwari, you will remember, was a field assessment, leaving the cultivator free to
cultivate or give up any particular field. And, as we saw, the working of such a
system depended upon the government carrying out a detailed measurement and
assessment of each field. But after 1820 the system was extended to many districts
where no surveys had ever been carried out. No one knew how much land a
peasant cultivated, or what its product might be. His tax came to be fixed on an
arbitrary basis, usually by looking at what he had paid in earlier years. This was
known as a 'putcut' assessment.

Again, in theory the ryotwarl allowed the ryot to give up any field that he chose.
But it soon became clear that if this was freely permitted the tax reverme of the
State would fall. So government officers began to compel the cultivators to hold
on to (and of course, pay for) land that they did not really want to cultivate. Since
cultivation was not voluntary, it, was always difficult to collect the revenue, and so
the use of beating and torture to enforce payment was also widespread. These
methods were exposed by the Madras Torture Commission in 1854. After this
certain reforms were intrdduced. A scientific survey of the land was undertaken,
the real burden of tax declined, and there was no need to use violent and coercive
methods to collect the revenue. However, these improvements occ arred after
1860- beyond the period that we are studying at present.

15.5.4 Effects of the Ryotwari System in Madras

There is hardly any doubt that the effects of this system upon the rural economy
were distinctly harmful. The peasants werp impoverished and lacked the resources
to cultivate new lands. The Government of Madras itself noted in 1855 that only
14% million acres of ryotwari land were cultivated, while 18 million acres were
waste. It confessed: 'There is no room for doubt that an increase of cultivation
would follow reductions of the Government tax.'

Apart from this depressing effect upon the rural economy, the heavy burden of
taxation distorted the land market. Land in most districts of Madras had no value
in the first half of the 19th century. No .one would buy it, because buying it meant
that the new owner would have to pay the extortionate land revenue. After paying
it, be would have no income from the land, and obviously, in such circumstances,
no one would purchase land.

15.5.5 The ~ $ o t w &Settlement

i in Bombay
Ryatwari in the Bombay Presidency had its beginnings in Gujarat. The British
began by collecting the land revenue through the hereditary officials called desais
and the village headmen (Patel). However, this did not produce as much revenue
as the British wanted, ar, they began collecting directly from the peasants in
1815-14. When they conquered the Peshwa's territory in 1818 the ryotwari system
on the Madras pattern was also introduced there, under the supervision of Munro's
disciple Elphinstone. The abuses that characterised the Madras ryotwari soon
-red in the Bombay Presidency also, especially as the Collectors began trying
to increase the revenue as rapidly as they could.
A regular measurement and classification of the land was commenced under the
supervision of an officer named Pringle. This survey was supposed to be founded
upon the theory of rent developed by the English economist Ricardo. This theory
was hardly applicable to Indian conditions, and, in any case, Pringle's calculations
were full of errors, and the resulting assessmerit was far too high. When the
government tried to collect the amounts futed by Pringle in Pune district, many of
the cultivators gave up their lands and fled into the territory of the Nizam of
Hyderabad. This assessment thus had to be abandoned after some years.
It was replaced by a reformed system divised by two officers named Wingate and
Goldsmid. Their system did not try to apply any theoretical rules: instead it aimed
at moderating the demand to a level where it could be regularly paid. The actual
assessment of each field depended upon its soil and location. This new assessment
began to be made in 1836 and covered most of the Deccan by 1865. Its effects
upon agricultfire were beneficial, and the dultivated area expanded as the new
assessment was introduced.

15.5.6 Effects of t k Ryotwui System in ad& and Bombay

We have seen how the Permanent Settlement established a few big zamindars in a
position of dominance over the mass of the peasants. The socid effects of the
ryotwari settlements were less dramatic. In many areas the actual cultivating
peasants were recorded as the occupants or 'ryots', and thus secured the title to
their holdings. However, as we saw, the tax was so heavy that many peasants
would have gladly abandoned at least some of their land, and had to be prevented
from doing so. It was also possible for non-cultivating landlords to have their
names entered as the occupants (or owners) of particular holdings, while the actual
cultivation was carried on by their tenants, servants or even bonded labourers. This
was partic&rly the case in irrigated districts like Thanjavur (in Tamil Nadu) where
many of the 'ryots' held thousands of acres of land. There was no limit to the
amount of land that a ryot could hold, so there could be great difference in wealth
and status between one ryot and another. However, money-lenders and other
non-cultivators were not much interested in acquiring lands because of the heavy
taxes that came with them. Hence the small peasants, oppressed though they might
be by the tax-collector did not have to fear expropriation by the money-lender or
landlord.
Under the reformed ryotwari system that gradually developed in Bombay after
1836 and Madras after 1858 the burden of the land revenue was somewhat
reduced, and land acquired a saleable value. The purchaser could now expect to
make a profit from owning land :the State would not take it all as tax. One result
of this was that money-lenders began to seize the lands of their peasant debtors
and either evict them.or reduce them to tenants. This process led to considerable
social tension, and caused a major rural uprising in the Bombay Deccan in 1875.
15.6 THE OTHER ALTERNATIVE SETTLEMENT:
THE MAHALWARI SYSTEM

The aggressive policies of Lord Wellesley led to large territorial gains for the
British in North India between 1801 and 1806. These areas came to be called the
North-Western Provinces. Initially the British planned a settlement on the Bengal
pattern, Wellesley ordered the local officials ro make the settlement with the
zamindars wherever they could, provided they agreed to pay a suitably high land
revenue. Only if the zamindars refused to pay, or nor zamindars could be found
were the settlements to be made village by village 'giving the preference to the
mokuddums, perdhauns, or any respectable,Ryotts of the village'. Ultimately, the
settlement was to be made permanent, as in Bengal.

In the meantime, however, every effort was made to enlarge the revenue collection.
The demand in 1803-4 was Rs. 188 lakhs - by 1817-18 it was Rs. 297 lakhs.
Such enormous increases provoked resistance from many of the big zamindars and
rajas, who had been almost independent in the earlier period. Many of them were
therefore driven off their lands by the new administration. In other cases the old
zamindars could not pay the amount demanded, and their estates were sold by the
Government. Increasingly, therefore, it became necessary to collect from the village
directly through its pradhan or muqaddam (headman). In the reSrenuerecords the
word used for a fiscal unit was a 'mahal', and the villagewise assessment therefore
came to be called a mahalwari settlement. It was however quite possible for one
person to hold a number of villages, so that many big zamindars continued to
exist. Furthermore, as in Bengal, the confusion and coercion that accompanied the
collection of the very heavy land tax created fine opportunities for the l y a l
officials, and large areas of land were illegally acquired by them in the eakly years.
Meanwhile, the Government found that its expenditures were alwasy exceeding its
revenues, and the idea of a permanent settlement was dropped.
15.6.1 Mahalwari Theory and Prsctice
In 1819 an English official, Holt Mackenzie, developed the theory that taluqdars
and zamindars were originally appointed by the State, and the real owners of
villages were the zamindars who lived in them, or constituted the village
community. He argued that their rights and payinents should be clearly established
by a survey. His ideas were embodied in a law, Regulation VII of 1822. This
required that Government officials should record all the rights of cultivators,
zamindars and others, and also fix the amounts payable from every piece of land.
The Governor-General orders:
It seems necessary to enter on the tas'k of fixing in detail the rates of rent
and modes of payment current in each village, and applicable to each field:
and anything short of this must be regarded as a very imperfect Settlement.
In practice, this proved impossible to implement. The calculations made were often
quite inaccurate, and the Collectors in any case slanted them so as to increase the
revenue due to the Government. Far from favouring the village communities, the
new mahalwari ofren ruined them by imposing impossible tax assessments. In 1833
it was decided that the detailed effort to regulate all rights and payments should be
given up, and that a rough and ready estimate of what the village could pay to rhe
State was adequate. In later years, these estimates came to be guided by the rents
paid by the tenants of village lands to the owners. From these rents the Settlement
officer would calculate the theoretical amount that all the lands of the village or
mahal would yield. Then some part - ultimately 50 per cent of this would have to
be paid to the Government. All these calculations involved a large amount of
guesswork: and, not suprisingly, the guesses tended to be on the high side,
increasing the amounts to be paid to the State.

15.6.2 Effects of the Mahalwari Settlement

One of the e a r b effects was that the areas under the controi of the big taluqdars
was reduced. The British officers made direct settlements with the vilIage
zarnindars as far as possible, and even supported them in the law c o w s when the
taluqdars brought suits against them. But the so-called village zamindars were
supported only because it was planned to extract the highest possible revenue from
them. They were freed from taluqdar's claims only to subject them to a full
measure of government taxation.

The result was often the ruin of the village zamindars. One officer reported that in
many villages of Aligarh:
the Juma (land revenue) was in the first place considerably too heavy; and in
which the Malgoozars revenue payers seem to have lost all hope of 'improving
their condition or of bearing up against the burden imposed on them. They
are now deeply in debt, and utteriy incapable of making any arrangements
for defraying their arrears.

The result of this situation was h a t large areas of land began t s pass into the
hands of money-lenders and merchants who ousted the old cultivating proprison
or reduced them to tenants-at will. This occurred most frequently in t k mxe
commercialised districts, where the land revenue demand had been p&ed to the
highest level, and where the landholders suffered most acutely from the business
collapse and export depression after 1833. .By the 1840s it was not uncommon to
Sind that no buyers could be found to take land that was being sold for arrears of
land revenue. As in the Madras Presidency, the tax in these cases was so high that
the buyer could not expect to make any profit from the purchase. Overall,
therefore. the mahalwari settlement brought impoverishment and widespread
dispossession to the cultivating communities of North India in the 1830s a d 1840s.
and their resentment expressed itself in popular uprisings in 1857. In that year
villagers and taluqdars all over North India drove off government official,
destroyed court and official records and papers, and ejected the new auction
purchasers from the villages.

15.7 LET US SUM UP

Thus in this Unit we have seen how the three major land systems devise.d by the
British came into existence. When new areas came under British rule the
settlements' made rekmbled either the ryotwari or the mahalwari. Thus Punjab
came under the mahalwari, as did a large part of central India under a slightly
modified form known as malguzari, In Awadh,-after the revolt of 185? the
government recognised the talqudars ag proprietors so as to ensure that they
supported it in any future revolt. The pssessment itself was mahalwari.
An ever-present theme throughout our discussion has been that the drive to collect
B large revenue was central to British Policy. Sometimes this led to the
development of a land market - to the sale and purchase of land. But at other
times, the State's demands were so heavy that no purchasers were to be found.
The need to collect so much was itself made necessary by the heavy expenditures
of the Government in India, and its need to send !vge slims to britain for its
expenses there. Some other aspects of this will be discussed in Unit 16 on the
commercialisation of agriculture.
 T?ICNrw I.and
2) In what way did the Mahalwari Settlement diffcr from the Ryotuari ljc- Srttkncnts
Settlement? Answer in five lines.

3) What was the effect of thc h,lahal\vari Settlernen! on the rural econoiny?
Answer in 60 words.

15.8 ANSWERS 3TCH4XX YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES

Chrck Yaur Progress 1

1) SeeSec. 15.1.
2) Your answer s M d fdcw on the ecooomic interest that the British had for
the introduction of the Permanent Settlement. In the second p u t of the
answer, you should write about the growing d w n d a n c y of the cultivators on
the zamindars and the miseries that the cultivators had to face. Sce Sec. 15.3.
3) See Sec. 15.2.
Check Your Progress 2 ,

1) One was with the zamindars, other was with the Ryets, for more diffomcer,
See Secs. 15.3 and 15.5.
2) SeeSecs. 15.5 and 15.6.
3) Growth of money-lenders and merchants in the rural economy, disposKIIliaa
and impoverishment of the cultivating communities, etc. Sce Sub-Sec. 15.6~2.
Land Revenue Systems in British India:
Zamindari, Ryotwari and Mahalwari
Land Revenue Systems Before British Rule
Tax from the land was a major source of revenue for the kings and emperors from ancient times.
But the ownership pattern of land had witnessed changes over centuries. During Kingship, land
was divided into Jagirs, Jagirs were alloted to Jagirdars, these Jagirdars split the land they got
and allocated to sub-ordinate Zamindars. Zamindars made peasants cultivate the land, in-return
collected part of their revenue as tax.

Land Revenue Systems in British India

Land Revenue System under British. British got Diwani rights of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa in
1765. The major aim of British East India Company was to increase their land revenue
collection. So its policies were aimed at getting maximum income from land without caring
about its consequences on cultivators and peasants.

Three major systems of land revenue collection existed in India. They were – Zaminidari,
Ryotwari and Mahalwari.

Zamindari System

 Zamindari System was introduced by Cornwallis in 1793 through Permanent Settlement

Act.
 It was introduced in provinces of Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Varanasi.
 Also known as Permanent Settlement System.
 Zamindars were recognized as owner of the lands. Zamindars were given the rights to
collect the rent from the peasants.
  The realized amount would be divided into 11 parts. 1/11 of the share belongs to
Zamindars and 10/11 of the share belongs to East India Company.

Ryotwari System

 Ryotwari System was introduced by Thomas Munro in 1820.

 Major areas of introduction include Madras, Bombay, parts of Assam and Coorgh
provinces of British India.
 In Ryotwari System the ownership rights were handed over to the peasants. British
Government collected taxes directly from the peasants.
 The revenue rates of Ryotwari System were 50% where the lands were dry and 60% in
irrigated land.

Mahalwari System

 Mahalwari system was introduced in 1833 during the period of William Bentick.
 It was introduced in Central Province, North-West Frontier, Agra, Punjab, Gangetic
Valley, etc of British India.
 The Mahalwari system had many provisions of both the Zamindari System and Ryotwari
System.
 In this system, the land was divided into Mahals. Each Mahal comprises one or more
villages.
 Ownership rights were vested with the peasants.
 The villages committee was held responsible for collection of the taxes.
 - --

UNIT 28 SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION AND

DISPRIVILEGED GROUPS

28.0 Objectives
28.1 introduction
28.2 Pre-Colonial Social Discrimination and the Colonial Impact
28.3 Pegional Variations.: South India
28.4 hestern India
28.5 Northern and Eastern India
28.6 bontinuity and Change in Colonial India
28.7 -
A New Consciousness : Some Regional Examples
28.8 bet Us Sum Up
28.9 Key Words
28.10 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

28.0 , OBJECTIVES
After sthdying this Unit you will be able to:
leain about v a ~ b u forms
s of social discriminations in different parts of-India,
understand the impact of Colonial rule on the existing social system a d how the
changes came in it, and
explain the growth of a new consciousness among the disprivileged groups and
hoy did they try to change the existing social order.

28.1 INTRODUCTION
In$an dociety being based on caste system gave birth to different kind of social
discrimi~nationand created two broad social orders - privileged and disprivileged. In
this Unit we have tried to idtroduce you to_various forms of social discrimination and
disprivilleged groups in different parts of India. Social discrimination existed in India
long bebre the beginning of the colonial ruie. But the establishment of colonial rule
brought changes in economic and administrative system which to a great extent
inflbencled the existing social system in India. How 'and to what extent the change
came in Indian social system have been discussed in this Unit. Here we have also
touched upon the process of social mobility among the lower and intermediary castes
and also the challenge by some disprivileged groups to the agelong Brahmanical
domination in the society.

28.2 PRE-COLONIAL SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION AND

THE COLONIAL IMPACT
There is no doubt that social backwardness and disprivilege emanating from social
discrimihation predates colonialism. The hierarchical division of society with assigned
ranks, functions and distinctions under the vama system constituted the structural
framewbrk which regulated economic and ritual relationship. Viewed from the
economiic angle, the jatis were hereditary, closed occupation groups and was
probablk related to efforts to eliminate competition and ensure security of
employment and income. Moving up within this hierarchical structure was not
cornpleteli ruled out but it was rare. Two fixed points marked the extreme ends of the
hierarcqical orders Brahmans on the one end and untouchables at the other. Most of
the rnareinal groups belonged to the lower orders and were forced to live a precarious
exisltenct.
 By the time colonial rule made its presence felt in the second half of the eighteenth Social Discrimination and
century, the situation had become somewhat fluid, though not to the extent of Disprivileged Groups
eliminating social discrimination. But as India became a colonial appendage to a
',capitalist world economy, new economic relationships began to take shape. The policy
of de-industrialisation deprived the rural artisans of their hereditary occupations and,
in course of time, undermined the basis of a non-competitive and hereditary system of
economic organisation at the rural level. The service castes found it difficult to get
their payments in the way they got under the jajmani system. In its efforts to maximise
the revenue collection , the company resumed various forms of rent-free tenures
resulting in the impoverishment of those service groups who were dependent on them.
The insistence on contract, enforced by law and law-courts, meant that those who had
access to the new system could thereby mdnipulate its levers and consolidate their
position in society. Viewed in this light, the colonial rule denied many of the
subordinate social groups their means of subsistence and, in course of time relegating
some of them to the degraded level of '.criminal tribes'. But at the same time, by
undermining the old economic basis of social organisation colonial rule fuelled an
already developing tendency towards mobility. It also indirectly rendered possible the
growth of lower caste protests in future. While pliable elements among the rural elites
were successfuIly accommodated within the framework of the British revenue system,
the intransigents were rendered powerless by the destruction of forts and disbandment
of local militias uhder British rule. In course of time the dominant groups in different
parts of India consolidated their position by manipulating the institutional framework
of the coloniaf rule.

28.3 REGIONAL VARIATIQNS :SOUTH INDIA

What then was the position of subordinate groups who were subject to social
discrimination? The nature of discrimination differed from region to region in the
early years of the nineteenth century. In large parts of the Madras Presidency the bulk
of the agricultural labourers, belonging to low caste grohps, were said to have been
reduced virtually to conditions of slavery. This was evident from the first major
survey of the conditions of agricultural labourers undertaken by the Madras Board of
Revenue (1818). The Madras Presidency was divided in three,major areas. Of these,
the Telugu region was relatively frde from bondage system. But in the Tamil country -
especially in the wet districts - and in the Malabar and Kanara.region, a large portion
of the labouring class lived in a state of bondage. In districts like Chingleput and
Tanjore, the condition of the untouchables castes called Pallans or Paraiyans was
really deplorable. Here the old Hindu institutions were reinforced by the British legal
system, giving a fresh lease of life to power and influence of certain higher castes.
There was a group of Brahman landowners, forbidden most types of manual labour
by the rules of their'caste, who were letting their lands to tenants or employing hired
labourers to do the task they could not do themselves. What is interesting in all this is
that what some historians call agricultural servitude was sanctioned by caste system.
Likewise, in Malabar the Cherumans, corresponding to the Paraiyans in Tamilnad,
were almast exclusively treated as slaves. Buchanan, in course of his travels in early
years of the nineteenth century, found that in Palghat by far the greater parts of the
work in the fields was performed by Cheruman slaves. They could be sold, mortgaged
and rented out. From Malabar Buchanan moved to Kanara where he found an
equally harrowing situation. Men of low caste occa~ionallysold their younger
relations into slavery in discharge of debts. In short, available evidences on South
India suggest that agrarian bondage was quite widespread in the early years of the
nineteenth century.
Case-studies of some select subordinate groups outside the agrarian sectors show the
same'process of social discrimination at work. A recent survey of the Nadars of
Tamilnad demonstrate that in the early nineteenth century they were counted among
the most oppressed caste. They were economically differentiated between higher
ranking Nadars and lowely Shanars or toddy-tappers. Various disabilities were
heaped upon the Shanars. They were, of course, forbidden entry into temples. Wells
were strictly forbidden to their use: they were denied the right to carry an umbrella,
to wear shoes, golden ornaments, to milk cows, to walk in certain streets: and their
women were forbidden to cover their breasts. Indeed. a Nadar could not even
Social and Cultural Change as Minorities in areas north of Tirunelveli, confronted even more humiliating
conditions. They were even denied the service of barbers and washermen used by the
'cashe Hindu of the villages. Gradually, among the main body of Shanars emerged a
mobile body of traders who traded couptry liquor and jaggery sugar. When the
Poligar Wars ended in 1801 both the trading and toddy-tapping Shanars moved on
northwards to the Maravar country and settled in 'Six Nadar Towns of Ramnad'. But
the llocally dominant castes of the region, the Maravars, Tevars and Kallars associated
theh with the lowly, polluted, toddy-tapping Shanars. It is not surprising that the
Nadars constituted a fertile ground for conversion to christianity. They would be in
the rorefront of the later day anti-Brahman movement in the region.

2844 WESTERN INDIA

Farther up the western coastline of India there was another striking instance of
institutionalised social discrimination in South Gujarat. Recorded in the early
nineteenth century British records as Halipratha, it was a formalised system of lifelong
andoften hereditary attachment of the low-caste Publas to the Anavil Brahmans who
owned the best and the largest lots of land. In some regions the attached farm
servlants also included a section of Kolis called gulam Kolis. The condition of service
was not contractual. It usually began wtien an agricultural labourer wished to marry
and found a master ready to pay for it. The debt thus incurred attached the servant to
the master for life. It increased in the course of years thereby rendering repayment
virtually impossible. The Haks were not sold though their service could be transferred
to abother master. The ritual domination of the high caste Brahmans over low caste
Dubbas was consolidated in an exploitative relationship of an all-encompassing nature.
The master had the right to the labour of the servant and his wife as maid in the
household.
In Maharashtra the idioms of dominance and discrimination were no less
prohounced. In eighteenth century Maratha kingdom, Brahmanical dominance was
backed up by the state power of the Peshwas. There was a strong connection between
Marjatha polity and caste system through the regular requisition of forced labour from
artisans and menial castes by the authorities. In the directly administered (swarajya)
regions of the eighteenth century Maratha kingdom, the state took an active role in
maintaining and enforcing ritual and economic~aspectsof caste society. In 1784 the
government formulated rules of worship at the holy places of Pandharpur which
explicitly stated that the untouchables were not allowed to go near their own shrine
close to the main temple. "The place is SO narrow and crowded that the visitors are
touahed to one another and the Brahmins are opposed to this. Therefore the
untouchables should perform worship from near the stone lamp (in front) of the
image of Chokhmela or from a nearby untouchable hamlet. . ." In another instance
the bahars of the Konkan region demanded some Brahman priests of the place to
offi4iate their marriage ceremony. Despite the support from the local officials this
dedand was turned down with a heavy hand. The state offered the untouchables to
have their marriage officiated by their own priests and warned, "if they trouble the
Brahmin priests in future, no good result will come out." In other words, the Maratha
state power mediated caste relationship in the region and ensured the Brahmanical
hegqmony in soeiety. Baji Rao 11, himself a Chitpavan Brahman, distributed generous
sump of money to large number of Brahman scholars in Pune, to enable them to
devdte their time to religious scholarship.
Wh&nthe Company took over the administration after the fall of the Marathas, the
state's active support of the Hindu religious values was withdrawn. Ttiis, of course,
did hot immediately signify any major change in the condition of the lower castes. As
the Company's adminisiration engrafted itself on the Indian society, it depended on
Indihn subordinates at the lower levels. The upper castes, in view of their earlier
accqss to educational opportunities, gained a strategic mediatory position between the
Company's government and the larger masses of western Indian society. This
effectively buttressed their already dominant position in society. But the relatively
stagDant position of the lower castes and untouchables made them fertile grounds for
misdionary propagation. In western India in the nineteenth century the missionaries
did their utmost to persuade their audiences that the Hindu religion had deprived
the*, as shudras, of their real rights in matters of education and religion. There was a
I
 Social Discrimination and
preponderance of higher castes in general and Brahmans in particular in Disprivileged Groups
administration, far in excess of their numerical proportions in the population as a
whole. "Far from breaking down inequalites in western Indian society, British rule
looked as though it might reinforce them by adding to the older religious authority of
Brahmans, a formidable new range of administrative'and political powers." Critical
observers like Jotirao Phule and his followers drew the natural inference that a
rejection of the religious authority of the Brahmans and of the hierarchical values on
which it was based, formed the precondition for any real change in their condition.

28.5 NORTHERN AND EASTERN INDIA

The foregoing survey of sdcial discrimination in some selected region is not meant to
suggest that elsewhere in India the condition of the lower orders of society was any
better. Our purpose was to highlight some glaring instances of domination. In fact,
some recent surveys of the Chandals in Bengal, the Doms in Bihar, the Bhuinyas in
south Bihar or the C h a m h in large parts of northern India show how these groups
were subjected to similar processes of rigorous discrimination. The Namasudras of
Bengal, earlier known as Chandals, formed marginal groups, relegated to the level of
Antyaja. The barbers, washermen and sometimes even the scavengers refused their
services to them. In the social feasts, they were required to sit at a distance from the
rest and clear up their own dishes. It has been shown that their lowest position in the
purity-pollution scale corresponded to their inferior ekonomic status via-a-vis men of
the higher castes. The Maghaiya doms, like the Lodhas of south western Bengal, were
marginalised to such an extent that they were ultimately branded as criminal tribes.
The Bhuinya oral traditions which record the memory of their subordinates to the
mostly Brahman maliks, remember their incorporation in the Hindu caste hierarchy
as a ritually impure caste. ?hey were initially treated as Kamias providing labour
services to the high caste Maliks ultimately ending up as a kind of bonded labour. The
Chamars, including Mochis are found in every part of India, though they are most
numerous in the U P and in the bordering area of Bihar on the east and of the
Punjab on the north-west. They occupied an utterly degraded position in the village
life. Apart from their customary profession, they were often called upon to- perform
begar services by the landlords.

In concluding this section let us recapitulate its basic points. First, there was a very
strong linkage between caste and ritually governed entitlement to resources. This
obviously implied that lok ritual status went together with precarious existence.
Moreover, this was an existence wrapped up by m;ltiple badges of low status. Second,
while most of these practices predate colonial rule, the latter, in turn, precipitated
certain changes in the positidn of subordinate social groups on different parts of
India. Notable among these was the disintegration of the relatively non-competitive
structure of the village society.

Check Your Progress 1

1) Write in brief the various forms of social discrimination existed in South India?
Answer in 100 words.
.......................................................................
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.......................................................................
 I

2) 'P+litics has a positive role in the continuation of the caste domination'. Explain
statement in 100 words in the light of the caste system existed in Western

........................................................................
I
'
I

.. I
......................................................................

I
........................................................................

.. I
......................................................................
I

3) #ad the following statements and mark right ( \/ ) or wrong ( X ).

i) Mobility within the caste system is not possible.
I

ii) The colonial rule by undermining the old economic basis oPsocial
I
organisation helped the social mobility.
iib) Lower status in the caste hierarchy did not deprive the lower castes from
I taking part in ritual ceremonies with the higher castes.
ih) Agrarian bondage was quite widespread in South India in the eariy years of
the 19th century.

28.4 CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN COLONIAL INDIA

~ i e w b din retrospect, the first century of the british rule may be termed as a period of
gestabion. During this period two apparently contradictory developments were taking
placel. Social discrimination which prevailed in myriad variety of formi in different
$arts of India, initially got a new lease of life. The upper caste elites consolidated their
$osition in many different ways. After some initial reverses in some areas, they
adjudted themselves with the new revenue system. They adroitly utilised the new
oppdrtunities for administrative and political power by the use of their skills. A high

1
qlegr e of literacy rendered them extremely useful to the new regime. Their growing
tami iarity with the Anglo-Indian law and the functioning of the law court$ gave them
advahtage over their low-caste subordinates. Those who could master the language of
P
the c urt of law found a new opportunity waiting for them. Finally, the early British
attityde of studied non-interference in social matters of the Indians precluded the
possibility of any major structural change in society through legislative and other
beads backed by state-power.
But during the same period a very different kind of development was taking shape
which, in course of time was to undermine the ritual and social hegemony of the
uppel caste elites. The caste system allowed for mobility at the intermediate levels
while/ preserving the top and bottom levels fixed. The fact that upward mobility was
not ebtirely ruled out gave a certain strength and resilience to the system as a whole.
I
Interbtingly, however, in course of the first century of the British rule, the bottom
level also began to stir. Some of the idioms of social and ritual dominance which the
lower orders had, under the weight af tradition, internalised over time, came to be

1
serid sly questioned. Initially, of cburse, there was predictable opposition from the
dom nant upper castes. But the material basis of the caste bound systzm of
Biscr mination began to change. The penetration of market forces at the rural level
~ f f e rd some opportunities in some regions which ran contrary to the occupatibn-

I
base jati system. In some regions it was even possible for members of submerged
caste to emerge as zamindars, taluqdars or subinfeudated tenure holders. Thmwasa
mar ed tendency among many of them to "sanskritize" their behaviour. It has been
$oin ed out that acquiring symbols of sanskritization need not be taken as meek
tion of.the upper castes. It also meant the appropriation of certain symbol and
certain codes of conduct which had been the exclusive preserves of the upper castes. thdd Dkhnbatioaa d
In some communities missionary activities opened up new possibilities of educational Dlspri*ilegcd Groups
and consequently material advancement. In the changing perspective, the ideology of
hierarchically divided society failed to carry conviction especially among the victims
of social discrimination. There were indications of the emergence of a new
consciousness as a result of which what had earlier been implicitly accepted as 'duty'
came to be construed as 'disprivilege'.

28.7 A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS : SOME

REGIONAL EXAMPLES
The articulation of this new consciousness, however is a complex phenomenon and
therefore can hardly be reduced to simple formulations. Reference has already been
made to the growth of sanskritizing tendencies among some caste groups. There were
others who found in Christianity a means to escape from the grim realities of their
'precarious existence. In Travancore education and ~ h r i s t i a n ihad
t ~ given the Nadars
hope of a release from their sufferings under the dominance of the Nair landlords. In
response to pressures from the Christian Nadars and the missionaries, the government
issued a proclamation in 1829, permitting native Christian women to cover their
breasts in the manner of the Syrian Christians and the Mopla Muslims. This triggered
off the famous"breast cloth controversy' which culminated in the Royal Proclamation
of 1869.
This has been regarded as the first major movement among the depressed classes to
remove the badge of servility. But regions and among the sociky groups where
pmelytisation was not quite successful, the missionary polemic against Hindu social
practices informed the ideas of many of the indigenous reformers. Moreover, the
humanist content in some Indian social reformers' critique ofbhideboundHindu
society raised the level of general social consciousness. What was historically more
important though was the spirited attempt on the part of some lower caste groups to
improve their position by themselves. Although'most of such attempts lie beyond the
time frame of this paper, some early indications may still be noted. Despite regional
variations in the mode of expression and mobilisation, there were some common
features. A relatively prosperous group among some of the submerged castes took the
lead in regulating the social behaviour of their caste brethren. Having done that, they
then began claiming higher ritual status which was generally resisted by the upper
castes. It is at this stage that the ground was prepared for an imminent caste conflict.
Occasionally one finds certain sects promoting caste solidarity and thereby helping the
process of mobilisation. The gradual introduction df electoral politics and the census
operations from the last quarter of the nineteenth century gave a distinctly political
touch to the lower caste movements.
A prosperous section among the Namasudras of Bengal, comprising mainly of
landowners and rich peasants, initiated the move to sanskritize the3r caste behaviour
and asserted the claims of a higher status. This was predictably thwarted by higher
castes. Undaunted by this rebuff, the Namasudra leaders displayed an attitude of
defiance to the social authority of the higher castes, organised their caste brethren
within the Matua 'sect and embarked on a policy of protest. Interestingly, while
challenging the moral authority of the higher castes, the Namasudras were effusive in
their protestations of loyalty to the Raj. In due course the Namasudra protest
developed a distinctly 'separatist' overtone. In Tamilnadu, the mercantile upper
stratum of Ramnad Nadars set up 'common good funds', which was used, inter alia,
for the welfare of the community. They also began to sanskritize their manner of life
and asserted a high kshatriya status. Towards the close of the nineteenth century they
became powerful enough to challenge the ban on temple entry and in 1895 forced
their way into the Sivakasi temple. This was followed by retaliatory attacks on them
which was ultimately taken to the courts. Although the judgement went against the
Nadars, they gained a good deal of sympathy. Moreover, through litigation and
intermittent rioting a sense of communal solidarity was fostered. This solidarity was
to yield good dividend in the present century. In Travancore, the low caste Iravas had
long been subjected to higher caste domination. By the end of the nineteenth century
there emerged a sizeable number of educated youth who were deeply satisfied with the
treatment meted out to them. Influenced by Sri Narayana Guru and the SNDP
Social and Cultural Change

.........................................................................

discrihnination, it was probably too late to attempt to restore the older intercaste
equaqions. In many parts of India submerged castes were smarting under multiple
disabflities. But there were others in other areas who had begun to form their own
identities on the basis of.radica1 redefinitions of their own in the system. In
 Soclal Discrimination Pad
Btwing castes. Dlsprfwlleged Croup
~ P o U a t i o :oIt is an abstract notion which considers certain activities, objects. and
occupations ritually purer, for example Vegetarianism is considered purer than non-
Vegetarianism. Both these concepts are necessarily relative to each other.
SaarWthtio~~ : Adoption of social and religious practices of the upper castes by the
tower castts in order to move up in caste hierarchy is called Sanskritization.
Sod.l Mobility :Movement'or changing of position of any social group in social
hierarchy is called social mobility.

28.10 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES

1) Your answer should focus on deplorable condition of the agiicultural labourers,

various social disabilities imposed on lower castes, etc. See Sec. 28.3.
2) You have to write in this answer that how the upper caste domination was backed
by the state power, how the Maratha policy ensured the Brahmanical hegemony
in the society, etc. See Sec. 28.4.
3) i) X ii) 4 iii) X iv) 4

Chedr Your Progress 2

1) Your answer should highlight how the Colonial rule on one way helped the
continuation of caste system and on the other provided avenues for upward social
mobility, etc. See Sec. 28.6.
2) You have to write about the process of mobilisatio,~by disprivileged groups along
caste lines and how through socio-ritualistic reforms they tried to move up in the
caste hierarchy. See Sec. 28.7.

SOME USEFUL BOOKS FOR THIS BLOCKS

Kenneth W. Jones: The New Cambridge Histary of India. ZZZ, Z, Socio-Re1igiou.c Reform
Movements in British India.
S.G. Malik (ed.): Dissent, Protest, and Reforms in Indian Civilization.
David Kopf: British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance, the Dynamics of Zndian
Modernization, 1773-1835.
Robert L. Hardgrave: The Nadars of Tamilnadu :The Political Culture o f a Community
in Change.
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay : Bengal: 1872-1937 Caste, Politics and Raj.
 UNIT 13 IMPERIAL IDEOLOGY :
ORIENTALIST CONSTRUCTION
OF INDIA AND THE
UTILITARIANS

Structure
13.0 Objectives
13.1 Introduction
13.2 The Earlv Images
13.3 Warren Hastings and the British Image of Indla
13.3.1 William Jones
13.3.2 Hastings in Practise
13.4 Institutionalization
13.'~ Evangelicalism and Other New Trends
13.5.1 The Battle for Improvement
13.5.2 Preservation and Munro
13.6 The Utilitarians
13.6.1 The Question of Law
13.6.2 The Question of Land Revenue
13.6.3 The Emerdng Vision of the Empire
13.7 Let Us Sum Up
13.8 Key Words
13.9 Answers To Check Your Progress Exercises

, In this Unit you will get to know about :

the ways in which the British perception of India was being shaped, ..
how the British perception about India changed over the years, and
some reasons as to why the British perception about India changed over the
years.

13.1 INTRODUCTION
So far you have had a look at the forniation of new states after the Mughal decline
and then the rise and penetration of British imperialism in India. At this point we
will examine the images and ideas of the British as they confronted the Indian scene.
We will also try to see whether these images and ideas about India went through
any change as the needs of the British in India changed.

13.2. THE EARLY IMAGES

The very early images of India in the British mind were in terms of their own
Western experience and their travels in the great voyages of discovery. The early
travellers to India, Edward Terry and John Ovington described, the Mughal rule in
1689 'yet another example of Muslim despotism'. The early British, who had read
about the Ottoman and Persian empires in the great traveller Bernier's writings,
seem to have felt that a closer study of the Mughals would tell them very little that
they did not know. It was believed by people like Sir William Temple in the
classical age, that Lycurgus and Pythogaras had been taught by the Indians.
British conquest However, :he genera! impression was that in 17th century India tradition of learning ,
Consolidation
'
noxlor,ger remained. Terry argued that the Brahmins who were the ancient
repositories o i learning had degenerated.

Other signs of this degeneration were detected by the British in their contact with
the communit~esof the West coast of India. It was argued that they were
'indpstrious. submjss:ve, frugal and cowardly people' who had rigid habits of mind.
The caste systen; was ftecluently cited as an example of their rigid mind.

By and large these images were to persist. However, with the establishment of more
permanent stations. the British had io contend with further Indian realities.

13.3 \VARREN HASTINGS AND THE BRITISH

IMAGE OH; INDIA
The prevalent impression that the Indians had degenerated tended to be reinforced
by British experielxce In 18th century India. At the same time the early
administratals were keenly aware of India's past giory. To administer this country
properly a thorough knowledge of India and its pasi was needed.

7. Warren Hastfnsg in India

Warren Hastings took this mission rather seriously. To fulfil this mission he was
aware that he required a band of dedicated administrators, who would rise above
the opportufiistic fortune hunters who came from Britain to India. For this purpose,
52 he made strenuous efforts to 'work towards institutions of learning which would first
acquire the knowledge of the golden past of India and then, perhaps, convey it to Imperial Ideology :Oriental&
' Construction of India
those who could be i.nvolved in the project of administering India.
and the Utilitarians
This. vision, which has sometimes been called the Orientalist vision, was not confined
to Warren Hastings alone.

133.1 William Jones

William Jones, an English Jurist, was to commit himself to rediscovering India
precisely for this reason, identifying with the Whig tradition of British politics,
Jones set himself the task of making India more intelligible to the British. Jones on
coming to India realized that to understand India, individual initiative would not be
enough. He gradually came around to the view that it would have to be an
organized effort to combine scientific study with the labour and knowledge of a
group of dedicated individuals. It was thus that the famous Asiatic Society was
formed. The Society was to cover the task of unearthing knowledge about Asia both
within and outside Asia.

It is here that Jones' efforts and Warren Hastings' vision were to coincide. The
Society received full blessings of the Governor-General and an era of studying India
from within close quarters of its social, religious, linguistic and political aspects
began. This in itself was a departure from the early travellers who would normally
record impressions and go away.

The Asiatic Society contributed in a major way by trans!ating from Persian and
Sanskrit works of Grammar, Puranas and the writings Bf Kalidasa. Secondly, the
members of the Asiatic Society researched and published a large number of articles
on Indian society and religion. As a result, Jones' contribution through the society
was to 'infectiously spread the romantic fascination of India and her culture
throughout Europe.'
C

133.2 Hastings in Practise

Hastiqgs on the other hand had more practical reasons for promoting the Asiatic
Society. By this time he had decided that the 'dual Government' establishfAI by Clive
shoulq go and the East India Company should take up the responsibility of Bengal.
But he/ was not in favour of introducing English laws and English ways in India. His
main iflea was to rule the 'conquered in their own way'. He felt that the rapid
gowtq of the British rule had excited various prejuiiices. These, he felt, needed to
be stilled. Secondly, he wanted to reconcile British rule with the Indian institutions.
This inevitably meant more intensive investigation into the 'manners and customs' of
thekountry and an indepth analysis of the literature and taws of the Indians. It is
for this purpose that Halhed, one of Hastings' lieutenants, drew up a list of religious
and customary laws called the 'Gent'oo Laws' which would help in understanding the
process of furthering 'the conciliation of natives or ensure stability to the .
acquisitions'. This, Halhed maintained, would help further in enhancing the
prospects of commerce and territorial establishment.

63:4 INSTITUTIONALIZATION
The early quests of rediscovering the rich Indian past then were slowly being
su bsumcd to the practical needs of the British rule. To enable the practical task of
training and the orienting future administrators t o the goals of this task, in the
tradition of Wwren Hastings, Wellesley established the Fort William College at
Calcutta in 1500.

The Fort William College basically impressed upon its students to study the Indian
language so that the future administrator could take on the tiijk of familiarising
themselves with the 'vernacular' of the people and with India's'past in a more
concrete fashion. For example, studying Persian served very practical ends. Most of
 the Indian states used Persian as the language for maintaining official record and
running the day to day business. Thus the vision of learning about India's past glory
and the practical needs of the British administration were neatly dovetailed.

8. Estabbhlpg a rapport Englishman with a Hookah

One should be careful in not reducing the steps taken to train the future
administrators to the visions of the Indian past held by the administrators of the
time. The Indian Residents who were posted a t the courts of various submissive
Iridian rolers, combined both the knowledge and usage of Persian with the cultural
life style$ of the ,court. To establish an identity with the Indian courtiers, the British
Residentloften donned the Indian dresses and maintained huge establishments like
the court nobility. He would often adopt the manners and etiquettes of the court,
while having a major say in the decisions of the ruler. The Indian rulers then
maintained some kind of cultural independence inspite of being politically
subservie~tto the British.
With the consolidation of the conquests and the need to create a more integrated
administ~tive,structure, the British had to step in to realms of Indian institutions
like law and landed property. In the meanwhile, the industrial revolution in Britain
had forced the need bf ,market and raw materials outside Britain for the industrialist
on the minds of the policy makers in Britain.
 Imperial Ideology :OlkntdM
C o n a t d n of lndia
and the Utilitariurr

9. Cd. Pdkr In 1ndl.n drew watching a Nautch

The new needs of the British necessarily meant that the idea of retaining lndian
institutions and laws had to be reviewed. If new products were to enter the market
there was a need to create a taste for.them. This meant the infusion of a new way of
life and culture, at least in the top crust of society.
In the early period of establislling institutions which discoveted India's past, a neat
compromise, of Ilearning and the needs of the Company commerce and
administration had been made. That is. 'learn about the lndian society but do not
disturb it*. That this coqpromise was resented, is shown id the struggle ofthe

1
S eerampore missionaries, who wanted to get on with the task of 'reforming' the
c rrent degeneration of the Indian society. While thd Sreerampore missionaries were

1
to do this task quietly, respecting the Indian traditions, the later mjs 'onaries like
Y
C arles Grant were to be openly hostile to 'Indian barbarism*. This 4ostility, a hall-
m rk of evangelicalism, was combined with the desire to 'civilize' India. Bringing a

\
Ch istian zeal into his mission, Grant was to propagate the policy of assimilation of
Ind ,a into the great civilizing mission of Britain.
This attitude was to go hand in hand with the expression ofl~ritishliberalism, as for ,
example in Macaulay, the liberal British administrator's task was to 'civilize' rather
than subdue. The merchant community supported this;firstly, because since they
would benefit from the civilizing mission's laws to acquire property etc. in India,
anh then, under "free trade' they could work out the ~roble'mof creating a market
for British goods amongst the Indians. Charles Grant saw a complementarity
between the civilizing\process and material prosperity. It was thus that another
liberal C.E. Trevelyan, in 1838, was to outline his vision of India as 'the proudest
-
-

monument of British beneyolence'.

B 'tish Conquest
conoiidation
Check Your Progress 1
1) H o w did William Jones differ from !he early travellers who wrote about fndia?

...............................................................................................................................
2) Why did Warren Hastings want to study India's past?

3) Did the Sreera~nporeMissionaries and Charles Grant agree with Warren

Hastings way of deaJing with India?

...............................................................................................................................
136.1 The Battle for Improvement
The Ydea of improvement*was to take shape in the late 18th and early 19th
centuries as a part of. the vision of Britain as a promoter of prosperity and
civilization. It was thus, that Cornwallis agmd to settling the revenue permanently
on the landed class (Zamindars) in Bengal. Cornwallis's assumption was that since
the main source of wealth was agiculture, the 'magic touch of property*will create
capital and market in land. A more prosperous landed class with fixed obligation to
the state and an English rule of law would create new men of enterprise in land who,
would also take trade forward. John Shore, who had seen the idea of Permanent
Settlement grow and had more experience of the countryside, while agreeing with
Comwallis*~ vision of improvement, suggested that the improvement should be
broyght about by slow degrees by experimentally introducing innovations.

13.5.2 Preservation and Munro

Among the critics of Cornwallis were ~ u n r o in the Soutb along with his famous
colleagues like Malcolm and Metcalfe. They found the Cbrnwallis System as having
no regard for Indian history or experience. They opposed the very idea that a
political society could be built on principles derived from an alien Enghsh tradition.
It was for this reason that they opposed Cornwallis's import of the English rule of
law with its strict division of judiciary and executive powers of the government.
 Imperial Ideology : Orienta!ist
Construction of India
and the Utilitarians

10. Imphatiom of History from the statu of Edmund Burkq the Philomopha

-1.0 ~ u n r o politics
, was both experimental : , d pragmatic. The brief period the
British had spent in lndia, he thought, was .ar too short for any permanent .
solutions. It was thus he argue ! periodic revision of the rate of ryotwari (see
Block IV). He t hrrefore argued that the basis of India's stable heritage, the
village communities sllould be conserved. And any law and order problem
should be lnct with a system where the judiciary and executive were fused
together. '['his he felt would enab'e the preservation of justice to the peasantry as
well as t l ~ caims ~f the British rule. I11 line with this idea bf preserving the
varying heritage of India, Munro and his colleagues opposed a centrally
imposed rute in lndia and 'favoured diversity in the Indian government'.

The taskbf transforming the Indian mind was then to become more complex.
The task of education in the process was mooted by the liberal Macaulay as a
prime responsibility of the British in India. But in the context of both tht; %

resistance of Orientalists, and pragmatic Anglo-Indians like Munro whb'.&nted

to preserve the Indian institutions and culture the role of a western or a n
Anglicist education became a subject of immense controversy in the middle of
the 19th century.
British Conquest
and Consolidation 13.6 THE UTILITARIANS
The Utilitarians were not to take the liberal detour to education for the task of
'civilizing' and 'improving' India. They went back to the basic question of reform of
law and landed property to create conditions where the market could flourish. They
believed, under the guidance of Jereiny Ekntham, that, a scientific and logical
approach to these two problems of law and landed property could create reforms
which would satisfy the principle of 'the greatest good of the greatest number'.

13.6.1 The Question of Law

The utilitarian ideas were to have a fundamental influence in moulding the British
attitudes towards India. The question of law as an instrument uf change was mooted
under Bentinck. It was possible, he believed, for judiciary or law to be the
instrument of changing Indian practices like Sati and female infanticide.

Bcntinck'~ reply lo ihe petition on saG

1 122. Bentiruk'r rrpb to the petition on sati

I
14 J u l y 1830
T h e governor-general has read with attention the petition which has
been presented to him: a n d has some satisfaction in observing that the
opinions of the pandits consulted by the petitioners confirm the sup-
position that widows are not, by the religious writings of the Hindus,
commanded t o destroy themselves; but that, upon the death of their
husbands the choice of a life of strict and severe morality is e v e w h e r e
expressly offered: that in the books usually considered of the highest
authority it is commanded above every other course; and is stated to be
adapted t o a better state of society; such as, by the Hindus, is believed
to have subsisted in former times.
Thus, none of the Hindus are placed in the dirtressing situation
of having to disobey either the ordinances of the government or those
of their religion. By a virtuous life a Hindu wjdow not only compllies at
once with the laws of the government and with the purest precepts of
her own religion, but affords a n example to the existing g e ~ ~ e r a t i oofn
that good conduct which is supposttd to have distinguished the earlier
and better times of the Hindu people.
T h e petitioners cannot require the assurance that the British gokern-
ment will continue t o allow the most complete toleration in matteis of
religious belief; a n d that to the full extent of what it is pscitlle to
reconcile with reason and with natural justice they will be undisturbed
in the observance of their established usages. But, some of thcse, which
the governor-general is unwilling to recall into notice, his prrc?acc-qsors
i n council, for the security of human life, and the prpservation of scxial
order, have, a t different times, found it necessary to prohibit. If there
is any one which the common voice of all mankind would exccpt from
indulgence it is surely that by which the hand of a son is ~n::riethe
instrument of a temble death to the mother who has borne Flirn, and
from whose heart he has drawn the sustenance of his help!c<s i : ; f ~ i ~ ~ y .
T h e governor-general has given an attentive consideratii!n to a11 that
has been urged by the numerous and respectable body of pititinnen:
and has thought fit to make this further statement, in adtlitiirn to what
had been before exprased as the reasons, which, in his mind, have
made it an urgent duty of the British govcrilnlent to prevent the usage
in support ofwhich the petition has becn preferred: but if the petitioners
should still be of opinion that the latc regulation is not in conformity
with the enactments of the imperial parliament, they have a n appeal
to the king in council, which the governor-gcneral shall he most happy
to forward.
- --

11. Bentinck on Sati

With the coming of James Mill to the East India Company's London office, a 1rnper:al Ideobgy :Orimtalist
Construction of India
systematic utilitarian attempt was made to combat the Orientalist, Cornwallis and
and the IJtilitarians
the Munro heritage. A total vision of political reform on the philosophical premises
of' utilitarianism was sought to be given a concrete shape. We see a series of laws
and penal codes enacted under the Benthamite principle of a centrally logically and
coherently evolved system which would go down to the grassroots. In the process it
would give the direction to the Indian government to function 'with a united
purpose.'

13.6.2 The Question of Land Revenue

Mill also supported a restructuring of the land revenue policy in a manner that
would be consistent with utilitarian economics. While, on the one hand this meant a
direct contact with the mass of cultivators as in Munro's ryotwari settlement (see
Block IV), on the other hand this meant taxing the landlord along Ricardo's
philosophy. This taxation would be in such a manner that the landlord would not
enjoy undue benefit a t the cost of manufacture and trade just by virtue of ownership
of land. This meant that landholder would give to the state as tax on land revenue a
certain proportion of the net produce (i.e. the gross produce -nini!c :ost of
~ultivation).

This doctrine of rent was sought to be put into practice by officers like Pringle in
Bombay. Elaborate survey methods were used to calculate the 'net produce' from
land. Then tax rates were assessed. However, in practise the revenue demand often
went very high, sometimes as much as fifty to sixty percent of the produce. This led
gradually to the abandonment of complex calculations based on the rent doctrine.
From 1840s purely pragmatic and empirical methods derived from the tradition of
taxation in respective areas were beginning to be adopted.

But, the rent doctrine of the, utilitarian philosophy was not given up in theory.
Inspite of the purely pragmatic and empirical calculation of rent, the justification of
rent theory for the calculation was still given. The justification of the theory though
did have practical reasons as over the next decades the idea of defining rights and
obligations of the tax paying cultivators permanently was relegated to the
background. But then the scientific calculations of the utilitarianism were again
paradoxically submitted to Munro like consideration of Indian heritage and
traditions.

13.6.3. The Emerging Vision of The Empire

There was a streak of authoritarianism in English utilitarian thought which
developed abroad into fullfledged despotism. Utilitarianism in India despite being I
born in the tradition of liberalism could never accept a democratic government in
India. James Mill consistently opposed any form of representative go'vernment in
WLb Conquat st '
The consolidation or the empire under Dalhousie was to take the paradoxes of the
md W i d a t i o n
various kinds of perceptions of British India still more forward. Dalhousie took
forward Mill's vision of belligerent advancement of Britain's mission, in his policy
towards the native Indian States. Again, in the true Benthamite tradition he created
'rill India' departments with9single heads for Post and Telegraph Services, the Public
Works Department, etc. He was thus to give fruition to the idea of efficient
administration within the framework of a unitary all India empire. This latter was in
direct contrast to Munro's vision of India as loose federation of regional entities.
At the same time Dalhousie was prepared to take a liberal stance in some respects.
For example, he was to encourage the development of his legislative council into a
forym for the pepresentation of non-official opinion. He also provided it with
elaborate rules of procedure taken from the English Parliament. He even favoured
the admission of Indian members into the legislative council. He agreed with the
Macaulay's view of diffusion of English education and along with his colleague
Thomason encouraged a system of vernacular education at mass level.
However this impulse to link the,task of changing the Indian society to the tasks of
law, landed property or education gradually declined. With the consolidation of law
codes, revenue administration and education and the all India empire, the focus
shifted to efficiency of governance. Pragmatism with rationality and efficiency now
dominated the British administration. Utilitarian arguments were st/ll used for
glovernance, for example in the change of law codes under Macaulay. But the overall
spirit of reform declined.
The later British administrators of our period were to emphasise that the British rule
had always been governed by law. However, it was argued then. for efficient
administration force had to be used and there was no need to justify it by
cansideration of political change or reform. The utilitarian task of transforming
India then was subsumed under the principle of an efficient and good government
held up by the 'steel frame'of British administration.

..............................................................................................................................
2 ) H o w did Henlinck war;t to bring ahout a social change in ladiii'l

1) L'V:~.,.l;~rnec Mill In fci,\\)ur of a derlloc~acyIn im~dla?

4 HUWdid t3r IJtilitarians trv to solve theprobierxi of land revc:l~!i-'l

i
! ............ .................................................. ...........................................:. . . . . . . . . . . .
 ....................... ................... Imperial.Ideology :Orientalkt
Comtrudion of lndia
.............................. ................................................................. and the Ulilitariadi
t

13.7 LET US SUM UP

Each regime needs a rationale. We saw in this Unit that, in the era of her expansion
in India Britain found hers in a 'civilizing mission'. On the one hand, it served to
glorify a rather sordid history of greed and aggression and plunder. On the other
hand, it instilled in all manner of men a greater sense of purpose. This purpose was
not the same to all men. As we have seen, Orientalists like.William Jones,
Evangelists like Charles Grant, .Utilitarians like James Mill, and again a Munro or a
Dalhousie had quite different purposes in mind. There were also substantial
differences between the modes of thinking in the Orientalist construction of India. or
the Evangelical drive to save 'native' souls, or the Utilitarian calculus of the 'greatest
goods' in terms of moral and material improvement. Yet, in this diversity of ideas a n
over-arching conception of Britain's 'mission' in lndia provided unity in action.
Objectively these ideas and men all served to build the British empire in India.

13.8 KEY WORDS

Evrmgelicnlism: A Protestant Christian movement in England of 18th century, which .
I in contrs3ttothe orthodox church emphasized on personal experiences, individual 1
1 reading of gospel rather than the traditions of established church. I
F

Paradox: Self contradictory statement, belief etc.

13.9 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS I

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
2) See Sub-sec. 13.3.1.
2) See Sec. 13.3., Sub-sec. 13.3.2.
3) See Sec. 13.5.

Check Your Progress 2

I) See Sub-sec. 13.5.2.
2) See Sub-sec. 13.6;l.
71 See Sub-sec. 13.6.3.
British Conquest 4) gee Sub-sec. 13.6.2.
and Consolidation
5) See Sub-sec, 13.6.3.

SOME USEFUL BOOKS FOR THIS BLOCK

C.A. Bayly : The New Cambridge History of India, Vol. 11.1, Indian Society and the
Making of the British Empire.
P.J. Marshal : The New Cambridge History of India, Vol.II.2, Bengal, The British
Bridgehead, Eastern India, 1740-1827.
R.C. Majumdar (ed.) : British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance, Vol.IX, Part-I,
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (Publication)
N.K, Sinha ( 4 . ) : Economic History of Bengal, Vol. 3
Michael H. Fisher : A Claslz of Cultures: Awadh, The British and The Mughals.
Richard B. Barnett : North India Between Empires: Awadh, The Mughals and
@e British.
S.N. Sen : Anglo-Maratha Relations, 1785-1796.
bric Stokes : English Utilitarians and India.
UNIT 24 ADMINISTRATION AND LAW
Structure
24.0 Objectives
24.1 lntroduction
24.2 The Background
24.2.1 British Thinking on Administration
24.2.2 British Interests
24.3 institutional Framework
24.3.1 Judicial System
24.3.2 Administrat~veSystem
24.3.3 Extent of Indian Part~cipation
24.4 Let Us Sum Up
.
24.5 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

24.0 OBJECTIVES
In the previous Unit (No 23) you got a summary of the const~tutionalprovisions
which were made by the British rulers in lndia from 1717 till the end of company's
rule. This Unit will take the story further and talk about how the structure of
administration and judiciary were gradually being built up by the British. This would
involve looking at the ideological orientation and specific requirements of the rulers
on the one hand, and the various changes and innovations made in the field of
administration, on the other. In this Unit you will study:
various ideas and elements that went into the making of the British administrative
policy
the institutional framework that evolved in accordance with that policy, and
an assessment of the administrative and judicial system introduced by the British
in India.

24.1 INTRODUCTION
You have seen in the earlier Units how the British gradually controlled the entire
country through a series of conquests. The East lndia Company was transformed
from b mere commercial body into a political force. Mere conquests could not
possibly hold the empire together for a long time. It had to be sustained by evolving
a comprehensive system of administration. This Unit, is therefore, concerned
exclusively with ideas and institutions. We discuss the British ideas on how to govern
India, and than go on to describe thckind of administrative institutions which were
evolved in order to govern and control India.

24.2 THE BACKGROUND

The vast territories of lndia were controlled by a massive administrative structure,
and various branches of which were held together by a set of laws. Before we go into
the details of this structure, let us look at the background to these administrative
innovations. These changes in the field of administration and law were a product of
certain ideas which had gained currency in 19th century Britain. These administrative
change also catered to certain British interests in lndia. Let us look at both these
aspects.

24.2.1 British Thinking on Administration

The administrative and legal system introduced by the British did not take shape
overnight and did not evolve in a vacuum. It was spread well over eighty years, was
implanted through a series of measures and acts, and was based on the initiative Administration and Law
taken by many British administrators and thinkers. A number of its provisions and
schemes continue even today. It did not evolve in a vacuum but should be seen
against the background of intellectual movements in the late 18th and early 19th
century Britain, which looked upon the British administration of lndia as on one of
its major concerns.
One of the earliest influences that can be seen is the idea of improvement. This
influence, evident at the earliest in Cornwallis, looked a t the creation of English style
aristocracy in land a s the best means of developing India. This aristocracy, identified
by Cornhallis as the Zamindars was looked upon as trustees who would encourage
the growth of trade and production under them. This coupled with English style
institution of law and administration-where the object was t o separate revenue and
judicial function of administration would effectively ensure the improvement of lndia
under the landed aristocracy. (See Block 4 and Section 24.3 below.)
,Whereas Cornwallis worked mainly with the ideas and perceptions which came
before utilitarianism, Macaulay was a liberal who had grown up in interaction with
both the missionary zeal of evangelicalism and the emerging pragmatism of 1830s
and 1840s. Thus we see him take up the codification of laws (see sec. 24.3) with
vigour. However, though he approved of this aspect of institutionalism, he did not at
all agree with their goal of reforming India.
Between the concern of Cornwallis and Macaulay,came the intellectual current called
.
'utilitarianism' (you have read about it in Unit 13 of Block 3) with James Mill,
Jeremy Bentham, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill a s were its major exponents
showed a special interest in the lndian question, and were largely responsible for the
kind of administration and judicial system that came into being in India. The
ufilitarians reflected on how to govern and control lndia and their ideas gradually
gained acceptance in Britain perhaps because they represented and combined the
interest of the British merchants. manufacturers and missionaries. What were their
ideas on lndia and prescription for the lndian problem ?
lndian society was seen by them as completely devoid of the values of rationalism
and individualism, which were seen as the essential principles for building a
modern society.
A traditional and decadent society like lndia could be improved through proper
legislation, which would impart "human justice" as against "divine justice"
practised in traditional societies. This meant that "British administration with its
principles of justice and uniformity could convert lndia into progressive and
dynamic society.
However in this scheme the instrumentality of education was rejected by Mill.
And s o was the lndianisation of the Government structure. Given their character,
Indians were seen unfit in the task of their over 'modernisation'. Mill therefore
dismissed the idea of giving any power and responsibility to Indians. Utilitarians
prescribed a modern machine of government, run by the British.
In other words, from the 19th century onwards when information about lndia
began trickling into the European societies, there began a debate among thinkers,
scholars and administrators on the lndian problem and its solution. Among them the
utilitarians. with their well defined structure of ideas, a set of followers, their
keenness on India, and the readymade applicabilities of their concerns (of taxation,
forms of government and administration of justice) to India, proved t o be the most
outspoken and effective. In 1819, James Mill was admitted into the executive
government of the East lndia Company. This made it easier for the utilitarian ideas
to be implemented in the lndian situation. Their ideas can be summed up in the
format of problems and prescribed solutions.

Problems '

Indian society was backward, decadent, retrograde and despotic. There was
degradation of the many by the few and absence of any security for the individual
and his rights.
This resulted in poverty, therefore crime
Servility and superstition was (characteristic of Indian people) 15
Impact of British Rule : Solution
Polity end Society
Advancement of society through'the establishment of a good government with
good laws and sound administration.
This would lead to freeing of individual initiative from despotism, customs and
communal ownership (which Mill saw a sign of a primitive society and inhibiting I

the making of a civil society).

T h i s would give a free and full scope for capital and labour and place due
emphasis on individual rights and ownership (as against communal ownership,
characteristic of Indian society).
Towards the same and it was necessary to legally define and protect individual
right in land.
To put it briefly, the utilitarian thinking was a n advocacy of a 'Rule of Law'. Laws
were to be scientifically defined and embodied in a written form in codes. They were I,
to be implemented through the creation of a body of local courts to make law
accessible to every man. Only this could create an individualist competitive society.
t4
24.2.2 British Interests
By now you must have become familiar with British ideas on law and its relationship
with the society. But at the same time, it would be wrong to overlook the interests,
which here also at work behind the introduction of British administration and law in
India. It suited the British requirements in lndia to have a uniform system of
adminibtration. And the British need for a new administration and laws varied with
the changes in the British interest in lndia and the combination of interest groups in
Britain.
As you are aware, the imperial interest in lndia did not remain the same throughout.
They changed during the different stages of the British rule. They also represented
the interests of different social groups in Britain in different stages. During the first
stage of the British rule in lndia till 1813, British interests lay mainly in
the East India Company's monopoly of trade with India, and the elimination of
other European competitors,
the control over financial resources, through taxation,
Both these objectives could be fulfilled without having to disturb the existing
institutions and administrative apparatus. British rulers at this stage were not very
different from that of traditional rulers, interested mainly in the appropriation of
agricubural surplus. No attempt was, therefore, made to create a uniform
administrative structure or even to renovate the old one at fhis stage. No basic
changes were introduced in the judicial system and administration. Whatever little
changes were made in the field of administration were only made a t the top of the
structure of revenue collection and were linked to the objective of smooth revenue
collection. A modern judicial system or a uniform administrative structure for lndia
was ndt seen as necessary at this stage, since it was not considered relevant for the
fulfilmlent of British objectives during the first stage of british rule in India.
This saenario changed considerably after 1813. As you are aware, the British
economy and society were going through a major transformation, caused maiqly by
the Industrial Revolution. The mercantilist trading corporations were now giving
way to the Industrial bourgeoisie which had became the dominant force in the British
society. The East lndia Company was gradually losing its monopoly over lndian
trade. The British interests in India no longer represented the interests of the
company but of the Industrial capitalist class. The interests of the British
industrialists by in using India as
a mlarket for their manufactured industrial good,
a source of raw material (like Jute, Cotton etc.) for their industries, and
foodgrains, opium etc. for export.
All this required much greater penetration into Indian economy and society and
controll over Indian trade not only with ~ r i t a i nbut
' with other countries also. India
was now expected to play a new role. It was perhaps not possible to perform the
new r ~ l ewith the traditional administrative institutions. They had to be changed and
 transformed t o suit the new requirements. And hence started the process of Administration and Law
transforming Indian administration the details of which you will study in the next
section. Similarly, the entire legal structure had to be overhauled to promote modern
business, create a market economy, free commercial relations and t o regulate the
various economic transaction smoothly with the help of modern laws. And hence
started the process of the transformation of Indian administration and judiciary, the
details of which you will need in the following section.
I
Check Yoilr Progress 1
1 ) What according to util~tar~ans,
were the problems o l the Indian society, and
what was the way out? Write in ten lines.

2) Why did the British g o in for administrative reforms in the 19th century'?.IWrite
....
in ten lines.

24.3 INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK

Having discussed the dominant British ideas on the question of law and
administration, let us now look at the framework of administrative institutions that
evolved in the 19th century, and the extent to which the ideas discussed above, were
incorporated into this framework.

24.3.1 ' The Judicial system

The building up of an adequate structure of administration started taking shape from
1793 under Cornwallis, and continued, with interruptions. down the 19th century.
During Cornwallis Governor Generalship important changes were made in all the
branches of administration including the judicial system. These changes involved a
divorce of revenue from civil administration. i.e.. the separation of judicial from
executive functions and the multiplication of judicial courts.
Impact of British Rule : The separation of civil and revenue administration meant, that the collector hitherto
Polity and Society the holder of judicial and revenue responsibilities was now deprived of his judicial
functions and concerned mainly with revenue. The collection of revenue and the
administration of justice were now to be carried out by separate officials appointed
for that purpose. There was now a coltector responsible for the collection of revenue
and a judge Magistrate with civil and criminal jurisdiction, Broadly the structure of
the new judiciary was something like this

Civil Courts

Sadar Diwani Adalat

Provincial Court 1-1V
District Courts Presided over by a District Magistrate trom Civil Services

Registrar's Court 1
Subordinate Courts (Presided over by lndian Judges called Munsif and Amins)

Criminal Courts

Sadar Nizarnat Adalat (Sadar Fauzdari Adalat in Madras, Bombay)

Court of Circuit (Presided over by Civil servants)
Local Courts (Presided over by Indian Magistrates, called Principal Sadar
Amin in Madras)
This system of a hiera;chy of courts was tried and implemented first in Bengal which
had assumed the states of a Laboratory for the British rule where they could make
experiments in the field of administration, and they extend it to the rest of the
country. Before we proceed further, let us try and understand the chart above. The
Sadar Diwani Adalat and Sadar Nizarnat Adalat formed the top of the pyramid and
were situated in Calcutta. Below these were the provincial courts of appeal (in the
case of civil courts) and the courts of circuit (in the case of criminal courts) which
were established in the towns of Calcutta, Dacca, Murshidabad and Patna. Below
these were the registrar's courts and all those were presided over only by the
Europeans. The participation of Indians was confined to subordinate positions such
as Munsifs. Amins; the Qazis and the Pandits who merely advised the judges on the
existing Mohammedan and Hindu laws.
Thus was laid the foundation of a new judicial structure in India. In years that came
this structure grew and evolved. Many changes are made in it and it was
subsequently applied to other parts of India. Let us at this stage look at some of the
important characteristics of the judicial structure developed in lndia in the 19th
century.
One important feature of the system of law that was erected was that enough
tolerance was displayed toward the existing traditional and religious laws. The
criminal courts did not altogether abolish the Muslim criminal law but applied it in a
somewhat modified form, so as to make it less harsh. Similarly the civil courts also
did not do away with the customary laws which had been followed by the local
people. Evidently at this stage the East lndia Company was not bent upon an
overhauling of the system. Only a partial modification was attempted. The existing
institutions of justice and also revenue appropriation were not dismantled.
Another feature of the new judicial system was the establishment of a whole network
of laws through the process of enactment of laws and codification of old laws. This
was well in keeping wifh the 19th century British passion for the codification of laws.
The traditional system had been based on I) customary laws based on traditions and
social practices, 2) religious laws based on Shastras and Shariat, and 3) laws flowing
from the will and authority of the rulers. As against this, the British created a new
system of laws. They introduced regulations, codified the existing laws and
systematised and the laws were now open to judicial interpretations and subsequent
amendment. Through the Charter Act of 1,833, all law making authority was vested in
the Governor General-in-Council. In the same year, a Law Commission was
 appointed. Headed by. Lord Macaulay, it prepared the Indian Penal Code which was A h i n i s t r a t i u n and Law
applicable throughout the country. Thus there came into being, for the first time, a
set of laws which included into its fold every Indian.
The two main theoretical principles underlying the entire judicial system were the
notions of the Rule of Law and Equality before law.
The Rule of Law for lndia was a n integral part of utilitarian thinking on Law. They
posited the Rule of Law as the possible solution t o the three main problems :
1) Tremendous discretionary power in the hands of the individuals who were likely
t o misuse it;
2) lack of definition of individual rights, and
3) the existence of a large body of unwritten laws without any clear direction.
The Rule of Law meant that the administration was now to be carried out strictly
according to certain laws which defined the rights, privileges and obligations of the
people, and not according to the personal desires of the rulers. It also meant that in
theory at least, nobody was above law. Even the official. and those who supervised
law, were in theory, accountable to the same set of laws and could be brought before
a court of law for violating any law. The law once formulated, could place
restrictions on the actions of the rulers. However, the laws formulated and
interpreted were such that they contained enough space for the oppression of the
people. As it happened, various bureaucratic misdeeds, did not require a violation of
law, they could be done well within the legal rights of the officials. Qespite the
theoretical principle of "rule of law", there remained domains of action. e.g. by the
police o r army, which remained unaffected by restrictions which should have
followed from the principles. A great deal of extra-legal continued to be exercised by
the police and civil-servants. In fact, under the Rule of Law, legality itself became a n
instrument of power and oppression.
Equality before law meant that in theory all the citizens irrespective of their caste,
status etc. were now placed at a n equal footing in the eyes of the law. The concept of
equality before law did not of course, include Europeans into its fold. Separate
courts and laws were set up for them. In criminal cases they could be tried only by
the European Judges. In reality total equality before law could not possibly be
implemented. But it did bring about a national equality among.lndians.
In practice, the Indian people had t o pay a heavy price for the undeniably laudable
principles of the Rule of Law and Equality before Law. Justice became very
expensive and therefore out of reach for most people. Now the stamp fee had t o be
paid which was very costly. It cost Rs. 1,000 t o start action in a court on a property
worth Rs.50,000. Moreover, the new laws were quite complicated and most people
could not understand or interpret them. Lawyers, therefore, had t o be employed and
that added t o the expenses. T o seek justice people now had t o come t o the district
towns or the provincial centres. Also the legal process generally became very lengthy
and sometime law suits dragged on for years. T o take one example a zamindari in
~ a d i a went
s into litigation in 1832 t o settle some inheritance and d2bt suits. The
l
- Judgment was finally delivered only as late as in 1896 i.e. after 64 years.
However, the judicial system introduced in India did have the merit of saving in
motion the process of the unification of India. Now it was possible t o conceive of
I India, in judicial terms at least, as one unit. The British formulated and used the idea
of legality as a n instrument of controlling India. But later, in the 20th century, the
same instrument of Jegality was t o be used by the leaders of the national movement
to defend civil liberty and right t o challenge government authority within the limits
of law.

24.3.2 Administrative System

The main aim of the British administration in lndia was the maintenance of law and
order and the perpetuation of the British rule. A fairly adequate body of written laws
had already been created t o facilitate the tasks of the administration. The three main
pillars of the British administration in lndia were
the civil service
the Army, and
Impact 01 British Rule : the Police.
Polity and Society Let us briefly see the composition and functions of each of them.

The Civil Service

The main job of the civil service was to translate law into action and the collection
of revenue. The term 'civil services' was used, for the first time by the East lndia
Company mainly to demarcate its civilian employees from their military and
accesiastical counterparts. The service was initially only commercial in nature but
was late transformed into a public service.
From the very beginning it was a graded post-the gradations being-Apprentices,
writem, factors. junior merchants then finally senior merchants. It was from senior
merchants that appointments for higher services including the Governor were made.
This iystem of grading continued till 1839.
The appointment to these services was the sole prerogative of the court of Directors
of the East lndia Company. These nominated civil servants indulged in corruption.
bribery and illegal private trade. Cornwallis tried to check this corruption. arising
out of apolicy of patronage practised by the court of Directors. He imposed certain
restrictions on the civil servants (like forbiding private trade) but increased their
salaries as a compensation. For instance. the collector of a district was to be paid
1500 a month, besides one per cent commission on the revenue collected from his
distri~t.At this stage, the company's service was perhaps the highest paid service in
the World.
All this, however, failed to solve the twin problems of corruption and inefficiency.
Lord-Wellesly. who arrived in 1798 took significant stepts in this direction. He
introduced the idea of a suitable training for the civil servants in India. He felt that
the foundation of the training of the civil servants should be laid in England and
further training imparted in India. This was founded the Fort William College in
Calcutta on 24 November 1800, where the civil servants were to reveive training in
literature. science and languages in India. After five years, an East lndia College was
established at Hailybury for imparting two years, training to young officers for the
civil services. Indian Civil Services for the next fifty years or so remained the
product of the Hailybury College.
The method of recruitment. however. remained through the system of patronage in
the hands of the court of Directors who were free to nominate their sons and
nephews for the services.
The idea of 'competition' for recruitment (as against nomination practised earlier)
was introduced for the first time by the Charter Act of 1833. But it was to be a very
limited competition and could be termed as nomination-cum-competition for
recruitment. The Court of Directors were to first nominate four times the number of
civil servants required. These nominated candidates had to go through a competitive
examination. through which one fourth could ultimately be selected to join the
coveted Civil Services.
But gradually the demand for open Public competition started gaining ground. The
Charter Act of 1853 ultimately took away the power of the court of Directors to
make nominations and made a provision for open competition. For regulations
regarding age, qualification and subjects for the competitive examination a
committee was appointed headed by Macauly which was to submit its
reconimendations to the Board of control. Subsequently the college at Hailybury was
abolidhed in 1858 and the competitive examinations became the sole responsibility of
the Civil Service Commission. This competitive examination was to be held annually
in England and it was therefore, virtually impossible for an Indian to compete in it.
In late 19th century there began a demand that the competition examination should
be held in India.
The afficers of the civil serviCes were employed both in the control officer and the
district. The chief Officer in the district was the collector who was initially
responsible exclusively for the collection of revenue. He had t!le authority to decide
all disputes related to the boundary and the rent. He was assisted by a Tehsildar who
was ah Indian. After the reforms of 1831 the offices of the Magistrate (you have
head about him in sub-section 24.3.1) and the local chief of Police were also
transferred to him. This gave him total authority in the district. Given the large size Administration and Law
of some of the districts, a post of Deputy Collector, placed between the Collector
and the Tehsildar in the hierarchy was also created after 1831. This was soon
converted into an uncovenanted post which meant that experienced lndians could be
employed as Deputy Collectors.
The lndian Civil Services in years to come, developed into one of the most efficient
and powerful civil services in the world. Its members played a very crucial role in the
framing of the British Policies in lndia and also in maintaining and running the
mighty British empire in lndia. After 1947, independent lndia inherited this system
of Civil Services, which continue in its essentially original form even today.

The A m y and the Police

Very little need be said about the other two pillars of British administration. The
bulk of the Company's army consisted of lndian soldiers. In 1857 the lndians
constituted about. 86% of the total strength of the Company's army. The main reason '

for this large share of Indians, lay in the expenses involved in maintaining an
exclusively British army. Also, given the Company's expansionary policy company's
need to maintain a large army. How Company to rely on an army largely India. ,

However, the officers of the army, as in other branches of administration, were

exclusively British. The highest an lndian could reach was the post of a Subedar.
The army played a crucial role in the expansion of British dominions over the lndian
rulers. However, after the conquest over lndia was over and the rivalry with foreign
powers eliminated. Keeping lndia under subjection became the main task of the
army. A secondary task was to fight England's wars with the Russian, or the French
or with lndian neighbouring countries.

Police, the third Pillar of the British administration was created by Cornwallis. So
far, the function of the Police was performed-by Zamindar through their armed
retainers. They were now stripped off their power, their armed retainers were
disbanded and in its place, a police force was set up. This force was entirely at the
command of the government of the. East lndia Company. This force was grouped
into Thanas, headed by a Daroga who was an Indian. These thanas were initially
under the general supervision of the District Judge. Later the post of District
Superintendent of Police was created to head the police organisation in the district.
Finally the organisation of the police force was handed over to the civil service and
the collector in the district also controlled the police. The main task of the police
was to handle crime and also to prevent conspiracy against the British rule. Later, in
the 20th century the police was employed in a big way to suppress the growing
national movement.

24.3.3 Extent of Indian Participation

(One noticeable feature of the judicial and adminjstrative reforms introduced by the
British was the absence of lndians from responsible offices. This was well in
harmony with the utilitarian thinking on the lndian question represented mainly by
Mill. Moreover Cornwallis, the initiator of these reforms in lndia did not seem to
have much faith in the efficiency and sincerity of the Indians. The field for their
employment was therefore. 'narrowed to subordinate positions such as the Amin and
Police Daroga. This policy of excluding lndians was applied to almost every branch
of the government like army. Police, Civil Services, judiciary and engineering. In fact
it had officially been laid down in 1793 that all higher posts in administration worth
a salary of 500 a year or more could be held only by an Englishman. This was so
mainly because the British were convinced that an administration based on British
ideas, institutions and practices could be firmly established only by Englishmen. The
dominant British thinking of that time seemed to be in favour of providing good
administration for the Indians, not one run by them.
However, after 1813 under Hastings, there started the process of the gradual
lridianisation of the lower branches of services, mainly the judiciary. As the judicial
system was made more extensive, more lndians were included in it. The argument
given was that if justice had to be made locally available then local people should be
involved in it. Bentinck advocated the inclusion of lndians on the grounds of
Impact o f British Rule :
Polity and Society
. also providing the justification in terms of justice, moral*obligation, and local needs
Check Your Progress 2
I ) Write five lines on each of the following
or~ehtingadministration t o the local needs, which could only be defined by the
Indians themselves.
A major reason for lndianisation was the expenses involved. The wars fought under
Hastings, especially the Anglo Burmese war produced a financial crises. This crises
was compounded with the need to make administration more extensive. The
extension of the covenanted services (services held by the Erigl~shmen)was virtually
impossible. So, on the one hand there was the need to make the administration more
extenslve. And on the other hand, was their inability to bear the cost of the extensive
administration, by British standards. The only way out was to recruit lndians in
large numbers to fill subordinate posts as they were cheaper and easily available
compared to Englishmen. This did not threaten the British aspirants for the lucrative
Indians posts, as they did not want to compete for the subordinate jobs in India.
It was mainly for this reason that the claims of the Indian people for a share in
administration were being publically recognised, and the British Government was
etc. A regulation of 1831 placed in the hand of the Indian Judicial officers a large
share of the judicial responsibility. Bentinck was succeeded by Auckland who
increased the power and salary of the Indian Judges.
But it must be remembered that the top posts, involving decision-making authority .
wert reserved strictly for the British till the late 19th and early 20th centuries when
the lndians started making a n entry into the coveted civil services.
i) Rule of Law.
...........................................................................
ii) ~ ~ u a l i t y ' b e f o rLaw.
e
.........................................................
.........................................................
.........................................................
.........................................................
iii) Police
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
....................................................................................
................................................................................
>....,
....................................................................................
iv) Army
.....................................................................................
........................................................................................
..............................................................................................
.......................................................................................
....................................................................................
 Read the following statements and mark right ( d ) or wrong ( X ) Admiriisrmtion and Law
2)
i) Under the new judicial system, the civil and revenue adminlstrat~onwere'
separated from each other.
ii) The existing traditional and religious laws were abolished from the very
beginning under the new system.
iii) The lndian Penal Code was applicable only in Bengal.
iv) lndian participation in the British Services was confined to lower ranks only.

2-4.4 LET US S U M UP
P
In the 19th century India started a process in which new legal and administrative
institutions came into being, grew and took a definite shape. This process was a
product of certain British ideas on the Indian problems from the early 19th century
Q onwards, as well as certain changes in British interests pressing for administrative
reforms. The result was network of laws applicable throughout the country and a
vast administrative structure to implement the laws. This structure was truly modern
i'n nature and pan-Indian in its spread. Its impact, clearly visible only in the 20th
century was somewhat ambivalent in nature. To the British Government it provided
the channels for control over the Indian people, and for greater penetration into
India. To the Indians on the other hand, it provided the ground on which a protest
could be launched and the authority of the British could be challenged.

24.5 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES

Check Your Progress 1

1) See Sub-sec. 24.2.1
2) In your answer you should refer to thechanges in the British interests thereby
necessitating a comprehensive administrative structure in the 19th century. See
Sub-sec. 24.2.2.
Check Your Progress 2
I) i) and ii) See Sub-sec. 24.3.1 iii) and iv) See Sub-sec. 24.3.2
 - - -- - - -

UNIT 23 CONSTITUTIONAL
DEVELOPMENTS (1757-1858)
Structure
23.0 Objectives
23.1 Introduction
23.2 Background
23.3 The Regulating Act, 1773
23.4 Pitts' lndia Act, 1784
I 23.5
23.6
23.7
Charter Act of 1793
Charter Act of 1813
Charter Act of 1833
i
23.8 Charter Act of 1853
I 23.9
23.10
Government of lndia Act. 1858
Let Us Sum Up
23.1 1 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

23.0 OBJECTIVES
After reading this Unit you will :
become ramiliar with the important constitutional devqlopnlents in the first
century of Hritish rule
trace the transition from Company's rule to rule by the Crown
acquaint yourself with the stages in the evolution of the structure of Government,
and
bring out the link between the constitutional changes and the economic and
political interests behind them.

23.1 INTRODUCTION
The English East lndia Company was essentially a commercial body. Following the
principles of mercantilism and to ensure monopolistic profit the company needed
political power hence political activities which resulted in acquiring revenue-yielding
territories. After 1757 it was in a privileged position of yielding political power over
a large section of the population of India.
The authority which controlled the Company was situated far away from lndia in
Britain. The Hritish Ciovernment faced many problems from this situation and
relationship. The Company had becomea great empire combining the role of trader
and an overlord. It was now clear that the power and sovereignty of the Indian
empire was vested in the Company. 7 hr British Government decided that it could no
longer be allowed to remain outside the ambit of the state. Even Clive and Hastings
had held that constitutional relations with the Crown might be desirable.

23.2 BACKGROUND
Establishing the sovereignty of the Crown in place of the Company was yet too bold
a siep t o be taken. That would have directly put a n enormous mass of patronage in
the hands of the government. Again it would have caused much bitterness in India
and among European hations. The wise step was to subject the Company to control
on the basis of current doctrines of constitutional law.
A select committee of Parliament was appointed in April, 1772 t o enquire into the
state of affairs in India. In August the Company begged the Government for a loan
Impact of British: Rule : of 6: 1,00,000.It was surprising that although the servants of the Company collected
Polity and Society
wealth, the Company faced serious financial crisis.
The problem before the British Government was to define the relationsh~pof East
lndia Company and its possessions with the British Government. Another problem
was td determine the way the Company's authorities in Britain were to control the
large number of officials and soldiers working for it in far away India. The question
of providing a single centre of control over farspread British possessions in Bengal,
Madras and Bombay was also causing great concern.
The form of the relationship of the East lndia Company and ~ t possessions
s with
the British Government was most important because it was closely connected with -
party and parliamentary rivalries in Britain. English statesmen were politically
ambitious and English merchants were commercially greedy. Bengal had yielded rich
resources into the hands of the Company. Fabulous wealth brought home by its
officials caused jealousy in the British natian. Mirchants, the growing section of
manufacturers and newly risen 'free enterprisers' were striving to have a share in the
profits of Indian trade and wealth coming from India. Why should East lndia
Company alone enjoy this? They wanted to put a n end to the monopoly of trade
held by the Company. With this end, they criticised the way the Company
administered Bengal.
Many political thinkers and statesmen of Britain were afraid that the Company and
its powerful rich officials would lower the standard of morality of the English nation
and increase corruption in British politics. The seats in the House of Commons were
bought by the Company for its agents. It was feared that the Company, with the
help of money brought from India, might achieve dangerous supremacy in the
British Government.
A new School of economists who were advocating free trade condemned exclusive
companies. Adam Smith in his book, 'Wealth of Nations' wrote that exclusive
companies were causing harm both to countries which estabIish them and the
countries that they govern.
The East India Company's position was unique a t home. King George-Ill patronised
it. It fought with the help of its friends in Parliament. The Parliament decided on a
compromise. A balance was worked out. The British decided t o control the
Company's lndian administration in the interest of Britain's influential elite class as a
whole. The Company was allowed t o continue with its monopoly of Eastern ttade.
The Directors of the Company were given the control of Indian administration.
- - - - -

23.3 THE REGULATING ACT, 1773

In these circumstances. the Parliament passed its first important Act in 1773. called
the Regulating Act t o control the Company's Administration. The Act made changes
in the constitution of the Company at home; the whole of the territories in India
were subjected to some degree of control.
The provision was made in a very efficient manner for the government t o keep
supervision over the Company. Changes were made in the Constitution of the Court
of Directors of the Company. It was required that it should submit to the
Government all communications about civil and military affairs received from Bengal
and revenues of India.
In the field of executive government. the status of Governor of Bengal was raised t o
Governor General. His Council would consist of four members. The Governor
General in Council was given the power to superintend and control the presidencies
of Madras and Bombay in matters of war and peace. In this body was vested the
civil and military administration of the presidency, and government of all the
territorial acquisitions and revenues in the kingdoms of Bengal. Bihar and Orissa.
The Governors of Madras and Bombay were required t o send regularly. to the
Governor General, information connected with government, revenues. o r interests of
the Company. The Governor General in turn was under the direct control of Court
of Directors and kept it fully informed of the affairs concerning the interests of the
Company.
 The Act also provided for the establishment of a Supreme Court of Justice at Constitutional
Developments ( I 757-1858)
Calcutta to give justice to Europeans, their employees and citizens of Calcutta.
Legislative powers were granted to the Governor General and Council to make rules,
ordinances and regulations for the civil government of Fort William and subordinate
factories.
The Regulating Act did not work smoothly in practice. Its defects and weaknesses
were exposed when it was put to working. Supervision of the British government was
ineffective. The Governor General had to face the opposition of his council, who
united against him. He had no power to override them, though in case of an equal
division he had a casting vote. Disunity of the Council prevented it from solving
external and internal problems of a serious nature. They had to often face deadlocks
which impeded smooth working of the administration. The President of Madras arid
Bombay were under the general controlling power of the Governor General and
Council proved inefficient in actual working.

23.4 PITT'S INDIA ACT, 1784

Pitt's India Act was passed in August, 1784. The purpose was to remove defects in
the Regulating Act. Its essential plan was the same. Company's public affairs and its
administration in lndia were to come directly under supreme control of the British
Government. The right of the Company to territorial possessions was however not
touched, so it essentially meant a compromise.
The Act established a Board of Control consisting of six~commissioners,including,
two Cabinet ministers. The Board of Control was to guide and control the work of .
the Court of Directors and the Government of India. They were to control all
matters of civil and military Government of the British territories in India.' A secret
'
committee consisting of three Directors was appointed to take the place of the Court
of Directors in political and military matters.
The Constitution of the Company's government in lndia was revised. The Act
established the principle that the government of lndia be placed under the Governor
General and a Council of three, so that if only one member of the Council supported
him, he could have his way. The Governor General was given a casting vote. The
Act clearly stated that the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay were to be
subordinate to the Presidency of Bengal in all matters of war, diplomatic relations
and revenue.

I The Governor General and council were made subordinate to British Government.
They were forbidden to declare war and enter into any treaty without the sanction of
the directors or the secret committee.
Pitt's lndia Act is important in many aspects. The President and the b o a 4 were
destined to be the future Secretary of State for lndia and his council. It helped in
uniting lndia by giving supreme power to Governor General over the Governors of
Presidencies.
By reducing one member of the Executive Council of the Governor General his
position was strengthened. The Governor General and Governors were given the
authority to override their councils. The possessions of the Company in India came
under the supremacy of the British Parliament.
The Act laid the foundation of a centralised administration-a process which
k reached its climax towards the close of the nineteenth century. Parliament's control
over East lndia Company was tightened, a trend which remained conspicuous till the
Crown directly took over the Government of lndia in 1858.

I The Act had many defects too. It had divided authority and responsibility. The
Governor General had two masters, the Court of Directors and the Board of
Control. Out of this conflict of authority emerged the view of the primacy of the
1 man on the spot. Cornwallis accordingly stretched his authority to the widest

I
I
possible limit. The actual state of affairs were not known to the Home Government.
This gave Governor General an opportunity to act in his discretion even on matters
of importance.
I
Impact of British Rule : The Government of India was to be carried on till 1857 according to the framework
Polity and Society given in the Pitt's lndia Act. Cornwallis, when appointed Governor General, insisted
on having the power to override his council in important matters such as safety,
peace abd interests of the Crown in India. The Act of 1786 gave him the powers he
asked for. The offices of the Governor General and the Commander-in-Chief were to
be united in the same person.
Declaratory Act of 1788 gave full powers and supremacy to the Board of control.
This wa6 a step towards transfer of powers of the Company to the Crown.

Check Your Progress 1

I) Why dtd the Rntish Covcrrin:cnt decttie that the a!fat15 of the 1 a\t ::l(i~d
Company should no .longer remain okt\lde thc~rcontrol)

2) Which weaknesses of the Regulating Act were removed by the Pitt's India Act?
Answer in five lines.

23.5 CHARTER ACT OF 1793

The Charter was to be renewed in 1793. Henry Dundas, President of the Board of
Control, was in favour of renewing the Charter and allowing the Company to retain
its political privileges and responsibilities. Cornwallis also supported this stand. The
Charter of the Company was renewed for 20 years and it was declared that it would
be allowed to continue with the possession of all territories for the next 20 years.
The Governor General's and Governors' powers to overrule their council were
emphasiked and explained. This power had been given specially to Cornwallis in
1786. Governor General's control over the Presidencies was strengthened. He was
allowed /to issue orders and directions to any Government and Preside'ncy of lndia
during his absence from Bengal without previous consultation with his council. He
could exercise all executive power vested in the Central Government.
A regular code of all regulations that could be enacted for the internal Government
of the BFitish territory in Bengal was framed. The Regulation applied to the rights.
persons and property of the Indian people and it bound the Courts to regulate their
decisioni by the rules and regulations contained therein. It also required that, "all
laws relqting to the rights of the person and property should be printed with
translation in Indian languages and prefixed with statements of grounds on which
they were enacted, "so that the people should become familiar with their rights.
privileges and immunities.
The Act of 1793 thus laid the foundation of government by written laws and Constitutional
regulations in British lndia in place of the personal rule of the past rulers. The L)evelopments ( 1757-1858)
interpretation of regulations and written laws was to be done by the Courts. The
concepts of a civil law. enacted by a secular human agency and applied universally,
was an important change.
Indians were not given positions where they could share the influence o r authority.
Indians were excluded "to satisfy the demand of English men for lucrative jobs."

23.6 CHARTER ACT OF 1813

Enquiries into the Company's affairs were ordered before another renewal of the
Charter due in 1813. In 1808, the House of Commons appointed a Committee of
investigations. Its report on judicial and police arrangements was submitted in 1812.
The government decided to allow British subjects access to lndia with their ships.
The Home Government had specifically directed the Government of lndia not to
follow the policy of conquests. But aggressive policies in lndia resulted in acquisition
of territory. Lord Wellesley and Marquis of Hastings followed an imperialistic
policy. The Company's power had spread t o the whole of lndia except Punjab,
Nepal and Sind. Company requested for financial help from the Parliament due to
overspending in wars and setback in trade. There was also a lot of agitation against
continuance of commercial monopoly by the East lndia Company. Independent
merchants demanded ending of the same. They wanted a share in the trade with
India. The teachings of Adam Smith and his school were by then dominating the
politics of Britain. Benthamite Reformists, the Evangelicals a n d the Traditionalists
tried to influence British politics and policies towards British India. Their foremost
interest was to safeguard the stability of the Empire.
The Act of 1813 renewed the Company's Charter for 20 years, but it asserted the
sovereignty of the British Crown over the lndian territories held by the Company,
Company was allowed t o have territorial possessions for another 20 years.
The Company was deprived of its monopoly of trade with India. It was allowed to
continue with its monopoly of trade with China for 20 years. The lndian trade was
thrown open to all British
- merchants.

23.7 CHARTER ACT OF 1833

The Industrial Revolution had made Britain a manufacturer of cotton textiles and
other factory goods. A vast country like lndia could consume a large number of
manufactured goods and provide raw materials as well. Industrialists were keen to
conquer the vast lndian markets. The East India Company served the ends of British
imperialism. Their restrictive policies had led t o the ruin of indigenous industries.
Laissez Faire had become the basic philosophy of the new industrial policy in
Britain. There was a popular desire to free trade from restrictions and monopolies.
When it wastime for the renewal of the Charter in 1833 there was widespread agitation for
abolition of the Company and take over of administration by the Crown. A
Parliamentary enquiry was held.
The political atmosphere in Britain was full of enthusiasm for reforms. The well
known Reform Act was passed in 1832. The country was enjoying the prosperity
achieved with the Industrial Revolution. It could afford to adhere t o the policy of
free trade. Slavery was abolished in the whole of the British empire.
The Act of 1833 was a great landmark in the constitutional history on India.
The monopoly of tea trade with China was abolished. The Company was t o have
only political functions. lndia was t o pay the Company's debts. Its shareholders were
guaranteed a dividend of 10.5 per cent per annum. The union of the trader and the
sovereign was finally dissolved. the lndian possessions of the Company were t o be
held in trust for the British Crown. The President of the Board of-Control became
Impact of British Rule : the minister for lndian affairs. The Directors were to act as expert advisors of the
Polity and Society President of the Board of Control. The Board of Control was invested with authority
to superintend, direct and control the affairs of the Company relating to the
Government or revenues of the lndian territory which vested in the Company in
trust for the English Crown.
Governor General of Bengal became the Governor General of India. The Governor
General in Council was to control, superintend and direct the civil and military
affairs of the Company. Bombay, Bengal, Madras and other regions were subjected
to complete control of the Governor General in Council. Central Government was to
have complete control over raising of revenues and expenditure. Expenses of
Provincial Governments, creation of new offices, and obedience of all members of
the Government of Bombay, Madras were under strict control of the Central
Government.
By the Act of 1833, the Governor General in Council were given the power to
legislate for the whole of the British territories in India. These laws were applicable
to all persons, British or lndian foreigners or others and to the servants of the
Company. They were enforceable by all cou'rts in India.
The Act added one more member to the Executive council of the Governor General.
the Law Member, whose work was fully legislative. He had no vote in the Council
and he was to attend meetings, on invitation. But he practically became a regular
member of the council. Lord Macaulay, the Law member, influenced't he educational
policy of the government for a number of years.
The number of members of the Presidency Councils was reduced to two. Bombay
and Madras were to keep their separate armies under the Commanders-in-Chief.
They were to be under the control of the Central Government.
The Act provided for the codification of laws in India. There were several type of
laws before 1833. There were the English Acts, Presidency Regulations, Hindu Law,
Muslim Law, Customary Law etc. By this Act the Governor General was empowered
to appoint the Law Commission to study, collect and codify various rules and
regulations prevalent in India. The lndian Penal Code and Codes of Civil and
Criminal Law were enacted by the efforts of lndian Law Commission.
Section 87 of the Act declared, "that no native or natural born subject of the crown
resident in lndia should be by reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent,
colour or any of them be disqualified for any place in the company's service." It was
a momentous declaration. Lord Morley later described it as the most important
lndia Act passed by the British Parliament till 1909. This was not of much practical
importhnce, since nothing was done and Indians remained excluded from higher
posts in civil and military service.

The Charter Act of 1833 made no provision to secure the nomination of Indians to
the covenanted services of the company. Yet the clause proclaiming on
discrimination was of great importance for it became the sheet-anchor of political
agitation in lndia towards the end of the century.

Check Your Progress 2

I ) Which important source of profit did the East lndia Company lose in 1833'?
Write in five lines.

.........................................................................................
.........................................................................................
.........................................................................................
.........................................................................................

2 ) What were the main clauses of the Charter Act of 1793? Write in ten lines.
 Constitutional
Developments (I757-1858)

23.8 CHARTER ACT OF 1853

Politically conscious Indians made efforts to bring to an'end the reactionary
government of the East lndia Company. Raja Rammohan Roy went to Britain and
represented India's case before the Parliamentary Select Committee. The Bombay
Association and the Madras Native Association sent petitions on similar lines. But
there was strong opposition to it from leaders of different parties, ministers,
president of the Board of Control and Company's Directors. They favoured the
renewal of the Charter.
By the Act of 1853, separation of the executive and the legislative functions was
carried a step further by the provision of additional members of council for the
purpose of legislation.
The Law Member was made a full member of the Executive Council of the
Governor General. The consent of the Governor General was made necessary for all
legislative proposals. In this framework the central,legislature was completed.
Central Legislative Council was to consist of one representative each from the
Provinces. Measures concerning a province were to be considered in the presence of
representatives from that province. The Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Calcutta
was to be the ex-officio member of the Council. Two more civilians might be
nominated by the Governor General, but this authority was never exercised.
The Council in its legislative capacity was to consist of 12 members. These included
-
the Governor General, Commander-in-Chief, four members of his council and six
legislative members. .
All vacancies in lndia were to be filled in by competitive examinations. Lord
Macaulay was appointed the President of the Committee.
The number of Directors was reduced from 24 to 18. Six of them were to be
nominated by the Crown.
The Company was allowed to retain possessions of the Indian territories " i ~trust for
Her Majesty, her heirs and successors until Parliament shall otherwise provide."
The "Legislative Councillors" were neatly distinguished from the "Executive
Councillors" and by doing so, legislation was for the first time treated as a special
function of the government requiring special machinery and special procedure. The
business of the Council was conducted in public. The procedure it adopted for
transaction of business was much the same as in the British Parliament. Questions
were put, papers were demanded and information was asked for and Government
was criticised for its lapses and excesses.
Certain misgivings were raised in the minds of Home authorities lest a representative
system might not pave its way into the fortress of their autocratic machinery. The
authorities in Britain felt when the Council which consisted of British officials only,
showed boldness and inquisitiveness and pried into the field of the Executive. Its
petitions for redress of grievances were presented as defiance of the parental
authority of the Home Government and public rejection of certain bills offended the
authorities in Britain. No Indian element was associated with the Legislative
Councils.
Impact of British Rule : In practice the Legislative Council threatened to alter the whole structure of the
Polity and Society Indian Government. It had developed into "an Anglo-Indian House of Commons."

23.9 GOVERNMENT OF INDIA ACT. 1858

As the Charter Act of 1853 did not give the East lndia Company the right to
govern lndia for another 20 years, it gave an opportunity to the Home Government
to step in and take the place of the East lndia Company in India. This process was
hastened by the happenings of 1857, or the s o called 'Mutiny'.
Whigs and Tories had joined hands to complete without delay the process of
extendihg crown government over India. Lord Palmerston, the British Prime
Ministdr, declared his Government's decision to assume directly the Government of
lndia by the British Crown. John Stuart Mill prepared-a dignified and weighty
petition which was presented by the Company against the Government decision t o
both the Houses of Parliament. But no petition could any longer stem the tide of
mounting criticism against the Company's administration. Lord Stanley. President of
the Board of Control introduced a bill for the 'Better Government' of lndia which
became an Act of Parliament in August 1858.
The Government of lndia passed from the hands of the English East lndia Company
to the crown. The armed forces of the company were transferred t o the crown.
The Board of control and court of Directors were abolished. Their place was taken
by the Secretary of State of lndia and his lndia Council. They were to govern lndia
in the name of her majesty. The Secretary of State was t o sit in Parl~ament.He was
a cabinet minister of England and as such was responsible t o Parliament. Ultimate
power over lndia remained with Parliament.
The Act created a n lndia council of fifteen members. It was t o advise the Secretary
of State who could overrule its decisions. Approval of the Council was essential in
financial matters. Most of the members of the lndia Council were those who had
retired from Indian services.
The Secretary of State was given the power of sending and receiving secret messages
and despatches from the Governor General without the necessity of communicating
them t o the lndia Council. The Secretary of State was t o present t o the House of
C o m q o n s periodically report on the moral and material progress of India.
The Government of India in its dealings with England was guided by the directions
laid down by the Secretary of State in Council. All matters concerning legislation.
land revenue. public works, railways, jobs, new expenditure and policies were rigidly
scrutinised and controlled by the Secretary of State. The Rules and Regulations made
in lndia by the secretary of state were t o be laid on the table of the House of
Commons.
The Governor General became known from now as the Viceroy or Crown's
representative. In matters of policy and its execution the viceroy was increasingly
reduced to a subordinate position in relation to the British Government. The
Govetnrnent of lndia was finally directly controlled from London.

Check Your Progress 3

I ) T o what extent wab the revolt of t857 responbible lor the takeover of the I n d ~ a n
dovernment by the Crown !' Write in five line.\.

...................................................................................

2) What were the power5 of the Secretary ol State and the Viceroy under the
Gnvernrnrnt i > t Indtn Act of 1858 '7
 Constitutional
Developments (1757-1858)

1 23.10 LET US SUM UP

The need for constitutional change arose after the East lndia Company became the
political power in 1757. The British Government was no longer willing t o allow the '
Company's affairs t o continue unsupervised. Pressure from merchants and
manufacturers t o end the monopoly of the Company mounted. Public opinion was
critical of corruption in the Government in Bengal. Free enterprise became a popular
slogan.
The Regulating Act of 1773 accordingly put a check -on the powers of the Company.
Its administration was subjected t o supervision by the British Government. The
setting u p of the Supreme Court at Calcutta was t-he first step towards establishing a
new structure of Government.
Pitt's lndia Act further strengthened the powers of the Government vis-a-vis the
Company. In lndia authority was centralised in the person of the Governor-General
who was answerable to the British Government through the Board ef Control.
The Charter Act of 1813 ended the prized monopoly of the Company over trade
with India. With this a n era begun in 1600 ended. The Company's control over
revenue. administration and appointments was untouched. Its monopoly of the
China trade continued.
The Charter Act of 1833 ended the Company's monopoly of the China trade. The
Act also declared that n o Indian subject would face discrimination o n the grounds of
creed, descent, colour etc.
The Charter'Act of 1853 was a holding measure. The Government of lndia Act of
1858 vested authority in the Secretary of State and the Viceroy. They became the
twin pillars on which the structure of Government rested. The rule of the Crown was
finally established in place of Company's rule.

23.11 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
I ) See Section 23.2
2) Read Sections 23.3 and 23.4 before writing your answer.

Check Your Progress 2

1) See Section 23.7
2) See Section 23.5

Check Your Progress 3

I) See Section 23.9
2) See Section 23.9
 -

UNIT 25 SOCIAL POLICY A N D INDIAN

RESPONSE
Structure
25.0 Objectives
25.1 Introduction
25.2 Historiography of Colonial Policy Formation
25.3 Early Social Policy of the British
25.4 Changes in Colonial Social lntervention
25.4.1 lntanticide
25.4.2 Sati
25.4.3 Shvery
25.5 The British Policy and the lndian Response : An Assessment
25.6, Let Us Sum Up
25.7 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

25.0 OBJECTIVES
Aftdr reading this Unit you will learn :
the factors which shaped the colonial social policy
the early social policy of the British in lndia
svbsequent British intervention in lndian social practices, and
the impact of British social policies, and the lndian response.

25.1 INTRODUCTION
Tha latter half of the 18th century saw the English East lndia Company emerge as a
victorious commercial military power in Bengal after its victories a t the Battles of
Plassey and Buxar. The remaining decades of the 18th century and the early 19th
century witnessed the slow and halting transformation of the British Company from
trader-conquerors t o rulers. This shift necessitated the establishment of institutional
inftjastructures and a definite policy perspective for governing the subject population.
This process was marked by an initial dependence on pre-colonial institutions and
mekhanisms of rule, followed by ad hoc modifications in them, finally culminating in
reordering af the institutions of government.
Economic and intellectual developments in-Britain, combined with the requirements
and limits of the newly established colonial government of lndia provide the context
for the formulation of state policies i n colonial India.

25.2 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF COLONIAL POLICY

FORMATION
T h t study of colonial policy becomes important t o understand the state's
intervention in society. Early British administrators and subsequent lndian
nationalist economists like R.C. Dutt, who commented on British policies in lndia,
in spite of their opposing views shared certain common assumptions. Both viewed
the colonial state as a monolithic entity which had the power t o effect
transformations in lndian society if it chose to. Following from this assumption it
was logical t o focus on the upper levels of the state machinery to understand the
direction and nature of state policy.
Later, Marxist writers such as R a j n ~Palme Dutt in their study of British policy
formulation focused o n the requirements of the metropolitan economy. Another
I noticeable stream in the historiography of this subject has focused on the multiple
ideological influences on colonial policy makers as the dominant determinant of
policy formulation. More recent studies at the regional and district levels have tried
to counter the earlier preoccupation with the monolithic colonial state as the prime
variable in the framing of policies. These works attribute great significance to local
power configurations in determining the final outcome of state policies.
Social Policy and
lndian Response

25.3 EARLY SOCIAL POLICY OF THE BRITISH

The term social policy covers wide range of policies pertaining to law. education, ,
family, criminality, status ranking, social information gathering and various other
similar kinds of state intervention for the collective life of the governed population
with the object of regulating it. Given the extremely wide coverage of the term 'social
policy' and the fact that some of these areas have already been covered in earlier
Units, we shall concentrate in this Unit on British attitudes towards certain lndian
attention and action in early colonial period. It may be mentioned at the outset that
most of our discussions refer largely to Bengal. Being the headquarters of the
Company's government in lndia and its early subjugation to British rule, Bengal
provided a laboratory where the government developed many of its early state
policies. Bengal was also the region where there existed a substantial number of
educated middle class people who played a role in evolving a social policy. The
economic activities of the British in Calcutta and the spread of western education
among its upper classes contributed to the exhilaration of social and cultural life in
the city. he' Western educated Bengali elite, therefore. actively discussed and
responded to British policies. apart from trying to shape its formulation.
Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of lndia, was in favour of creating an
English bureaucracy, which would be well versed in lndian languages and responsible
to lndian traditions. In 1784 Hastings noted that "Every accumulation of knowledge
and especially such as is obtained by social communication with people over whom
we exercise dominion founded on the right of conquest, is useful to the stage : it is
the gain of humanity ......" For Hastings the mastery over traditional lndian
languages provided the key to understanding lndia and communicating with the
subject population. With this end in mind he drafted a proposal for creating a
professorship in Persian at Oxford. Civil servants were encouraged to learn Persian
and Hindustani before coming to India. Since the Company took official action on
the issue of language training only as late as 1790, Hastings as an immediate
solution. gathered around himself a group of civil servants who we're dedicated to the
study and translation of lndian texts on law and jurisprudence. To encourage such
activity. Hastings offered attractive financial inducement for translation exercises.
Under his patronage Bengali became the first Sanskrit based vernacular to be studied
systematically by Englishmen. Nathaniel Halched, a close aide of Hastings compiled
and translated into English a set of Hindu customary and religious laws. In 1788 he
published a Grammar of the Bengali Language.
Hasting's efforts at reproducing Company documents in lndian languages promoted
the beginning of printing and publishing in Calcutta. Warren Hastings was also
instrumental in founding the Asiatic Society which was to help in 'rediscovering' the
early traditions of Indians. The establishment of the Calcutta Madrassa was another
step in this direction.
The cultural and social policy during Hasting's governor generalship has often been
explained as one inspired by the ideology of British Orientalism. It must be kept in
mind that this ideology also fitted in with the requirements and limits of the British
empire in India. Knowledge about the subject population, their social customs,
manners and codes were essential prerequisites for developing. Permanent
institutions of rule in lndia, Hasting's policy to rule the conquered in their own way
and resist anglicization reflected a combination of Orientalist conceptions and
elements of political pragmatism. Early British oficial reports on the conditions of
the Malabar on the West Coast exhibit the above discussed tendency to view native
social practices sympathetically even when they differed from Western norms. For
instance late 18th century reports describe the Nair custom of matriliny and
polyandry without contempt. Company officials reported on polyandry amongst Nair
Impact of British Rule : women. explaining it as a consequence of the marital profession of the Nayar males.
Polity and Society
Later in the nineteenth century matrilineal inheritance came to be viewed as
'unnatural' and Nayar female polyandry was condemned as 'concubinage' and
'immoral'.

Check Your Progress I

1) What are the various trends in historical writings on colonial policy formulation?
Write in 50 ~ c ~ r d s .

2) Wha: u a s the cultural a n d social policy of the Hnt~shduring Warren Hastirigs

Governor (jeneralship'? Write in ten line>.

25.4 CHANGES IN COLONIAL SOCIAL

INTERVENTION
Sinct the end of Hasting's tenure as governor-general the attitude and policies of the
lndian Government slowly and hesitatingly but progressively moved in the direction
of cautiously intervening in lndian social institutions. Orientalism which was the
characteristic feature of Hastings period now came to be criticized by a variety of
ideological streams which shared the belief that lndian society needed urgent
modernization and westernization. The Evangelical challenge led by William
Wilberforce and Charles Grant (who later became the President of the Company's t

Board of Control) asserted that Hinduism was based on superstition. idolatory and
the tyranny of the priests. Their avowed objectives were to modernize lndians by
Christian missionary proselytization. The 'Radicals' headed by Jeremy Bentham.
James Mill and John Stuart Mill based their ideas on utilitarian nations of reason
and science. They advocated happiness of the greatest number rather than liberty as
the aim of good government. The protection of individual life and property were
seen as the means to achieve this goal.
These contending ideologies provided the ideological determinants of policy
formulations. Pragmatic considerations of not provoking widescale resentment and
revolt acted as severe constraint in the wRolesale application of Western ideals on
India. We shall now turn tb detailed study of some specific instances of
governmental intervention in social practices.

25.4.1 Infanticide
The first traditional social custom which was suppressed by the British lndian
government was the practice of infanticide. Female infanticide was prevalent in many
parts of India. The difficulty and expenses incurred in marrying girls amongst the Social Policy and
Rajputs, the Jats, the Mewatis and the Rajput Rajkumars of Benares gave rise to the Indian Response
practice of killing female infants by starvation or poisoning. Jonathan Duncan, the
Resident of Benares was the first official who tried to curb this social evil. Instead of
unilaterally abolishing infanticide by legislation Duncan met the local Rajkumars
and convinced them that the killing of female infants went against the tenets of
Hindu scriptures. Duncan knew that in the prevailing social system female children
were an economic liability to their families and he promised monetary compensation
by the Government if the Rajkurnars abandoned this practice.
Reverend Ward in his book A View of the History, Literature and Religion of the
Hindoos provides a detailed description of the practice of infanticide in Bengal.
William Carey, a missionary in the College of Fort William vehemently argued for
abolishing these customs. A member of the Governor General's Council who was
sympathetic to the Serampore Missionaries pointed out these social evils to
Wellesley. Carey after consulting Hindu pundits submitted a petition to the
government for immediately suppressing these practices. Around the same time the
Calcutta magistrates sent a letter to the Vice-President-in-Council stating that
infanticide had never enjoyed sanction under the Mughal or the British governments.
They also mentioned that no public opposition was encountered when the police
prevented infanticide.
Ultimately a law banning infanticide was enacted as Regulation V1 of 1802.
The abolition of infanticide which appears to have been effective in Bengal did not
result in any significant opposition by the public. Probably its limited practice in
Bengal and the absence of religious sanction allowed the British to stamp it out
easily. The banning of infanticide in other parts of India does not appear to have been
effective, as this practice continued even after its prohibition.
In the case of suppression of infanticide the initiative for change came for local level
officials and missionaries. The Governor General gave his assent only after
ascertaining the views of the Hindu pundits and the unlikely possibility of such a
measure causing public hostility.

25.4.2 Sati
The next significant state intervention in Indian social life was the suppression of
widow burning or sati. This practice was widespread in all the three Presidencies at
the beginning of the 19th century with the larger number of reported incidents being
in the lower districts of Bengal.
OFFICIALLY REPORTED INCIDENTS O F SAT1 IN THE LOWER PROVINCES
. 1815-1823
No. of incidents
Calcutta
Dacca
Murshidabad
Patna
Benares
Bareilly
Total

Widow burning was practised not only by the Brahmans but also other castes.
However, in proportion to the total population the incidence of Sati was very
limited. For example during the 1825 cholera epidemic when more than 25,000
people died, the total number of widow burnings amounted to only 63 in Bakarganj
district of Bengal.
As early as 1795 Colebrook tried to demonstrate that this practice constituted a
departure from the authentic Vedic tradition. Though Sati had been a vogue from
very ancient times in India, a number of Indian rulers including Akbar, Jahangir,
Guru Arnardas, the Maratha chief Ahalya-bai, the Peshwas, the King of Tanjore and
the Portuguese in Goa tried to discourage this practice.
Impact of British Rule : No sustained and systematic effort was made to suppress this inhuman practlce till
Polity and Society the 19th century. While the other European companies in Bengal had banned widow
burruing 'in their territories, the Calcutta Supreme Court disailowed it only in one
part of the city.
The Igovernment's early attitude towards this practice can be seen when in 1789,
Brooke, the collector of Shahabad disallowed an act of Sati. Referring the case of
Governor-General Cornwallis, he noted "The rites and superstitions of the Hindu
religion should be allowed with the most unqualified tolerance, but a practice at
which human nature shudders cannot permit without particular instruction"
Cormwallis replied asking him not to employ coercive methods and try and persuade
the people to stop this practice. In 1797 the Midnapore District Magistrate who
stopped the burning of a child widow was asked by the Governor General to avoid
coercion and use persuasion.
Led by William Carey, the Serampore Missionaries conducted a survey on widow
burqing in the vicinity of Calcutta. Carey got the pundits employed by the college of
Fort William to collect Hindu shastras containing information on Sati. After
studying these he concluded that whereas Hinduism did not forbid it, it did not
make it -obligatory either. Carey then sent a memorial to Wellesley for curbing Sati.
In 1805 Wellesley asked the Judges of the Nizamat Adalat to find out to what extent
the practice of Sati was based on Hindu religion. The Pundits of the court declared
that forcible burning of widows was not permitted. The court also noted that %ti
being widely practised and popular among Hindus, any measure to abolish it would
result in considerable dissatisfaction amongst them.
In 1813 after some vacillation the governmen't fixed the minimum age for a widow to
become Sati at sixteen years and declared that a mother of a child less than three
yearb could not become Sati unless another person undertook to look after the child.
In 1819 and 1821 two Judges of the Supreme Court pleaded for an immediate
suppression of Sati arguing that such a measure would not result in any serious
public resentment. This plea was rejected by the government. In 1821 Lord Hastings
refused to authorize the total abolition of Sati fearing it would incite religious
fanalticisms. Hasting's successor Lord Amherst was against the prohibition of Sati
becaluse he feared that such a measure would have immediate adverse repercussions
on the sepoys of the army. The Bombay government and Charles Metcalfe in Delhi
were also not in favour of immediately suppressing this custom.
While the government dithered over this issue the Westernized Bengali intelligentsia
led by Rammohan Roy actively agitated for the abolition of Sati. In 1818 he sent a
petition to the government urging them to abolish this practice and counter
orthodox Hindu demands against prohibition. A vigilance committee was organized
to slirictly implement the age restrictions on the practice of Sati. Rammohan engaged
in a polemical debate with the supporters of Sati such as Kasinath Tarkavagish
(18 IY), wrote pamphlets and newspaper articles to mobilize public opinion against
this customs. He used his journal Sambnd Kaumudi to further his campaign, with
papers like Samachar Darpan and B q a d u t supporting him. The Samachar
Chandrika became the organ of his orthodox Hindu opponents. s

Meanwhile the Christian missionaries attracted English public attention to the evils
of %ti and the urgent need for its prohibition by the government, in Britain. The
Parliament instructed the Indian government to publish all the available information
on %ti.
In spite of the mounting demand for its abolition in India and Britain the
parljament, and the company authorities in England did not want to take any
decision themselves, not knowing what reaction it would produce in India. Finally it
was left to Bentinck, the Governor-General to legislate against Widow burning in
December 1829.
The abolition of widow-burning by the government did not result in any visible
disaffection or resentment among the Indians. As in the case of infanticide, the
initiative for banning widow burning came mainly from the Western educated Indian
intelligentsia, Christian missionaries and individual administrators. The marked
procrastination by the Company's government in abolishing it was mainly due to its
extreme fear of inciting a violent Indian reaction.
25.4.3 Slavery . Social Policy and
Indian Response
Slavery was another institution which came under attack in British India. Slavery as
a system of labour exploitation was prevalent in lndia till its abolition in 1843. The
extent and economic significance of the slave labour in general economic terms,
however, varied greatly from region to region. In Bombay and Calcutta slaves
constituted an article of trade; Arab traders brought slaves from Arabia and Africa
for sale. In order to survive famines, such as the one in 1803, a large number of poor
offered themselves in the slave market.
In Madras. unlike the other two presidencies, predial slavery was very important.
This form of slavery was very significant in the region's agricultural production.
Malabar. Coorg and Canara were the chief areas where widespread predial slavery
existed.
Procrastination was once again the most evident feature in the Government of lndia
attitude towaqds the abolition of slavery. As early as 1774 the Government was
concerned about this practice. Evangelical propaganda against slavery led by
Wilberforce helped in focusing public attention in Britain on the evils of slavery in
India. Though Britain abolished slave trade in her dominions in 1820. the Company
in lndia acknowledged the legality of slavery on the grounds that it was a traditional
practice with religious sanction.
The Charter Act of 1832 directed the lndian Government to ameliorate the condition
of slaves "assoon as extinction shall be practicable and safe, and should prepare
drafts of laws and regulations for the purposes aforesaid."
This led to the appointment of the lndian Law Comm.ission of 1835. Though its
primary task was to frame a Penal code. the law commission drew up an anti-slavery
Report in 1841. The Law Commission requested the government that some of.its
members be permitted to conduct local level enquiries into the practice. The
government refused this request.
In 1839 the Law Commission submitted a Draft Act whereby inflicting corporal
punishment on slaves was made a penal offence. Before taking any action on the
Draft Act the Commissioners discussed the possibility of such a measure exciting
public disaffection. Regulation X of 181 1 (prohibition of import of slaves by land),
Regulation IV of 1832 (prohibition of inter provincial movement of slaves) and the
practical abolition of slavery in Delhi were reviewed and seen to have had no hostile
repercussions. Several members of the commission were against immediate passing
of the Act and letters were sent to ascertain the views of the Bombay and Madras
governments on the issue. The Bombay government did not feel the need for any
special law and the Madras administration also doubted the expediency of such an
Act.
Under pressure of parliamentary opinions. the law commission was again asked to
frame a new Act which after considerable delay on the part of the lndian
Government was passed as Act V of 1845, abolishing slavery in lndia.
The impact of the Act suppressing slavery was however very limited. The most
crucial provision in the Act merely stated that no claim to the labour of a slave was
to be recognized in a British court of law and that a government official could no
longer force a slave to return to his master.
The more important factor in the decline of slavery was the generation of souices of
alternate employment in the later 19th-century in plantation and public works.

25.5 THE BRITISH POLICY A N D THE INDIAN .

RESPONSE : AN ASSESSMENT
The above discussion suggests significant shifts in British attitude towards lndian
traditions and culture. The changing servitor role of the lndian colony and the
pragmatic political considerations of the lndian government produced the context
which defined the direction of state policies in India.
Impact of British Rule The conscious attempts at state intervention in India's social practices and customs
Polity and Society were extremely limited in their impact. However, the colonial government by altering
the political configuration of precolonial India did trigger off significant structural
social changes. The British consciously denied political power and privileges to the
precolonial ruling Indian groups while recognising their social and caste status.
Education was also an important instrument of social changes, perhaps more
effective than legislation. (See Unit 21).
The small Western educated Bengali intelligentsia epgaged in debates with the state
on policy matters, responded to policy changes and independently tried to bring
about social changes in Bengal. This groups of intelligentsia which included
personalities like Rammohan Roy and Keshub Chandra Sen were impressed by
Britain's progress and convinced that Indian society needed urgent social change. At
the same time the resisted anglicization as well as Christian missionary attempts to
convert Indians.
Intellectuals like Rammohan Roy offered to their countrymen a reformed Indian
religion, vedantism, free of superstition and priesthood. The Brahmo Samaj, which
was their organizatienal form coupled Hindu reformation with an adoption of
progressive Western values. Unfortunately the Brahmos and the Bengal reformist
groups could mot extend their campaign beyond the restricted Western educated'
urban Bengali population. The message of social reform, however, spread gradually
to many parts of India and brought about reform movement under Indian initiative,
independent of governmental support. (See Units 26 and 27).
It may therefore be reiterated that the pragmatic considerations of the British Indian
government acted as a strong check to the translation of reformist ideas into state
policies in India. Social and religious institutions were an area in which the
government intervened with great caution. Even the policy of limited state
intervedtion in social affairs, surveyed above, suffered a total reversal in the period
after the 1857 revolt. From then onwards social reform was left mainly to indigenous
initiative.

Cheek Your Progress 2

I ) What were the reasons for the changes that took place In the colon~al\dciai
policy in the period after Warren Hastings?

2) Write on the development and the impact of British policies with refsre~lceto
Sati, Infanticide. and slavery.
 Some Useful Books
for this Block

25.6 LET U S S U M U P
After reading this Unit we hope that you have grasped the various ideological and
material factors which provided the direction for British social policy in India. The
Government of lndia cautiously intervened in Indian social practices under pressure
from individual administrators. missionaries and Indian social reformers. However,
the impact of these policies (except in the field of education) was extremely limited
and did not provoke any significant lndian response. In the post 1857 period even
these limited efforts at social changes were consciously abandoned by the colonial
government.

25.7 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
\

Check Your Progress I

I) See Section 25.2
2) See Section 25.3

Check Your Progress 2

I) You should gather your information from Section 25.3 and 25.4 and then
compare the two.
2) See Section 25.4

SOME USEFUL BOOKS FOR THIS BLOCK

Datta K.K.(ed.), A Comprehensive History of lndia Volume XI.
Chandra, Bipan, Modern India.
Kopf. David. British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance
Stokes. Eric, English Utilitarians and India
 UNIT 1 IMPERIALISM AND COLONIALISM:
A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
Structure
1.0 Objectives
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Colonialism: Various View Points
1.2.1 Nature of Colonialism
1.2.2 Impact on Colony
1.3 Stages of Colonialism
1.3.1 First Stage
1.3.2 Secondstage
1.3.3 Third Stage
1.4 L e t U s S u m U p
1.5 Key Words
1.6 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

This Unit presents a broad discussion of the phenomenon of imperialism arid

colonialism and tries to show how this can be helpful in understanding the basic features
of historical development in India under the British colonial rule over a period of t w o
centuries.
After going through this Unit you will be able to learn:
what is colonialism, its nature and its various stages,
the links between colonialism and the world capitalist system, and
how under colonialism the Indian economy and society were completely
iubordinated to British economy and political control.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Imperialism refers to the process of capitalist development which leads the capitalist
countries to conquer and dominate pre-capitalist countries of the world. Under this
head, we deal with the development of capitalism in advanced capitalist countries, the
mutual relations among advanced capitalist countries, and the subjugation of
pre-capitalist countries by a capitalist country (also described here as metropolis or
metropolitan country). More narrowly, the term imperialism is used to denote or
describe the relations of political and economic domination between metropolis and
the country it subjugates or dominates.
The country which isso subjugated by a metropolitan capitalist country is described as
a colony, and what happens in a colony is colonialism. The total system of imperialist
domination of a pre-capitalist country is colonialism. The study of imperialism and
colonialism is closely co-related and, in a way, we shall be discussing both. But here we
shall concentrate more on the study of colonialism while leaving major aspects of
imperialism to be taken up in the study of development of capitalism.

1.2 COLONIALISM: VARIOUS VIEW POINTS

What does colonialism mean'! Is it merely the political control by one country ur.
another, or does it indicate a process of economic subordination of one country to
another? The understanding of colonialism has varied from one scholar to another. In
I thissection we will introduce you to va~ious view points on colonialism as well as other
I

I related aspects:
c-.nd i) One view represented by a large number of sociologists, political scientists and
economists is that colonial society was basically a traditional society or, in other words
colonialism retained basicsocio-economic elements and structures of pre-colonial
' society. Post-colonial societies then begin the task of modemisation from a traditional
'socio-economic structure. Many others see colonialism as representing a transitional
society, that is, a society which was being transformed economically, socially and
politically from a traditional, pre-colonial society into a modern capitalist society. They
believe that, given enough time, colonialism would have succeeded in the task if it had
not been overthrown.
ii) Still other writers hold that colonialism produces a dualistic society in which ohe
sector is modern and capitalist while another sector is traditional and pre-capitalist. The
two sectors exist side-by-side without either being strong enough to overwhelm o r
overthrow the other. Some writers have followed a more radical version of the dualistic
model. According to them colonialism begins the task of modernisation but fails to
complete it giving up the effort half-way. This leads to 'arrested growth' of the colonial
economy and society. Thus the semi-feudal features of agriculture are seen as remnants
of the pre-colonial period. Colonialism is accused of preserving these semi-feudal
features or, at least, of failing to uproot them.
iii) Many writers see colonialism as nothing more than political dumination or foreign
political rule. The weaknesses of colonialism are seen as weaknesses of policies.
followed by individual cdonial administrators.

1.2.1 Nature of Colonialism

Colonialism produced a society which was neither capitalist as in Britain nor was it
pre-colonial o r pre-capitalist. Thus, for example, India under British rule neither
resembled capitalist Britain nor was it basically similar to Mughal India. The
development of agrarian relations in the colonies- in India, o r Egypt, o r Indonesia-
makes this aspect quite clear. For example, landlordism in both zamindari and ryotwari
areas of British India was something new; it did not exist in Mughal India. It was the
creation of British rule. It was the result of the colonial rulers' efforts to transform
Indian agriculture. Indian agriculture was not capitalist but it had many capitalist
elements; for example, property relations were capitalist; land was now a private
property which was freely bought and sold on a large scale.
Infact, we can say that the colonial societies under-went a fundamental transformation
under colonialism. They were made an integral part of the world capitalist system. For
example, colonialism in1ndia was as modem a phenomenon as industrial capitalism in
Britain -the t,wo had developed together since the middle of the 18th century.
Capitalism was, by its very nature, a world-system -that is, it must cover the entire
world; but it does not cover the entire world in the same way:
It has one face in the metropolis and another in the colonies. It devilops the
metropolis as a modem industrially developed country, it underdevelops the colony.
The same capitalist process which produces economic development in the metropolis
and makes it an advanced capitalist country produces and maintains
underdevelopment in the colonies and transforms them into colonial societies.
Colonialism uproots old society and economy, but the new colonial society and
economy are as much a barrier to modern economic development as are the old,
precapitalist economy and society.
A colony is integrated into-or made a part of -world capitalist system, but without
taking part in industrial revolution or the development of capitalist production.
Colonialism in fact blocks the development of modem capitalism in the colonies.

1.2.2 Impact on Colony

You would like t o know the essential features of Colonialism. Basic t o colonialism are
two features:
i). One is the complete subordination of the colony to the needs of the metropolis or
the imperialist power and,
ii) Second is economic exploitation of'the colony or the appropriation of the colony's
economic surplus by the metropolis.
The economic surplus in the colony is produced in many different ways. from traditional ImprWirm lad Cdwi.lism :
A Theoretical Ptnpectlvc
agriculture to plantations to modern mining and factory production. But the essence of
colonialism is appropriation of this surplus by various classesof the imperialist country.
Subordination means that the basic issues of the colony's economy and social and
political development are not determined by the colony's own needs but by the needs
and interests of the metropolitan economy and of the metropolitan capitalist class.
Colonialism is thus much more than political control or colonial policies. It is best seen
as a structure. Colonial interests and policies, colonial state and administrative
institutions, colonial culture and society. colonial ideas and ideologies, all fur~ction
within the framework of colonial structure.
Check Your rrogress 1
1) Which of the following statements are right or wrong? (Mark V or x ) .
i) India under British rule resembled capitalist Britain. '

ii) Capitalism, by its nature, is a localised phenomenon.

iii) Colonialism obstructs the economic growth of a colony.
iv) Indian agriculture had some capitalist elements before India became a clonoy.

2) Discuss in about ten lines the main features of Colonialism.

1.3 STAGES OF COLONIALISM

Colonialism is not one continuous phenomenon or unified structure. Colonialism goes
through several stages. The subordination of the colonial country and its exploitation
remain constant but the forms of subordination and exploitation undergo changes over
time from one stage to another. These changes are linked to several factors. For
example:
the historical development of capitalism as a world system,
the changing patterns of the individual metropolitan (or imperialist) country's
economic, social and political development,
the changing position it occupies in the world system,
and the colony's own historical development.
Colonialism may be divided into three distinct stages which were related to distinct
forms of exploitation or surplus appropriation. Consequently, each stage represented
a different pattern of subordination of colonial economy, society and polity and
therefore, different colonial policies, political and administrative institutions,
ideologies and impact as also different responses by the colonial people.
Stages of colonialism for different colonies are not bound by the same time horizons.
Different stages occur in different colonies at different times, that is, different stages
jccupy different periods in different countries. But the content of a stage remains
broadly the same whenever and wherever it may occur. We should also noiz !ha: z, stage
of colonialism does not occur in a pure form, nor is,there a sharp and complete break
between one stage and another. Forms of surplus appropriation or exploitation and
other features of colonialism from earlier stages continue into the later stages. Different
stages are, however, marked by distinct dominant features -there is a qualitative
I ~ . F - . - d
change from one stage to another.
w.~*..uI(. Basic features ofcolonialism and its different stages can be illustrated from the history
of colonialism in modern India. This is especially so because historians agree on treating
India as a classic colony. The basic character of British rule did not remain the same
through its long history of nearly 200 years. The changing pattern of Britain's position
'In the developing world capitalist ecohomy led to changes in the nature of British
, colonialism in India, that is changes in forms of exploitation and consequently in
colonial policies, impact and Indian response. The last two aspects, that is, impact of
colonialism on India and the response of the Indian people will be discussed in other
units. Colonial policies will also be discussed at length later in other units. But we
will now discuss the basic features of colonialism in India during different stages as also
the reasons for transition or change from one stage of colonialism to another.
1.3.1 First Stage
This is described as the Period of Monopoly Trade and Direct Appropriation (or the
Period of East India Company's Domination, 1757-1813). During the last half of the
18th century, India was conquered by a r?onopoly tradingcorporation -the East India
Conipany. The Company had two basic objectives at this stage.
i) TheYirst was to acquire a monopoly of trade with India. This meant that other
English or European merchants or trading companies should not compete with it in
purchase and sale of lndian products. Nor should the Indian merchants do so. This
would enable the East India Company to buy lndian products ascheaply as possible and
sell t h e y in World markets at as high a price as possible. Thus Indian economic surplus
was to b i appropriated through monopoly trade.
The English competitors were kept out by persuading the British Government to grant
the East India Company through a Royal Charter a monopoly of the right to trade with
India and the East. Against the European rivals the Company had to wage long and
fierce wars on land and the sea. To acquire monopoly against Indian traders and to
prevent lndian rulers from interfering with its trade, the Company took advantage of
the disintegration of the Mughal Empire to acquire increasing political domination and
corltrol over different parts of the country. After political conquest, Indian weavers
were also employed directly by the Company. In that case, they were forced to produce
cloth at below market prices.
ii) The second major objective of colonialism at this stage was to directly appropriate
or take over governmental revenues through control over state power. The East India
Company required large financial resources to wage wars in lndia and on the seas
against European rivals and lndian rulers and to malntaln naval forces, forts and armies
*aroundtheir tradingposts, etc. East lndia Corn?any did not possess such resources and
the British Government neither possessed tt-m nor was it willing to use them to
promote theCompany's interests. The much needed financ~alresources had, therefore,
to be raised in India from the Indian people. This provided another incentive to make
tenitorial conquests in India.
Financial resources had to be raised in India for another reason. lndian money was
needed to purchase Indian goods. This could be acquired either by sale of British goods
in Iqdia o r by export of gold and silver to India. The first method was barred because
the British produced hardly any goods which could be sold in lndia in competition with
Indian products. British industrial products could not compete with lndian handicraft
products till the beginning of the 19th century. British Government, heavily influenced
by merchantalist theories, was also unhappy with the export of gold and silver from
Britain. Appropriation of government revenue would also, of course, increase the
profits of the East India Company and dividents of itsshareholders. Both the objectives
-the monopoly of trade and appropriation of government revenues - were rapidly
fulfilled with the conquest first 0.f Bengal and parts of South India and then over the
yearc16f the rest of India. The East India Company now used its political power to
acquire monopolistic control over Indian trade and handicraft products. Indian traders
were gradually replaced and ruined, while the weavers and other craftsmen were
compelled either tosell their productsat uneconomic rates o r to work for the Company
a t low wages. It is important to note that at this stage there was no large scale import of
~ ~ t imanufactures
s h into India; rather the reverse occurred, thatis, there was increase
in expWfl of Indian textiles, etc. The weavers were, for example, not ruined at this stage
by British imports but because of the Company's monopoly and their exploitation by
being forced to produce for the Company under uneconomic conditions.
With political conquest, the East India Company acquired direct control over the
revenues of the Indian states. Moreover, both Company and its servants extorted
illegally immense wealth from Indian merchants, officials, nobles, rulers and
zamindars. In fact, this element of plunder and direct seizure of surplus was very strong
in the first stage of colonialism. Gradually, large number of highly paid British officials
were appointed in India and their salaries and pensions became a form of surplus
appropriation. There was intense struggle within Britain, especially among the
aristocracy and the landed gentry, for British appointments in India.
An iKnportant feature of colonialism during this period was that no basic changes were
introduced in the colony in administration, judicial system, transport and
comhunication, methods of agricultural or industrial production, forms of business
management or economic organisation (except for the Permanent Settlement in Bengal
which really belonged to the second stage of colonialism). Nor were any changes made
in education or intellectual field,' culture or social organisation. Only two new
educational institutions were started -one at Banaras for Sanskritic learning and other
at Calcutta for Persian and Arabic learning. Even the Christian Missionaries and
British capitalists, who might have acted as a channel for the import of modern Western
ideas, were kept out of British possessions in India. The only changes made were:
i) in military organisation and technology which contemporary independent Indian
rulers were also introducing in their armed forces, and
ii) in administration at the top of the structure of revenue collection so that it could be
made more efficient and diverted to the Company.
At this stage, British rule was not very different from traditional Indian empires which
too relied on land revenue collection.
Why was this so? Why were so few changes introduced? Because the two basic
objectives of colonialism at this stage did not require basic socio-economic-
administrative changes in India. Colonialism of the first stage could be superimposed
over its existing economic, cultural, social and political structure. Also the British
rulers did not feel the need to penetrate the villages deeper than their indigenous Indian
predecessors had done so long as land revenue was successfully sucked out through the
traditional machinery of revenue collection. There was therefore no need to disturb
India's existing economic or political structure, or administrative and social
organisation, or cultural and ideological framework.
This lack of change was also reflected in the ideology of the rulers. No need was felt to
criticise traditional Indian civilisation, religions, laws, caste system, family structure,
etc. for they were not seen as obstacles at that stage of colonial exploitation. The need
was to understand them sympathetically so that political control and economic
exploitation could proceed smoothly without arousing opposition from Indians on
religious, social or cultural grounds.
This period witnessed large scale drain of wealth from India. This wealth played an
important role in financing Britain's industrial revolution. Drain of Wealth from India
constituted 2 to 3 per cent of Britain's national income at the time.

Check Your Progress 2 !

1) Discuss the two major objectives of the East India Company in about ten lines.
2) Which of the following statements are correct or wrong? (Mark V or x).
i) Colonialism is a continuous phenomenon with no change in forms of
exploitation.
ii) The various stages of colonialism developed simultaneously in all colonies at the
same time.
iii) The British Government was not willing to use its resources for the promotion
of the East India Company's interests.
iv) The Company's servants extorted immense wealth from Indian merchants.
3) List the main features of the monopoly trade phase of colonialism in India.

1.3.2 Second Stage

This was a period of exploitation through trade and is also termed as Colonialism of
Free Trade during the 19th century. Immediately after the East India company
became the ruler over most parts of India, an intense struggle broke out in Britain to
determine whose interests would the newly acquired colony serve. Britain was after
1750 undergoing the Industrial Revolution. The newly developing industrial capitalists
began to attack the East India Company and the forms of its exploitation of India. They
demanded that colonial administration and policy in India should now serve their
interests which were very different from those of the East India Company. They did not
gain much from a monopoly trade in Indian products or from the Company's control
over Indian revenues. They wanted India to serve as a market for their ever-increasing
output of manufactured goods, especially textiles. They also needed from India exports
of raw materials, especially cotton, and foodgrains. Moreover, India could buy more
British goods only if it earned foreign exchange by increasing its exports. Increasing
exports were also needed to enable dividents of the East India Company and profits of
British merchants and earnings and pensions of British.officia1s to be transferred to
Britain.
But what was India to export? Since the British were for years not willing to let India's
textiles be imported into Britain and later their export was no longer economic, these
exports from India could consist only of agricultural raw materials and other non-
manufactured goods. In other words, to suit the convenience of British industrial
capitalists, British colonialism in India must enter its second stage. India must become
a subordinate trading partner of Britain, as a market to be exploited and as a dependent
colony to produce and supply the raw materials and food-stuffs Britain needed. India's
economic surplus was to be appropriated through trade based on unequal exchange. As
a result, Britain increasingly produced and exported goods which were produced in
factories using advanced technology and less labour, and in which level of productivity
and wages was high. On the other hand, India produced agricultural raw materials
through backward methods of production using great deal of labour leading to low
productivity and low wages. This international division of labour was, moreover, not
only highly unfavourable to India but was unnatural and artificial and was introduced
and maintained forcibly through coloniel domination.
The beginnings of the change occurred with the passing of the Regulating Act of 1773
and Pitt's India Act of 1784 which were primarily the result of intense struggle within
the British ruling classes. The East India Company was saved and given a reprieve by
the French Revolutionary Wars after 1789. But the Company gradually lost ground. By
1813, when another Charter Act was passed, the Company had lost most of its political
and economic power in India; the real power being wielded by the British Government
which ruled India in the interests of the British capitalist class as a whole.
India could not be exploited in the new way within its existing economic, political,
administrative and socio-cultural setting. This setting, therefore, had to be shattered
 and transformed all along the line. The British Indian Government set out to do so after I m p r h l h dColoalPlbm :
A Theorrtkrl Perspective
1813. In the economic field this meant integrating India's colonial economy with the
British and world capitalist economy. The chief instrument of this was the introduction
of free trade. All import duties in India were either totally removed or drastically
reduced to nominal rates. Thus India was thrown open to British manufactures. Free
entry was also now given to British capitalists to develop tea, coffee and indigo
plantations, trade, transport, mining and modern industries in India. The British
Indian Government gave active state help to these capitalists.
The agrarian structure of India was sought to be transformed in a capitalist direction
through the Permanent Settlement and the Ryotwari systems. The large-scale imports
and their sale in land and even more the large-scale export of the bulky raw materials
and their gathering at the ports from long distances inside the country required a cheap
and easy system of transport and communications. Without such a system India could
not be opened to large-scale foreign trade. The Government, therefore, improved
rivers and canals, encouraged the introduction of steamships on the rivers and improved
the roads. Above all, during latter half of the 19th century, it encouraged and financed
a large network of railways linking India's major cities and markets to its ports. By 1905
nearly 45,000 kms. of railways had been built. Similarly, a modern postal and telegraph
system was introduced to facilitate economic transactions.
Many changes were now brought about in the administrative fieid. Administration was
made more elaborate and comprehensive and it reached down to the villages and-
out-lying areas of the country so that British goods could reach, and agricultural
products drawn from, its interior villages and remotest parts. Legal and judicial
structure of India was overhauled to promote capitalist commercial relations and
maintain law and order. The changes, however, related to criminal law, law of contract
and legal procedures. Personal law, including that relating to marriage and inheritance,
was largely left untouched since it did not in any way affect colonial transformation of
the economy. Further more it was in the 1830sand 1840s, that English replaced Persian
as the official language in India. Lord William Bentinck's resolution dated March 7,
1835 stated that 'the funds appropriated to education would be best employed in
English education alone'.
Modern education was now introduced basically with the objective to man the new,
vastly expanded administration. But it was also expected to help transform India's
society and culture. This transformation was needed for two reasons; it was expected to,
i) create an overall climate of change and development and,
ii) generate a culture of loyalty to the rulers.
It is to be noted that it was around this period that many Indian intellectuals like Raja
Ram Mohan Roy began to work for social and cultural modernisation for different
reasons, mainly as part of national regeneration.
The second stage of colonialism generated a liberal imperialist ideology among many
British statesmen and administrators. They talked of training the Indian people in the
arts of democracy and self Government. Britain was at this time, the workshop of the
world -it was the only rapidly industrialising country. Consequently, many in Britain
believed that the pattern of trade with India could be maintained even if Britain was to
withdraw its direct political and administrative control over India, so long as law and
I order, free trade and sanctityof businesscontract were maintained there. But even the
liberal imperialists believed that it would take Indians a hundred years or more to
acquire these virtues, and therefore, British rule should be maintained and
strengthened for centuries to come.
If India's socio-economic structure was to be radically transformed, its existing culture
and social organisation had to be declared unsuitable and decadent. Indian culture and
society were now subjected to sharp criticism. No racialism was, however involved in
this criticism for it was simultaneously maintained that Indians could gradually be
raised to the level of Europeans.
The earlier formsof surplus extraction continued during this phase. This, plus the costly
administration, plus the efforts at economic transformation led to a steep rise in
taxation and in the burden on thc peasant. Because of the constant needs of colonial
administration for funds to maintain military and civil administration and for
~.onstructionof railways. and its large reliance on taxation of land, which had its own
limits, colonial administration suffered from constant financial constraint.
Imprhlbm,-.nd Consequently, the process of modernisation in other fields was reduced to paltry
Ndennm pr~portions.

India played a crucial role in the development of British capitalism during this stage.
British industries, especially textiles, were heavily dependent on exports. India
absorbed 10 to 12 per cent of British exports and nearly 20 per cent of Britain's textile
exports during 1860 to 1880. After 1850, India was also a major importer of engine
coaches, rail lines and other railway stores. Moreover, Indian army played an important
role in extending British colonialism in Asia and Africa. Throughout this stage In'dian
wealth and capital continued to be drained to Britain.

1.3.3 Third Stage

This is described as the Era of Foreign Investments and International Competition for
Colonies. A new stage of colonialism was ushered in India from about 1860s. This was
the result of several major changes in the world economy:
i) Spread of industrialisation to seveal countries of Europe, the United States and
Japan with the result that Britain's industrial supermacy in the world came to an
end.
ii) There was intensification of industrialisation aaa result of the application of
scientific knowledge to industry. Modern chemical industries, the use of petroleum
as fuel for the internal combustion engine and the use of electricity for industrial
purposes developed during this period.
iii) There was further unification of the world market because of revolution in the
means of international transport.
The new industries in many industrialised countries consumed immense quantities of
raw materials. Rapid industrial development also led to continuous eypansion of urban
population which needed more and more food. There now occurred an intense struggle
for new, secure and exclusive markets and sources of agricultural and mineral raw
materials and foodstuffs.
Moreover, the development of trade and industry at home and extended exploitation
of colonies and semi-colonies produced large accumulations of capital in the capitalist
countries. Simultaneously there occurred concentration of capital in fewer and fewer
corporations, trusts and cartels and merger of banking capital with industrial capital.
Outlets had to be found for this capital. This led to large scale export of capital. Once
again the developed capitalist countries began a search and compete for areas where
they could acquire the exclusive right to invest their surplus capital.
Thus in their search for markets, raw materials and fields for capital investment the
capitalistic countries began to divide and re-divide the world among themselves.
Colonialism at this stage also served important political and idealogical purpose in the
metropolitan, that is, imperialist countries. Chauvinism or aggressive nationalism
based on the glorification of empire could be used to tone down social divisions at home
by stressing the common interests in empire. The British, for example, raised the slogan
that "The Sun never sets on the British Empire" to spread pride and a sense of
contentment among workers on whose slum-houses the Sun seldom shone in real life.
The French talked of their "Civilising Mission", while Japan talked of Pan-Asianism
and claimed to be the champion of the Asian people.
During this stage, Britain's position in the world was constantly challenged and
weakened by the rival capitalistic countries. It now made vigorous efforts to consolidate
its control over India. Reactionary imperialist policies now replaced liberal imperialist
policies. This was reflected in the viceroyalties of Lytton, Dufferin, Lansdowne and
Curzon. The strengthening of colonial rule over India was essential to keep out the
rivals, to attract British capital to India and to provide it security. After 1850, a very
large amourt of British capital was invested in railways, loans to the Government of
India, trade and to a lesser extent in plantations, coal mining, jute mills, shipping and
banking in India.
India also performed another important role for Britain. Its army -men and financial
resources -could be used to fight Britain's rivals in the struggle for the division and
re-division of the world. In fact, the Indian army was the chief instrument for the
defence, expansion and consolidation of British empire in Africa and Asia. The result
was a costly standing army that absorbed nearly 52 per cent of the Indian revenues in Imperinlim and Cdoniibm :
A Theoretical Perspective
1904.
Politically and administratively the third stage of colonialism meant renewed and more
intensive control over India. Moreover, it was now even more important than ever
before that colonial administration should reach out to every nook and corner of India.
The administration now became more bureaucratically tight,efficient and extensive
than earlier. Railways were built at even a faster rate.
A major change now occurred in the ideology of colonialism. All talk of training the
Indian people for self-government died out. (It was revived in the 20th century after
1918 as a result of pressure from the Indian national movement). Instead, the aim of
British rule was declared to be permanent 'trusteeship' over the Indian people. Indian
people were declared to be a permanently immature, a 'child' people, needing British
control and trusteeship. Geography, 'race', climate, history, religion, culture and social
organisation were cited as factors which made Indians permanantly unfit for self-
government o r democracy. Britain had, therefore, to exercise benevolent despotism
over them for centuries to come.
Efforts at the transformation of India continued during this stage, though once again
with meagre results. This was partly because of the financial constraints discussed
earlier and also because of the rise of the national movement. Even the limited changes
produced an intelligentsia which began to oppose colonialism and analyse the
mechanism of colonial exploitation. The British administrators increasingly assumed a
neutral stand on social and cultural questions, and then began to support social and
cultural reactionaries in the name of preserving indigenous institutions.

Check Your Progress 3

1) Discuss in about 100 words the basic forms of surplus extraction or exploitation
during the second and third stages of colonialism in India.

..........................................................................................................
2) Which of the following statements are correct or wrong? (Mark V or x).
i) During the Free Trade phase of colonialism in 1ndia import duties were
increased.
ii) The Railways contributed in the extension of markets.
iii) With new challenges to British industrial supremacy its colonial policy
underwent a change.
iv) The British claimed that "the Sun never sets on the British Empire"
3) Discuss in about ten lines the efforts made by the British to consolidate their position
in India in the latter half of the 19th century.
1.4 LET US SUM UP
Under colonialism, Indian economy and society were completely subordinated to
British economy. The result was that during the very years after 176b when Britain was
developing into a leading capitalist country of the world India was becoming
underdeveloped and turned into a classic backward colony.

1.5 KEY WORDS

Capitalism: An economic and political system in which property business and industry
are privately owned and where competition is the mainstay of the economy.
Intelligentsia: That section of society whose social role is to generate and spread ideas.
They can be teachers, lawyers, men of politics, arts and letters.
Landed gentry: People of high birth and high social status who were owners of
considerable portions of land e.g. zamindars, tallukdars.
Metropolis: A technical term referring to a capitalist country possessing colonies.
Mercantalist theory: A political and economic philosophy according to which the main
aim of the nation state was to maximise exports, minimise imports and accumulate as
much bullion (gold and silver) as possible.

1.6 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

EXERCISES
Check Your Progress 1
1) -(i) x (ii) x (iii) d (iv)
2) See Sub-section 1.2.2
Check Your Progress 2
1) See Sub-section 1.3.1
2) (i) x (ii) x (iii) q (iv) q
3) See Sub-section 1.3.1
Check Your Progress 3
1) Sec Sub-sections 1.3.2 and 1.3.3
2) (i) x (ii) V (iii) V (iv) V
3) See Sub-section 1.3.3
 WORLD HISTORY: 1750–1914
The British Impact on India, 1700–1900
By Fritz BlaCKWell
A military procession in India. Image source: The British Battles Web site at http://www.britishbattles.com/first-sikh-war/ferozeshah.htm.
T
he period 1700 to 1900 saw the beginnings, and the develop-
ment, of the British Empire in India. Empire was not planned,
at least not in the early stages. In a sense, it just happened. The
first British in India came for trade, not territory; they were business-
men, not conquerors. It can be argued that they came from a culture
that was inferior, and a political entity that was weaker, than that into
which they ventured, and they came hat-in-hand. They would not have
been viewed as a threat by the Indians—who most certainly would not
have thought of themselves as “Indian,” at least in any political sense.
National identity was to be established much later, during the Inde-
pendence Movement (which, indeed, was also known as the National-
ist Movement). Identity was in terms of region and caste, which, to a
considerable extent, it still is today. The British and the Indians would
go on to affect each other in profound ways that still are important
today. In what follows, because of limited space, the impact of Imperial
Britain on India is addressed. Hopefully, a future useful essay on the
impact of India on Great Britain will also be published in EAA.
The Roots of Empire
While there is no 1492-type date for the commencement of empire,
1757, the date of the Battle of Plassey, is often used. The date of the
British take-over of Delhi, 1803, is symbolic: the British occupied the
Mughul capital and were not to leave. The empire was neither uni-
form—different policies responding to different events in different
parts of India—nor static. It was upon the British and the Indians al-
most before they realized it. Its effects were ambiguous and ambiva-
lent. A recent catalog advertising DVDs said about a presentation
entitled “The British Empire in Color,”
The British Empire brought education, technology, law and
democracy to the four corners of the globe. It also brought prej-
udice, discrimination, cultural bigotry and racism.
34 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA
The blurb goes on to state that the video “examines the complex-
ities, contradictions, and legacies of empire, both positive and nega-
tive.”1 To a degree, such is the intent of this article. Only to a degree, for
an article this brief on a topic as complex and intricate as the British im-
pact on India cannot be complete and faces the danger of becoming
simply an inventory.
Trade and Power
In 1600, a group of English merchants secured a royal charter for pur-
poses of trading in the East Indies. The Dutch, however, had fairly well
sealed off trade in what is now Indonesia, and the merchants’ company,
which was to become known as the East India Company (the Com-
pany), turned its attention to the vast expanse of India, with its cotton
and spices (e.g., “pepper” and “ginger” are from south Indian words),
as well as other commodities. Other powers, especially the French and
Portuguese, were to become competitors. The Portuguese secured en-
claves on the west coast, the most important of which was Goa, which
they controlled until 1961, and which preserves a Portuguese flavor to
this day. The French secured influence in the southeast, where
Puducherry, formerly Pondicherry, is sometimes referred to as “The
French Riviera of the East,” and was transferred to Indian jurisdiction
in 1954.
The dominant power in India was the Mughal Empire. British ad-
venturers had preceded the Company into India, including at the
Mughal court. It needs to be emphasized that the purpose of the Com-
pany was trade. But a combination of factors and events were to draw
the Company into Indian politics, especially with the decline of the
Mughal Empire and the concurrent and resulting rise of regional pow-
ers, including that of the British, who had become ensconced at what
is now Chennai (Madras), Mumbai (Bombay), and Kolkata (Calcutta).2
It is noteworthy that these three cities were founded (or at least devel-
Volume 13, Number 2 Fall 2008
 WORLD HISTORY: 1750–1914

oped) by the British, and in recent years have each had their names de- trative functions of the Company from commercial ones. The attempt
Anglicized. was to regulate taxation, justice, rule, and bribery (the last being viewed
Mughal Decline by Company servants as an indispensable feature of doing business in
Two events, fifty years apart, had important consequences. The first India). The Company had acquired considerable political power (al-
was the death in 1707 of the last of the “Great Mughals,” Aurangzeb, though consisting of only a fraction of one percent of the population of
who was followed by “lesser Mughals.”3 In various ways, Aurangzeb's the subcontinent), over more people than there were in England. Par-
own policies may have contributed significantly to the Mughal decline, liament was concerned, and was to remain so. Empire may not have
but the importance of his demise is that it was followed by incapable been, at this early stage, a governmental declaration, but the wheels
successors and considerable instability. were in motion and Parliament became a core part
The British took advantage of the instability of it all. The India Act of 1784 created a council of six
and the resulting regional tensions, especially in commissioners, including the Chancellor of the Ex-
1757 at the Battle of Plassey in Bengal. Through chequer and a newly-created Secretary of State for
machinations and intrigues, a force of eight hundred India. This group was constituted above the Com-
Europeans and 2,200 Indian troops under Robert pany directors in London.
Clive defeated an army of 50,000 belonging to the With the transition of the Company to the role
ruler of Bengal. Clive was able to wrest concessions of ruler, the British attitude toward Indians degener-
from the Mughals, most importantly the right of ated. Previously, there had been some limited social
land revenue, and, in retrospect, it appears that an mixing between the British and Indians, with no
empire was underway. sense of superiority or inferiority. That changed.
Other challenges arose for the Mughals, in- What earlier Englishmen had viewed with interest in
cluding the rise of regional and ethnic powers such Indian culture became abomination; thus, the parlia-
as the Marathas, Sikhs, and Rajputs, and the sack of mentary leader against the slave trade, William
Delhi in 1739 by the Persian invader Nadir Shah. Wilberforce (1759–1833) felt Hinduism to be a
Meanwhile, the British were to win out in south greater evil than slavery. The opening of the Suez
India over the French, largely because of the Anglo- Canal (1869) allowed greater access to India by Eng-
French wars in Europe and North America in the lish women—who, of course, had to be “protected”
1740s. Aurangzeb (Mughal Emperor of India 1658- from the hostile culture and barbarous Indian men.
1707) reading the Quran.
The Company Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:
Biased concepts regarding non-Western cultures and
The Company's increase in power and territory did Aurangzeb_reading_the_Quran.jpg. non-white peoples, arising from so-called social Dar-
not go unnoticed in London. In 1792, the Company winism and evangelicalism, provided rationale for
applied for a loan from the government, which Par- imperial rule. It is not coincidence that the heyday of
liament provided, but with strings attached: The imperialism was the Victorian age.
Regulating Act of 1793, the first of a series of acts Although the foundation was provided by the
reining in the Company through parliamentary su- Battle of Plassey (1757), 1803 is a good symbolic date
pervision. Nevertheless, Arthur Wellesley, as gover- for the start of empire. General Gerard Lake defeated
nor-general (1797–1805), exercised his intention to the Marathas, perhaps the most important Indian
make the Company the paramount power in India. power, and entered Delhi, the Mughal capital. By this
He was able to suppress what French influence re- time the emperor was mostly a figurehead, but sym-
mained (except for some small enclaves, such as bolically important. He now became a pensioner of
Pondicherry), and to remove powerful Indian forces the British, with his realm reduced to the Red Fort. A
in both the north and the south. The British (that is British official, referred to as the Resident, became
the Company; in India the two were now to be al- de facto ruler of Delhi. Company soldiers protected
most synonymous until 1858) were paramount, and the city and commercial interests. Things were never
they developed a bureaucratic infrastructure, em- to be the same. In a sense, the taking of Delhi was but
ploying cooperating Indians, who came to constitute part of a process, for, as Dilip Hiro, in his chronol-
a new, urban class. ogy of Indian history has asserted, “By the late 18th
The title of Governor-General had been be- George Curzon (1859–1925) Viceroy of India century it had become commonplace among the
stowed upon the governor of the Bengal presidency from 1899 to 1905. Image source: http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Image:George_Curzon2.jpg.
British, irrespective of class, to despise Indians.” This
(Calcutta), who had been granted power and rank characterization has been affirmed by other ob-
over the governors of the Bombay and Madras pres- servers.4
idencies. This arrangement, provided in the Regulating Act, was felt to Racism and Rebellion
be necessary because of the long distance between London and India Racism is a core characteristic of the British Empire in India, or, as it
(the Suez canal did not yet exist) and the convenience of dealing with came to be known, the Raj (from a Sanskrit word, which found its way
one governor rather than three: an administrative step toward unity into vernacular languages, meaning to rule over, or the sovereign who
which certainly aided the arrangement for empire. does so). Historically, the term was applied to Hindu kings (as raja, or
The series of acts passed by Parliament banned private trading on maharaja, great king). While implying political superiority, it did not
the part of Company employees and separated judicial and adminis- have racial implications. Cultural and political factors were to add racial

35
 WORLD HISTORY: 1750–1914
"General Havelock's Attack on Nana Sahib at Futtyporer, 1857," a steel engraving by the london
Printing and Publishing Co., late 1850s.
Image source: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1800_1899/1857revolt/
nanasahib/nanasahib.html.
distinction to the concept under the British: Christian proselytizing
and the great uprising, or rebellion, or mutiny, of 1857. This historic re-
bellion was not an insurrection, for it was not organized, and therein
may have been its failure.5
The rebellion was a bloody mess, involving Indian soldiers
(sepoys), native rulers of “subsidiary” or “princely” states that were
quasi-independent but in thrall to the Company (and in fear of loss of
their principalities), and the Company armies, in vicious retaliation. In
essence, it was an explosion of deep frustration and fear that had been
building up for decades. It is significant that it was largely confined to
north central India, where Company rule and British oppression were
strongest and most obvious.
The causes were numerous, and included forcing the use of West-
ern technologies—the railroad and telegraph—upon a highly tradi-
tional society, imposition of English as the language for courts and
government schools, opening the country to missionaries (with the re-
sulting fear of forced conversions), Company takeover of subsidiary
states when a prince died without direct heir, increasing haughtiness
and distance on the part of the rulers, and policies beneficial to the
Company's profits, but even inimical to the people, and so on. The
spark was the introduction of the Enfield rifle to the sepoy ranks, which
necessitated handling of cartridges packed in animal grease, anathema
for both Hindus and Muslims, and considered as an attempt to Chris-
tianize the sepoys. Atrocities became commonplace on both sides, and
were to be repeated by the British in the Amritsar Massacre of 1919.
The rebellion and the gruesome reaction to it were atrocious
enough, but, as Maria Misra has observed, “The after-shock of the Re-
bellion was if anything even more influential than the event itself.”6 A
curtain had fallen, and the two sides would never trust each other again.
British disdain increased, and for the Indians, resentment festered. Yet
oddly enough, Western influence was eclectically accepted by many upper
class urban Indians (to a large extent in imitation, but also as a means to,
and result of, upward mobility). The apparent anomaly of interest in
things Western is best illustrated by Calcutta, one of the three early cen-
ters of Company presence. The others were Madras and Bombay— cities
that built up around the Company's commercial establishment.
36 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA
Indian Culture
Bengal historically has been marked by cultural pride, most justly so.
Its position in Indian culture has been compared with that of Italy in
European culture. Given different historical situations, the comparison
might have gone the other way. Western impact was central to Calcutta
(particularly noticeable in its architecture), the capital of British India,
and provided the impetus for what is known as the Bengal Renaissance.
As in Florence, it was business that made revival of the arts possible. In
the case of Bengal, the revival involved religion as well. An almost per-
fect paradigm is that of the Tagore family. The modern founder was
Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846), an entrepreneur with British part-
ners and British friends, including women. His association with the
relative freedom of English women, in contrast to the rigidly orthodox
outlook of the women in his household, resulted in part with his be-
coming “a strong advocate of female education.”7 The fortune he ac-
cumulated enabled his heirs to pursue other interests.
Dwarkanath's son Debendranath (1817–1905) was active in so-
cial and religious reform, especially the revitalization of Hinduism,
largely in response to missionary activity resulting in conversions of
Hindus to Christianity. He was also active in the 1850s in forming the
British Indian Association, a forerunner of the Indian National Con-
gress.
Debendranath was father of the famed Rabindranath (1861–
1941), an artistic genius and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1913. Several other Tagores were active in the arts and influential in
the revitalization of Bengali culture.
A fascinating example of this revitalization is a style of painting
dating from about 1800. Kalighat painting originated around a temple
dedicated to the goddess Kali in a neighborhood near the Hooghly
River. The subject matter was in part religious, but in a sensual man-
ner, and it also focused on daily life. A favorite topic was the babu, who
in this context was a quasi-Westernized dandy obsessed with shady
women. (The term babu has many connotations.) As a form, the art
anticipated some Western developments, but received little recognition
from Westerners, the general attitude being reflected by John Ruskin's
dismissal of all Indian art as that of “heathen people.” Missionaries
showed a negative interest, viewing the paintings as childish and evil at
the same time. The art was an urban twist upon folk tradition, yet with
its own freshness and uniqueness.
After 1857
There were decisive changes as a result of 1857. The Mughal dynasty
was terminated, as was the Company. The British government took
over direct rule, replacing the Company's administrative apparatus with
an Indian Civil Service (which became the Indian Administrative Serv-
ice after independence). In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Em-
press of India, a symbolic exclamation point.
Governor-Generals, popularly referred to as Viceroys (after 1858),
came and went, but the direction remained clear: Imperial rule for the
profit of Britain, not for the welfare of the people of India—this was
shown even in the governmental response to famines, and India be-
came represented as the Jewel in the Crown. With the formation of
the Indian National Congress (or, simply, Congress), some half-
hearted concessions to change and inclusion occurred, albeit always
seeming to be too little too late. This organization (curiously, initiated
by a retired British official) might have seemed impotent at first, but
it did demand that “the Government should be widened and that the
people should have their proper and legitimate share in it.”8 Perhaps
Volume 13, Number 2 Fall 2008
 WORLD HISTORY: 1750–1914
most significantly, the initial meeting, held in Bombay in 1885, in-
volved about seventy-two delegates, from various regions, and con-
sisted mostly of upper class Hindus and Parsis (many of them lawyers)
with only two Muslims in attendance. It was through this organiza-
tion, under the leadership of lawyers such as Motilal Nehru and his
son Jawaharlal (India's first prime minister), and M. K. Gandhi, that
India achieved independence.
Such a meeting, let alone the organization itself (or, for that mat-
ter, the nationalist/independence movement), would not have been
possible had it not been for the English language as a lingua franca,
which stemmed from the 1835 decision by the Governor-General to
make English the official language of instruction. That decision opened
a can of worms: men educated in English law saw the possibilities of
constitutional democracy. No one Indian language could claim the ma-
jority of speakers, and English provided the bridge that made commu-
nication possible between the educated from different parts of India.
The importance of this development cannot be overemphasized. Re-
lated developments included the establishment of universities (oddly,
in 1857) in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta; a vibrant (if often censored)
press, and Indian literature in English. These all are evident and thriv-
ing yet today, and strongly so. The most important development might
well have been that of nationalism, an attempt to override the British
policy of divide-and-rule (which played on Hindu-Muslim antipathy).
Of course, the creation of Pakistan showed that the dream was not
completely successful—yet India today is a successful democracy. And
the nationalist movement did bring the diverse cultures and languages,
the religious sects and castes, into a new identity: Indian.
Conclusion
The date 1900 makes a good closing point. In 1899, Lord Curzon, the
most imperial of the Viceroys, became Governor-General, and in 1901
the Queen-Empress, Victoria, died. The post-1857 developments were,
of course, designed to keep empire supreme, but British tradition
opened doors within the empire, and did so in spite of empire (e.g., the
use of the Magna Carta by an Indian teacher in the classroom ).9 Fur-
ther, they really did not develop a coherent approach toward rule. The
late Raghavan Iyer found it to be a mix of Trusteeship, Utilitarianism,
Platonic Guardianship, and Evangelicalism.10 The focus was on ad-
ministration, not development, and that by as small a cadre as possible.
Stalin is said to have observed that it was ridiculous . . . that a few hun-
dred Englishmen should dominate India. Actually, the “few hundred”
numbered just over a thousand, of whom one-fifth were at any time
either sick or on leave. This, over a population of about 300 million in
what is now India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh.11 Although
certainly not as cruel as the Belgians in the Congo, the servants of the
Raj and their compatriots (families, businessmen, missionaries, etc.)—
about 100,000 in 190012 —were viewed as “lofty and contemptuous.”13
And they had their moments of cruelty as well.
The empire was a mix of the White Man's Burden and Ma-Bap
(“We are your mother and father”). Mix is a good word to describe the
Raj. The British engaged in racism and exploitation, and they also pro-
vided the doors that would lead to Indian democracy and nationhood.
Paul Scott, in the opening to The Jewel in the Crown, the initial novel of
the Raj Quartet, wrote of two nations in violent opposition
. . . locked in an imperial embrace of such long standing and subtlety
it was no longer possible for them to know whether they hated or
loved one another, or what it was that held them together and
seemed to have confused the image of their separate destinies.14 n
NOTES
1. Video Collectables: The Very Best of British Entertainment, Summer 2008, 30. Web
site: www.collectablesdirect.com.
2. The favored concept of the decay of the Mughal Empire as resulting in anarchy and
a power vacuum that the British stepped into and righted with stability is not with-
out challenge; e.g., Archie Baron, An Indian Affair (London: Channel 4 Books, 2001),
19. Be that as it may, Mughal power withered and British power grew, although not
necessarily by design, even though regional or local economies may have prospered.
3. A very useful annotated chronology, to which I am indebted, is Dilip Hiro's The
Rough Guide Chronicle: India (London: Rough Guides Ltd, 2002).
4. Hiro, 227–233; quote from 227. This attitude is reflected in other works (e.g., Zareer
Masani, Tales of the Raj—see notes 9 and 12 below—and Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quar-
tet”) far too numerous to list.
5. There are problems with what to call this event—or series of events. Originally, the
British referred to it as the Sepoy Mutiny. A sepoy, from the Hindi sipahi, or soldier,
was an Indian, Hindu or Muslim, serving in the East India Company army. After in-
dependence, nationalists began to refer to it as the First War of Independence. Vari-
ations abound, trying to avoid either extreme. Perhaps the best is that of “the Great
Rebellion,” as in the subtitle of an outstanding new study by Maria Misra, Vishnu’s
Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
6. Misra, page 7; see 6–17 for an account.
7. Blair B. King, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in
Eastern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 183. An informative
article, “Jorasanko and the Thakur Family,” by Chitra Deb, appears in a rich collec-
tion of articles on historical Calcutta edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Calcutta: The
Living City, Volume I: The Past (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990/1995), 64–
67. Jorsanko is the particular branch of the Tagore family, and Thakur is the literal
transliteration of Tagore from Bengali.
8. As quoted by Hiro, 259.
9. Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj (London: BBC Books, 1987), 90. This a re-
markable book for insight into the nationalist-independence struggle beyond the
political level. The author is the son of nationalist leaders, who were neither Hindu
nor Muslim, but Parsi. In his introduction, he provides a very apt observation: “the
Indians who have been the most enduring legacy of the Raj—the Western-educated
middle class whom the British fostered to serve their interests, but which eventually
threw them out. ” (5)
10. Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That: The Political Theory of British Imperial-
ism (Santa Barbara: Concord Press, 1983).
11. David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (New York: Far-
rar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005), xiii.
12. Masani, 7.
13. Maria Misra, “The New Statesman Essay—Before the Pith Helmets,” published 8 Oc-
tober 2001, available at www.newstatemen.com/200110080018. This small, concise
article is highly worthwhile.
14. The Raj Quartet has gone through several publishings. The quote appears on page
nine (the initial page of the work) of The Jewel in the Crown, Avon paperback edition
of 1970 (first published 1966).
ADDITIONAL READING
There are far-ranging books of a popular nature, such as Archie Baron's An Indian
Affair (goes only to 1857) and Geoffrey Moorhouse's India Britannica (to 1947), but per-
haps best for the British Empire in India to 1900 are the first six (of ten) chapters of Denis
Judd's The Lion and the Tiger (London: Oxford University Press, 2004; paperback 2005).
Finding video for the period 1700–1900 is even more difficult. One which reflects the
impact of the British during the period of empire, but which is almost an apologia,
is “Ironies of Empire,” part ten of The Triumph of the West: A View of World History,
produced, written, and narrated by John Roberts for the British Broadcasting Corpora-
tion, 1985.
Fritz BlaCKWell taught in the departments of History and Foreign Languages (as
well as in the Religious Studies and Humanities programs), for thirty-five years at Wash-
ington State University, where for thirteen years he was the director of the Asia Program.
He is author of India: A Global Studies Handbook (ABC-CLIO, 2004), and a co-editor of Global
Passages: Sources in World History (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). He is currently working on a
comparative study of non-violence in the Indian Independence movement and the
American Civil Rights movement.
37
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Mesopotamia
by Joshua J. Mark
published on 14 March 2018

Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning 'between two

rivers’) was an ancient region located in the eastern
Mediterranean bounded in the northeast by the Zagros
Mountains and in the southeast by the Arabian Plateau,
corresponding to today’s Iraq, mostly, but also parts of
modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. The 'two rivers' of
the name referred to the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers
and the land was known as 'Al-Jazirah' (the island) by the
Arabs referencing what Egyptologist J.H. Breasted would
later call the Fertile Crescent, where Mesopotamian
civilization began.

The Cradle of Civilization

Unlike the more uni ed civilizations of Egypt or Greece, Mesopotamia was a collection of varied
cultures whose only real bonds were their script, their gods, and their attitude toward women. The
social customs, laws, and even language of Akkad, for example, cannot be assumed to correspond
to those of Babylon; it does seem, however, that the rights of women, the importance of literacy,
and the pantheon of the gods were indeed shared throughout the region (though the gods had
di erent names in various regions and periods). As a result of this, Mesopotamia should be more
properly understood as a region that produced multiple empires and civilizations rather than any
single civilization. Even so, Mesopotamia is known as the “cradle of civilization” primarily because
of two developments that occurred there, in the region of Sumer, in the 4th millenium BCE:

the rise of the city as we recognize that entity today.

the invention of writing (although writing is also known to have developed in Egypt, in the
Indus Valley, in China, and to have taken form independently in Mesoamerica).

The invention of the wheel is also credited to the Mesopotamians and, in 1922 CE, the
archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley discovered “the remains of two four-wheeled wagons, [at the
site of the ancient city of Ur] the oldest wheeled vehicles in history ever found, along with their
leather tires” (Bertman, 35). Other important developments or inventions credited to the
Mesopotamians include, but are by no means limited to, domestication of animals, agriculture,
common tools, sophisticated weaponry and warfare, the chariot, wine, beer, demarcation of time
into hours, minutes, and seconds, religious rites, the sail (sailboats), and irrigation. Orientalist
Samuel Noah Kramer, in fact, has listed 39 ` rsts' in human civilization that originated in Sumer.
These include:

The First Schools, The First Case of `Apple Polishing’, The First Case of
Juvenile Delinquency, The First `War of Nerves’, The First Bicameral Congress,
The First Historian, The First Case of Tax Reduction, The First `Moses’, The
First Legal Precedent, The First Pharmacopoeia, The First `Farmer’s Almanac’,

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The First Experiment in Shade-Tree Gardening, Man’s First Cosmogony and

Cosmology, The First Moral Ideals, The First `Job’, The First Proverbs and
Sayings, The First Animal Fables, The First Literary Debates, The First Biblical
Parallels, The First `Noah’, The First Tale of Resurrection, The First `St. George’,
The First Case of Literary Borrowing, Man’s First Heroic Age, The First Love
Song, The First Library Catalogue, Man’s First Golden Age, The First `Sick’
Society, The First Liturgic Laments, The First Messiahs, The First Long-
Distance Champion, The First Literary Imagery, The First Sex Symbolism, The
First Mater Dolorosa, The First Lullaby, The First Literary Portrait, The First
Elegies, Labor’s First Victory, The First Aquarium.

Archaeological excavations starting in the 1840s CE have

revealed human settlements dating to 10,000 BCE in
Mesopotamia that indicate that the fertile conditions of the
land between two rivers allowed an ancient hunter-gatherer
people to settle in the land, domesticate animals, and turn
their attention to agriculture. Trade soon followed, and with
prosperity came urbanization and the birth of the city. It is
generally thought that writing was invented due to trade, out
of the necessity for long-distance communication, and for
keeping more careful track of accounts.

THERE WERE OVER 1,000

DEITIES IN THE PANTHEON
OF THE GODS OF THE Lion of Babylon [Detail]
MESOPOTAMIAN CULTURES.

Learning & Religion

Mesopotamia was known in antiquity as a seat of learning, and it is believed that Thales of Miletus
(c. 585 BCE, known as the ' rst philosopher') studied there. As the Babylonians believed that water
was the ' rst principle' from which all else owed, and as Thales is famous for that very claim, it
seems probable he studied in the region.

Intellectual pursuits were highly valued across Mesopotamia, and the schools (devoted primarily
to the priestly class) were said to be as numerous as temples and taught reading, writing, religion,
law, medicine, and astrology. There were over 1,000 deities in the pantheon of the gods of the
Mesopotamian cultures and many stories concerning the gods (among them, the creation myth,
the Enuma Elish). It is generally accepted that biblical tales such as the Fall of Man and the Flood
of Noah (among many others) originated in Mesopotamian lore, as they rst appear in
Mesopotamian works such as The Myth of Adapa and the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest written story
in the world. The Mesopotamians believed that they were co-workers with the gods and that the
land was infused with spirits and demons (though `demons’ should not be understood in the
modern, Christian, sense).

The beginning of the world, they believed, was a victory by the gods over the forces of chaos but,
even though the gods had won, this did not mean chaos could not come again. Through daily
rituals, attention to the deities, proper funeral practices, and simple civic duty, the people of
Mesopotamia felt they helped maintain balance in the world and kept the forces of chaos and
destruction at bay. Along with expectations that one would honor one’s elders and treat people
with respect, the citizens of the land were also to honor the gods through the jobs they performed
every day.

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Jobs
Men and women both worked, and “because
ancient Mesopotamia was fundamentally an
agrarian society, the principal occupations were
growing crops and raising livestock” (Bertman,
274). Other occupations included those of the
scribe, the healer, artisan, weaver, potter,
shoemaker, sherman, teacher, and priest or
priestess. Bertman writes:

At the head of society were the kings

and priests served by the populous
staff of palace and temple. With the Map of Mesopotamia, 2000-1600 BC
institution of standing armies and
the spread of imperialism, military
officers and professional soldiers took their place in Mesopotamia’s
expanding and diverse workforce. (274)

Women enjoyed nearly equal rights and could own land, le for divorce, own their own
businesses, and make contracts in trade. The early brewers of beer and wine, as well as the healers
in the community, were initially women. These trades were later taken over by men, it seems,
when it became apparent they were lucrative occupations. The work one did, however, was never
considered simply a `job’ but one’s contribution to the community and, by extension, to the gods’
e orts in keeping the world at peace and in harmony.

Buildings & Government

The temple, at the center of every city (o en on a raised platform), symbolized the importance of
the city’s patron deity who would also be worshipped by whatever communities that city presided
over. Mesopotamia gave birth to the world’s rst cities which were largely built of sun-dried brick.
In the words of Bertman: 

The domestic architecture of Mesopotamia grew out of the soil upon which it
stood. Unlike Egypt, Mesopotamia –especially in the south– was barren of
stone that could be quarried for construction.” The land was equally devoid of
trees for timber, so the people “turned to other natural resources that lay
abundantly at hand: the muddy clay of its riverbanks and the rushes and
reeds that grew in their marshes. With them, the Mesopotamians created the
world’s first columns, arches, and roofed structures. (285)

Simple homes were constructed from bundles of reeds lashed together and inserted in the
ground, while more complex homes were built of sun-dried clay brick (a practice followed later by
the Egyptians). Cities and temple complexes, with their famous ziggurats (the step-pyramid
structures indigenous to the region), were all built using oven-baked bricks of clay which were
then painted.

The gods were thought to be present in the

planning and execution of any building project
and very speci c prayers, recited in a set order to PRIOR TO THE CONCEPT OF A
the proper deity, were considered of utmost
importance in the success of the project and the KING, THE PRIESTLY RULERS
prosperity of the occupants of the home. ARE BELIEVED TO HAVE

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Whichever kingdom or empire held sway across DICTATED THE LAW

Mesopotamia, in whatever historical period, the
vital role of the gods in the lives of the people
ACCORDING TO RELIGIOUS
remained undiminished. This reverence for the PRECEPTS.
divine characterized the lives of both the eld
worker and the king. The historian Helen
Chapin Metz writes:

The precariousness of existence in southern Mesopotamia led to a highly

developed sense of religion. Cult centers such as Eridu, dating back to 5000
BCE, served as important centers of pilgrimage and devotion even before the
rise of Sumer. Many of the most important Mesopotamian cities emerged in
areas surrounding the pre-Sumerian cult centers, thus reinforcing the close
relationship between religion and government. (2)

The role of the king was established at some point a er 3600 BCE and, unlike the priest-rulers
who came before, the king dealt directly with the people and made his will clear through laws of
his own devising. Prior to the concept of a king, the priestly rulers are believed to have dictated
the law according to religious precepts and received divine messages through signs and omens;
the king, while still honoring and placating the gods, was considered a powerful enough
representative of those gods to be able to speak their will through his own dictates, using his own
voice.

This is most clearly seen in the famous laws of Hammurabi of

Babylon (r. 1792-1750 BCE), but a ruler claiming direct contact
with the gods was quite common throughout Mesopotamian
history, most notably in the Akkadian king Naram-Sin (r.
2261-2224 BCE) who went so far as to proclaim himself a god
incarnate. The king was responsible for the welfare of his
people and a good king, who ruled in accordance with divine
will, was recognized by the prosperity of the region he reigned
over.

Still, even very e cient rulers, such as Sargon of Akkad (r.

2334-2279 BCE), had to deal with perpetual uprisings and
revolts by factions, or whole regions, contesting his legitimacy.
As Mesopotamia was so vast a region, with so many di erent
cultures and ethnicities within its borders, a single ruler
attempting to enforce the laws of a central government would
invariably be met with resistance from some quarter.
Shalmaneser III

The History of Mesopotamia

The history of the region, and the development of the civilizations which ourished there, is most
easily understood by dividing it into periods:

Pre-Pottery Neolithic Age

Also known as The Stone Age (c. 10,000 BCE though evidence suggests human habitation much
earlier). There is archaeological con rmation of crude settlements and early signs of warfare
between tribes, most likely over fertile land for crops and elds for grazing livestock. Animal
husbandry was increasingly practiced during this time with a shi from a hunter-gatherer culture
to an agrarian one. Even so, the historian Marc Van De Mieroop notes:

There was not a sudden change from hunting-gathering to farming, but

rather a slow process during which people increased their reliance on

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resources they managed directly, but still supplemented their diets by

hunting wild animals. Agriculture enabled an increase in continuous
settlement by people (12).

As more settlements grew, architectural developments slowly became more sophisticated in the
construction of permanent dwellings.

Pottery Neolithic Age (c. 7,000 BCE)

In this period there was a widespread use of tools and clay pots and a speci c culture begins to
emerge in the Fertile Crescent. Scholar Stephen Bertman writes, “during this era, the only
advanced technology was literally 'cutting edge'” as stone tools and weapons became more
sophisticated. Bertman further notes that “the Neolithic economy was primarily based on food
production through farming and animal husbandry” (55) and was more settled, as opposed to the
Stone Age in which communities were more mobile. Architectural advancements naturally
followed in the wake of permanent settlements as did developments in the manufacture of
ceramics and stone tools.

Copper Age (5,900 – 3,200 BCE)

Also known as The Chalcolithic Period owing to

the transition from stone tools and weapons to
ones made of copper. This era includes the so-
called Ubaid Period (c. 5900-4300 BCE, named
for Tell al-`Ubaid, the location in Iraq where the
greatest number of artifacts were found) during
which the rst temples in Mesopotamia were built
and unwalled villages developed from sporadic
settlements of single dwellings.  These villages
then gave rise to the urbanization process and
cities began to appear in this period, most notably
Reconstruction of the Ziggurat of Ur
in the region of Sumer in which thrived the cities
of Eridu, Uruk, Ur, Kish, Nuzi, Lagash, Nippur,
and Ngirsu, and in Elam with its city of Susa.

The earliest city is o en cited as Uruk, although Eridu and Ur have also been suggested. Van De
Mieroop writes, “Mesopotamia was the most densely urbanized region in the ancient world” (as
cited in Bertman, 201), and the cities which grew up along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well
as those founded further away, established systems of trade which resulted in great prosperity.

This period saw the invention of the wheel (c. 3500 BCE) and writing (c. 3000 BCE), both by the
Sumerians, the establishment of kingships to replace priestly rule, and the rst war in the world
recorded between the kingdoms of Sumer and Elam (3200 BCE) with Sumer as the victor.
Increased prosperity in the region gave rise to ornate temples and statuary, sophisticated pottery
and gurines, toys for children (including dolls for girls and wheeled carts for boys), and the use of
personal seals (known as Cylinder Seals) to denote ownership of property and to stand for an
individual’s signature. Cylinder Seals would be comparable to one's modern-day identi cation
card or driver's license and, in fact, the loss or the of one's seal would have been as signi cant as
modern-day identity the or losing one's credit cards. 

Early Bronze Age (3,000 – 2119 BCE)

During this period, bronze supplanted copper as the material from which tools and weapons were
made. The rise of the city-state laid the foundation for economic and political stability which
would eventually lead to the rise of the Akkadian Empire (2350 BCE) and the rapid growth of the
cities of Akkad and Mari, two of the most prosperous urban centers of the time. The cultural
stability necessary for the creation of art in the region resulted in more intricate designs in
architecture and sculpture, as well as the following inventions or improvements:

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a number of specific and momentous inventions: the plough and the wheel,
the chariot and the sailboat, and the cylinder-seal, the single most
distinctive art form of ancient Mesopotamia and a pervasive demonstration
of the importance of property ownership and business in the country’s daily
life. (Bertman, 55-56)

The Akkadian Empire of Sargon was the rst multi-national realm in the world and Sargon's
daughter, Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE), the rst author of literary works known by name. The
library at Mari contained over 20,000 cuneiform tablets (books) and the palace there was
considered one of the nest in the region.

Middle Bronze Age (2119-1700 BCE)

The expansion of the Assyrian Kingdoms (Assur,

Nimrud, Sharrukin, Dur, and Nineveh) and the
HAMMURABI, KING OF
rise of the Babylonian Dynasty (centered in BABYLON (1792-1750 BCE),
Babylon and Chaldea) created an atmosphere ROSE FROM RELATIVE
conducive to trade and, with it, increased
warfare. The Guti Tribe, erce nomads who
OBSCURITY TO CONQUER
succeeded in toppling the Akkadian Empire, THE REGION & REIGN FOR
dominated the politics of Mesopotamia until 43 YEARS.
they were defeated by the allied forces of the
kings of Sumer.

Hammurabi, King of Babylon rose from relative obscurity to conquer the region and reign for 43
years. Among his many accomplishments was his famous code of laws, inscribed on the stele of
the gods. Babylon became a leading centre at this time for intellectual pursuit and high
accomplishment in arts and letters. This cultural centre was not to last, however, and was sacked
and looted by the Hittites who were then succeeded by the Kassites.

Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE)

The rise of the Kassite Dynasty (a tribe who came from the Zagros Mountains in the north and are
thought to have originated in modern-day Iran) leads to a shi in power and an expansion of
culture and learning a er the Kassites conquered Babylon. The collapse of the Bronze Age
followed the discovery of how to mine ore and make use of iron, a technology which the Kassites
and, earlier, the Hittites made singular use of in warfare.

The period also saw the beginning of the decline of Babylonian culture due to the rise in power of
the Kassites until they were defeated by the Elamites and driven out. A er the Elamites gave way
to the Aramaeans, the small Kingdom of Assyria began a series of successful campaigns, and the
Assyrian Empire was rmly established and prospered under the rule of Tiglath-Pileser I (r. 1115-
1076 BCE) and, a er him, Ashurnasirpal II (r. 884-859 BCE) consolidated the empire further. Most
Mesopotamian states were either destroyed or weakened following the Bronze Age Collapse
around 1200 BCE, leading to a short "dark age".

Iron Age (1000 – 500 BCE)

This age saw the rise and expansion of the Neo-Assyrian

Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III (r. 745-727 BCE) and that
Empire’s meteoric rise to power and conquest under the
rule of great Assyrian kings such as Sargon II (722-705
BCE), Sennacherib (705-681 BCE), Esarhaddon (681-669
BCE) and Ashurbanipal (c. 668-627 BCE, who conquered
Babylonia, Syria, Israel, and Egypt). The Empire su ered a
decline as rapid as its rise due to repeated attacks on central
cities by Babylonians, Medes, and Scythians.

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The tribes of the Hittites and the Mitanni consolidated

their respective powers during this time which resulted in
the rise of the Neo-Hittite and Neo-Babylonian Empires.
King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon destroyed Jerusalem
(588 BCE) during this period and forced the inhabitants of
Israel into the “Babylonian Exile”. He was also responsible
for extensive construction in Babylon, creating famous
buildings such as the Ishtar Gate and the Great Ziggurat
(the "Tower of Babel"). The fall of Babylon to Cyrus II of
Persia in 539 BCE e ectively ended Babylonian culture.

Classical
Antiquity
(500 BCE AFTER CYRUS II TOOK
– 7th
century BABYLON, THE BULK OF Ashurnasirpal II Wall Relief
CE) MESOPOTAMIA BECAME
A er
PART OF THE PERSIAN
Cyrus II EMPIRE & SAW A RAPID
(d. 530 CULTURAL DECLINE.
BCE) took
Babylon,
the bulk
of Mesopotamia became part of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and this period saw a rapid
cultural decline in the region, most notably in the loss of the knowledge of cuneiform script. The
conquest of the Persians by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE brought Hellenization of the culture
and religion but, even though Alexander tried to again make Babylon a city of consequence, its
days of glory were now in the past.

A er his death, Alexander’s general Seleucus took control of the region and founded the Seleucid
Dynasty which ruled until 126 BCE when the land was conquered by the Parthians who were, in
turn, dominated by the Sassanians (a people of Persian descent). Bertman writes, “Under Sassanian
domination, Mesopotamia lay in ruins, its elds dried out or turned into a swampy morass, its
once great cities made ghost towns” (58).

By the time of the conquest by the Roman Empire (116 CE), Mesopotamia was a largely Hellenized
region, lacking in any unity, which had forgotten the old gods and the old ways. The Romans
improved the infrastructure of their colonies signi cantly through their introduction of better
roads and plumbing and brought Roman Law to the land. Even so, the region was constantly
caught up in the wars various Roman emperors waged with other nations over control of the land. 

The entire culture of the region once known as Mesopotamia was swept away in the nal conquest
of the area by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE which resulted in the uni cation of law,
language, religion and culture under Islam. Bertman notes, “With the Islamic conquest of 651 CE
the history of ancient Mesopotamia ends” (58). Today the great cities that once rose along the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers are largely unexcavated mounds or broken bricks on arid plains, and
the once fertile crescent has steadily dwindled to a wasteland due to human factors (such as
overuse of the land through agricultural pursuits or urban development) and also due to climate
change.

Legacy
The legacy of Mesopotamia endures today through many
of the most basic aspects of modern life such as the sixty-
second minute and the sixty-minute hour. Helen Chapin
Metz writes,

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Because the well-being of the community

depended upon close observation of natural
phenomena, scientific or protoscientific
activities occupied much of the priests' time.
For example, the Sumerians believed that each
of the gods was represented by a number. The
number sixty, sacred to the god An, was their
basic unit of calculation. The minutes of an
hour and the notational degrees of a circle
were Sumerian concepts. The highly developed
agricultural system and the refined irrigation
and water-control systems that enabled Sumer
Queen of the Night Plaque
to achieve surplus production also led to the
growth of large cities. (4)

Urbanization, the wheel, writing, astronomy, mathematics, wind power, irrigation, agricultural
developments, animal husbandry, and the narratives which would eventually be re-written as the
Hebrew Scriptures and provide the basis for the Christian Old Testament all came from the land
of Mesopotamia.

As noted, Kramer lists 39 ` rsts' from Mesopotamia in his book  History Begins at Sumer and yet, as
impressive as those ` rsts' are, Mesopotamian contributions to world culture do not end with
them. The Mesopotamians in uenced the cultures of Egypt and Greece through long-distance
trade and cultural di usion and, through these cultures, impacted the culture of Rome which set
the standard for the development and spread of western civilization. Mesopotamia generally, and
Sumer speci cally, gave the world some of its most enduring cultural aspects and, even though the
cities and great palaces are long gone, that legacy continued into the modern era. 

In the 19th century CE, archaeologists of varying nationalities arrived in Mesopotamia to excavate
for evidence which would corroborate the biblical tales of the Old Testament. At this time, the
Bible was considered the oldest book in the world and the stories found in its pages were thought
to be original compositions. The archaeologists who sought physical evidence to support the
biblical stories found exactly the opposite once cuneiform was deciphered by the scholar and
translator George Smith (1840-1876 CE) in 1872 CE. The story of the Great Flood and Noah's Ark,
the story of the Fall of Man, the concept of a Garden of Eden, even the complaints of Job had all
been written centuries before the biblical texts by the Mesopotamians.   

Once cuneiform could be read, the ancient world of Mesopotamia opened up to the modern age
and transformed people's understanding of the history of the world and themselves. The
discovery of the Sumerian Civilization and the stories of the cuneiform tablets encouraged a new
freedom of intellectual inquiry into all areas of knowledge. It was now understood that the biblical
narratives were not original Hebrew works, the world was obviously older than the church had
been claiming, there were civilizations which had risen and fallen long before that of Egypt and if
these claims by authorities of church and schools had been false, perhaps others were as well. 

The spirit of inquiry in the late 19th century was already making inroads into challenging the
paradigms of accepted thought when Smith deciphered cuneiform but the discovery of
Mesopotamian culture and religion encouraged this further. In ancient times, Mesopotamia
impacted the world through its inventions, innovations, and religious vision; in the modern day it
literally changed the way people understood the whole of history and one's place in the continuing
story of human civilization. 

About the Author

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Joshua J. Mark
A freelance writer and former part-time Professor of Philosophy at Marist College, New York,
Joshua J. Mark has lived in Greece and Germany and traveled through Egypt. He has taught
history, writing, literature, and philosophy at the college level.

Ancient Babylon: Center of Mesopotamian Civilization | LiveScience

Mesopotamia - The British Museum
Mesopotamia
Durant, W. Our Oriental Heritage. (Simon & Schuster, 1954).
Kriwaczek, P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014).
Leick, G. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the Cities. (Scarecrow Press, 2002).
Leick, G. The A to Z of Mesopotamia. (Scarecrow Press, 2010).
Van De Mieroop, M. A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC [Blackwell History of the
Ancient.. (Blackwell Publishing, 2006).
Bertman, S. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Black, J & Green, A. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. (University of Texas Press,
1992).
Black, J. et. al. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. (Oxford University Press, U.S.A., 2018).
Bottéro, J. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. ( Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
Jacobsen,T. The Treasures of Darkness. (Yale University Press, 1978).
Kramer, S. N. History Begins at Sumer. (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988).
Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. (University of Chicago Press, 1971).
Mehta-Jones, S. Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. (Crabtree Publishing Company, 2004).
Van De Mieroop, M. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015).
Von Soden, W. The Ancient Orient. (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994).
Wallis Budge, E. A. Babylonian Life and History. (Barnes & Noble Press, 2005).
Wise Bauer, S. The History of the Ancient World. (W. W. Norton & Company, 2007).

APA Style
Mark, J. J. (2018, March 14). Mesopotamia. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
https://www.ancient.eu/Mesopotamia/

Chicago Style
Mark, Joshua J. "Mesopotamia." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified March 14, 2018.
https://www.ancient.eu/Mesopotamia/.

MLA Style
Mark, Joshua J. "Mesopotamia." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 14 Mar 2018.
Web. 02 Aug 2019.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published on 14 March 2018 under the following license: Creative Commons:
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content
non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.
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NOV 30, 2017

Mesopotamia
HISTORY.COM EDITORS

Mesopotamia is a region of southwest Asia

CONTENTS in the Tigris and Euphrates river system
that benefitted from the area’s climate and
1. WHERE IS MESOPOTAMIA? geography to host the beginnings of
human civilization. Its history is marked by
2. MESOPOTAMIAN CIVILIZATION many important inventions that changed
3. ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA the world, including the concept of time,
math, the wheel, sailboats, maps and
4. GILGAMESH writing. Mesopotamia is also defined by a
5. SARGON AND THE AKKADIANS changing succession of ruling bodies from
different areas and cities that seized
6. GUTIANS
control over a period of thousands of
7. UR-NAMMA years.
8. THE BABYLONIANS
WHERE IS MESOPOTAMIA?
9. THE HITTITES
10. THE ASSYRIANS Mesopotamia is located in the region now
known as the Middle East, which includes
11. SARGON II
parts of southwest Asia and lands around
12. NEBUCHADNEZZAR the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
13. THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

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14. MESOPOTAMIAN ART The word “mesopotamia” is formed from

the ancient words “meso,” meaning
15. MESOPOTAMIAN GODS
between or in the middle of, and “potamos”
16. SOURCES meaning river. Situated in the fertile valleys
between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers,
the region is now home to modern-day
Iraq, Kuwait, Turkey and Syria.

MESOPOTAMIAN CIVILIZATION
Humans first settled in Mesopotamia in the Paleolithic era. By 14,000 B.C., people in
the region lived in small settlements with circular houses.

Five thousand years later, these houses formed farming communities following the
domestication of animals and the development of agriculture, most notably irrigation
techniques that took advantage of the proximity of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Agricultural progress was the work of the dominant Ubaid culture, which had
absorbed the Halaf culture before it.

ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA
HISTORY HISTORY

These scattered Bronze Age Fertile

MAVEN

agrarian communities started in the northern part of the ancient

Mesopotamian region and spread south, continuing to grow for several thousand
Crescent
years until forming what modern humans would recognize as cities, which were
considered the work of the Sumer people.

Uruk was the first of these cities, dating back to around 3200 B.C., a mud brick
metropolis built on the riches brought from trade and conquest and featuring public
art, gigantic columns and temples, and with a population of some 50,000 citizens.

Sumerians are also responsible for the earliest form of written language, cuneiform,
with which they kept detailed clerical records.

By 3000 B.C., Mesopotamia was firmly under the control of the Sumerian people.
Sumer contained several decentralized city-states—Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Uruk, Kish
and Ur.

The first king of a united Sumer is recorded as Etana of Kish. It’s unknown whether
Etana really existed, as he and many of the rulers listed in the Sumerian King List that
was developed around 2100 B.C. are all featured in Sumerian mythology as well.

Etana was followed by Meskiaggasher, the king of the city-state Uruk. A warrior
named Lugalbanda took control around 2750 B.C.

GILGAMESH
Gilgamesh, the legendary subject of the Epic of Gilgamesh, is said to be Lugalbanda’s
son. Gilgamesh is believed to have been born in Uruk around 2700 B.C.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered to be the earliest great work of literature and the
inspiration for some of the stories in the Bible.

King Lugalzagesi was the final king of Sumer, falling to Sargon of Akkad, a Semitic
people, in 2334 B.C. They were briefly allies, conquering the city of Kish together, but
Lugalzagesi’s mercenary Akkadian army was ultimately loyal to Sargon.

SARGON AND THE AKKADIANS

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The Akkadian Empire existed from 2234-2154 B.C. under the leadership of the now-
titled Sargon the Great, considered the world’s first multicultural empire with a
central government.

Little is known of Sargon’s background, but legends give him a similar origin to the
Biblical story of Moses. He was at one point an officer who worked for the king of
Kish, and Akkadia was a city that Sargon himself established. When the city of Uruk
invaded Kish, Sargon took Kish from Uruk and was encouraged to continue with
conquest.

Sargon expanded his empire through military means, conquering all of Sumer and
moving into what is now Syria. Under Sargon, trade beyond Mesopotamian borders
grew, and architecture became more sophisticated, notably the appearance of
ziggurats, flat-topped buildings with a pyramid shape and steps.

GUTIANS
The final king of the Akkadian Empire, Shar-kali-sharri, died in 2193 B.C., and
Mesopotamia went through a century of unrest, with different groups struggling for
control.
HISTORY HISTORY
Among these were the Gutian people, barbarians from the Zagros Mountains. The
Gutian rule is considered
BronzeaAge
disorderly one that caused aFertile
severe downturn in the
MAVEN

empire’s prospects.
Crescent
UR-NAMMA
In 2100 B.C. the city of Ur attempted to establish a dynasty for a new empire. The
ruler of Ur-Namma, the king of the city of Ur, brought Sumerians back into control
after Utu-hengal, the leader of the city of Uruk, defeated the Gutians.

Under Ur-Namma, the first code of law in recorded history appeared. Ur-Namma was
attacked by both the Elamites and the Amorites and defeated in 2004 B.C.

THE BABYLONIANS
Choosing Babylon as the capital, the Amorites took control and established Babylonia.

Kings were considered deities and the most famous of these was Hammurabi, who
ruled 1792–1750 B.C. Hammurabi worked to expand the empire, and the Babylonians
were almost continually at war.

Hammurabi’s most famous contribution is his list of laws, better known as the Code
of Hammurabi, devised around 1772 B.C.

Hammurabi’s innovation was not just writing down the laws for everyone to see, but
making sure that everyone throughout the empire followed the same legal codes, and
that governors in different areas did not enact their own. The list of laws also
featured recommended punishments, to ensure that every citizen had the right to the
same justice.

In 1750 B.C. the Elamites conquered the city of Ur. Together with the control of the
Amorites, this is considered to mark the end of Sumerian culture.

THE HITTITES
The Hittites, who were centered around Anatolia and Syria, conquered the
Babylonians around 1595 B.C.
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Smelting was a significant contribution of the Hittites, allowing for more sophisticated
weaponry that lead them to expand the empire even further. Their attempts to keep
the technology to themselves eventually failed, and other empires became a match
for them.

The Hittites pulled out shortly after sacking Babylon, and the Kassites took control of
the city. Hailing from the mountains east of Mesopotamia, their period of rule saw
immigrants from India and Europe arriving, and travel sped up thanks to the use of
horses with chariots and carts.

The Kassites abandoned their own culture after a couple of generations of

dominance, allowing themselves to be absorbed into Babylonian civilization.

THE ASSYRIANS
The Assyrian Empire, under the leadership of Ashur-uballit I, rose around 1365 B.C. in
the areas between the lands controlled by the Hittites and the Kassites.

Around 1220 B.C., King Tukulti-Ninurta I aspired to rule all of Mesopotamia and seized
Babylon. The Assyrian Empire continued to expand over the next two centuries,
moving into modern-day Palestine and Syria.
HISTORY HISTORY
Under the rule of Ashurnasirpal
Bronze Age II in 884 B.C., the empireFertile
created a new capitol,
MAVEN

Nimrud, built from the spoils of conquest and brutality that made Ashurnasirpal II a
hated figure. Crescent
His son Shalmaneser spent the majority of his reign fighting off an alliance between
Syria, Babylon and Egypt, and conquering Israel. One of his sons rebelled against him,
and Shalmaneser sent another son, Shamshi-Adad, to fight for him. Three years later,
Shamshi-Adad ruled.

SARGON II
A new dynasty began in 722 B.C. when Sargon II seized power. Modeling himself on
Sargon the Great, he divided the empire into provinces and kept the peace.

His undoing came when the Chaldeans attempted to invade, and Sargon II sought an
alliance with them. The Chaldeans made a separate alliance with the Elamites, and
together they took Babylonia.

Sargon II lost to the Chaldeans but switched to attacking Syria, parts of Egypt and
Gaza, embarking on a spree of conquest before eventually dying in battle against the
Cimmerians from Russia.

Sargon II’s grandson Esarhaddon ruled from 681 to 669 B.C., and went on a
destructive campaign of conquest through Ethiopia, Palestine and Egypt, destroying
cities he rampaged through after looting them. Esarhaddon struggled to rule his
expanded empire. A paranoid leader, he suspected many in his court of conspiring
against him and had them killed.

His son Ashurbanipal is considered the final great ruler of the Assyrian empire. Ruling
from 669 to 627 B.C., he faced a rebellion in Egypt, losing the territory, and from his
brother, the king of Babylonia, whom he defeated. Ashurbanipal is best remembered
for creating Mesopotamia’s first library.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR

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In 626 B.C. the throne was seized by Babylonian public official Nabopolassar,
ushering in the rule of the Semitic dynasty from Chaldea. In 616 B.C. Nabopolassar
attempted to take Assyria but failed.

His son Nebuchadnezzar reigned over the Babylonian Empire following an invasion
effort in 614 B.C. by King Cyaxares of Media that pushed the Assyrians further away.

Nebuchadnezzar is known for his ornate architecture, especially the Hanging Gardens
of Babylon, the Walls of Babylon and the Ishtar Gate. Under his rule, women and men
had equal rights.

Nebuchadnezzar is also responsible for the conquest of Jerusalem, which he

destroyed in 586 B.C., taking its inhabitants into captivity, and appeared in the Old
Testament because of this action.

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE

Persian Emperor Cyrus II seized power during the reign of Nabonidus in 539 B.C.
Nabonidus was such an unpopular king that Mesopotamians did not rise to defend
him during the invasion.
HISTORY HISTORY
Babylonian culture is considered to have ended under Persian rule, following a slow
decline of use inBronze
cuneiformAge
and other cultural hallmarks.Fertile
MAVEN

By the time Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Crescent

Empire in 331 B.C., most of
the great cities of Mesopotamia no longer existed and the culture had been long
overtaken. Eventually, the region was taken by the Romans in 116 A.D. and finally
Arabic Muslims in 651 A.D.

MESOPOTAMIAN ART
While making art predates civilization in Mesopotamia, the innovations there include
creating art on a larger scale, often in the context of their grandiose and complex
architecture, and frequently employing metalwork.

One of the earliest examples of metalwork in art comes from southern Mesopotamia,
a silver statuette of a kneeling bull from 3000 B.C. Before this, painted ceramics and
limestone were the common artforms.

Another metal-based work, a goat standing on its hind legs and leaning on the
branches of a tree, featuring gold and copper along with other materials, was found
in the the Great Death Pit at Ur and dates to 2500 B.C.

Mesopotamian art often depicted its rulers and the glories of their lives. Also created
around 2500 B.C. in Ur is the intricate Standard of Ur, a shell and limestone structure
that features an early example of complex pictorial narrative, depicting a history of
war and peace.

In 2230 B.C., Akkadian King Naram-Sin was the subject of an elaborate work in
limestone that depicts a military victory in the Zagros Mountains and presents Naram-
Sin as divine.

MESOPOTAMIAN GODS
Religious worship was another preoccupation for Mesopotamians. A painted
terracotta from 1775 B.C. gives an example of the sophistication of Babylonian art,
portraying either the goddess Ishtar or her sister Ereshkigal, accompanied by night
creatures.

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Among the most dynamic forms of Mesopotamian art are the reliefs of the Assyrian
kings in their palaces, notably from Ashurbanipal’s reign around 635 B.C. One famous
relief in his palace in Nimrud shows him leading an army into battle, accompanied by
the winged god Assur.

Ashurbanipal is also featured in multiple reliefs that portray his frequent lion-hunting
activity. An impressive lion image also figures into the Ishtar Gate in 585 B.C., during
the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II and fashioned from glazed bricks.

Mesopotamian art returned to the public eye in the 21st century when museums in
Iraq were looted during conflicts there. Many pieces went missing, including a 4,300-
year-old bronze mask of an Akkadian king, jewelry from Ur, a solid gold Sumerian
harp, 80,000 cuneiform tablets, and numerous other irreplaceable items.

SOURCES
Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Paul Kriwaczek.
Ancient Mesopotamia. Leo Oppenheim.
Ancient Mesopotamia: This History, Our History. University of Chicago.
Mesopotamia 8000-2000 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
HISTORY HISTORY
30,000 Years of Art. Editors at Phaidon.
Bronze Age Fertile
MAVEN

Citation Information
Crescent
Article Title
Mesopotamia

Author
History.com Editors

Website Name
HISTORY

URL
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/mesopotamia

Access Date
August 2, 2019

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Last Updated
August 21, 2018

Original Published Date

November 30, 2017

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8/2/2019 Ancient Egypt - Ancient History Encyclopedia

Ancient Egypt
by Joshua J. Mark
published on 02 September 2009

Egypt is a country in North Africa, on the Mediterranean Sea,

and is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth. The
name 'Egypt' comes from the Greek Aegyptos which was the
Greek pronunciation of the ancient Egyptian name 'Hwt-Ka-
Ptah' ("Mansion of the Spirit of Ptah"), originally the name of
the city of Memphis. Memphis was the rst capital of Egypt
and a famous religious and trade centre; its high status is
attested to by the Greeks alluding to the entire country by that
name.

To the ancient Egyptians themselves, their country was simply

known as Kemet which means 'Black Land' so named for the
rich, dark soil along the Nile River where the rst settlements
began. Later, the country was known as Misr which means
'country', a name still in use by Egyptians for their nation in the
present day. Egypt thrived for thousands of years (from c.
8000 BCE to c. 30 BCE) as an independent nation whose
culture was famous for great cultural advances in every area of human knowledge, from the arts to
science to technology and religion. The great monuments which ancient Egypt is still celebrated
for re ect the depth and grandeur of Egyptian culture which in uenced so many ancient
civilizations, among them Greece and Rome.

One of the reasons for the enduring popularity of Egyptian culture is its emphasis on the
grandeur of the human experience. Their great monuments, tombs, temples, and art work all
celebrate life and stand as reminders of what once was and what human beings, at their best, are
capable of achieving. Although ancient Egypt in popular culture is o en associated with death and
mortuary rites, something even in these speaks to people across the ages of what it means to be a
human being and the power and purpose of remembrance.

To the Egyptians, life on earth was only one aspect of an eternal journey. The soul was immortal
and was only inhabiting a body on this physical plane for a short time. At death, one would meet
with judgment in the Hall of Truth and, if justi ed, would move on to an eternal paradise known
as The Field of Reeds which was a mirror image of one's life on earth. Once one had reached
paradise one could live peacefully in the company of those one had loved while on earth,
including one's pets, in the same neighborhood by the same steam, beneath the very same trees
one thought had been lost at death. This eternal life, however, was only available to those who had
lived well and in accordance with the will of the gods in the most perfect place conducive to such a
goal: the land of Egypt. 

Egypt has a long history which goes back far beyond the written word, the stories of the gods, or
the monuments which have made the culture famous. Evidence of overgrazing of cattle, on the
land which is now the Sahara Desert, has been dated to about 8000 BCE. This evidence, along with
artifacts discovered, points to a thriving agricultural civilization in the region at that time.  As the

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land was mostly arid even then, hunter-gathering nomads sought the cool of the water source of
the Nile River Valley and began to settle there sometime prior to 6000 BCE.

Organized farming began in the region c. 6000 BCE and communities known as the Badarian
Culture began to ourish alongside the river. Industry developed at about this same time as
evidenced by faience workshops discovered at Abydos dating to c. 5500 BCE. The Badarian were
followed by the Amratian, the Gerzean, and the Naqada cultures (also known as Naqada I, Naqada
II, and Naqada III), all of which contributed signi cantly to the development of what became
Egyptian civilization.  The written history of the land begins at some point between 3400 and
3200 BCE when hieroglyphic script is developed by the Naqada Culture III. By 3500 BCE
mummi cation of the dead was in practice at the city of Hierakonpolis and large stone tombs built
at Abydos. The city of Xois is recorded as being already ancient by 3100-2181 BCE as inscribed on
the famous Palermo Stone. As in other cultures world-wide, the small agrarian communities
became centralized and grew into larger urban centers.

Early History of Egypt

The Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-c. 2613 BCE) PROSPERITY LED TO, AMONG
saw the uni cation of the north and south OTHER THINGS, AN
kingdoms of Egypt under the king Menes ( also INCREASE IN THE BREWING
known as Meni or Manes) of Upper Egypt who
conquered Lower Egypt in c. 3118 BCE or c. 3150
OF BEER, MORE LEISURE
BCE. This version of the early history comes TIME FOR SPORTS, AND
from the Aegyptica (History of Egypt) by the ADVANCES IN MEDICINE.
ancient historian Manetho who lived in the 3rd
century BCE  under the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-
30 BCE). Although his chronology has been
disputed by later historians, it is still regularly consulted on dynastic succession and the early
history of ancient Egypt.

Manetho’s work is the only source which cites Menes and the conquest and it is now thought that
the man referred to by Manetho as `Menes’ was the king Narmer who peacefully united Upper and
Lower Egypt under one rule. Identi cation of Menes with Narmer is far from universally accepted,
however, and Menes has been as credibly linked to the king Hor-Aha (c. 3100-3050 BCE)who
succeeded him. An explanation for Menes' association with his predecessor and successor is that
`Menes' is an honori c title meaning "he who endures" and not a personal name and so could have
been used to refer to more than one king. The claim that the land was uni ed by military
campaign is also disputed as the famous Narmer Palette, depicting a military victory, is considered
by some scholars to be royal propaganda. The country may have rst been united peacefully but
this seems unlikely. 

Geographical designation in ancient Egypt follows the direction of the Nile River and so Upper
Egypt is the southern region and Lower Egypt the northern area closer to the Mediterranean Sea.
Narmer ruled from the city of Heirakonopolis and then from Memphis and Abydos. Trade
increased signi cantly under the rulers of the Early Dynastic Period and elaborate mastaba tombs,
precursors to the later pyramids, developed in ritual burial practices which included increasingly
elaborate mummi cation techniques.

The Gods
From the Pre-Dynastic Period (c. 6000-c.3150 BCE) a belief in the gods de ned the Egyptian
culture. An early Egyptian creation myth tells of the god Atum who stood in the midst of swirling
chaos before the beginning of time and spoke creation into existence. Atum was accompanied by
the eternal force of heka (magic), personi ed in the god Heka and by other spiritual forces which
would animate the world. Heka was the primal force which infused the universe and caused all
things to operate as they did; it also allowed for the central value of the Egyptian culture: ma'at,
harmony and balance. 

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All of the gods and all of their responsibilties went back to ma'at and heka. The sun rose and set as it
did and the moon traveled its course across the sky and the seasons came and went in accordance
with balance and order which was possible because of these two agencies. Ma'at was also
personi ed as a deity, the goddess of the ostrich feather, to whom every king promised his full
abilities and devotion. The king was associated with the god Horus in life and Osiris in death based
upon a myth which became the most popular in Egyptian history.

Osiris and his sister-wife Isis were the original monarchs who governed the world and gave the
people the gi s of civilization. Osiris' brother, Set, grew jealous of him and murdered him but he
was brought back to life by Isis who then bore his son Horus. Osiris was incomplete, however, and
so descended to rule the underworld while Horus, once he had matured, avenged his father and
defeated Set. This myth illustrated how order triumphed over chaos and would become a
persistent motif in mortuary rituals and religious texts and art. There was no period in which the
gods did not play an integral role in the daily lives of the Egyptians and this is clearly seen from
the earliest times in the country's history.

The Old Kingdom

During the period known as the Old Kingdom (c.
2613-2181 BCE), architecture honoring the gods
developed at an increased rate and some of the
most famous monuments in Egypt, such as the
pyramids and the Great Sphinx at Giza, were
The Pyramids
constructed. The king Djoser, who reigned c. 2670
BCE, built the rst Step Pyramid at Saqqara c.
2670, designed by his chief architect and physician Imhotep (c. 2667-2600 BCE) who also wrote
one of the rst medical texts describing the treatment of over 200 di erent diseases and arguing
that the cause of disease could be natural, not the will of the gods. The Great Pyramid of Khufu
(last of the seven wonders of the ancient world) was constructed during his reign (2589-2566 BCE)
with the pyramids of Khafre (2558-2532 BCE) and Menkaure (2532-2503 BCE) following.

The grandeur of the pyramids on the Giza plateau, as they originally would have appeared,
sheathed in gleaming white limestone, is a testament to the power and wealth of the rulers during
this period. Many theories abound regarding how these monuments and tombs were constructed
but modern architects and scholars are far from agreement on any single one. Considering the
technology of the day, some have argued, a monument such as the Great Pyramid of Giza should
not exist. Others claim, however, that the existence of such buildings and tombs suggest superior
technology which has been lost to time.

There is absolutely no evidence that the monuments of the Giza plateau - or any others in Egypt -
were built by slave labor nor is there any evidence to support a historical reading of the biblical
Book of Exodus. Most reputable scholars today reject the claim that the pyramids and other
monuments were built by slave labor although slaves of di erent nationalities certainly did exist in
Egypt and were employed regularly in the mines. Egyptian monuments were considered public
works created for the state and used both skilled and unskilled Egyptian workers in construction,
all of whom were paid for their labor. Workers at the Giza site, which was only one of many, were
given a ration of beer three times a day and their housing, tools, and even their level of health care
have all been clearly established. 

The First Intermediate Period & the Hyksos

The era known as The First Intermediate Period (2181-2040 BCE) saw a decline in the power of the
central government following its collapse. Largely independent districts with their own governors
developed throughout Egypt until two great centers emerged: Hierakonpolis in Lower Egypt and
Thebes in Upper Egypt. These centers founded their own dynasties which ruled their regions
independently and intermittently fought with each other for supreme control until c. 2040 BCE
when the Theban king Mentuhotep II (c. 2061-2010 BCE) defeated the forces of Hierakonpolis and
united Egypt under the rule of Thebes.

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The stability provided by Theban rule allowed for the ourishing of what is known as the Middle
Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE). The Middle Kingdom is considered Egypt’s `Classical Age’ when art
and culture reached great heights and Thebes became the most important and wealthiest city in
the country. According to the historians Oakes and Gahlin, “the Twel h Dynasty kings were strong
rulers who established control not only over the whole of Egypt but also over Nubia to the south,
where several fortresses were built to protect Egyptian trading interests” (11). The rst standing
army was created during the Middle Kingdom by the king Amenemhat I (c. 1991-1962 BCE) the
temple of Karnak was begun under Senruset I (c. 1971-1926 BCE), and some of the greatest art and
literature of the civilization was produced. The 13th Dynasty, however, was weaker than the 12th
and distracted by internal problems which allowed for a foriegn people known as the Hyksos to
gain power in Lower Egypt around the Nile Delta.

The Hyksos are a mysterious people, most likely from the area of Syria/Palestine, who rst
appeared in Egypt c. 1800 and settled in the town of Avaris. While the names of the Hyksos kings
are Semitic in origin, no de nite ethnicity has been established for them. The Hyksos grew in
power until they were able to take control of a signi cant portion of Lower Egypt by c. 1720 BCE,
rendering the Theban Dynasty of Upper Egypt almsot a vassal state.

This era is known as The Second Intermediate Period (c.1782-c.1570 BCE). While the Hyksos
(whose name simply means `foreign rulers’) were hated by the Egyptians, they introduced a great
many improvements to the culture such as the composite bow, the horse, and the chariot along
with crop rotation and developments in bronze and ceramic works. At the same time the Hyksos
controlled the ports of Lower Egypt, by 1700 BCE the Kingdom of Kush had risen to the south of
Thebes in Nubia and now held that border. The Egyptians mounted a number of campaigns to
drive the Hyksos out and subdue the Nubians but all failed until  prince Ahmose I of Thebes
(c.1570-1544 BCE) succeeded and uni ed the country under Theban rule.

The New Kingdom & the Amarna Period

Ahmose I initiated what is known as the period of the New Kingdom (c.1570- c.1069 BCE) which
again saw great prosperity in the land under a strong central government. The title of pharaoh for
the ruler of Egypt comes from the period of the New Kingdom; earlier monarchs were simply
known as kings.  Many of the Egyptian sovereigns best known today ruled during this period and
the majority of the great structures of antiquity such as the Ramesseum, Abu Simbel, the temples
of Karnak and Luxor, and the tombs of the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens were
either created or greatly enhanced during this time.

Between 1504-1492 BCE the pharaoh Tuthmosis I consolidated his power and expanded the
boundaries of Egypt to the Euphrates River in the north, Syria and Palestine to the west, and
Nubia to the south. His reign was followed by Queen Hatshepsut (1479-1458 BCE) who greatly
expanded trade with other nations, most notably the Land of Punt. Her 22-year reign was one of
peace and prosperity for Egypt.

Her successor, Tuthmosis III, carried on her policies

(although he tried to eradicate all memory of her as, it is
thought, he did not want her to serve as a role model for
other women since only males were considered worthy
to rule) and, by the time of his death in 1425 BCE, Egypt
was a great and powerful nation. The prosperity led to,
among other things, an increase in the brewing of beer in
many di erent varieties and more leisure time for sports.
Advances in medicine led to improvements in health.

Bathing had long been an important part of the daily

Egyptian’s regimen as it was encouraged by their religion
and modeled by their clergy. At this time, however, more
elaborate baths were produced, presumably more for
leisure than simply hygiene. The Kahun Gynecological
Papyrus, concerning women’s health and contraceptives,

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had been written c. 1800 BCE and, during this period, Portrait of Queen Hatshepsut
seems to have been made extensive use of by doctors.
Surgery and dentistry were both practiced widely and
with great skill, and beer was prescribed by physicians for ease of symptoms of over 200 di erent
maladies.

In 1353 BCE the pharaoh Amenhotep IV succeeded to the throne and, shortly a er, changed his
name to Akhenaten (`living spirit of Aten’) to re ect his belief in a single god, Aten. The Egyptians,
as noted above, traditionally believed in many gods whose importance in uenced every aspect of
their daily lives. Among the most popular of these deities were Amun, Osiris, Isis, and Hathor. The
cult of Amun, at this time, had grown so wealthy that the priests were almost as powerful as the
pharaoh. Akhenaten and his queen, Nefertiti, renounced the traditional religious beliefs and
customs of Egypt and instituted a new religion based upon the recognition of one god. 

His religious reforms e ectively cut the power of the priests of Amun and placed it in his
hands. He moved the capital from Thebes to Amarna to further distance his rule from that of his
predecessors. This is known as The Amarna Period (1353-1336 BCE) during which Amarna grew as
the capital of the country and polytheistic religious customs were banned.

Among his many accomplishments, Akhenaten was the rst ruler to decree statuary and a temple
in honor of his queen instead of only for himself or the gods and used the money which once
went to the temples for public works and parks. The power of the clergy declined sharply as that
of the central government grew, which seemed to be Akhenaten's goal, but he failed to use his
power for the best interest of his people. The Amarna Letters make clear that he was more
concerned with his religious reforms than with foreign policy or the needs of the people of Egypt. 

His reign was followed by his son, the most recognizable

Egyptian ruler in the modern day, Tutankhamun, who
reigned from c.1336- c.1327 BCE. He was originally
named `Tutankhaten’ to re ect the religious beliefs of his
father but, upon assuming the throne, changed his name
to `Tutankhamun’ to honor the ancient god Amun. He
restored the ancient temples, removed all references to
his father’s single deity, and returned the capital to
Thebes. His reign was cut short by his death and, today,
he is most famous for the intact grandeur of his tomb,
discovered in 1922 CE, which became an international
sensation at the time.

The greatest ruler of the New Kingdom, however, was

Ramesses II (also known as Ramesses the Great, 1279-1213
BCE) who commenced the most elaborate building
projects of any Egyptian ruler and who reigned so
Death Mask of Tutankhamun
e ciently that he had the means to do so. Although the
famous Battle of Kadesh of 1274 (between Ramesses II of
Egypt and Muwatalli II of the Hitties) is today regarded as
a draw, Ramesses considered it a great Egyptian victory and celebrated himself as a champion of
the people, and nally as a god, in his many public works.

His temple of Abu Simbel (built for his queen Nefertari) depicts the battle of Kadesh and the
smaller temple at the site, following Akhenaten’s example, is dedicated to Ramesses favorite queen
Nefertari. Under the reign of Ramesses II the rst peace treaty in the world (The Treaty of Kadesh)
was signed in 1258 BCE and Egypt enjoyed almost unprecedented a uence as evidenced by the
number of monuments built or restored during his reign.

Ramesses II's fourth son, Khaemweset (c.1281-c.1225 BCE), is known as the "First Egyptologist" for
his e orts in preserving and recording old monuments, temples, and their original owner's names.
It is largely due to Khaemweset's initiative that Ramesses II's name is so prominent at so many
ancient sites in Egypt. Khaemweset le a record of his own e orts, the original builder/owner of
the monument or temple, and his father's name as well.

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Ramesses II became known to later generations as `The Great Ancestor’ and reigned for so long
that he out-lived most of his children and his wives.  In time, all of his subjects had been born
knowing only Ramesses II as their ruler and had no memory of another. He enjoyed an
exceptionally long life of 96 years, over double the average life-span of an ancient Egyptian. Upon
his death, it is recorded that many feared the end of the world had come as they had known no
other pharaoh and no other kind of Egypt.

The Decline of Egypt & the Coming of

Alexander the Great
One of his successors, Ramesses III (1186-1155 BCE), followed
his policies but, by this time, Egypt’s great wealth had
attracted the attention of the Sea Peoples who began to make
regular incursions along the coast. The Sea Peoples, like the
Hyksos, are of unknown origin but are thought to have come
from the southern Aegean area. Between 1276-1178 BCE the
Sea Peoples were a threat to Egyptian security. Ramesses II
had defeated them in a naval battle early in his reign as had
his successor Merenptah (1213-1203 BCE). A er Merenptah's
death, however, they increased their e orts, sacking Kadesh,
which was then under Egyptian control, and ravaging the
coast. Between 1180-1178 BCE Ramesses III fought them o ,
nally defeating them at the Battle of Xois in 1178 BCE. Ramesses II Statue

Following the reign of Ramesses III, his successors attempted

to maintain his policies but increasingly met with resistance from the people of Egypt, those in the
conquered territories, and, especially, the priestly class. In the years a er Tutankhamun had
restored the old religion of Amun, and especially during the great time of prosperity under
Ramesses II, the priests of Amun had acquired large tracts of land and amassed great wealth which
now threatened the central government and disrupted the unity of Egypt. By the time of
Ramesses XI (1107-1077 BCE), the end of the 20th Dynasty, the government had become so
weakened by the power and corruption of the clergy that the country again fractured and central
administration collapsed, initiating the so-called Third Intermediate Period of c.1069-525 BCE.

Under the Kushite King Piye (752-722 BCE),

Egypt was again uni ed and the culture
ourished, but beginning in 671 BCE, the
Assyrians under Esarhaddon began their invasion
of Egypt, conquering it by 666 BCE under his
successor Ashurbanipal. Having made no long-
term plans for control of the country, the
Assyrians le it in ruin in the hands of local
rulers and abandoned Egypt to its fate. Egypt
rebuilt and re-forti ed, however, and this is the
state the country was in when Cambyses II of
Persia struck at the city of Pelusium in 525 BCE.
Knowing the reverence the Egyptians held for
cats (who were thought living representations of
the popular goddess Bastet) Cambyses II ordered
his men to paint cats on their shields and to drive
cats, and other animals sacred to the Egyptians, Map of the Third Intermediate Period
in front of the army toward Pelusium. The
Egyptian forces surrendered and the country fell
to the Persians. It would remain under Persian occupation until the coming of Alexander the Great
in 332 BCE.

Alexander was welcomed as a liberator and conquered Egypt without a ght. He established the
city of Alexandria and moved on to conquer Phoenicia and the rest of the Persian Empire. A er

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his death in 323 BCE his general, Ptolemy, brought his body back to Alexandria and founded the
Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE). The last of the Ptolemies was Cleopatra VII who committed
suicide in 30 BCE a er the defeat of her forces (and those of her consort Mark Antony) by the
Romans under Octavian Caesar at the Battle of Actium (31 BCE). Egypt then became a province of
Rome (30 BCE-476 CE) then of the Byzantine Empire (c. 527-646 CE) until it was conquered by
the Arab Muslims under Caliph Umar in 646 CE and fell under Islamic Rule. The glory of Egypt's
past, however, was re-discovered during the 18th and 19th centuries CE and has had a profound
impact on the present day's understanding of ancient history and the world. Historian Will Durant
expresses a sentiment felt by many:

The effect or remembrance of what Egypt accomplished at the very dawn of

history has influence in every nation and every age. ‘It is even possible', as
Faure has said, 'that Egypt, through the solidarity, the unity, and the
disciplined variety of its artistic products, through the enormous duration
and the sustained power of its effort, offers the spectacle of the greatest
civilization that has yet appeared on the earth.' We shall do well to equal it.
(217)

Egyptian Culture and history has long held a universal fascination for people; whether through
the work of early archeologists in the 19th century CE (such as Champollion who deciphered the
Rosetta Stone in 1822 CE) or the famous discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard
Carter in 1922 CE. The ancient Egyptian belief in life as an eternal journey, created and
maintained by divine magic, inspired later cultures and later religious beliefs. Much of the
iconography and the beliefs of Egyptian religion found their way into the new religion of
Christianity and many of their symbols are recognizable today with largely the same meaning. It is
an important testimony to the power of the Egyptian civilization that so many works of the
imagination, from lms to books to paintings even to religious belief, have been and continue to
be inspired by its elevating and profound vision of the universe and humanity's place in it.  

About the Author

Joshua J. Mark
A freelance writer and former part-time Professor of Philosophy at Marist College, New York,
Joshua J. Mark has lived in Greece and Germany and traveled through Egypt. He has taught
history, writing, literature, and philosophy at the college level.

Gods and Goddesses

Flinders, Sir W. M. (William Matthew Flinders) Petrie. The Religion of Ancient Egypt. (Public Domain
Books, 2009).
Oakes, L. and Gahlin, L. Ancient Egypt. (Hermes House, London, 2008).
Bunson, M. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. (Gramercy Books, 1991).
David, R. Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt. (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Nardo, D. Living in Ancient Egypt. (Thompson/Gale, 2004).
Shaw, I. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. (Oxford University Press, 2006).
Strudwick, H. The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. (Metro Books, 2006).
Wilkinson, R. H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. (Thames & Hudson, 2003).

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APA Style
Mark, J. J. (2009, September 02). Ancient Egypt. Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from
https://www.ancient.eu/egypt/

Chicago Style
Mark, Joshua J. "Ancient Egypt." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Last modified September 02, 2009.
https://www.ancient.eu/egypt/.

MLA Style
Mark, Joshua J. "Ancient Egypt." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 02 Sep 2009.
Web. 02 Aug 2019.

Written by Joshua J. Mark, published on 02 September 2009 under the following license: Creative Commons:
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike . This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content
non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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Ancient Egyptian religion
Ancient Egyptian religion, indigenous beliefs of ancient Egypt from predynastic times (4th millennium
BCE) to the disappearance of the traditional culture in the first centuries CE. For historical background and
detailed dates, see Egypt, history of.
Isis nursing Horus
Isis nursing Horus, calcite and bronze
sculpture from Egypt, c. 712–525
BCE
; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Photograph by Lisa O'Hara. Brooklyn Museum,
New York, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund,
37.400E
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Ancient Egyptian religion -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
Nature and significance Nature and significance
Sources and limitations of ancient and
Egyptian religious beliefs and practices were closely
modern knowledge
integrated into Egyptian society of the historical period (from
King, cosmos, and society
c. 3000 BCE). Although there were probably many survivals
from prehistory, these may be relatively unimportant for The Gods
understanding later times, because the transformation that The cult
established the Egyptian state created a new context for Piety, practical religion, and magic
religion.
The world of the dead
Religious phenomena were pervasive, so much so that it is not Influence on other religions
meaningful to view religion as a single entity that cohered as a
system. Nevertheless, religion must be seen against a
background of potentially nonreligious human activities and values. During its more than 3,000 years of development,
Egyptian religion underwent significant changes of emphasis and practice, but in all periods religion had a clear
consistency in character and style.
It is inappropriate to define religion narrowly, as consisting only in the cult of the gods and in human piety. Religious
behaviour encompassed contact with the dead, practices such as divination and oracles, and magic, which mostly
exploited divine instruments and associations.
There were two essential foci of public religion: the king and the gods. Both are among the most characteristic features
of Egyptian civilization. The king had a unique status between humanity and the gods, partook in the world of the
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gods, and constructed great, religiously motivated funerary monuments for his afterlife. Egyptian gods are renowned for their wide variety of forms, including
animal forms and mixed forms with an animal head on a human body. The most important deities were the sun god, who had several names and aspects and was
associated with many supernatural beings in a solar cycle modeled on the alternation of night and day, and Osiris, the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld.
With his consort, Isis, Osiris became dominant in many contexts during the 1st millennium BCE, when solar worship was in relative decline.

The Egyptians conceived of the cosmos as including the gods and the present world—whose centre was, of course, Egypt—and as being surrounded by the realm of
disorder, from which order had arisen and to which it would finally revert. Disorder had to be kept at bay. The task of the king as the protagonist of human society
was to retain the benevolence of the gods in maintaining order against disorder. This ultimately pessimistic view of the cosmos was associated principally with the
sun god and the solar cycle. It formed a powerful legitimation of king and elite in their task of preserving order.

Despite this pessimism, the official presentation of the cosmos on the monuments was positive and optimistic, showing the king and the gods in perpetual
reciprocity and harmony. This implied contrast reaffirmed the fragile order. The restricted character of the monuments was also fundamental to a system of decorum
that defined what could be shown, in what way it could be shown, and in what context. Decorum and the affirmation of order reinforced each other.

These beliefs are known from monuments and documents created by and for the king and the small elite. The beliefs and practices of the rest of the people are
poorly known. While there is no reason to believe that there was a radical opposition between the beliefs of the elite and those of others, this possibility cannot be
ruled out.

Sources and limitations of ancient and modern knowledge

The only extensive contemporaneous descriptions of ancient Egyptian culture from the outside were made by Classical Greek and Roman writers. Their works
include many important observations about Egyptian religion, which particularly interested the writers and which until late antiquity was not fundamentally different
in type from their own religions. Herodotus (5th century BCE) remarked that the Egyptians were the most religious of people, and the comment is apt because
popular religious practices proliferated in the 1st millennium BCE. Other significant Classical sources include Plutarch’s essay on Isis and Osiris (1st century CE),
which gives the only known connected narrative of their myth, and the writings of Apuleius (2nd century CE) and others about the Isis cult as it spread in the Greco-
Roman world.

In other respects, ancient Egypt has been recovered archaeologically. Excavation and the recording of buildings have produced a great range of material, from large
monuments to small objects and texts on perishable papyrus. Egyptian monuments are almost unique in the amount of inscription they bear; vast numbers of texts

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and representations with religious content are preserved, especially from the later 2nd and 1st millennia BCE. Much of this material is religious or has religious
implications. This dominance may be misleading, partly because many monuments were in the desert, where they are well preserved, and partly because the
lavishing of great resources on religious monuments for the king and the gods need not mean that people’s lives were dominated by religion.

In addition to favouring large monuments and the elite, the archaeological record has other important biases. The formal cults of major deities and the realm of the
dead are far better known than everyday religious activities, particularly those occurring in towns and villages, very few of which have been excavated. The absence
of material deriving from the religious practice of most people in itself constitutes evidence suggesting both the inequality of society and the possibility, confirmed
by other strands of evidence, that many people’s religious life did not focus on official cult places and major temples.

Many official works of art present standard conceptions of the divine world and of the king’s role in this world and in caring for the gods. Much religious evidence
is at the same time artistic, and the production of works of art was a vital prestige concern of king and elite. Religious activities and rituals are less well known than
this formalized artistic presentation of religious conceptions. The status of personal religion in the context of official cults is poorly understood.

Official forms were idealizing, and the untoward, which is everywhere an important focus of religion, was excluded almost entirely from them. The world of the
monuments is that of Egypt alone, even though the Egyptians had normal, sometimes reciprocal, relations with other peoples. Decorum affected what was shown.
Thus, the king was almost always depicted as the person offering to the gods, although temple rituals were performed by priests. Scenes of offering and of the gods
conferring benefits on the king may not depict specific rituals, while the equal form in which king and gods are depicted bears no direct relation to real cult actions,
which were performed on small cult images kept inside shrines.

An additional limitation is that knowledge of many central concerns was restricted. The king was stated to be alone in knowing aspects of the solar cycle.
Knowledge of some religious texts was reserved to initiates, who would benefit from them both in this life and in the next. Magic evoked the power of the exotic
and esoteric. Evidence for some restricted material is preserved, but it is not known who had access to it, while in other cases the restricted knowledge is only
alluded to and is now inaccessible.

Death and the next world dominate both the archaeological record and popular modern conceptions of Egyptian religion. This dominance is determined to a great
extent by the landscape of the country, since tombs were placed if possible in the desert. Vast resources were expended on creating prestigious burial places for
absolute rulers or wealthy officials. Tombs contained elaborate grave goods (mostly plundered soon after deposition), representations of “daily life,” or less
commonly of religious subjects, and some texts that were intended to help the deceased attain the next world and prosper there. The texts came increasingly to be

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inscribed on coffins and stone sarcophagi or deposited in burials on papyrus. Some royal tombs included long passages from religious texts, many of them drawn
from nonmortuary contexts and hence more broadly valuable as source material.

One crucial area where religion extended beyond narrow bounds was in the ethical instructions, which became the principal genre of Egyptian literature. These are
known from the Middle Kingdom (c. 1900–1600 BCE) to the Roman period (1st century CE). As with other sources, the later texts are more overtly religious, but all
show inextricable connections between proper conduct, the order of the world, and the gods.

King, cosmos, and society

The king was the centre of human society, the guarantor of order for the gods, the recipient of god-given benefits including life itself, and the benevolent ruler of the
world for humanity. He was ultimately responsible for the cults of the dead, both for his predecessors in office and for the dead in general. His dominance in religion
corresponded to his central political role: from late predynastic times (c. 3100 BCE), state organization was based on kingship and on the service of officials for the
king. For humanity, the king had a superhuman role, being a manifestation of a god or of various deities on earth.

The king’s principal original title, the Horus name, proclaimed that he was an aspect of the chief god Horus, a sky god who was depicted as a falcon. Other
identifications were added to this one, notably “Son of Re” (the sun god) and “Perfect God,” both introduced in the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–2465 BCE), when the great
pyramids were constructed. The epithet “Son of Re” placed the king in a close but dependent relation with the leading figure in the pantheon. “Perfect God” (often
rendered “Good God”) indicated that the king had the status of a minor deity, for which he was “perfected” through accession to his office; it restricted the extent of
his divinity and separated him from full deities.

In his intermediate position between humanity and the gods, the king could receive the most extravagant divine
Ramses II; Horus
adulation and was in some ways more prominent than any single god. In death he aspired to full divinity but could not
Ramses II making an offering to Horus, at
Abu Simbel, now located in Aswān escape the human context. Although royal funerary monuments differed in type from other tombs and were vastly
muḥāfaẓah (governorate), southern larger, they too were pillaged and vandalized, and few royal mortuary cults were long-lasting. Some kings, notably
Egypt.
Amenhotep III (1390–53 BCE), Ramses II (1279–13 BCE), and several of the Ptolemies, sought deification during their
Dennis Jarvis (CC-BY-2.0) (A Britannica
Publishing Partner )
own lifetime, while others, such as Amenemhet III (1818–c. 1770 BCE), became minor gods after their death, but these
developments show how restricted royal divinity was. The divinized king coexisted with his mortal self, and as many
nonroyal individuals as kings became deified after death.

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The gods, the king, humanity, and the dead existed together in the cosmos, which the creator god had brought into being from the preexistent chaos. All living
beings, except perhaps the creator, would die at the end of time. The sun god became aged and needed to be rejuvenated and reborn daily. The ordered cosmos was
surrounded by and shot through with disorder, which had to be kept at bay. Disorder menaced most strongly at such times of transition as the passage from one year
to the next or the death of a king. Thus, the king’s role in maintaining order was cosmic and not merely social. His exaction of service from people was necessary to
the cosmos.

The concept of maat (“order”) was fundamental in Egyptian thought. The king’s role was to set maat in place of isfet (“disorder”). Maat was crucial in human life
and embraced notions of reciprocity, justice, truth, and moderation. Maat was personified as a goddess and the creator’s daughter and received a cult of her own. In
the cult of other deities, the king’s offering of maat to a deity encapsulated the relationship between humanity, the king, and the gods; as the representative of
humanity, he returned to the gods the order that came from them and of which they were themselves part. Maat extended into the world of the dead: in the weighing
of the heart after death, shown on papyri deposited in burials, the person’s heart occupies one side of the scales and a representation of maat the other. The meaning
of this image is deepened in the accompanying text, which asserts that the deceased behaved correctly on earth and did not overstep the boundaries of order,
declaring that he or she did not “know that which is not”—that is, things that were outside the created and ordered world.

This role of maat in human life created a continuity between religion, political action, and elite morality. Over the centuries, private religion and morality drew apart
from state concerns, paralleling a gradual separation of king and temple. It cannot be known whether religion and morality were as closely integrated for the people
as they were for the elite, or even how fully the elite subscribed to these beliefs. Nonetheless, the integration of cosmos, king, and maat remained fundamental.

The Gods
Egyptian religion was polytheistic. The gods who inhabited the bounded and ultimately perishable cosmos varied in nature and capacity. The word netjer (“god”)
described a much wider range of beings than the deities of monotheistic religions, including what might be termed demons. As is almost necessary in polytheism,
gods were neither all-powerful nor all-knowing. Their power was immeasurably greater than that of human beings, and they had the ability to live almost
indefinitely, to survive fatal wounds, to be in more than one place at once, to affect people in visible and invisible ways, and so forth.

Most gods were generally benevolent, but their favour could not be counted on, and they had to be propitiated and encouraged to inhabit their cult images so that
they could receive the cult and further the reciprocity of divine and human. Some deities, notably such goddesses as Neith, Sekhmet, and Mut, had strongly
ambivalent characters. The god Seth embodied the disordered aspects of the ordered world, and in the 1st millennium BCE he came to be seen as an enemy who had
to be eliminated (but would remain present).

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The characters of the gods were not neatly defined. Most had a principal association, such as that of Re with the sun or that of the goddess Hathor with women, but
there was much overlap, especially among the leading deities. In general, the more closely circumscribed a deity’s character, the less powerful that deity was. All the
main gods acquired the characteristics of creator gods. A single figure could have many names; among those of the sun god, the most important were Khepri (the
morning form), Re-Harakhty (a form of Re associated with Horus), and Atum (the old, evening form). There were three principal “social” categories of deity: gods,
goddesses, and youthful deities, mostly male.

Gods had regional associations, corresponding to their chief cult places. The sun god’s cult place was Heliopolis,
Hathor
Ptah’s was Memphis, and Amon’s was Thebes. These were not necessarily their original cult places. The principal cult
Hathor, relief on capitals at Philae island,
southern Egypt. of Khnum, the creator god who formed people from clay like a potter, was Elephantine, and he was the lord of the
© Jeff Schultes/Shutterstock.com nearby First Cataract. His cult is not attested there before the New Kingdom, however, even though he was important
from the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 BCE). The main earlier sanctuary there belonged to the goddess Satet, who became
Khnum’s companion. Similarly, Mut, the partner of Amon at Thebes, seems to have originated elsewhere.

Deities had principal manifestations, and most were associated with one or more species of animal. For gods the most important forms
Khnum
were the falcon and bull, and for goddesses the cow, cobra, vulture, and lioness. Rams were widespread, while some manifestations were
Khnum.
as modest as the millipede of the god Sepa. Some gods were very strongly linked to particular animals, as Sebek was with the crocodile
© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
and Khepri with the scarab beetle. Thoth had two animals, the ibis and the baboon. Some animal cults were only partly integrated with
specific gods, notably the Ram of Mendes in the Delta and the Apis and Mnevis bulls at Memphis and Heliopolis, respectively. Animals
could express aspects of a deity’s nature: some goddesses were lionesses in their fiercer aspect but were cats when mild.

These variable forms relate to aspects of the person that were common to gods and people. The most significant of
Thoth, represented in human form with
ibis head, detail from the Greenfield these were the ka, which was the vital essence of a person that was transmitted from one generation to the next, the ba,
Papyrus, c. 950 which granted freedom of movement and the ability to take on different forms, principally in the next world, and the
BCE akh, the transfigured spirit of a person in the next world.
; in the British Museum, London.
Copyright British Museum The chief form in which gods were represented was human, and many deities had only human form. Among these
deities were very ancient figures such as the fertility god Min and the creator and craftsman Ptah. The cosmic gods
Shu, of the air and sky, and Geb, of the earth, had human form, as did Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, deities who provided a model of human society. In temple reliefs
the gods were depicted in human form, which was central to decorum. Gods having animal manifestations were therefore shown with a human body and the head of

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their animal. The opposite convention, a human head and an animal body, was used for the king, who was shown as a sphinx with a lion’s body. Sphinxes could
receive other heads, notably those of rams and falcons, associating the form with Amon and Re-Harakhty. Demons were represented in more extravagant forms and
combinations; these became common in the 1st millennium BCE. Together with the cult of animals, they were mocked by Greek and Roman writers.

Min
Min, relief on a column of the Great
Temple of Amon at Karnak in Thebes,
Egypt.
© Anastasiya Igolkina/Shutterstock.com
Memphis, Egypt: alabaster sphinx
Alabaster sphinx in Memphis, Egypt.
© eugen_z/Fotolia
Bes
Bes, stone relief at the Temple of Hathor,
Dandarah, Egypt.
Hajor
Apart from major deities—gods who received a cult or had a significant cosmic role—there were important minor
figures. Several of these marginal beings had grotesque forms and variable names. The most prominent were Bes, a
helpful figure with dwarf form and a masklike face, associated especially with women and children, and Taurt, a
goddess with similar associations whose physical form combined features of a hippopotamus and a crocodile. Among
demons, the most important figure was Apopis, shown as a colossal snake, who was the enemy of the sun god in his
daily cycle through the cosmos. Apopis existed outside the ordered realm; he had to be defeated daily, but, since he did
not belong to the sphere of existence, he could not be destroyed.
Groupings of deities
The number of deities was large and was not fixed. New ones appeared, and some ceased to be worshipped. Deities
were grouped in various ways. The most ancient known grouping is the ennead, which is probably attested from the
3rd dynasty (c. 2650–2575 BCE). Enneads were groups of nine deities, nine being the “plural” of three (in Egypt the
number three symbolized plurality in general); not all enneads consisted of nine gods.

The principal ennead was the Great Ennead of Heliopolis. This was headed by the sun god and creator Re or Re-Atum,
followed by Shu and Tefnut, deities of air and moisture; Geb and Nut, who represented earth and sky; and Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. This ordering
incorporated a myth of creation, to which was joined the myth of Osiris, whose deeds and attributes ranged from the founding of civilization to kinship, kingship,
and succession to office. The ennead excluded the successor figure, Horus, son of Osiris, who is essential to the meaning of the myth. Thus, the ennead has the
appearance of a grouping that brought together existing religious conceptions but was rather arbitrary and inflexible, perhaps because of the significance of the
number nine.

Other numerical ordering schemas included the Ogdoad (group of eight gods) of Hermopolis, which embodied the inchoate world before creation and consisted of
four pairs of male and female deities with abstract names such as Darkness, Absence, and Endlessness. Here too the number was significant in itself, because at least

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six different pairs of names are known although eight deities are listed in any occurrence. The major god Amon, whose name can mean “He who is hidden,” was
often one of the ogdoad with his female counterpart, Amaunet.

The most common grouping, principally in the New Kingdom and later, was the triad. The archetypal triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus exhibits the normal pattern of a
god and a goddess with a youthful deity, usually male. Most local centres came to have triads, the second and third members of which might be devised for the sake
of form. Thus, one triad worshipped in the Greco-Roman-period temple at Kawm Umbū (Kôm Ombo) consisted of Haroeris (the “elder Horus”), the goddess
Tsenetnofret (“the perfect companion”), and the youthful god Pnebtawy (“the lord of the two lands”). The last name, which is an epithet of kings, is revealing,
because youthful gods had many attributes of kings. As this case indicates, triads resemble a minimal nuclear family, but deities were rarely spouses. The notion of
plurality and the bringing together of the essential types of deity may have been as important to the triads as the family analogy.

Another important ordering of deities was syncretism, a term with a special meaning for Egyptian religion. Two or more
Isis and Osiris
names of gods were often combined to form a composite identity; many combinations included the name of Re.
Isis (right) and Osiris.
Prominent examples are Amon-Re, a fusion of Amon and Re, and Osiris-Apis, a fusion of Osiris with the Apis Bull.
Judie Anderson/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Although composite forms such as Amon-Re became the principal identities of some gods, the separate deities continued
to exist and sometimes, as in the case of Re, to receive a cult. In part, these syncretisms expressed the idea of Amon in
his aspect as Re; they were thus analogous to the multiple manifestations of individual deities. Through syncretism many major deities came to resemble one
another more closely.

Myth
Myths are poorly known. Religious discourse was recorded in hymns, rituals, temple scenes, and specialized texts but rarely in narrative, which only slowly became
a common written genre and never had the highest literary prestige. In addition, much religious activity focused on constant reiteration or repetition rather than on
development. A central example of this tendency is the presentation of the cycle of the sun god through the sky and the underworld, which was an analogy for the
creation, maturity, decay, and regeneration of an individual life and of the cosmos. This is strikingly presented in the underworld books. These pictorial and textual
compositions, which probably imparted secret knowledge, were inscribed in the tombs of New Kingdom kings. They describe the solar cycle in great detail,
including hundreds of names of demons and of deities and other beings who accompanied the sun god in his barque on his journey through night and day. The texts
are in the present tense and form a description and a series of tableaux rather than a narrative.

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The fact that mythical narratives are rare does not imply that myths or narratives did not exist. There is reason to think that some myths underlay features of enneads
and therefore had originated by the Early Dynastic period (c. 3000 BCE). Mythical narratives preserved from the New Kingdom and later include episodes of the rule
of the sun god on earth, tales of the childhood of Horus in the delta marshes, and stories with themes similar to the Osiris myth but with differently named
protagonists. The rule of the sun god was followed by his withdrawal into the sky, leaving people on earth. The withdrawal was motivated by his age and by the lack
of tranquility in the world. One narrative recounts how Isis obtained a magical substance from Re’s senile dribbling and fashioned from it a snake that bit him; to
make her still the agony of the snakebite, he finally revealed to her the secret of his “true” name. A myth with varied realizations recounts how Re grew weary of
humanity’s recalcitrance and dispatched his daughter or “Eye” to destroy them. Regretting his action later, he arranged to have the bloodthirsty goddess tricked into
drunkenness by spreading beer tinted the colour of blood over the land. This myth provides an explanation for the world’s imperfection and the inaccessibility of the
gods. In Greco-Roman times it was widespread in Lower Nubia, where it seems to have been related to the winter retreat of the sun to the Southern Hemisphere and
its return in the spring.

The cult
Most cults centred on the daily tending and worship of an image of a deity and were analogous to the pattern of human life. The shrine containing the image was
opened at dawn, and then the deity was purified, greeted and praised, clothed, and fed. There were several further services, and the image was finally returned to its
shrine for the night. Apart from this activity, which took place within the temple and was performed by a small group of priests, there were numerous festivals at
which the shrine and image were taken out from the sanctuary on a portable barque, becoming visible to the people and often visiting other temples. Thus, the daily
cult was a state concern, whose function was to maintain reciprocity between the human and the divine, largely in isolation from the people. This reciprocity was
fundamental because deities and humanity together sustained the cosmos. If the gods were not satisfied, they might cease to inhabit their images and retreat to their
other abode, the sky. Temples were constructed as microcosms whose purity and wholeness symbolized the proper order of the larger world outside.

The priesthood became increasingly important. In early periods there seem to have been no full-time professional priests; people could hold part-time high priestly
offices, or they could have humbler positions on a rotating basis, performing duties for one month in four. The chief officiant may have been a professional. While
performing their duties, priests submitted to rules of purity and abstinence. One result of this system was that more people were involved in the cult and had access
to the temple than would have been the case if there had been a permanent staff. Although most priestly positions were for men, women were involved in the cult of
the goddess Hathor, and in the New Kingdom and later many women held the title of “chantress” of a deity (perhaps often a courtesy title); they were principally
involved in musical cult performances.

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Festivals allowed more-direct interaction between people and the gods. Questions were often asked of a deity, and a response might be given by a forward or
backward movement of the barque carried on the priests’ shoulders. Oracles, of which this was one form, were invoked by the king to obtain sanction for his plans,
including military campaigns abroad and important appointments. Although evidence is sparse, consultation with deities may have been part of religious interaction
in all periods and for all levels of society.

Apart from this interaction between deities and individual people or groups, festivals were times of communal celebration, and often of the public reenactment of
myths such as the death and vindication of Osiris at Abydos or the defeat of Seth by Horus at Idfū. They had both a personal and a general social role in the
spectrum of religious practice.

Nonetheless, the main audience for the most important festivals of the principal gods of state held in capital cities may have been the ruling elite rather than the
people as a whole. In the New Kingdom these cities were remodeled as vast cosmic stages for the enactment of royal-divine relations and rituals.

Piety, practical religion, and magic

Despite the importance of temples and their architectural dominance, the evidence for cult does not point to mass participation in temple religion. The
archaeological material may be misleading, because in addition to major temples there were many local sanctuaries that may have responded more directly to the
concerns and needs of those who lived around them. From some periods numerous votive offerings are preserved from a few temples. Among these are Early
Dynastic and Old Kingdom provincial temples, but the fullest evidence is from New Kingdom temples of Hathor at Thebes and several frontier sites and from the
Late and Ptolemaic periods (664–30 BCE).

Egyptian temple offering
Egyptian temple offering, displaying the
heads of two animals, limestone, c. 664–
30
BCE
; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Photograph by Trish Mayo. Brooklyn Museum,
New York, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 36.262
Although votive offerings show that significant numbers of people took gifts to temples, it is difficult to gauge the
social status of donors, whose intentions are seldom indicated, probably in part for reasons of decorum. Two likely
motives are disinterested pious donation for the deity and offering in the hope of obtaining a specific benefit. Many
New Kingdom offerings to Hathor relate to human fertility and thus belong to the second of these categories. Late
period bronze statuettes are often inscribed with a formula requesting that the deity represented should “give life” to
the donor, without stating a specific need. These may be more generally pious donations, among which can also be
counted nonroyal dedications of small parcels of land to temples. These donations are recorded on stelae from the New
Kingdom onward. They parallel the massive royal endowments to temples of land and other resources, which resulted
in their becoming very powerful economic and political institutions.

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Apart from the donation of offerings to conventional cult temples, there was a vast Late period expansion in animal cults. These might be more or less closely
related to major deities. They involved a variety of practices centring on the mummification and burial of animals. The principal bull cults, which gave important
oracles, focused on a single animal kept in a special shrine. The burial of an Apis bull was a major occasion involving vast expenditure. Some animals, such as the
sacred ibis (connected with Thoth), were kept, and buried, in millions. The dedication of a burial seems to have counted as a pious act. The best-known area for
these cults and associated practices is the necropolis of northern Ṣaqqārah, which served the city of Memphis. Numerous species were buried there, and people
visited the area to consult oracles and to spend the night in a temple area and receive healing dreams. A few people resided permanently in the animal necropolis in
a state akin to monastic seclusion.

There are two further important groups of evidence for pious and reciprocal relations between people and gods. One is proper names of all periods, the majority of
which are meaningful utterances with religious content. For example, names state that deities “show favour” to or “love” a child or its parents. From the end of the
New Kingdom (c. 1100 BCE), names commonly refer to consultation of oracles during pregnancy, alluding to a different mode of human-divine relations. The
second source is a group of late New Kingdom inscriptions recounting episodes of affliction that led to people’s perceiving that they had wronged a god. These
texts, which provide evidence of direct pious relations, are often thought to show a transformation of religious attitudes in that period, but allusions to similar
relations in Middle Kingdom texts suggest that the change was as much in what was written down as in basic attitudes.

Piety was one of many modes of religious action and relations. Much of religion concerned attempts to comprehend and respond to the unpredictable and the
unfortunate. The activities involved often took place away from temples and are little known. In later periods, there was an increasing concentration of religious
practice around temples; for earlier times evidence is sparse. The essential questions people asked, as in many religious traditions, were why something had
happened and why it had happened to them, what would be an appropriate response, what agency they should turn to, and what might happen in the future. To
obtain answers to these questions, people turned to oracles and to other forms of divination, such as consulting seers or calendars of lucky and unlucky days. From
the New Kingdom and later, questions to oracles are preserved, often on such mundane matters as whether someone should cultivate a particular field in a given
year. These cannot have been presented only at festivals, and priests must have addressed oracular questions to gods within their sanctuaries. Oracles of gods also
played an important part in dispute settlement and litigation in some communities.

A vital focus of questioning was the world of the dead. The recently deceased might exert influence on the living for good or for bad. Offerings to the dead, which
were required by custom, were intended, among other purposes, to make them well disposed. People occasionally deposited with their offerings a letter telling the
deceased of their problems and asking for assistance. A few of these letters are complaints to the deceased person, alleging that he or she is afflicting the writer. This
written communication with the dead was confined to the very few literate members of the population, but it was probably part of a more widespread oral practice.
Some tombs of prominent people acquired minor cults that may have originated in frequent successful recourse to them for assistance.
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Offerings to the dead generally did not continue long after burial, and most tombs were robbed within a generation or
Anubis weighing the soul of the scribe
Ani, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, so. Thus, relations with dead kin probably focused on the recently deceased. Nonetheless, the dead were respected and
c. 1275 feared more widely. The attitudes attested are almost uniformly negative. The dead were held accountable for much
BCE misfortune, both on a local and domestic level and in the broader context of the state. People were also concerned that,
.
when they died, those in the next world would oppose their entry to it as newcomers who might oust the less recently
Mary Evans Picture Library/age fotostock
dead. These attitudes show that, among many possible modes of existence after death, an important conception was
one in which the dead remained near the living and could return and disturb them. Such beliefs are rare in the official
mortuary literature.

A prominent aspect of practical religion was magic. There is no meaningful distinction between Egyptian religion and magic. Magic was a force present in the
world from the beginning of creation and was personified as the god Heka, who received a cult in some regions. Magic could be invoked by using appropriate
means and was generally positive, being valuable for counteracting misfortune and in seeking to achieve ends for which unseen help was necessary. Magic also
formed part of the official cult. It could, however, be used for antisocial purposes as well as benign ones. There is a vast range of evidence for magical practice, from
amulets to elaborate texts. Much magic from the Greco-Roman period mixed Egyptian and foreign materials and invoked new and exotic beings. Preserved magical
texts record elite magic rather than general practice. Prominent among magical practitioners, both in folklore and, probably, in real life, were “lector priests,” the
officiants in temple cults who had privileged access to written texts. Most of the vast corpus of funerary texts was magical in character.

The world of the dead

The majority of evidence from ancient Egypt comes from funerary monuments and burials of royalty, of the elite, and, for the Late period, of animals; relatively
little is known of the mortuary practices of the mass of the population. Reasons for this dominance of the tomb include both the desert location of burials and the use
of mortuary structures for display among the living. Alongside the fear of the dead, there was a moral community between the living and the dead, so that the dead
were an essential part of society, especially in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BCE.

The basic purpose of mortuary preparation was to ensure a safe and successful passage into the hereafter. Belief in an afterlife and a passage to it is evident in
predynastic burials, which are oriented to the west, the domain of the dead, and which include pottery grave goods as well as personal possessions of the deceased.
The most striking development of later mortuary practice was mummification, which was related to a belief that the body must continue intact for the deceased to
live in the next world. Mummification evolved gradually from the Old Kingdom to the early 1st millennium BCE, after which it declined. It was too elaborate and
costly ever to be available to the majority.

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This decline of mortuary practice was part of the more general shift in the focus of religious life toward the temples
Mummy and mummy case of a Tanite
princess, 21st dynasty (1075–c. 950 and toward more communal forms. It has been suggested tentatively that belief in the afterlife became less strong in the

BCE 1st millennium BCE. Whether or not this is true, it is clear that in various periods some people voiced skepticism about
); in the British Museum, London. the existence of a blessed afterlife and the necessity for mortuary provision, but the provision nevertheless continued to
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages the end.

It was thought that the next world might be located in the area around the tomb (and consequently near the living); on
Egypt, ancient: mummy
the “perfect ways of the West,” as it is expressed in Old Kingdom invocations; among the stars or in the celestial
Ancient Egyptian mummy of a child.
regions with the sun god; or in the underworld, the domain of Osiris. One prominent notion was that of the “Elysian
Dennis Jarvis (CC-BY-2.0) (A Britannica
Publishing Partner ) Fields,” where the deceased could enjoy an ideal agricultural existence in a marshy land of plenty. The journey to the
next world was fraught with obstacles. It could be imagined as a passage by ferry past a succession of portals, or
through an “Island of Fire.” One crucial test was the judgment after death, a subject often depicted from the New Kingdom onward. The date of origin of this belief
is uncertain, but it was probably no later than the late Old Kingdom. The related text, Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, responded magically to the dangers of
the judgment, which assessed the deceased’s conformity with maat. Those who failed the judgment would “die a second time” and would be cast outside the ordered
cosmos. In the demotic story of Setna (3rd century BCE), this notion of moral retribution acquired overtones similar to those of the Christian judgment after death.

Influence on other religions

Egyptian culture, of which religion was an integral part, was influential in Nubia as early as predynastic times and in Syria in the 3rd millennium BCE. During the
New Kingdom, Egypt was very receptive to cults from the Middle East, while Egyptian medical and magical expertise was highly regarded among the Hittites,
Assyrians, and Babylonians. The chief periods of Egyptian influence were, however, the 1st millennium BCE and the Roman period. Egypt was an important centre
of the Jewish diaspora starting in the 6th century BCE, and Egyptian literature influenced the Hebrew Bible. With Greek rule there was significant cultural
interchange between Egyptians and Greeks. Notable among Egyptian cults that spread abroad were those of Isis, which reached much of the Roman world as a
mystery religion, and of Serapis, a god whose name probably derives from Osiris-Apis, who was worshipped widely in a non-Egyptian iconography and cultural
milieu. With Isis went Osiris and Horus the child, but Isis was the dominant figure. Many Egyptian monuments were imported to Rome to provide a setting for the
principal Isis temple in the 1st century CE.

The cult of Isis was probably influential on another level. The myth of Osiris shows some analogies with the Gospel story and, in the figure of Isis, with the role of
the Virgin Mary. The iconography of the Virgin and Child has evident affinities with that of Isis and the infant Horus. Thus, one aspect of Egyptian religion may
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have contributed to the background of early Christianity, probably through the cultural centre of Alexandria. Egypt also was an influential setting for other religious
and philosophical developments of late antiquity such as gnosticism, Manichaeism, Hermetism (see Hermetic writings), and Neoplatonism, some of which show
traces of traditional Egyptian beliefs. Some of these religions became important in the intellectual culture of the Renaissance. Finally, Christian monasticism seems
to have originated in Egypt and could look back to a range of native practices, among which were seclusion in temple precincts and the celibacy of certain
priestesses. Within Egypt, there are many survivals from earlier times in popular Christianity and Islam.

John R. Baines

Citation Information
Article Title: Ancient Egyptian religion
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 10 October 2017
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/ancient-Egyptian-religion
Access Date: September 09, 2020

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Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt, civilization in northeastern Africa that dates from the 4th millennium BCE. Its many
achievements, preserved in its art and monuments, hold a fascination that continues to grow as TABLE OF CONTENTS
archaeological finds expose its secrets. This article focuses on Egypt from its prehistory through its
unification under Menes (Narmer) in the 3rd millennium BCE—sometimes used as a reference point for Introduction

Egypt’s origin—and up to the Islamic conquest in the 7th century CE. For subsequent history through the Introduction to ancient Egyptian
contemporary period, see Egypt. civilization

The Predynastic and Early Dynastic

Introduction to ancient Egyptian periods
civilization The Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130
BCE) and the First Intermediate period

Life in ancient Egypt (c. 2130–1938 BCE)

The Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630

Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of
Khufu
Side view of the Sphinx with the Great
Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) rising in the
background, Al-Jīzah (Giza), Egypt.
© Maksym Gorpenyuk/Shutterstock.com
artery.
Ancient Egypt can be thought of as an oasis in the desert of
BCE) and the Second Intermediate
northeastern Africa, dependent on the annual inundation of period (c. 1630–1540 BCE)
the Nile River to support its agricultural population. The
The New Kingdom (c. 1539–1075 BCE)
country’s chief wealth came from the fertile floodplain of the
Egypt from 1075 BCE to the
Nile valley, where the river flows between bands of limestone
Macedonian invasion
hills, and the Nile delta, in which it fans into several branches
Macedonian and Ptolemaic Egypt
north of present-day Cairo. Between the floodplain and the
(332–30 BCE)
hills is a variable band of low desert that supported a certain
amount of game. The Nile was Egypt’s sole transportation Roman and Byzantine Egypt (30 BCE–
642 CE)

The First Cataract at Aswān, where the riverbed is turned into rapids by a belt of granite, was the country’s
only well-defined boundary within a populated area. To the south lay the far less hospitable area of Nubia, in which the river flowed through low sandstone hills that
in most regions left only a very narrow strip of cultivable land. Nubia was significant for Egypt’s periodic southward expansion and for access to products from

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farther south. West of the Nile was the arid Sahara, broken by a chain of oases some 125 to 185 miles (200 to 300 km) from the river and lacking in all other
resources except for a few minerals. The eastern desert, between the Nile and the Red Sea, was more important, for it supported a small nomadic population and
desert game, contained numerous mineral deposits, including gold, and was the route to the Red Sea.

To the northeast was the Isthmus of Suez. It offered the principal route for contact with Sinai, from which came turquoise and possibly copper, and with
southwestern Asia, Egypt’s most important area of cultural interaction, from which were received stimuli for technical development and cultivars for crops.
Immigrants and ultimately invaders crossed the isthmus into Egypt, attracted by the country’s stability and prosperity. From the late 2nd millennium BCE onward,
numerous attacks were made by land and sea along the eastern Mediterranean coast.

At first, relatively little cultural contact came by way of the Mediterranean Sea, but from an early date Egypt maintained trading relations with the Lebanese port of
Byblos (present-day Jbail). Egypt needed few imports to maintain basic standards of living, but good timber was essential and not available within the country, so it
usually was obtained from Lebanon. Minerals such as obsidian and lapis lazuli were imported from as far afield as Anatolia and Afghanistan.

Agriculture centred on the cultivation of cereal crops, chiefly emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeum vulgare). The fertility of the land and general
predictability of the inundation ensured very high productivity from a single annual crop. This productivity made it possible to store large surpluses against crop
failures and also formed the chief basis of Egyptian wealth, which was, until the creation of the large empires of the 1st millennium BCE, the greatest of any state in
the ancient Middle East.

Basin irrigation was achieved by simple means, and multiple cropping was not feasible until much later times, except perhaps in the lakeside area of Al-Fayyūm. As
the river deposited alluvial silt, raising the level of the floodplain, and land was reclaimed from marsh, the area available for cultivation in the Nile valley and delta
increased, while pastoralism declined slowly. In addition to grain crops, fruit and vegetables were important, the latter being irrigated year-round in small plots. Fish
was also vital to the diet. Papyrus, which grew abundantly in marshes, was gathered wild and in later times was cultivated. It may have been used as a food crop,
and it certainly was used to make rope, matting, and sandals. Above all, it provided the characteristic Egyptian writing material, which, with cereals, was the
country’s chief export in Late period Egyptian and then Greco-Roman times.

Cattle may have been domesticated in northeastern Africa. The Egyptians kept many as draft animals and for their various products, showing some of the interest in
breeds and individuals that is found to this day in the Sudan and eastern Africa. The donkey, which was the principal transport animal (the camel did not become
common until Roman times), was probably domesticated in the region. The native Egyptian breed of sheep became extinct in the 2nd millennium BCE and was
replaced by an Asiatic breed. Sheep were primarily a source of meat; their wool was rarely used. Goats were more numerous than sheep. Pigs were also raised and

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eaten. Ducks and geese were kept for food, and many of the vast numbers of wild and migratory birds found in Egypt were hunted and trapped. Desert game,
principally various species of antelope and ibex, were hunted by the elite; it was a royal privilege to hunt lions and wild cattle. Pets included dogs, which were also
used for hunting, cats, and monkeys. In addition, the Egyptians had a great interest in, and knowledge of, most species of mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish in their
environment.

Most Egyptians were probably descended from settlers who moved to the Nile valley in prehistoric times, with population increase coming through natural fertility.
In various periods there were immigrants from Nubia, Libya, and especially the Middle East. They were historically significant and also may have contributed to
population growth, but their numbers are unknown. Most people lived in villages and towns in the Nile valley and delta. Dwellings were normally built of mud
brick and have long since disappeared beneath the rising water table or beneath modern town sites, thereby obliterating evidence for settlement patterns. In antiquity,
as now, the most favoured location of settlements was on slightly raised ground near the riverbank, where transport and water were easily available and flooding was
unlikely. Until the 1st millennium BCE, Egypt was not urbanized to the same extent as Mesopotamia. Instead, a few centres, notably Memphis and Thebes, attracted
population and particularly the elite, while the rest of the people were relatively evenly spread over the land. The size of the population has been estimated as having
risen from 1 to 1.5 million in the 3rd millennium BCE to perhaps twice that number in the late 2nd millennium and 1st millennium BCE. (Much higher levels of
population were reached in Greco-Roman times.)

Nearly all of the people were engaged in agriculture and were probably tied to the land. In theory all the land belonged to the king, although in practice those living
on it could not easily be removed and some categories of land could be bought and sold. Land was assigned to high officials to provide them with an income, and
most tracts required payment of substantial dues to the state, which had a strong interest in keeping the land in agricultural use. Abandoned land was taken back into
state ownership and reassigned for cultivation. The people who lived on and worked the land were not free to leave and were obliged to work it, but they were not
slaves; most paid a proportion of their produce to major officials. Free citizens who worked the land on their own behalf did emerge; terms applied to them tended
originally to refer to poor people, but these agriculturalists were probably not poor. Slavery was never common, being restricted to captives and foreigners or to
people who were forced by poverty or debt to sell themselves into service. Slaves sometimes even married members of their owners’ families, so that in the long
term those belonging to households tended to be assimilated into free society. In the New Kingdom (from about 1539 to 1075 BCE), large numbers of captive slaves
were acquired by major state institutions or incorporated into the army. Punitive treatment of foreign slaves or of native fugitives from their obligations included
forced labour, exile (in, for example, the oases of the western desert), or compulsory enlistment in dangerous mining expeditions. Even nonpunitive employment
such as quarrying in the desert was hazardous. The official record of one expedition shows a mortality rate of more than 10 percent.

Just as the Egyptians optimized agricultural production with simple means, their crafts and techniques, many of which originally came from Asia, were raised to
extraordinary levels of perfection. The Egyptians’ most striking technical achievement, massive stone building, also exploited the potential of a centralized state to
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mobilize a huge labour force, which was made available by efficient agricultural practices. Some of the technical and organizational skills involved were
remarkable. The construction of the great pyramids of the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE) has yet to be fully explained and would be a major challenge to this
day. This expenditure of skill contrasts with sparse evidence of an essentially neolithic way of living for the rural population of the time, while the use of flint tools
persisted even in urban environments at least until the late 2nd millennium BCE. Metal was correspondingly scarce, much of it being used for prestige rather than
everyday purposes.

In urban and elite contexts, the Egyptian ideal was the nuclear family, but, on the land and even within the central ruling group, there is evidence for extended
families. Egyptians were monogamous, and the choice of partners in marriage, for which no formal ceremony or legal sanction is known, did not follow a set
pattern. Consanguineous marriage was not practiced during the Dynastic period, except for the occasional marriage of a brother and sister within the royal family,
and that practice may have been open only to kings or heirs to the throne. Divorce was in theory easy, but it was costly. Women had a legal status only marginally
inferior to that of men. They could own and dispose of property in their own right, and they could initiate divorce and other legal proceedings. They hardly ever held
administrative office but increasingly were involved in religious cults as priestesses or “chantresses.” Married women held the title “mistress of the house,” the
precise significance of which is unknown. Lower down the social scale, they probably worked on the land as well as in the house.

The uneven distribution of wealth, labour, and technology was related to the only partly urban character of society, especially in the 3rd millennium BCE. The
country’s resources were not fed into numerous provincial towns but instead were concentrated to great effect around the capital—itself a dispersed string of
settlements rather than a city—and focused on the central figure in society, the king. In the 3rd and early 2nd millennia, the elite ideal, expressed in the decoration of
private tombs, was manorial and rural. Not until much later did Egyptians develop a more pronouncedly urban character.

The king and ideology: administration, art, and writing

In cosmogonical terms, Egyptian society consisted of a descending hierarchy of the gods, the king, the blessed dead, and humanity (by which was understood
chiefly the Egyptians). Of these groups, only the king was single, and hence he was individually more prominent than any of the others. A text that summarizes the
king’s role states that he “is on earth for ever and ever, judging mankind and propitiating the gods, and setting order [maʿat, a central concept] in place of disorder.
He gives offerings to the gods and mortuary offerings to the spirits [the blessed dead].” The king was imbued with divine essence, but not in any simple or
unqualified sense. His divinity accrued to him from his office and was reaffirmed through rituals, but it was vastly inferior to that of major gods; he was god rather
than man by virtue of his potential, which was immeasurably greater than that of any human being. To humanity, he manifested the gods on earth, a conception that
was elaborated in a complex web of metaphor and doctrine; less directly, he represented humanity to the gods. The text quoted above also gives great prominence to
the dead, who were the object of a cult for the living and who could intervene in human affairs; in many periods the chief visible expenditure and focus of display of

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nonroyal individuals, as of the king, was on provision for the tomb and the next world. Egyptian kings are commonly called pharaohs, following the usage of the
Bible. The term pharaoh, however, is derived from the Egyptian per ʿaa (“great estate”) and dates to the designation of the royal palace as an institution. This term
for palace was used increasingly from about 1400 BCE as a way of referring to the living king; in earlier times it was rare.

Rules of succession to the kingship are poorly understood. The common conception that the heir to the throne had to marry his predecessor’s oldest daughter has
been disproved; kingship did not pass through the female line. The choice of queen seems to have been free; often the queen was a close relative of the king, but she
also might be unrelated to him. In the New Kingdom, for which evidence is abundant, each king had a queen with distinctive titles, as well as a number of minor
wives.

Sons of the chief queen seem to have been the preferred successors to the throne, but other sons could also become king. In many cases the successor was the eldest
(surviving) son, and such a pattern of inheritance agrees with more general Egyptian values, but often he was some other relative or was completely unrelated. New
Kingdom texts describe, after the event, how kings were appointed heirs either by their predecessors or by divine oracles, and such may have been the pattern when
there was no clear successor. Dissent and conflict are suppressed from public sources. From the Late period (664–332 BCE), when sources are more diverse and
patterns less rigid, numerous usurpations and interruptions to the succession are known; they probably had many forerunners.

The king’s position changed gradually from that of an absolute monarch at the centre of a small ruling group made up mostly of his kin to that of the head of a
bureaucratic state—in which his rule was still absolute—based on officeholding and, in theory, on free competition and merit. By the 5th dynasty, fixed institutions
had been added to the force of tradition and the regulation of personal contact as brakes on autocracy, but the charismatic and superhuman power of the king
remained vital.

The elite of administrative officeholders received their positions and commissions from the king, whose general role as judge over humanity they put into effect.
They commemorated their own justice and concern for others, especially their inferiors, and recorded their own exploits and ideal conduct of life in inscriptions for
others to see. Thus, the position of the elite was affirmed by reference to the king, to their prestige among their peers, and to their conduct toward their subordinates,
justifying to some extent the fact that they—and still more the king—appropriated much of the country’s production.

These attitudes and their potential dissemination through society counterbalanced inequality, but how far they were accepted cannot be known. The core group of
wealthy officeholders numbered at most a few hundred, and the administrative class of minor officials and scribes, most of whom could not afford to leave
memorials or inscriptions, perhaps 5,000. With their dependents, these two groups formed perhaps 5 percent of the early population. Monuments and inscriptions
commemorated no more than one in a thousand people.

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According to royal ideology, the king appointed the elite on the basis of merit, and in ancient conditions of high mortality the elite had to be open to recruits from
outside. There was, however, also an ideal that a son should succeed his father. In periods of weak central control this principle predominated, and in the Late period
the whole society became more rigid and stratified.

Writing was a major instrument in the centralization of the Egyptian state and its self-presentation. The two basic types of writing—hieroglyphs, which were used
for monuments and display, and the cursive form known as hieratic—were invented at much the same time in late predynastic Egypt (c. 3000 BCE). Writing was
chiefly used for administration, and until about 2650 BCE no continuous texts are preserved; the only extant literary texts written before the early Middle Kingdom
(c. 1950 BCE) seem to have been lists of important traditional information and possibly medical treatises. The use and potential of writing were restricted both by the
rate of literacy, which was probably well below 1 percent, and by expectations of what writing might do. Hieroglyphic writing was publicly identified with Egypt.
Perhaps because of this association with a single powerful state, its language, and its culture, Egyptian writing was seldom adapted to write other languages; in this
it contrasts with the cuneiform script of the relatively uncentralized, multilingual Mesopotamia. Nonetheless, Egyptian hieroglyphs probably served in the middle of
the 2nd millennium BCE as the model from which the alphabet, ultimately the most widespread of all writing systems, evolved.

The dominant visible legacy of ancient Egypt is in works of architecture and representational art. Until the Middle Kingdom,
Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals.
most of these were mortuary: royal tomb complexes, including pyramids and mortuary temples, and private tombs. There were
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also temples dedicated to the cult of the gods throughout the country, but most of these were modest structures. From the
beginning of the New Kingdom, temples of the gods became the principal monuments; royal palaces and private houses, which
Egyptian hieratic numerals.
are very little known, were less important. Temples and tombs were ideally executed in stone with relief decoration on their
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walls and were filled with stone and wooden statuary, inscribed and decorated stelae (freestanding small stone monuments), and,
in their inner areas, composite works of art in precious materials. The design of the monuments and their decoration dates in
essence to the beginning of the historical period and presents an ideal, sanctified cosmos. Little in it is related to the everyday world, and, except in palaces, works
of art may have been rare outside temples and tombs. Decoration may record real historical events, rituals, or the official titles and careers of individuals, but its
prime significance is the more general assertion of values, and the information presented must be evaluated for its plausibility and compared with other evidence.
Some of the events depicted in relief on royal monuments were certainly iconic rather than historically factual.

Egyptian Book of the Dead
Illustration from an Egyptian Book of the
Dead, c. 1275
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The highly distinctive Egyptian method of rendering nature and artistic style was also a creation of early times and can
be seen in most works of Egyptian art. In content, these are hierarchically ordered so that the most important figures,
the gods and the king, are shown together, while before the New Kingdom gods seldom occur in the same context as
humanity. The decoration of a nonroyal tomb characteristically shows the tomb’s owner with his subordinates, who
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BCE administer his land and present him with its produce. The tomb owner is also typically depicted hunting in the marshes,
, showing the jackal-headed god of the
dead, Anubis, weighing the soul of the
a favourite pastime of the elite that may additionally symbolize passage into the next world. The king and the gods are
scribe, Ani. absent in nonroyal tombs, and, until the New Kingdom, overtly religious matter is restricted to rare scenes of mortuary
Mary Evans Picture Library/age fotostock rituals and journeys and to textual formulas. Temple reliefs, in which king and gods occur freely, show the king
defeating his enemies, hunting, and especially offering to the gods, who in turn confer benefits upon him. Human
beings are present at most as minor figures supporting the king. On both royal and nonroyal monuments, an ideal world is represented in which all are beautiful and
everything goes well; only minor figures may have physical imperfections.

This artistic presentation of values originated at the same time as writing but before the latter could record continuous texts or complex statements. Some of the
earliest continuous texts of the 4th and 5th dynasties show an awareness of an ideal past that the present could only aspire to emulate. A few “biographies” of
officials allude to strife, but more-nuanced discussion occurs first in literary texts of the Middle Kingdom. The texts consist of stories, dialogues, lamentations, and
especially instructions on how to live a good life, and they supply a rich commentary on the more one-dimensional rhetoric of public inscriptions. Literary works
were written in all the main later phases of the Egyptian language—Middle Egyptian; the “classical” form of the Middle and New kingdoms, continuing in copies
and inscriptions into Roman times; Late Egyptian, from the 19th dynasty to about 700 BCE; and the demotic script from the 4th century BCE to the 3rd century CE—
but many of the finest and most complex are among the earliest.

Literary works also included treatises on mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and magic, as well as various religious texts and canonical lists that classified the
categories of creation (probably the earliest genre, dating back to the beginning of the Old Kingdom, c. 2575 BCE, or even a little earlier). Among these texts, little is
truly systematic, a notable exception being a medical treatise on wounds. The absence of systematic inquiry contrasts with Egyptian practical expertise in such fields
as surveying, which was used both for orienting and planning buildings to remarkably fine tolerances and for the regular division of fields after the annual
inundation of the Nile; the Egyptians also had surveyed and established the dimensions of their entire country by the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. These
precise tasks required both knowledge of astronomy and highly ingenious techniques, but they apparently were achieved with little theoretical analysis.

Whereas in the earliest periods Egypt seems to have been administered almost as the personal estate of the king, by the central Old Kingdom it had been divided
into about 35 nomes, or provinces, each with its own officials. Administration was concentrated at the capital, where most of the central elite lived and died. In the
nonmonetary Egyptian economy, its essential functions were the collection, storage, and redistribution of produce; the drafting and organization of manpower for
specialized labour, probably including irrigation and flood protection works, and major state projects; and the supervision of legal matters. Administration and law
were not fully distinct, and both depended ultimately on the king. The settlement of disputes was in part an administrative task, for which the chief guiding criterion
was precedent, while contractual relations were regulated by the use of standard formulas. State and temple both partook in redistribution and held massive reserves
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of grain; temples were economic as well as religious institutions. In periods of decentralization similar functions were exercised by local grandees. Markets had only
a minor role, and craftsmen were employees who normally traded only what they produced in their free time. The wealthiest officials escaped this pattern to some
extent by receiving their income in the form of land and maintaining large establishments that included their own specialized workers.

The essential medium of administration was writing, reinforced by personal authority over the nonliterate 99 percent of the population; texts exhorting the young to
be scribes emphasize that the scribe commanded while the rest did the work. Most officials (almost all of whom were men) held several offices and accumulated
more as they progressed up a complex ranked hierarchy, at the top of which was the vizier, the chief administrator and judge. The vizier reported to the king, who in
theory retained certain powers, such as authority to invoke the death penalty, absolutely.

Before the Middle Kingdom, the civil and the military were not sharply distinguished. Military forces consisted of local militias under their own officials and
included foreigners, and nonmilitary expeditions to extract minerals from the desert or to transport heavy loads through the country were organized in similar
fashion. Until the New Kingdom there was no separate priesthood. Holders of civil office also had priestly titles, and priests had civil titles. Often priesthoods were
sinecures: their chief significance was the income they brought. The same was true of the minor civil titles accumulated by high officials. At a lower level, minor
priesthoods were held on a rotating basis by “laymen” who served every fourth month in temples. State and temple were so closely interconnected that there was no
real tension between them before the late New Kingdom.

Sources, calendars, and chronology

For all but the last century of Egyptian prehistory, whose neolithic and later phases are normally termed “predynastic,” evidence is exclusively archaeological; later
native sources have only mythical allusions to such remote times. The Dynastic period of native Egyptian rulers is generally divided into 30 dynasties, following the
Aegyptiaca of the Greco-Egyptian writer Manetho of Sebennytos (early 3rd century BCE), excerpts of which are preserved in the works of later writers. Manetho
apparently organized his dynasties by the capital cities from which they ruled, but several of his divisions also reflect political or dynastic changes—that is, changes
of the party holding power. He gave the lengths of reign of kings or of entire dynasties and grouped the dynasties into several periods, but, because of textual
corruption and a tendency toward inflation, Manetho’s figures cannot be used to reconstruct chronology without supporting evidence and analysis.

Manetho’s prime sources were earlier Egyptian king lists, the organization of which he imitated. The most significant preserved example of a king list is the Turin
Papyrus (Turin Canon), a fragmentary document in the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy, which originally listed all kings of the 1st through the 17th dynasty,
preceded by a mythical dynasty of gods and one of the “spirits, followers of Horus.” Like Manetho’s later work, the Turin document gave reign lengths for
individual kings, as well as totals for some dynasties and longer multidynastic periods.

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In early periods the kings’ years of reign were not consecutively numbered but were named for salient events, and lists were made of the names. More-extensive
details were added to the lists for the 4th and 5th dynasties, when dates were assigned according to biennial cattle censuses numbered through each king’s reign.
Fragments of such lists are preserved on the Palermo Stone, an inscribed piece of basalt (at the Regional Museum of Archaeology in Palermo, Italy), and related
pieces in the Cairo Museum and University College London; these are probably all parts of a single copy of an original document of the 5th dynasty.

The Egyptians did not date by eras longer than the reign of a single king, so a historical framework must be created
The Palermo Stone, first side
from totals of reign lengths, which are then related to astronomical data that may allow whole periods to be fixed
Courtesy of the Regional Museum of
Archaeology, Palermo precisely. This is done through references to astronomical events and correlations with the three calendars in use in
Egyptian antiquity. All dating was by a civil calendar, derived from the lunar calendar, which was introduced in the
first half of the 3rd millennium BCE. The civil year had 365 days and started in principle when Sirius, or the Dog Star—also known in Greek as Sothis (Ancient
Egyptian: Sopdet)—became visible above the horizon after a period of absence, which at that time occurred some weeks before the Nile began to rise for the
1
inundation. Every 4 years the civil year advanced one day in relation to the solar year (with 365 / days), and after a cycle of about 1,460 years it would again agree
4
with the solar calendar. Religious ceremonies were organized according to two lunar calendars that had months of 29 or 30 days, with extra, intercalary months
every three years or so.

Five mentions of the rising of Sirius (generally known as Sothic dates) are preserved in texts from the 3rd to the 1st millennium, but by themselves these references
cannot yield an absolute chronology. Such a chronology can be computed from larger numbers of lunar dates and cross-checked from solutions for the observations
of Sirius. Various chronologies are in use, however, differing by up to 40 years for the 2nd millennium BCE and by more than a century for the beginning of the 1st
dynasty. The chronologies offered in most publications up to 1985 have been thrown into some doubt for the Middle and New kingdoms by a restudy of the
evidence for the Sothic and especially the lunar dates. For the 1st millennium, dates in the Third Intermediate period are approximate; a supposed fixed year of 945
BCE, based on links with the Bible, turns out to be variable by a number of years. Late period dates (664–332 BCE) are almost completely fixed. Before the 12th
dynasty, plausible dates for the 11th can be computed backward, but for earlier times dates are approximate. A total of 955 years for the 1st through the 8th dynasty
in the Turin Canon has been used to assign a date of about 3100 BCE for the beginning of the 1st dynasty, but this requires excessive average reign lengths, and an
estimate of 2925 BCE is preferable. Radiocarbon and other scientific dating of samples from Egyptian sites have not improved on, or convincingly contested,
computed dates. More-recent work on radiocarbon dates from Egypt does, however, yield results encouragingly close to dates computed in the manner described
above.

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King lists and astronomy give only a chronological framework. A vast range of archaeological and inscriptional sources for Egyptian history survive, but none of
them were produced with the interpretation of history in mind. No consistent political history of ancient Egypt can be written. The evidence is very unevenly
distributed; there are gaps of many decades; and in the 3rd millennium BCE no continuous royal text recording historical events was inscribed. Private biographical
inscriptions of all periods from the 5th dynasty (c. 2465–c. 2325 BCE) to the Roman conquest (30 BCE) record individual involvement in events but are seldom
concerned with their general significance. Royal inscriptions from the 12th dynasty (1938–1756 BCE) to Ptolemaic times aim to present a king’s actions according to
an overall conception of “history,” in which he is the re-creator of the order of the world and the guarantor of its continued stability or its expansion. The goal of his
action is to serve not humanity but the gods, while nonroyal individuals may relate their own successes to the king in the first instance and sometimes to the gods.
Only in the decentralized intermediate periods did the nonroyal recount internal strife. Kings did not mention dissent in their texts unless it came at the beginning of
a reign or a phase of action and was quickly and triumphantly overcome in a reaffirmation of order. Such a schema often dominates the factual content of texts, and
it creates a strong bias toward recording foreign affairs, because in official ideology there is no internal dissent after the initial turmoil is over. “History” is as much a
ritual as a process of events; as a ritual, its protagonists are royal and divine. Only in the Late period did these conventions weaken significantly. Even then, they
were retained in full for temple reliefs, where they kept their vitality into Roman times.

Despite this idealization, the Egyptians were well aware of history, as is clear from their king lists. They divided the past into periods comparable to those used by
Egyptologists and evaluated the rulers not only as the founders of epochs but also in terms of their salient exploits or, especially in folklore, their bad qualities. The
Demotic Chronicle, a text of the Ptolemaic period, purports to foretell the bad end that would befall numerous Late period kings as divine retribution for their
wicked actions.

The recovery and study of ancient Egypt

European interest in ancient Egypt was strong in Roman times and revived in the Renaissance, when the wealth of Egyptian remains in the city of Rome was
supplemented by information provided by visitors to Egypt itself. Views of Egypt were dominated by the classical tradition that it was the land of ancient wisdom;
this wisdom was thought to inhere in the hieroglyphic script, which was believed to impart profound symbolic ideas, not—as it in fact does—the sounds and words
of texts. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, Egypt had a minor but significant position in general views of antiquity, and its monuments gradually became better
known through the work of scholars in Europe and travelers in the country itself; the finest publications of the latter were by Richard Pococke, Frederik Ludwig
Norden, and Carsten Niebuhr, all of whose works in the 18th century helped to stimulate an Egyptian revival in European art and architecture. Coptic, the Christian
successor of the ancient Egyptian language, was studied from the 17th century, notably by Athanasius Kircher, for its potential to provide the key to Egyptian.

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Napoleon I’s expedition to and short-lived conquest of Egypt in 1798 was the culmination of 18th-century interest in the East. The expedition was accompanied by a
team of scholars who recorded the ancient and contemporary country, issuing in 1809–28 the Description de l’Égypte, the most comprehensive study to be made
before the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script. The renowned Rosetta Stone, which bears a decree of Ptolemy V Epiphanes in hieroglyphs, demotic script, and
Greek alphabetic characters, was discovered during the expedition; it was ceded to the British after the French capitulation in Egypt and became the property of the
British Museum in London. This document greatly assisted the decipherment, accomplished by Jean-François Champollion in 1822.

The Egyptian language revealed by the decipherment and decades of subsequent study is a member of the Afro-Asiatic
Rosetta Stone
(formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family. Egyptian is closest to the family’s Semitic branch but is distinctive in
The Rosetta Stone, basalt slab from Fort
Saint-Julien, Rosetta (Rashīd), Egypt, many respects. During several millennia it changed greatly. The script does not write vowels, and because Greek forms
196 for royal names were known from Manetho long before the Egyptian forms became available, those used to this day
BCE are a mixture of Greek and Egyptian.
; in the British Museum, London.
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages In the first half of the 19th century, vast numbers of antiquities were exported from Egypt, forming the nucleus of
collections in many major museums. These were removed rather than excavated, inflicting, together with the economic
development of the country, colossal damage on ancient sites. At the same time, many travelers and scholars visited the country and recorded the monuments. The
most important, and remarkably accurate, record was produced by the Prussian expedition led by Karl Richard Lepsius, in 1842–45, which explored sites as far
south as the central Sudan.

In the mid-19th century, Egyptology developed as a subject in France and in Prussia. The Antiquities Service and a museum of Egyptian antiquities were established
in Egypt by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, a great excavator who attempted to preserve sites from destruction, and the Prussian Heinrich Brugsch, who
made great progress in the interpretation of texts of many periods and published the first major Egyptian dictionary. In 1880 Flinders (later Sir Flinders) Petrie began
more than 40 years of methodical excavation, which created an archaeological framework for all the chief periods of Egyptian culture except for remote prehistory.
Petrie was the initiator of much in archaeological method, but he was later surpassed by George Andrew Reisner, who excavated for American institutions from
1899 to 1937. The greatest late 19th-century Egyptologist was Adolf Erman of Berlin, who put the understanding of the Egyptian language on a sound basis and
wrote general works that for the first time organized what was known about the earlier periods.

Complete facsimile copies of Egyptian monuments have been published since the 1890s, providing a separate record that becomes more vital as the originals decay.
The pioneer of this scientific epigraphy was James Henry Breasted of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, who began his work in 1905 and shortly
thereafter was joined by others. Many scholars are now engaged in epigraphy.

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In the first half of the 20th century, some outstanding archaeological discoveries were made: Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922; Pierre
Montet found the tombs of 21st–22nd-dynasty kings at Tanis in 1939–44; and W.B. Emery and L.P. Kirwan found tombs of the Ballānah culture (the 4th through the
6th century CE) in Nubia in 1931–34. The last of these was part of the second survey of Lower Nubia in 1929–34, which preceded the second raising of the Aswān
Dam. This was followed in the late 1950s and ’60s by an international campaign to excavate and record sites in Egyptian and Sudanese Nubia before the completion
of the Aswan High Dam in 1970. Lower Nubia is now one of the most thoroughly explored archaeological regions of the world. Most of its many temples have been
moved, either to higher ground nearby, as happened to Abu Simbel and Philae, or to quite different places, including various foreign museums. The campaign also
had the welcome consequence of introducing a wide range of archaeological expertise to Egypt, so that standards of excavation and recording in the country have
risen greatly.

Excavation and survey of great importance have continued in many places. For example, at Ṣaqqārah, part of the necropolis of the
Carter, Howard
ancient city of Memphis, new areas of the Sarapeum have been uncovered with rich finds, and a major New Kingdom necropolis is
Howard Carter.
being thoroughly explored. The site of ancient Memphis itself has been systematically surveyed; its position in relation to the ancient
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
course of the Nile has been established; and urban occupation areas have been studied in detail for the first time.

Egyptology is, however, a primarily interpretive subject. There have been outstanding contributions—for example in art, for which Heinrich Schäfer established the
principles of the rendering of nature, and in language. New light has been cast on texts, the majority of which are written in a simple metre that can serve as the
basis of sophisticated literary works. The physical environment, social structure, kingship, and religion are other fields in which great advances have been made,
while the reconstruction of the outline of history is constantly being improved in detail.

The Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods

Predynastic Egypt
The peoples of predynastic Egypt were the successors of the Paleolithic inhabitants of northeastern Africa, who had spread over much of its area; during wet phases
they had left remains in regions as inhospitable as the Great Sand Sea. The final desiccation of the Sahara was not complete until the end of the 3rd millennium BCE;
over thousands of years people must have migrated from there to the Nile valley, the environment of which improved as the region dried out. In this process the
decisive change from the nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life of Paleolithic times to settled agriculture has not so far been identified. Sometime after 5000 BCE the
raising of crops was introduced, probably on a horticultural scale, in small local cultures that seem to have penetrated southward through Egypt into the oases and
the Sudan. Several of the basic food plants that were grown are native to the Middle East, so the new techniques probably spread from there. No large-scale

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migration need have been involved, and the cultures were at first largely self-contained. The preserved evidence for them is unrepresentative because it comes from
the low desert, where relatively few people lived; as was the case later, most people probably settled in the valley and delta.

Egypt, ancient
Sites associated with Egypt from
Predynastic to Byzantine times.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
The earliest known Neolithic cultures in Egypt have been found at Marimda Banī Salāma, on the southwestern edge of
the delta, and farther to the southwest, in Al-Fayyūm. The site at Marimda Banī Salāma, which dates to the 6th–5th
millennium BCE, gives evidence of settlement and shows that cereals were grown. In Al-Fayyūm, where evidence dates
to the 5th millennium BCE, the settlements were near the shore of Lake Qārūn, and the settlers engaged in fishing.
Marimda is a very large site that was occupied for many centuries. The inhabitants lived in lightly built huts; they may

Egypt, ancient
Sites associated with Egypt from
Predynastic to Byzantine times, Nile delta
region.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
have buried their dead within their houses, but areas where burials have been found may not have been occupied by
dwellings at the same time. Pottery was used in both cultures. In addition to these Egyptian Neolithic cultures, others
have been identified in the Western Desert, in the Second Cataract area, and north of Khartoum. Some of these are as
early as the Egyptian ones, while others overlapped with the succeeding Egyptian predynastic cultures.

Egypt, ancient
Sites associated with Egypt from
Predynastic to Byzantine times, Thebes
region.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
In Upper Egypt, between Asyūṭ and Luxor (Al-Uqṣur), have been found the Tasian culture (named for Dayr Tāsā) and
the Badarian culture (named for Al-Badārī); these date from the late 5th millennium BCE. Most of the evidence for
them comes from cemeteries, where the burials included fine black-topped red pottery, ornaments, some copper
objects, and glazed steatite beads. The most characteristic predynastic luxury objects, slate palettes for grinding
cosmetics, occur for the first time in this period. The burials show little differentiation of wealth and status and seem to
belong to a peasant culture without central political organization.

Probably contemporary with both predynastic and dynastic times are thousands of rock drawings of a wide range of motifs, including boats, found throughout the
Eastern Desert, in Lower Nubia, and as far west as Mount ʾUwaynāt, which stands near modern Egypt’s borders with Libya and Sudan in the southwest. The
drawings show that nomads were common throughout the desert, probably to the late 3rd millennium BCE, but they cannot be dated precisely; they may all have
been produced by nomads, or inhabitants of the Nile valley may often have penetrated the desert and made drawings.

Naqādah I, named for the major site of Naqādah but also called Amratian for Al-ʿĀmirah, is a distinct phase that succeeded the Badarian. It has been found as far
south as Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar (Hierakonpolis; ancient Egyptian Nekhen), near the sandstone barrier of Mount Silsilah, which was the cultural boundary of Egypt in
predynastic times. Naqādah I differs from its Badarian predecessor in its density of settlement and the typology of its material culture but hardly at all in the social
organization implied by the archaeological finds. Burials were in shallow pits in which the bodies were placed facing to the west, like those of later Egyptians.

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Notable types of material found in graves are fine pottery decorated with representational designs in white on red, figurines of men and women, and hard stone
mace-heads that are the precursors of important late predynastic objects.

Naqādah II, also known as Gerzean for Girza (Jirza), is the most important predynastic culture. The heartland of its development was the same as that of Naqādah I,
but it spread gradually throughout the country. South of Mount Silsilah, sites of the culturally similar Nubian A Group are found as far as the Second Cataract of the
Nile and beyond; these have a long span, continuing as late as the Egyptian Early Dynastic period. During Naqādah II, large sites developed at Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar,
Naqādah, and Abydos (Abīdūs), showing by their size the concentration of settlement, as well as exhibiting increasing differentiation in wealth and status. Few sites
have been identified between Asyūṭ and Al-Fayyūm, and this region may have been sparsely settled, perhaps supporting a pastoral rather than agricultural
population. Near present-day Cairo—at Al-ʿUmāri, Al-Maʿādi, and Wādī Dijlah and stretching as far south as the latitude of Al-Fayyūm—are sites of a separate,
contemporary culture. Al-Maʿādi was an extensive settlement that traded with the Middle East and probably acted as an intermediary for transmitting goods to the
south. In this period, imports of lapis lazuli provide evidence that trade networks extended as far afield as Afghanistan.

The material culture of Naqādah II included increasing numbers of prestige objects. The characteristic mortuary pottery is made of buff desert clay, principally from
around Qinā, and is decorated in red with pictures of uncertain meaning showing boats, animals, and scenes with human figures. Stone vases, many made of hard
stones that come from remote areas of the Eastern Desert, are common and of remarkable quality, and cosmetic palettes display elaborate designs, with outlines in
the form of animals, birds, or fish. Flint was worked with extraordinary skill to produce large ceremonial knives of a type that continued in use during dynastic
times.

Egyptian clay vessel
Painted clay vessel with flamingos and
ibexes, Gerzean culture, Egypt, c. 3400–
c. 3100
BCE
; in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum,
Hildesheim, Germany.
Holle Bildarchiv, Baden-Baden
a falcon on a decorated palace facade, hardly varies, these objects are thought to have belonged to a single line of kings or a single state, not to a set of small states.
Sites of late Naqādah II (sometimes termed Naqādah III) are found throughout Egypt, including the Memphite area and
the delta region, and appear to have replaced the local Lower Egyptian cultures. Links with the Middle East intensified,
and some distinctively Mesopotamian motifs and objects were briefly in fashion in Egypt. The cultural unification of
the country probably accompanied a political unification, but this must have proceeded in stages and cannot be
reconstructed in detail. In an intermediate stage, local states may have formed at Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, Naqādah, and
Abydos and in the delta at such sites as Buto (modern Kawm al-Farāʿīn) and Sais (Ṣā al-Ḥajar). Ultimately, Abydos
became preeminent; its late predynastic cemetery of Umm al-Qaʿāb was extended to form the burial place of the kings
of the 1st dynasty. In the latest predynastic period, objects bearing written symbols of royalty were deposited
throughout the country, and primitive writing also appeared in marks on pottery. Because the basic symbol for the king,

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This symbol became the royal Horus name, the first element in a king’s titulary, which presented the reigning king as the manifestation of an aspect of the god
Horus, the leading god of the country. Over the next few centuries several further definitions of the king’s presence were added to this one.

Thus, at this time Egypt seems to have been a state unified under kings who introduced writing and the first bureaucratic administration. These kings, who could
have ruled for more than a century, may correspond with a set of names preserved on the Palermo Stone, but no direct identification can be made between them. The
latest was probably Narmer, whose name has been found near Memphis, at Abydos, on a ceremonial palette and mace-head from Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar, and at the
Palestinian sites of Tall Gat and ʿArad. The relief scenes on the palette show him wearing the two chief crowns of Egypt and defeating northern enemies, but these
probably are stereotyped symbols of the king’s power and role and not records of specific events of his reign. They demonstrate that the position of the king in
society and its presentation in mixed pictorial and written form had been elaborated by the early 3rd millennium BCE.

During this time Egyptian artistic style and conventions were formulated, together with writing. The process led to a complete and remarkably rapid transformation
of material culture, so that many dynastic Egyptian prestige objects hardly resembled their forerunners.

The Early Dynastic period (c. 2925–c. 2575 BCE)

The 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775 BCE)

The beginning of the historical period is characterized by the introduction of written records in the form of regnal year names—the records that later were collected
in documents such as the Palermo Stone. The first king of Egyptian history, Menes, is therefore a creation of the later record, not the actual unifier of the country; he
is known from Egyptian king lists and from classical sources and is credited with irrigation works and with founding the capital, Memphis. On small objects from
this time, one of them dated to the important king Narmer but certainly mentioning a different person, there are two possible mentions of a “Men” who may be the
king Menes. If these do name Menes, he was probably the same person as Aha, Narmer’s probable successor, who was then the founder of the 1st dynasty. Changes
in the naming patterns of kings reinforce the assumption that a new dynasty began with his reign. Aha’s tomb at Abydos is altogether more grandiose than
previously built tombs, while the first of a series of massive tombs at Ṣaqqārah, next to Memphis, supports the tradition that the city was founded then as a new
capital. This shift from Abydos is the culmination of intensified settlement in the crucial area between the Nile River valley and the delta, but Memphis did not yet
overcome the traditional pull of its predecessor: the large tombs at Ṣaqqārah appear to belong to high officials, while the kings were buried at Abydos in tombs
whose walled complexes have long since disappeared. Their mortuary cults may have been conducted in designated areas nearer the cultivation.

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Figure perhaps representing Menes on a In the late Predynastic period and the first half of the 1st dynasty, Egypt extended its influence into southern Palestine
victory tablet of Egyptian King Narmer, c.
2925–c. 2775
and probably Sinai and conducted a campaign as far as the Second Cataract. The First Cataract area, with its centre on
Elephantine, an island in the Nile opposite the present-day town of Aswān, was permanently incorporated into Egypt,
BCE
. but Lower Nubia was not.
Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo;
photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich Between late predynastic times and the 4th dynasty—and probably early in the period—the Nubian A Group came to
an end. There is some evidence that political centralization was in progress around Qustul, but this did not lead to any
further development and may indeed have prompted a preemptive strike by Egypt. For Nubia, the malign proximity of the largest state of the time stifled
advancement. During the 1st dynasty, writing spread gradually, but because it was used chiefly for administration, the records, which were kept within the
floodplain, have not survived. The artificial writing medium of papyrus was invented by the middle of the 1st dynasty. There was a surge in prosperity, and
thousands of tombs of all levels of wealth have been found throughout the country. The richest contained magnificent goods in metal, ivory, and other materials, the
most widespread luxury products being extraordinarily fine stone vases. The high point of 1st-dynasty development was the long reign of Den (flourished c. 2850
BCE).

During the 1st dynasty three titles were added to the royal Horus name: “Two Ladies,” an epithet presenting the king as making manifest an aspect of the protective
goddesses of the south (Upper Egypt) and the north (Lower Egypt); “Golden Horus,” the precise meaning of which is unknown; and “Dual King,” a ranked pairing
of the two basic words for king, later associated with Upper and Lower Egypt. These titles were followed by the king’s own birth name, which in later centuries was
written in a cartouche.

The 2nd dynasty (c. 2775–c. 2650 BCE)

From the end of the 1st dynasty, there is evidence of rival claimants to the throne. One line may have become the 2nd dynasty, whose first king’s Horus name,
Hetepsekhemwy, means “peaceful in respect of the two powers” and may allude to the conclusion of strife between two factions or parts of the country, to the
antagonistic gods Horus and Seth, or to both. Hetepsekhemwy and his successor, Reneb, moved their burial places to Ṣaqqārah; the tomb of the third king, Nynetjer,
has not been found. The second half of the dynasty was a time of conflict and rival lines of kings, some of whose names are preserved on stone vases from the 3rd-
dynasty Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah or in king lists. Among these contenders, Peribsen took the title of Seth instead of Horus and was probably opposed by Horus
Khasekhem, whose name is known only from Kawm al-Aḥmar and who used the programmatic epithet “effective sandal against evil.” The last ruler of the dynasty
combined the Horus and Seth titles to form the Horus-and-Seth Khasekhemwy, “arising in respect of the two powers,” to which was added “the two lords are at

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peace in him.” Khasekhemwy was probably the same person as Khasekhem after the successful defeat of his rivals, principally Peribsen. Both Peribsen and
Khasekhemwy had tombs at Abydos, and the latter also built a monumental brick funerary enclosure near the cultivation.

The 3rd dynasty (c. 2650–c. 2575 BCE)

There were links of kinship between Khasekhemwy and the 3rd dynasty, but the change between them is marked by a definitive shift of the royal burial place to
Memphis. Its first king, Sanakhte, is attested in reliefs from Maghāra in Sinai. His successor, Djoser (Horus name Netjerykhet), was one of the outstanding kings of
Egypt. His Step Pyramid at Ṣaqqārah is both the culmination of an epoch and—as the first large all-stone building, many times larger than anything attempted
before—the precursor of later achievements. The pyramid is set in a much larger enclosure than that of Khasekhemwy at Abydos and contains reproductions in
stone of ritual structures that had previously been built of perishable materials. Architectural details of columns, cornices, and moldings provided many models for
later development. The masonry techniques look to brickwork for models and show little concern for the structural potential of stone. The pyramid itself evolved
through numerous stages from a flat mastaba (an oblong tomb with a burial chamber dug beneath it, common at earlier nonroyal sites) into a six-stepped, almost
square pyramid. There was a second, symbolic tomb with a flat superstructure on the south side of the enclosure; this probably substituted for the traditional royal
burial place of Abydos. The king and some of his family were buried deep under the pyramid, where tens of thousands of stone vases were deposited, a number
bearing inscriptions of the first two dynasties. Thus, in perpetuating earlier forms in stone and burying this material, Djoser invoked the past in support of his
innovations.

Djoser’s name was famous in later times, and his monument was studied in the Late period. Imhotep, whose title as a master sculptor is preserved from the Step
Pyramid complex, may have been its architect; he lived on into the next reign. His fame also endured, and in the Late period he was deified and became a god of
healing. In Manetho’s history he is associated with reforms of writing, and this may reflect a genuine tradition, for hieroglyphs were simplified and standardized at
that time.

Djoser’s successor, Sekhemkhet, planned a still more grandiose step pyramid complex at Ṣaqqārah, and a later king, Khaba, began one at Zawyat al-ʿAryan, a few
miles south of Giza. The burial place of the last king of the dynasty, Huni, is unknown. It has often been suggested that he built the pyramid of Maydūm, but this
probably was the work of his successor, Snefru. Inscribed material naming 3rd-dynasty kings is known from Maghāra to Elephantine but not from the Middle East
or Nubia.

The organizational achievements of the 3rd dynasty are reflected in its principal monument, whose message of centralization and concentration of power is
reinforced in a negative sense by the archaeological record. Outside the vicinity of Memphis, the Abydos area continued to be important, and four enormous tombs,

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probably of high officials, were built at the nearby site of Bayt Khallaf; there were small, nonmortuary step pyramids throughout the country, some of which may
date to the 4th dynasty. Otherwise, little evidence comes from the provinces, from which wealth must have flowed to the centre, leaving no rich local elite. By the
3rd dynasty the rigid structure of the later nomes, or provinces, which formed the basis of Old Kingdom administration, had been created, and the imposition of its
uniform pattern may have impoverished local centres. Tombs of the elite at Ṣaqqārah, notably those of Hezyre and Khabausokar, contained artistic masterpieces that
look forward to the Old Kingdom.

The Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 BCE) and the First Intermediate period (c. 2130–1938 BCE)

The Old Kingdom

The 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c. 2465 BCE)
The first king of the 4th dynasty, Snefru, probably built the step pyramid of Maydūm and then modified it to form the first true pyramid. Due west of Maydūm was
the small step pyramid of Saylah, in Al-Fayyūm, at which Snefru also worked. He built two pyramids at Dahshūr; the southern of the two is known as the Blunted
Pyramid because its upper part has a shallower angle of inclination than its lower part. This difference may be due to structural problems or may have been planned
from the start, in which case the resulting profile may reproduce a solar symbol of creation. The northern Dahshūr pyramid, the later of the two, has the same angle
of inclination as the upper part of the Blunted Pyramid and a base area exceeded only by that of the Great Pyramid at Giza. All three of Snefru’s pyramids had
mortuary complexes attached to them. Snefru’s building achievements were thus at least as great as those of any later king and introduced a century of unparalleled
construction.

In a long perspective, the 4th dynasty was an isolated phenomenon, a period when the potential of centralization was realized to its utmost and a disproportionate
amount of the state’s resources was used on the kings’ mortuary provisions, almost certainly at the expense of general living standards. No significant 4th-dynasty
sites have been found away from the Memphite area. Tomb inscriptions show that high officials were granted estates scattered over many nomes, especially in the
delta. This pattern of landholding may have avoided the formation of local centres of influence while encouraging intensive exploitation of the land. People who
worked on these estates were not free to move, and they paid a high proportion of their earnings in dues and taxes. The building enterprises must have relied on
drafting vast numbers of men, probably after the harvest had been gathered in the early summer and during part of the inundation.

Snefru’s was the first king’s name that was regularly written inside the cartouche, an elongated oval that is one of the
Blunted Pyramid
most characteristic Egyptian symbols. The cartouche itself is older and was shown as a gift bestowed by gods on the

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The Blunted, Bent, False, or Rhomboidal king, signifying long duration on the throne. It soon acquired associations with the sun, so that its first use by the
Pyramid, so named because of its
peculiar double slope, built by King
builder of the first true pyramid, which is probably also a solar symbol, is not coincidental.
Snefru in the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–c.
2465 Snefru’s successor, Khufu (Cheops), built the Great Pyramid at Giza (Al-Jīzah), to which were added the slightly
BCE smaller second pyramid of one of Khufu’s sons, Khafre (more correctly Rekhaef, the Chephren of Greek sources), and
), Dahshūr, Egypt. that of Menkaure (Mycerinus). Khufu’s successor, his son Redjedef, began a pyramid at Abū Ruwaysh, and a king of
© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
uncertain name began one at Zawyat al-ʿAryan. The last known king of the dynasty (there was probably one more),
Shepseskaf, built a monumental mastaba at south Ṣaqqārah and was the only Old Kingdom ruler not to begin a
pyramid. These works, especially the Great Pyramid, show a great mastery of monumental stoneworking: individual blocks were large or colossal and were
extremely accurately fitted to one another. Surveying and planning also were carried out with remarkable precision.

Apart from the colossal conception of the pyramids themselves, the temple complexes attached to them show great mastery of architectural forms. Khufu’s temple
or approach causeway was decorated with impressive reliefs, fragments of which were incorporated in the 12th-dynasty pyramid of Amenemhet I at Al-Lisht. The
best known of all Egyptian sculpture, Khafre’s Great Sphinx at Giza and his extraordinary seated statue of Nubian gneiss, date from the middle 4th dynasty.

The Giza pyramids form a group of more or less completed monuments surrounded by many tombs of the royal family and the
The Great Sphinx at Giza, Egypt.
elite, hierarchically organized and laid out in neat patterns. This arrangement contrasts with that of the reign of Snefru, when
© vinzo/iStock.com
important tombs were built at Maydūm and Ṣaqqārah, while the King was probably buried at Dahshūr. Of the Giza tombs, only
those of the highest-ranking officials were decorated; except among the immediate entourage of the kings, the freedom of
expression of officials was greatly restricted. Most of the highest officials were members of the large royal family, so that power was concentrated by kinship as well
as by other means. This did not prevent factional strife: the complex of Redjedef was deliberately and thoroughly destroyed, probably at the instigation of his
successor, Khafre.

The Palermo Stone records a campaign to Lower Nubia in the reign of Snefru that may be associated with graffiti in the area itself. The Egyptians founded a
settlement at Buhen, at the north end of the Second Cataract, which endured for 200 years; others may have been founded between there and Elephantine. The
purposes of this penetration were probably to establish trade farther south and to create a buffer zone. No archaeological traces of a settled population in Lower
Nubia have been found for the Old Kingdom period; the oppressive presence of Egypt seems to have robbed the inhabitants of their resources, as the provinces were
exploited in favour of the king and the elite.

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Snefru and the builders of the Giza pyramids represented a classic age to later times. Snefru was the prototype of a good king, whereas Khufu and Khafre had
tyrannical reputations, perhaps only because of the size of their monuments. Little direct evidence for political or other attitudes survives from the dynasty, in part
because writing was only just beginning to be used for recording continuous texts. Many great works of art were, however, produced for kings and members of the
elite, and these set a pattern for later work. Kings of the 4th dynasty identified themselves, at least from the time of Redjedef, as Son of Re (the sun god); worship of
the sun god reached a peak in the 5th dynasty.

The 5th dynasty (c. 2465–c. 2325 BCE)

The first two kings of the 5th dynasty, Userkaf and Sahure, were sons of Khentkaues, who was a member of the 4th-dynasty royal family. The third king,
Neferirkare, may also have been her son. A story from the Middle Kingdom that makes them all sons of a priest of Re may derive from a tradition that they were
true worshipers of the sun god and implies, probably falsely, that the 4th-dynasty kings were not. Six kings of the 5th dynasty displayed their devotion to the sun
god by building personal temples to his cult. These temples, of which the two so far identified are sited similarly to pyramids, probably had a mortuary significance
for the king as well as honouring the god. The kings’ pyramids should therefore be seen in conjunction with the sun temples, some of which received lavish
endowments and were served by many high-ranking officials.

Pyramids have been identified for seven of the nine kings of the dynasty, at Ṣaqqārah (Userkaf and Unas, the last king), Abū Ṣīr (Sahure, Neferirkare, Reneferef,
and Neuserre), and south Ṣaqqārah (Djedkare Izezi, the eighth king). The pyramids are smaller and less solidly constructed than those of the 4th dynasty, but the
reliefs from their mortuary temples are better preserved and of very fine quality; that of Sahure gives a fair impression of their decorative program. The interiors
contained religious scenes relating to provision for Sahure in the next life, while the exteriors presented his “historical” role and relations with the gods. Sea
expeditions to Lebanon to acquire timber are depicted, as are aggression against and capture of Libyans. Despite the apparent precision with which captives are
named and total figures given, these scenes may not refer to specific events, for the same motifs with the same details were frequently shown over the next 250
years; Sahure’s use of them might not have been the earliest.

Foreign connections were far-flung. Goldwork of the period has been found in Anatolia, while stone vases named for Khafre and Pepi I (6th dynasty) have been
found at Tall Mardīkh in Syria (Ebla), which was destroyed around 2250 BCE. The absence of 5th-dynasty evidence from the site is probably a matter of chance.
Expeditions to the turquoise mines of Sinai continued as before. In Nubia, graffiti and inscribed seals from Buhen document Egyptian presence until late in the
dynasty, when control was probably abandoned in the face of immigration from the south and the deserts; later generations of the immigrants are known as the
Nubian C Group. From the reign of Sahure on, there are records of trade with Punt, a partly legendary land probably in the region of present-day Eritrea, from which

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the Egyptians obtained incense and myrrh, as well as exotic African products that had been traded from still farther afield. Thus, the reduced level of royal display in
Egypt does not imply a less prominent general role for the country.

High officials of the 5th dynasty were no longer members of the royal family, although a few married princesses. Their offices still depended on the king, and in
their biographical inscriptions they presented their exploits as relating to him, but they justified other aspects of their social role in terms of a more general morality.
They progressed through their careers by acquiring titles in complex ranked sequences that were manipulated by kings throughout the 5th and 6th dynasties. This
institutionalization of officialdom has an archaeological parallel in the distribution of elite tombs, which no longer clustered so closely around pyramids. Many are
at Giza, but the largest and finest are at Ṣaqqārah and Abū Ṣīr. The repertory of decorated scenes in them continually expanded, but there was no fundamental
change in their subject matter. Toward the end of the 5th dynasty, some officials with strong local ties began to build their tombs in the Nile valley and the delta, in a
development that symbolized the elite’s slowly growing independence from royal control.

Something of the working of the central administration is visible in papyri from the mortuary temples of Neferirkare and Reneferef at Abū Ṣīr. These show well-
developed methods of accounting and meticulous recordkeeping and document the complicated redistribution of goods and materials between the royal residence,
the temples, and officials who held priesthoods. Despite this evidence for detailed organization, the consumption of papyrus was modest and cannot be compared,
for example, with that of Greco-Roman times.

The last three kings of the dynasty, Menkauhor, Djedkare Izezi, and Unas, did not have personal names compounded with “-Re,” the name of the sun god (Djedkare
is a name assumed on accession); and Izezi and Unas did not build solar temples. Thus, there was a slight shift away from the solar cult. The shift could be linked
with the rise of Osiris, the god of the dead, who is first attested from the reign of Neuserre. His origin was, however, probably some centuries earlier. The pyramid
of Unas, whose approach causeway was richly decorated with historical and religious scenes, is inscribed inside with spells intended to aid the deceased in the
hereafter; varying selections of the spells occur in all later Old Kingdom pyramids. (As a collection, they are known as the Pyramid Texts.) Many of the spells were
old when they were inscribed; their presence documents the increasing use of writing rather than a change in beliefs. The Pyramid Texts show the importance of
Osiris, at least for the king’s passage into the next world: it was an undertaking that aroused anxiety and had to be assisted by elaborate rituals and spells.

Nekhbet, the vulture goddess, hovering

The 6th dynasty (c. 2325–c. 2150 BCE)
over Menkauhor, Egypt, 25th–24th
century No marked change can be discerned between the reigns of Unas and Teti, the first king of the 6th dynasty. Around
BC Teti’s pyramid in the northern portion of Ṣaqqārah was built a cemetery of large tombs, including those of several
.

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Alinari/Art Resource, New York viziers. Together with tombs near the pyramid of Unas, this is the latest group of private monuments of the Old
Kingdom in the Memphite area.

Information on 6th-dynasty political and external affairs is more abundant because inscriptions of high officials were longer. Whether the circumstances they
describe were also typical of less loquacious ages is unknown, but the very existence of such inscriptions is evidence of a tendency to greater independence among
officials. One, Weni, who lived from the reign of Teti through those of Pepi I and Merenre, was a special judge in the trial of a conspiracy in the royal household,
mounted several campaigns against a region east of Egypt or in southern Palestine, and organized two quarrying expeditions. In the absence of a standing army, the
Egyptian force was levied from the provinces by officials from local administrative centres and other settlements; there were also contingents from several southern
countries and a tribe of the Eastern Desert.

Three biographies of officials from Elephantine record trading expeditions to the south in the reigns of Pepi I and Pepi II. The location of the regions named in them
is debated and may have been as far afield as the Butāna, south of the Fifth Cataract. Some of the trade routes ran through the Western Desert, where the Egyptians
established an administrative post at Balāṭ in Al-Dākhilah Oasis, some distance west of Al-Khārijah Oasis. Egypt no longer controlled Lower Nubia, which was
settled by the C Group and formed into political units of gradually increasing size, possibly as far as Karmah (Kerma), south of the Third Cataract. Karmah was the
southern cultural successor of the Nubian A Group and became an urban centre in the late 3rd millennium BCE, remaining Egypt’s chief southern neighbour for
seven centuries. To the north the Karmah state stretched as far as the Second Cataract and at times farther still. Its southern extent has not been determined, but sites
of similar material culture are scattered over vast areas of the central Sudan.

The provincializing tendencies of the late 5th dynasty continued in the 6th, especially during the extremely long reign (up to 94 years) of Pepi II. Increasing
numbers of officials resided in the provinces, amassed local offices, and emphasized local concerns, including religious leadership, in their inscriptions. At the
capital the size and splendour of the cemeteries decreased, and some tombs of the end of the dynasty were decorated only in their subterranean parts, as if security
could not be guaranteed aboveground. The pyramid complex of Pepi II at southern Ṣaqqārah, which was probably completed in the first 30 years of his reign, stands
out against this background as the last major monument of the Old Kingdom, comparable to its predecessors in artistic achievement. Three of his queens were
buried in small pyramids around his own; these are the only known queens’ monuments inscribed with Pyramid Texts.

The 7th and 8th dynasties (c. 2150–c. 2130 BCE)

Pepi II was followed by several ephemeral rulers, who were in turn succeeded by the short-lived 7th dynasty of Manetho’s history (from which no king’s name is
known) and the 8th, one of whose kings, Ibi, built a small pyramid at southern Ṣaqqārah. Several 8th-dynasty kings are known from inscriptions found in the temple

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of Min at Qifṭ (Coptos) in the south; this suggests that their rule was recognized throughout the country. The instability of the throne is, however, a sign of political
decay, and the fiction of centralized rule may have been accepted only because there was no alternative style of government to kingship.

With the end of the 8th dynasty, the Old Kingdom system of control collapsed. About that time there were incidents of famine and local violence. The country
emerged impoverished and decentralized from this episode, the prime cause of which may have been political failure, environmental disaster, or, more probably, a
combination of the two. In that period the desiccation of northeastern Africa reached a peak, producing conditions similar to those of contemporary times, and a
related succession of low inundations may have coincided with the decay of central political authority. These environmental changes are, however, only
approximately dated, and their relationship with the collapse cannot be proved.

The First Intermediate period

The 9th dynasty (c. 2130–2080 BCE)
After the end of the 8th dynasty, the throne passed to kings from Heracleopolis, who made their native city the capital, although Memphis continued to be important.
They were acknowledged throughout the country, but inscriptions of nomarchs (chief officials of nomes) in the south show that the kings’ rule was nominal. At
Dara, north of Asyūṭ, for example, a local ruler called Khety styled himself in a regal manner and built a pyramid with a surrounding “courtly” cemetery. At Al-
Miʿalla, south of Luxor, Ankhtify, the nomarch of the al-Jabalayn region, recorded his annexation of the Idfū nome and extensive raiding in the Theban area.
Ankhtify acknowledged an unidentifiable king Neferkare but campaigned with his own troops. Major themes of inscriptions of the period are the nomarch’s
provision of food supplies for his people in times of famine and his success in promoting irrigation works. Artificial irrigation had probably long been practiced, but
exceptional poverty and crop failure made concern with it worth recording. Inscriptions of Nubian mercenaries employed by local rulers in the south indicate how
entrenched military action was.

The 10th (c. 2080–c. 1970 BCE) and 11th (2081–1938 BCE) dynasties
A period of generalized conflict focused on rival dynasties at Thebes and Heracleopolis. The latter, the 10th, probably continued the line of the 9th. The founder of
the 9th or 10th dynasty was named Khety, and the dynasty as a whole was termed the House of Khety. Several Heracleopolitan kings were named Khety; another
important name is Merikare. There was intermittent conflict, and the boundary between the two realms shifted around the region of Abydos. As yet, the course of
events in this period cannot be reconstructed.

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Several major literary texts purport to describe the upheavals of the First Intermediate period—the Instruction for Merikare, for example, being ascribed to one of
the kings of Heracleopolis. These texts led earlier Egyptologists to posit a Heracleopolitan literary flowering, but there is now a tendency to date them to the Middle
Kingdom, so that they would have been written with enough hindsight to allow a more effective critique of the sacred order.

Until the 11th dynasty made Thebes its capital, Armant (Greek, Hermonthis), on the west bank of the Nile, was the centre of the Theban nome. The dynasty
honoured as its ancestor the God’s Father Mentuhotep, probably the father of its first king, Inyotef I (2081–65 BCE), whose successors were Inyotef II and Inyotef III
(2065–16 and 2016–08 BCE, respectively). The fourth king, Mentuhotep II (2008–1957 BCE, whose throne name was Nebhepetre), gradually reunited Egypt and
ousted the Heracleopolitans, changing his titulary in stages to record his conquests. Around his 20th regnal year he assumed the Horus name Divine of the White
Crown, implicitly claiming all of Upper Egypt. By his regnal year 42 this had been changed to Uniter of the Two Lands, a traditional royal epithet that he revived
with a literal meaning. In later times Mentuhotep was celebrated as the founder of the epoch now known as the Middle Kingdom. His remarkable mortuary complex
at Dayr al-Baḥrī, which seems to have had no pyramid, was the architectural inspiration for Hatshepsut’s later structure built alongside.

In the First Intermediate period, monuments were set up by a slightly larger section of the population, and, in the absence of central control, internal dissent and
conflicts of authority became visible in public records. Nonroyal individuals took over some of the privileges of royalty, notably identification with Osiris in the
hereafter and the use of the Pyramid Texts; these were incorporated into a more extensive corpus inscribed on coffins (and hence termed the Coffin Texts) and
continued to be inscribed during the Middle Kingdom. The unified state of the Middle Kingdom did not reject these acquisitions and so had a broader cultural basis
than the Old Kingdom.

The Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630 BCE) and the Second Intermediate period (c. 1630–1540 BCE)

The Middle Kingdom

Mentuhotep II campaigned in Lower Nubia, where he may have been preceded by the Inyotefs. His mortuary complex in Thebes contained some of the earliest
known depictions of Amon-Re, the dynastic god of the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom. Mentuhotep II was himself posthumously deified and worshiped,
notably in the Aswān area. In administration, he attempted to break the power of the nomarchs, but his policy was unsuccessful in the longer term.

Mentuhotep II’s successors, Mentuhotep III (1957–45 BCE) and Mentuhotep IV (1945–38 BCE), also ruled from Thebes. The reign of Mentuhotep IV corresponds to
seven years marked “missing” in the Turin Canon, and he may later have been deemed illegitimate. Records of a quarrying expedition to the Wadi Ḥammāmāt from

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his second regnal year were inscribed on the order of his vizier Amenemhet, who almost certainly succeeded to the throne and founded the 12th dynasty. Not all the
country welcomed the 11th dynasty, the monuments and self-presentation of which remained local and Theban.

The 12th dynasty (1938–c. 1756 BCE)

In a text probably circulated as propaganda during the reign of Amenemhet I (1938–08 BCE), the time preceding his reign is depicted as a period of chaos and
despair, from which a saviour called Ameny from the extreme south was to emerge. This presentation may well be stereotyped, but there could have been armed
struggle before he seized the throne. Nonetheless, his mortuary complex at Al-Lisht contained monuments on which his name was associated with that of his
predecessor. In style, his pyramid and mortuary temple looked back to Pepi II of the end of the Old Kingdom, but the pyramid was built of mud brick with a stone
casing; consequently, it is now badly ruined.

Amenemhet I moved the capital back to the Memphite area, founding a residence named Itjet-towy, “she who takes possession of the Two Lands,” which was for
later times the archetypal royal residence. Itjet-towy was probably situated between Memphis and the pyramids of Amenemhet I and Sesostris I (at modern Al-
Lisht), while Memphis remained the centre of population. From later in the dynasty there is the earliest evidence for a royal palace (not a capital) in the eastern
delta. The return to the Memphite area was accompanied by a revival of Old Kingdom artistic styles, in a resumption of central traditions that contrasted with the
local ones of the 11th dynasty. From the reign of Amenemhet major tombs of the first half of the dynasty, which display considerable local independence, are
preserved at several sites, notably Beni Hasan, Meir, and Qau. After the second reign of the dynasty, no more important private tombs were constructed at Thebes,
but several kings made benefactions to Theban temples.

In his 20th regnal year, Amenemhet I took his son Sesostris I (or Senwosret, reigned 1908–1875 BCE) as his coregent, presumably in order to ensure a smooth
transition to the next reign. This practice was followed in the next two reigns and recurred sporadically in later times. During the following 10 years of joint rule,
Sesostris undertook campaigns in Lower Nubia that led to its conquest as far as the central area of the Second Cataract. A series of fortresses were begun in the
region, and there was a full occupation, but the local C Group population was not integrated culturally with the conquerors.

Amenemhet I apparently was murdered during Sesostris’s absence on a campaign to Libya, but Sesostris was able to
Sesostris I
maintain his hold on the throne without major disorder. He consolidated his father’s achievements, but, in one of the
Sesostris I, detail of a limestone statue,
Egypt, c. 1900 earliest preserved inscriptions recounting royal exploits, he spoke of internal unrest. An inscription of the next reign
alludes to campaigns to Syria-Palestine in the time of Sesostris; whether these were raiding expeditions and parades of
BCE
.

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Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo; strength, in what was then a seminomadic region, or whether a conquest was intended or achieved is not known. It is
photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich
clear, however, that the traditional view that the Middle Kingdom hardly intervened in the Middle East is incorrect.

In the early 12th dynasty the written language was regularized in its classical form of Middle Egyptian, a rather artificial idiom that was probably always somewhat
removed from the vernacular. The first datable corpus of literary texts was composed in Middle Egyptian. Two of these relate directly to political affairs and offer
fictional justifications for the rule of Amenemhet I and Sesostris I, respectively. Several that are ascribed to Old Kingdom authors or that describe events of the First
Intermediate period but are composed in Middle Egyptian probably also date from around this time. The most significant of these is the Instruction for Merikare, a
discourse on kingship and moral responsibility. It is often used as a source for the history of the First Intermediate period but may preserve no more than a memory
of its events. Most of these texts continued to be copied in the New Kingdom.

Little is known of the reigns of Amenemhet II (1876–42 BCE) and Sesostris II (1844–37 BCE). These kings built their pyramids in the entrance to Al-Fayyūm while
also beginning an intensive exploitation of its agricultural potential that reached a peak in the reign of Amenemhet III (1818–1770 BCE). The king of the 12th
dynasty with the most enduring reputation was Sesostris III (1836–18 BCE), who extended Egyptian conquests to Semna, at the south end of the Second Cataract,
while also mounting at least one campaign to Palestine. Sesostris III completed an extensive chain of fortresses in the Second Cataract; at Semna he was worshiped
as a god in the New Kingdom.

Frequent campaigns and military occupation, which lasted another 150 years, required a standing army. A force of this type may have been created early in the 12th
dynasty but becomes better attested near the end. It was based on “soldiers”—whose title means literally “citizens”—levied by district and officers of several grades
and types. It was separate from New Kingdom military organization and seems not to have enjoyed very high status.

The purpose of the occupation of Lower Nubia is disputed, because the size of the fortresses and the level of manpower needed to occupy them might seem
disproportionate to local threats. An inscription of Sesostris III set up in the fortresses emphasizes the weakness of the Nubian enemy, while a boundary marker and
fragmentary papyri show that the system channeled trade with the south through the central fortress of Mirgissa. The greatest period of the Karmah state to the south
was still to come, but for centuries it had probably controlled a vast stretch of territory. The best explanation of the Egyptian presence is that Lower Nubia was
annexed by Egypt for purposes of securing the southern trade route, while Karmah was a rival worth respecting and preempting; in addition, the physical scale of
the fortresses may have become something of an end in itself. It is not known whether Egypt wished similarly to annex Palestine, but numerous administrative seals
of the period have been found there.

Egypt: crowns

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The crown of Lower Egypt (left) and the Sesostris III reorganized Egypt into four regions corresponding to the northern and southern halves of the Nile valley
crown of Upper Egypt (right), both worn
by King Sesostris III, Egypt, 19th century
and the eastern and western delta. Rich evidence for middle-ranking officials from the religious centre of Abydos and
for administrative practice in documents from Al-Lāhūn conveys an impression of a pervasive, centralized
BCE
; in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. bureaucracy, which later came to run the country under its own momentum. The prosperity created by peace,
Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich conquests, and agricultural development is visible in royal monuments and monuments belonging to the minor elite,
but there was no small, powerful, and wealthy group of the sort seen in the Old and New Kingdoms. Sesostris III and
his successor, Amenemhet III (1818–c. 1770 BCE), left a striking artistic legacy in the form of statuary depicting them as aging, careworn rulers, probably alluding to
a conception of the suffering king known from literature of the dynasty. This departure from the bland ideal, which may have sought to bridge the gap between king
and subjects in the aftermath of the attack on elite power, was not taken up in later times.

The reigns of Amenemhet III and Amenemhet IV (c. 1770–60 BCE) and of Sebeknefru (c. 1760–56 BCE), the first certainly attested female monarch, were
apparently peaceful, but the accession of a woman marked the end of the dynastic line.

The 13th dynasty (c. 1756–c. 1630 BCE)

Despite a continuity of outward forms and of the rhetoric of inscriptions between the 12th and 13th dynasties, there was a complete change in kingship. In little
more than a century about 70 kings occupied the throne. Many can have reigned only for months, and there were probably rival claimants to the throne, but in
principle the royal residence remained at Itjet-towy and the kings ruled the whole country. Egypt’s hold on Lower Nubia was maintained, as was its position as the
leading state in the Middle East. Large numbers of private monuments document the prosperity of the official classes, and a proliferation of titles is evidence of their
continued expansion. In government the vizier assumed prime importance, and a single family held the office for much of a century.

Immigration from Asia is known in the late 12th dynasty and became more widespread in the 13th. From the late 18th century BCE the northeastern Nile River delta
was settled by successive waves of peoples from Palestine, who retained their own material culture. Starting with the Instruction for Merikare, Egyptian texts warn
against the dangers of infiltration of this sort, and its occurrence shows a weakening of government. There may also have been a rival dynasty, called the 14th, at
Xois in the north-central delta, but this is known only from Manetho’s history and could have had no more than local significance. Toward the end of this period,
Egypt lost control of Lower Nubia, where the garrisons—which had been regularly replaced with fresh troops—settled and were partly assimilated. The Karmah
state overran and incorporated the region. Some Egyptian officials resident in the Second Cataract area served the new rulers. The site of Karmah has yielded many
Egyptian artifacts, including old pieces pillaged from their original contexts. Most were items of trade between the two countries, some probably destined for
exchange against goods imported from sub-Saharan Africa. Around the end of the Middle Kingdom and during the Second Intermediate period, Medjay tribesmen

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from the Eastern Desert settled in the Nile valley from around Memphis to the Third Cataract. Their presence is marked by distinctive shallow graves with black-
topped pottery, and they have traditionally been termed the “Pan-grave” culture by archaeologists. They were assimilated culturally in the New Kingdom, but the
word Medjay came to mean police or militia; they probably came as mercenaries.

The Second Intermediate period

The increasing competition for power in Egypt and Nubia crystallized in the formation of two new dynasties: the 15th, called the Hyksos (c. 1630–c. 1523 BCE),
with its capital at Avaris (Tell el-Dabʿa) in the delta, and the 17th (c. 1630–1540 BCE), ruling from Thebes. The word Hyksos dates to an Egyptian phrase meaning
“ruler of foreign lands” and occurs in Manetho’s narrative cited in the works of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (1st century CE), which depicts the new rulers
as sacrilegious invaders who despoiled the land. They presented themselves—with the exception of the title Hyksos—as Egyptian kings and appear to have been
accepted as such. The main line of Hyksos was acknowledged throughout Egypt and may have been recognized as overlords in Palestine, but they tolerated other
lines of kings, both those of the 17th dynasty and the various minor Hyksos who are termed the 16th dynasty. The 15th dynasty consisted of six kings, the best
known being the fifth, Apopis, who reigned for up to 40 years. There were many 17th-dynasty kings, probably belonging to several different families. The northern
frontier of the Theban domain was at Al-Qūṣiyyah, but there was trade across the border.

Asiatic rule brought many technical innovations to Egypt, as well as cultural innovations such as new musical instruments and foreign loan words. The changes
affected techniques from bronze working and pottery to weaving, and new breeds of animals and new crops were introduced. In warfare, composite bows, new types
of daggers and scimitars, and above all the horse and chariot transformed previous practice, although the chariot may ultimately have been as important as a prestige
vehicle as for tactical military advantages it conferred. The effect of these changes was to bring Egypt, which had been technologically backward, onto the level of
southwestern Asia. Because of these advances and the perspectives it opened up, Hyksos rule was decisive for Egypt’s later empire in the Middle East.

Whereas the 13th dynasty was fairly prosperous, the Second Intermediate period may have been impoverished. The regional centre of the cult of Osiris at Abydos,
which has produced the largest quantity of Middle Kingdom monuments, lost importance, but sites such as Thebes, Idfū, and Al-Kawm al-Aḥmar have yielded
significant, if sometimes crudely worked, remains. Aside from Avaris itself, virtually no information has come from the north, where the Hyksos ruled, and it is
impossible to assess their impact on the economy or on high culture. The Second Intermediate period was the consequence of political fragmentation and
immigration and was not associated with economic collapse, as in the early First Intermediate period.

Toward the end of the 17th dynasty (c. 1545 BCE), the Theban king Seqenenre challenged Apopis, probably dying in battle against him. Seqenenre’s successor,
Kamose, renewed the challenge, stating in an inscription that it was intolerable to share his land with an Asiatic and a Nubian (the Karmah ruler). By the end of his

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third regnal year, he had made raids as far south as the Second Cataract (and possibly much farther) and in the north to the neighbourhood of Avaris, also
intercepting in the Western Desert a letter sent from Apopis to a new Karmah ruler on his accession. By campaigning to the north and to the south, Kamose acted
out his implicit claim to the territory ruled by Egypt in the Middle Kingdom. His exploits formed a vital stage in the long struggle to expel the Hyksos.

John R. Baines Peter F. Dorman

The New Kingdom (c. 1539–1075 BCE)

The 18th dynasty (c. 1539–1292 BCE)

Ahmose
Although Ahmose (ruled c. 1539–14 BCE) had been preceded by Kamose, who was either his father or his brother, Egyptian tradition regarded Ahmose as the
founder of a new dynasty because he was the native ruler who reunified Egypt. Continuing a recently inaugurated practice, he married his full sister Ahmose-
Nofretari. The queen was given the title of God’s Wife of Amon. Like her predecessors of the 17th dynasty, Queen Ahmose-Nofretari was influential and highly
honoured. A measure of her importance was her posthumous veneration at Thebes, where later pharaohs were depicted offering to her as a goddess among the gods.

Ahmose’s campaigns to expel the Hyksos from the Nile River delta and regain former Egyptian territory to the south probably started around his 10th regnal year.
Destroying the Hyksos stronghold at Avaris, in the eastern delta, he finally drove them beyond the eastern frontier and then besieged Sharuḥen (Tell el-Fārʿah) in
southern Palestine; the full extent of his conquests may have been much greater. His penetration of the Middle East came at a time when there was no major
established power in the region. This political gap facilitated the creation of an Egyptian “empire.”

Ahmose’s officers and soldiers were rewarded with spoil and captives, who became personal slaves. This marked the creation of an influential military class. Like
Kamose, Ahmose campaigned as far south as Buhen. For the administration of the regained territory, he created a new office, overseer of southern foreign lands,
which ranked second only to the vizier. Its incumbent was accorded the honorific title of king’s son, indicating that he was directly responsible to the king as deputy.

The early New Kingdom bureaucracy was modeled on that of the Middle Kingdom. The vizier was the chief administrator and the highest judge of the realm. By
the mid-15th century BCE the office had been divided into two, one vizier for Upper and one for Lower Egypt. During the 18th dynasty some young bureaucrats
were educated in temple schools, reinforcing the integration of civil and priestly sectors. Early in the dynasty many administrative posts were inherited, but royal

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appointment of capable officials, often selected from military officers who had served the king on his campaigns, later became the rule. The trend was thus away
from bureaucratic families and the inheritance of office.

Amenhotep I
Ahmose’s son and successor, Amenhotep I (ruled c. 1514–1493 BCE), pushed the Egyptian frontier southward to the Third Cataract, near the capital of the Karmah
(Kerma) state, while also gathering tribute from his Asiatic possessions and perhaps campaigning in Syria. The emerging kingdom of Mitanni in northern Syria,
which is first mentioned on a stela of one of Amenhotep’s soldiers and was also known by the name of Nahrin, may have threatened Egypt’s conquests to the north.

The New Kingdom was a time of increased devotion to the state god Amon-Re, whose cult largely benefited as Egypt
Amenhotep I
was enriched by the spoils of war. Riches were turned over to the god’s treasuries, and as a sign of filial piety the king
Limestone sculpture of Amenhotep I,
Egypt, c. 1500 had sacred monuments constructed at Thebes. Under Amenhotep I the pyramidal form of royal tomb was abandoned in
favour of a rock-cut tomb, and, except for Akhenaton, all subsequent New Kingdom rulers were buried in concealed
BCE
. tombs in the famous Valley of the Kings in western Thebes. Separated from the tombs, royal mortuary temples were
Reproduced by courtesy of the trustees of the erected at the edge of the desert. Perhaps because of this innovation, Amenhotep I later became the patron deity of the
British Museum
workmen who excavated and decorated the royal tombs. The location of his own tomb is unknown.

Thutmose I and Thutmose II

Lacking a surviving heir, Amenhotep I was succeeded by one of his generals, Thutmose I (ruled 1493–c. 1482 BCE), who married his own full sister Ahmose. In the
south Thutmose destroyed the Karmah state. He inscribed a rock as a boundary marker, later confirmed by Thutmose III, near Kanisa-Kurgus, north of the Fifth
Cataract. He then executed a brilliant campaign into Syria and across the Euphrates River, where he erected a victory stela near Carchemish.

Thus, in the reign of Thutmose I, Egyptian conquests in the Middle East and Africa reached their greatest extent, but they may not yet have been firmly held. His
little-known successor, Thutmose II (c. 1482–79 BCE), apparently continued his policies.

Hatshepsut and Thutmose III

At Thutmose II’s death his queen and sister, Hatshepsut, had only a young daughter; but a minor wife had borne him a boy, who was apparently very young at his
accession. This son, Thutmose III (ruled 1479–26 BCE), later reconquered Egypt’s Asian empire and became an outstanding ruler. During his first few regnal years,

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Thutmose III theoretically controlled the land, but Hatshepsut governed as regent. Sometime between Thutmose III’s second and seventh regnal years, she assumed
the kingship herself. According to one version of the event, the oracle of Amon proclaimed her king at Karnak, where she was crowned. A more propagandistic
account, preserved in texts and reliefs of her splendid mortuary temple at Dayr al-Baḥrī, ignores the reign of Thutmose II and asserts that her father, Thutmose I,
proclaimed her his successor. Upon becoming king, Hatshepsut became the dominant partner in a joint rule that lasted until her death in about 1458 BCE; there are
monuments dedicated by Hatshepsut that depict both kings. She had the support of various powerful personalities; the most notable among them was Senenmut, the
steward and tutor of her daughter Neferure. In styling herself king, Hatshepsut adopted the royal titulary but avoided the epithet “mighty bull,” regularly employed
by other kings. Although in her reliefs she was depicted as a male, pronominal references in the texts usually reflect her womanhood. Similarly, much of her statuary
shows her in male form, but there are rarer examples that render her as a woman. In less formal documents she was referred to as “King’s Great Wife”—that is,
“Queen”—while Thutmose III was “King.” There is thus a certain ambiguity in the treatment of Hatshepsut as king.

Her temple reliefs depict pacific enterprises, such as the transporting of obelisks for Amon’s temple and a commercial
The ancient Egyptian empire during the
rule of Thutmose III (1479–26 expedition to Punt; her art style looked back to Middle Kingdom ideals. Some warlike scenes are depicted, however,

BCE and she may have waged a campaign in Nubia. In one inscription she blamed the Hyksos for the supposedly poor state
). of the land before her rule, even though they had been expelled from the region more than a generation earlier.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

During Hatshepsut’s ascendancy Egypt’s position in Asia may have deteriorated because of the expansion of Mitannian

Egyptian sculpture: head of a queen power in Syria. Shortly after her death, the prince of the Syrian city of Kadesh, stood with troops of 330 princes of a
Syro-Palestinian coalition at Megiddo; such a force was more than merely defensive, and the intention may have been
Head of a queen, brown quartzite
sculpture from Egypt, c. 1479–25 to advance against Egypt. The 330 must have represented all the places of any size in the region that were not subject
BCE to Egyptian rule and may be a schematic figure derived from a list of place-names. It is noteworthy that Mitanni itself
; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York. was not directly involved.
Photograph by Trish Mayo. Brooklyn Museum,
New York, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund,
Thutmose III proceeded to Gaza with his army and then to Yehem, subjugating rebellious Palestinian towns along the
65.134.3
way. His annals relate how, at a consultation concerning the best route over the Mount Carmel ridge, the king overruled
his officers and selected a shorter but more dangerous route through the ʿArūnah Pass and then led the troops himself.
The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Dayr
al-Baḥrī, Thebes, Egypt, 15th century
The march went smoothly, and, when the Egyptians attacked at dawn, they prevailed over the enemy troops and
besieged Megiddo.
BCE
.
Katherine Young/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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Thutmose III meanwhile coordinated the landing of other army divisions on the Syro-Palestinian littoral, whence they
proceeded inland, so that the strategy resembled a pincer technique. The siege ended in a treaty by which Syrian princes swore an oath of submission to the king. As
was normal in ancient diplomacy and in Egyptian practice, the oath was binding only upon those who swore it, not upon future generations.

By the end of the first campaign, Egyptian domination extended northward to a line linking Byblos and Damascus. Although the prince of Kadesh remained to be
vanquished, Assyria sent lapis lazuli as tribute; Asian princes surrendered their weapons, including a large number of horses and chariots. Thutmose III took only a
limited number of captives. He appointed Asian princes to govern the towns and took their brothers and sons to Egypt, where they were educated at the court. Most
eventually returned home to serve as loyal vassals, though some remained in Egypt at court. In order to ensure the loyalty of Asian city-states, Egypt maintained
garrisons that could quell insurrection and supervise the delivery of tribute. There never was an elaborate Egyptian imperial administration in Asia.

Thutmose III conducted numerous subsequent campaigns in Asia. The submission of Kadesh was finally achieved, but
Thutmose III
Thutmose III’s ultimate aim was the defeat of Mitanni. He used the navy to transport troops to Asian coastal towns,
Thutmose III smiting his Asian foes, detail
of a limestone relief from the Temple of avoiding arduous overland marches from Egypt. His great eighth campaign led him across the Euphrates; although the
Amon at Karnak, Egypt, 15th century countryside around Carchemish was ravaged, the city was not taken, and the Mitannian prince was able to flee. The
BCE psychological gain of this campaign was perhaps greater than its military success, for Babylonia, Assyria, and the
. Hittites all sent tribute in recognition of Egyptian dominance. Although Thutmose III never subjugated Mitanni, he
Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich
placed Egypt’s conquests on a firm footing by constant campaigning that contrasts with the forays of his predecessors.
Thutmose III’s annals inscribed in the temple of Karnak are remarkably succinct and accurate, but his other texts,
particularly one set in his newly founded Nubian capital of Napata, are more conventional in their rhetoric. He seems to have married three Syrian wives, which
may represent diplomatic unions, marking Egypt’s entry into the realm of international affairs of the ancient Middle East.

Thutmose III initiated a truly imperial Egyptian rule in Nubia. Much of the land became estates of institutions in Egypt, while local cultural traits disappear from the
archaeological record. Sons of chiefs were educated at the Egyptian court; a few returned to Nubia to serve as administrators, and some were buried there in
Egyptian fashion. Nubian fortresses lost their strategic value and became administrative centres. Open towns developed around them, and, in several temples outside
their walls, the cult of the divine king was established. Lower Nubia supplied gold from the desert and hard and semiprecious stones. From farther south came
tropical African woods, perfumes, oil, ivory, animal skins, and ostrich plumes. There is scarcely any trace of local population from the later New Kingdom, when
many more temples were built in Nubia; by the end of the 20th dynasty, the region had almost no prosperous settled population.

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Under Thutmose III the wealth of empire became apparent in Egypt. Many temples were built, and vast sums were donated to the estate of Amon-Re. There are
many tombs of his high officials at Thebes. The capital had been moved to Memphis, but Thebes remained the religious centre.

The campaigns of kings such as Thutmose III required a large military establishment, including a hierarchy of officers and an expensive chariotry. The king grew up
with military companions whose close connection with him enabled them to participate increasingly in government. Military officers were appointed to high civil
and religious positions, and by the Ramesside period the influence of such people had come to outweigh that of the traditional bureaucracy.

Amenhotep II
About two years before his death, Thutmose III appointed his 18-year-old son, Amenhotep II (ruled c. 1426–1400 BCE), as coregent. Just prior to his father’s death,
Amenhotep II set out on a campaign to an area in Syria near Kadesh, whose city-states were now caught up in the power struggle between Egypt and Mitanni;
Amenhotep II killed seven princes and shipped their bodies back to Egypt to be suspended from the ramparts of Thebes and Napata. In his seventh and ninth years,
Amenhotep II made further campaigns into Asia, where the Mitannian king pursued a more vigorous policy. The revolt of the important coastal city of Ugarit was a
serious matter, because Egyptian control over Syria required bases along the littoral for inland operations and the provisioning of the army. Ugarit was pacified, and
the fealty of Syrian cities, including Kadesh, was reconfirmed.

Thutmose IV
Amenhotep II’s son Thutmose IV (ruled 1400–1390 BCE) sought to establish peaceful relations with the Mitannian king Artatama, who had been successful against
the Hittites. Artatama gave his daughter in marriage, the prerequisite for which was probably the Egyptian cession of some Syrian city-states to the Mitannian
sphere of influence.

Thutmose IV
Foreign influences during the early 18th dynasty
Gray granite sculpture of Thutmose IV, During the empire period Egypt maintained commercial ties with Phoenicia, Crete, and the Aegean islands. The
Egypt, 15th century
Egyptians portrayed goods obtained through trade as foreign tribute. In the Theban tombs there are representations of
BCE
Syrians bearing Aegean products and of Aegeans carrying Syrian bowls and amphorae—indicative of close
.
Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo;
commercial interconnections between Mediterranean lands. Egyptian ships trading with Phoenicia and Syria journeyed
photograph, Hirmer Fotoarchiv, Munich beyond to Crete and the Aegean, a route that explains the occasional confusion of products and ethnic types in

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Egyptian representations. The most prized raw material from the Aegean world was silver, which was lacking in Egypt, where gold was relatively abundant.

One result of the expansion of the empire was a new appreciation of foreign culture. Not only were foreign objets d’art
Egypt: tomb painting
imported into Egypt, but Egyptian artisans imitated Aegean wares as well. Imported textiles inspired the ceiling
Detail of a wall painting from a tomb in
Thebes, Egypt, c. 1450 patterns of Theban tomb chapels, and Aegean art with its spiral motifs influenced Egyptian artists. Under Amenhotep
II, Asian gods are found in Egypt: Astarte and Resheph became revered for their reputed potency in warfare, and
BCE
. Astarte was honoured also in connection with medicine, love, and fertility. Some Asian gods were eventually identified
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum with similar Egyptian deities; thus, Astarte was associated with Sekhmet, the goddess of pestilence, and Resheph with
Mont, the war god. Just as Asians resident in Egypt were incorporated into Egyptian society and could rise to important
positions, so their gods, though represented as foreign, were worshiped according to Egyptian cult practices. The breakdown of Egyptian isolationism and an
increased cosmopolitanism in religion are also reflected in hymns that praise Amon-Re’s concern for the welfare of Asians.

Amenhotep III
Thutmose IV’s son Amenhotep III (ruled 1390–53 BCE) acceded to the throne at about the age of 12. He soon wed Tiy, who became his queen. Earlier in the dynasty
military men had served as royal tutors, but Tiy’s father was a commander of the chariotry, and through this link the royal line became even more directly influenced
by the military. In his fifth year Amenhotep III claimed a victory over Cushite rebels, but the viceroy of Cush, the southern portion of Nubia, probably actually led
the troops. The campaign may have led into the Butāna, west of the ʿAṭbarah River, farther south than any previous Egyptian military expedition had gone. Several
temples erected under Amenhotep III in Upper Nubia between the Second and Third cataracts attest to the importance of the region.

Peaceful relations prevailed with Asia, where control of Egypt’s vassals was successfully maintained. A commemorative scarab from the king’s 10th year
announced the arrival in Egypt of the Mitannian princess Gilukhepa, along with 317 women; thus, another diplomatic marriage helped maintain friendly relations
between Egypt and its former foe. Another Mitannian princess was later received into Amenhotep III’s harem, and during his final illness the Hurrian goddess Ishtar
of Nineveh was sent to his aid. At the expense of older bureaucratic families and the principle of inheritance of office, military men acquired high posts in the civil
administration. Most influential was the aged scribe and commander of the elite troops, Amenhotep, son of Hapu, whose reputation as a sage survived into the
Ptolemaic period.

Amenhotep III sponsored building on a colossal scale, especially in the Theban area. At Karnak he erected the huge third pylon, and at Luxor he dedicated a
magnificent new temple to Amon. The king’s own mortuary temple in western Thebes was unrivaled in its size; little remains of it today, but its famous Colossi of

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Memnon testify to its proportions. He also built a huge harbour and palace complex nearby. Some colossal statues served as objects of public veneration, before
which men could appeal to the king’s ka, which represented the transcendent aspect of kingship. In Karnak, statues of Amenhotep, son of Hapu, were placed to act
as intermediaries between supplicants and the gods.

Among the highest-ranking officials at Thebes were men of Lower Egyptian background, who constructed large tombs
Colossi of Memnon
with highly refined decoration. An eclectic quality is visible in the tombs, certain scenes of which were inspired by Old
The Colossi of Memnon, stone statues of
Amenhotep III, near Thebes, Egypt, 14th Kingdom reliefs. The earliest preserved important New Kingdom monuments from Memphis also date from this reign.
century Antiquarianism is evidenced in Amenhotep III’s celebration of his sed festivals (rituals of renewal celebrated after 30
BCE years of rule), which were performed at his Theban palace in accordance, it was claimed, with ancient writings. Tiy,
. whose role was much more prominent than that of earlier queens, participated in these ceremonies.
Katherine Young/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Amenhotep III’s last years were spent in ill health. To judge from his mummy and less formal representations of him
from Amarna, he was obese when, in his 38th regnal year, he died and was succeeded by his son Amenhotep IV (ruled 1353–36 BCE), the most controversial of all
the kings of Egypt.

Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton)
The earliest monuments of Amenhotep IV, who in his fifth regnal year changed his name to Akhenaton (“One Useful to Aton”), are conventional in their
iconography and style, but from the first he gave the sun god a didactic title naming Aton, the solar disk. This title was later written inside a pair of cartouches, as a
king’s name would be. The king declared his religious allegiance by the unprecedented use of “high priest of the sun god” as one of his own titles. The term Aton
had long been in use, but under Thutmose IV the Aton had been referred to as a god, and under Amenhotep III those references became more frequent. Thus,
Akhenaton did not create a new god but rather singled out this aspect of the sun god from among others. He also carried further radical tendencies that had recently
developed in solar religion, in which the sun god was freed from his traditional mythological context and presented as the sole beneficent provider for the entire
world. The king’s own divinity was emphasized: the Aton was said to be his father, of whom he alone had knowledge, and they shared the status of king and
celebrated jubilees together.

In his first five regnal years, Akhenaton built many temples to the Aton, of which the most important were in the precinct of the temple of Amon-Re at Karnak. In
these open-air structures was developed a new, highly stylized form of relief and sculpture in the round. The Aton was depicted not in anthropomorphic form but as
a solar disk from which radiating arms extend the hieroglyph for “life” to the noses of the king and his family. During the construction of these temples, the cult of

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Amon and other gods was suspended, and the worship of the Aton in an open-air sanctuary superseded that of Amon, who had dwelt in a dark shrine of the Karnak
temple. The king’s wife Nefertiti, whom he had married before his accession, was prominent in the reliefs and had a complete shrine dedicated to her that included
no images of the king. Her prestige continued to grow for much of the reign.

At about the time that he altered his name to conform with the new religion, the king transferred the capital to a virgin site at Amarna (Tell el-Amarna; Al-
ʿAmārinah) in Middle Egypt. There he constructed a well-planned city—Akhetaton (“the Horizon of Aton”)—comprising temples to the Aton, palaces, official
buildings, villas for the high ranking, and extensive residential quarters. In the Eastern Desert cliffs surrounding the city, tombs were excavated for the courtiers, and
deep within a secluded wadi the royal sepulchre was prepared. Reliefs in these tombs have been invaluable for reconstructing life at Amarna. The tomb reliefs and
stelae portray the life of the royal family with an unprecedented degree of intimacy.

In Akhenaton’s ninth year a more monotheistic didactic name was given to the Aton, and an intense persecution of the older gods, especially Amon, was
undertaken. Amon’s name was excised from many older monuments throughout the land, and occasionally the word gods was expunged.

Akhenaton’s religious and cultural revolution was highly personal in that he seems to have had a direct hand in devising the precepts of the Aton religion and the
conventions of Amarna art. In religion the accent was upon the sun’s life-sustaining power, and naturalistic scenes adorned the walls and even the floors of Amarna
buildings. The king’s role in determining the composition of the court is expressed in epithets given to officials he selected from the lesser ranks of society,
including the military. Few officials had any connection with the old ruling elite, and some courtiers who had been accepted at the beginning of the reign were
purged. Even at Amarna the new religion was not widely accepted below the level of the elite; numerous small objects relating to traditional beliefs have been found
at the site.

Akhenaton’s revolutionary intent is visible in all of his actions. In representational art, many existing conventions were
Akhenaton, Nefertiti, and their
daughters revised to emphasize the break with the past. Such a procedure is comprehensible because traditional values were

King Akhenaton (left) with Queen Nefertiti consistently incorporated in cultural expression as a whole; in order to change one part, it was necessary to change the
and three of their daughters under the whole.
rays of the sun god Aton, Egypt, mid-14th
century
A vital innovation was the introduction of vernacular forms into the written language. This led in later decades to the
BCE
appearance of current verbal forms in monumental inscriptions. The vernacular form of the New Kingdom, which is
; in the State Museums, Berlin.
now known as Late Egyptian, appears fully developed in letters of the later 19th and 20th dynasties.
Foto Marburg/Art Resource, New York

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Akhenaton’s foreign policy and use of force abroad are less well understood. He mounted one minor campaign in Nubia. In the Middle East, Egypt’s hold on its
possessions was not as secure as earlier, but the cuneiform tablets found at Amarna recording his diplomacy are difficult to interpret because the vassals who
requested aid from him exaggerated their plight. One reason for unrest in the region was the decline of Mitanni and the resurgence of the Hittites. Between the reign
of Akhenaton and the end of the 18th dynasty, Egypt lost control of much territory in Syria.

The aftermath of Amarna

Akhenaton had six daughters by Nefertiti and possibly a son, perhaps by a secondary wife Kiya. Either Nefertiti or the widow of Tutankhamun called on the Hittite
king Suppiluliumas to supply a consort because she could find none in Egypt; a prince was sent, but he was murdered as he reached Egypt. Thus, Egypt never had a
diplomatic marriage in which a foreign man was received into the country.

After the brief rule of Smenkhkare (1335–32 BCE), possibly a son of Akhenaton, Tutankhaten, a nine-year-old child, succeeded and was married to the much older
Ankhesenpaaten, Akhenaton’s third daughter. Around his third regnal year, the king moved his capital to Memphis, abandoned the Aton cult, and changed his and
the queen’s names to Tutankhamun and Ankhesenamen. In an inscription recording Tutankhamun’s actions for the gods, the Amarna period is described as one of
misery and of the withdrawal of the gods from Egypt. This change, made in the name of the young king, was probably the work of high officials. The most
influential were Ay, known by the title God’s Father, who served as vizier and regent (his title indicates a close relationship to the royal family), and the general
Horemheb, who functioned as royal deputy and whose tomb at Ṣaqqārah contains remarkable scenes of Asiatic captives being presented to the King.

Just as Akhenaton had adapted and transformed the religious thinking that was current in his time, the reaction to the religion of Amarna was influenced by the
rejected doctrine. In the new doctrine, all gods were in essence three: Amon, Re, and Ptah (to whom Seth was later added), and in some ultimate sense they too were
one. The earliest evidence of this triad is on a trumpet of Tutankhamun and is related to the naming of the three chief army divisions after these gods; religious life
and secular life were not separate. This concentration on a small number of essential deities may possibly be related to the piety of the succeeding Ramesside period,
because both viewed the cosmos as being thoroughly permeated with the divine.

Under Tutankhamun a considerable amount of building was accomplished in Thebes. His Luxor colonnade bears detailed reliefs of the traditional beautiful festival
of Opet; he decorated another structure (now only a series of disconnected blocks) with warlike scenes. He affirmed his legitimacy by referring back to Amenhotep
III, whom he called his father. Tutankhamun’s modern fame comes from the discovery of his rich burial in the Valley of the Kings. His tomb equipment was
superior in quality to the fragments known from other royal burials, and the opulent display—of varying aesthetic value—represents Egyptian wealth at the peak of
the country’s power.

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Tutankhamun: funerary mask

Ay and Horemheb
Gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun’s funeral in about 1323 BCE was conducted by his successor, the aged Ay (ruled 1323–19 BCE), who in
Tutankhamun, Thebes, Egypt, 14th
century turn was succeeded by Horemheb. The latter probably ruled from 1319 to c. 1292 BCE, but the length of his poorly

BCE attested reign is not certain. Horemheb dismantled many monuments erected by Akhenaton and his successors and
; in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. used the blocks as fill for huge pylons at Karnak. At Karnak and Luxor he appropriated Tutankhamun’s reliefs by
© Lee Boltin surcharging the latter’s cartouches with his own. Horemheb appointed new officials and priests not from established
families but from the army. His policies concentrated on domestic problems. He issued police regulations dealing with
headrest; Tutankhamun tomb the misbehaviour of palace officials and personnel, and he reformed the judicial system, reorganizing the courts and
Headrest in the form of the god Shu with selecting new judges.
two crouching lions, from the tomb of
Tutankhamun, c. 1340
The Ramesside period (19th and 20th dynasties) (1292–1075 BCE)
BCE
; in the collection of the Egyptian Horemheb was the first post-Amarna king to be considered legitimate in the 19th dynasty, which looked to him as the
Museum, Cairo.
founder of an epoch. The reigns of the Amarna pharaohs were eventually to be subsumed into his own, leaving no
Photos.com/Thinkstock
official record of what posterity deemed to be an unorthodox and distasteful interlude. Having no son, he selected his
general and vizier, Ramses, to succeed him.
Tutankhamun's tomb, Valley of the
Kings
Ramses I and Seti I
Tutankhamun's tomb (lower left) in the
Valley of the Kings, Thebes, Egypt, 14th
century
Ramses I (ruled 1292–90 BCE) hailed from the eastern Nile River delta, and with the 19th dynasty there was a political
shift into the delta. Ramses I was succeeded by his son and coregent, Seti I, who buried his father and provided him
BCE
. with mortuary buildings at Thebes and Abydos.
© Robert Holmes
Seti I (ruled 1290–79 BCE) was a successful military leader who reasserted authority over Egypt’s weakened empire in

temple of Seti I
Hallway in the temple of Seti I, Thebes,
Egypt, 13th century
the Middle East. The Mitanni state had been dismembered, and the Hittites had become the dominant Asian power.
Before tackling them, Seti laid the groundwork for military operations in Syria by fighting farther south against
nomads and Palestinian city-states; then, following the strategy of Thutmose III, he secured the coastal cities and

BCE gained Kadesh. Although his engagement with the Hittites was successful, Egypt acquired only temporary control of

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. part of the north Syrian plain. A treaty was concluded with the Hittites, who, however, subsequently pushed farther
© EvrenKalinbacak/stock.adobe.com
southward and regained Kadesh by the time of Ramses II. Seti I ended a new threat to Egyptian security when he
defeated Libyans attempting to enter the delta. He also mounted a southern campaign, probably to the Fifth Cataract
region.

Seti I’s reign looked for its model to the mid-18th dynasty and was a time of considerable prosperity. Seti I restored countless monuments that had been defaced in
the Amarna period, and the refined decoration of his monuments, particularly his temple at Abydos, shows a classicizing tendency. He also commissioned striking
and novel reliefs showing stages of his campaigns, which are preserved notably on the north wall of the great hypostyle hall at Karnak. This diversity of artistic
approach is characteristic of the Ramesside period, which was culturally and ethnically pluralistic.

Ramses II
Well before his death, Seti I appointed his son Ramses II, sometimes called Ramses the Great, as crown prince. During the long reign of Ramses II (1279–13 BCE),
there was a prodigious amount of building, ranging from religious edifices throughout Egypt and Nubia to a new cosmopolitan capital, Pi Ramesse, in the eastern
delta; his cartouches were carved ubiquitously, often on earlier monuments. Ramses II’s penchant for decorating vast temple walls with battle scenes gives the
impression of a mighty warrior king. His campaigns were, however, relatively few, and after the first decade his reign was peaceful. The most famous scenes record
the battle of Kadesh, fought in his fifth regnal year. These and extensive accompanying texts present the battle as an Egyptian victory, but in fact the opposing
Hittite coalition fared at least as well as the Egyptians. After this inconclusive struggle, his officers advised him to make peace, saying, “There is no reproach in
reconciliation when you make it.” In succeeding years Ramses II campaigned in Syria; after a decade of stalemate, a treaty in his 21st year was concluded with
Hattusilis III, the Hittite king.

Ramses II
Detail of the face of the Colossus of
Ramses II, Temple of Luxor, Thebes,
Egypt, 13th century
BCE
.
© Mypix/Dreamstime.com
The rise of Assyria and unrest in western Anatolia encouraged the Hittites to accept this treaty, while Ramses II may
have feared a new Libyan threat to the western delta. Egyptian and Hittite versions of the treaty survive. It contained a
renunciation of further hostilities, a mutual alliance against outside attack and internal rebellion, and the extradition of
fugitives. The gods of both lands were invoked as witnesses. The treaty was further cemented 13 years later by Ramses
II’s marriage to a Hittite princess.
The king had an immense family by his numerous wives, among whom he especially honoured Nefertari. He dedicated
a temple to her at Abū Simbel, in Nubia, and built a magnificent tomb for her in the Valley of the Queens.

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For the first time in more than a millennium, princes were prominently represented on the monuments. Ramses II’s fourth surviving son, Khaemwese, was famous
as high priest of Ptah at Memphis. He restored many monuments in the Memphite area, including pyramids and pyramid temples of the Old Kingdom, and had
buildings constructed near the Sarapeum at Ṣaqqārah. He was celebrated into Roman times as a sage and magician and became the hero of a cycle of stories.

temple of Abu Simbel

Merneptah
Entrance to the temple of Abu Simbel, Ramses II’s 13th son, Merneptah (ruled 1213–04 BCE), was his successor. Several of Merneptah’s inscriptions, of
near Aswān, Egypt, 13th century
unusual literary style, treat an invasion of the western delta in his fifth year by Libyans, supported by groups of Sea
BCE
.
Peoples who had traveled from Anatolia to Libya in search of new homes. The Egyptians defeated this confederation

© Marie Giannola and settled captives in military camps to serve as Egyptian mercenaries.

One of the inscriptions concludes with a poem of victory (written about another battle), famous for its words “Israel is
desolated and has no seed.” This is the earliest documented mention of Israel; it is generally assumed that the exodus of the Jews from Egypt took place under
Ramses II.

Merneptah was able to hold most of Egypt’s possessions, although early in his reign he had to reassert Egyptian suzerainty in Palestine, destroying Gezer in the
process. Peaceful relations with the Hittites and respect for the treaty of Ramses II are indicated by Merneptah’s dispatch of grain to them during a famine and by
Egyptian military aid in the protection of Hittite possessions in Syria.

Last years of the 19th dynasty

Upon the death of Merneptah, competing factions within the royal family contended for the succession. Merneptah’s son Seti II (ruled 1204–1198 BCE) had to face a
usurper, Amenmeses, who rebelled in Nubia and was accepted in Upper Egypt. His successor, Siptah, was installed on the throne by a Syrian royal butler, Bay, who
had become chancellor of Egypt. Siptah was succeeded by Seti II’s widow Tausert, who ruled as king from 1193 to 1190 BCE, counting her regnal years from the
death of Seti II, whose name she restored over that of Siptah. A description in a later papyrus of the end of the dynasty alludes to a Syrian usurper, probably Bay,
who subjected the land to harsh taxation and treated the gods as mortals with no offerings in their temples.

The early 20th dynasty: Setnakht and Ramses III

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Order was restored by a man of obscure origin, Setnakht (ruled 1190–87 BCE), the founder of the 20th dynasty, who appropriated Tausert’s tomb in the Valley of the
Kings. An inscription of Setnakht recounts his struggle to pacify the land, which ended in the second of his three regnal years.

Setnakht’s son Ramses III (ruled 1187–56 BCE) was the last great king of the New Kingdom. There are problems in evaluating his achievements because he
emulated Ramses II and copied numerous scenes and texts of Ramses II in his mortuary temple at Madīnat Habu, one of the best-preserved temples of the empire
period. Thus, the historicity of certain Nubian and Syrian wars depicted as his accomplishments is subject to doubt. He did, however, fight battles that were more
decisive than any fought by Ramses II. In his fifth year Ramses III defeated a large-scale Libyan invasion of the delta in a battle in which thousands of the enemy
perished.

A greater menace lay to the north, where a confederation of Sea Peoples was progressing by land and sea toward Egypt. This alliance of obscure tribes traveled
south in the aftermath of the destruction of the Hittite empire. In his eighth regnal year Ramses III engaged them successfully on two frontiers—a land battle in
Palestine and a naval engagement in one of the mouths of the delta. Because of these two victories, Egypt did not undergo the political turmoil or experience the
rapid technical advance of the early Iron Age in the Near East. Forced away from the borders of Egypt, the Sea Peoples sailed farther westward, and some of their
groups may have given their names to the Sicilians, Sardinians, and Etruscans. The Philistine and Tjekker peoples, who had come by land, were established in the
southern Palestinian coastal district in an area where the overland trade route to Syria was threatened by attacks by nomads. Initially settled to protect Egyptian
interests, these groups later became independent of Egypt. Ramses III used some of these peoples as mercenaries, even in battle against their own kinfolk. In his
11th year he successfully repulsed another great Libyan invasion by the Meshwesh tribes. Meshwesh prisoners of war, branded with the king’s name, were settled in
military camps in Egypt, and in later centuries their descendants became politically important because of their ethnic cohesiveness and their military role.

The economic resources of Egypt were in decline at that time. Under Ramses III the estate of Amon received only one-fifth as much gold as in Thutmose III’s time.
Even at the great temple of Madīnat Habu, the quality of the masonry betrays a decline. Toward the end of his reign, administrative inefficiency and the
deteriorating economic situation resulted in the government’s failure to deliver grain rations on time to necropolis workers, whose dissatisfaction was expressed in
demonstrations and in the first recorded strikes in history. Such demonstrations continued sporadically throughout the dynasty. A different sort of internal trouble
originated in the royal harem, where a minor queen plotted unsuccessfully to murder Ramses III so that her son might become king. Involved in the plot were palace
and harem personnel, government officials, and army officers. A special court of 12 judges was formed to try the accused, who received the death sentence.

Many literary works date to the Ramesside period. Earlier works in Middle Egyptian were copied in schools and in good papyrus copies, and new texts were
composed in Late Egyptian. Notable among the latter are stories, several with mythological or allegorical content, that look to folk models rather than to the
elaborate written literary types of the Middle Kingdom.

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Ramses IV
Ramses III was succeeded by his son Ramses IV (ruled 1156–50 BCE). In an act of piety that also reinforced his legitimacy, Ramses IV saw to the compilation of a
long papyrus in which the deceased Ramses III confirmed the temple holdings throughout Egypt; Ramses III had provided the largest benefactions to the Theban
temples, in terms of donations of both land and personnel. Most of these probably endorsed earlier donations, to which each king added his own gifts. Of the annual
income to temples, 86 percent of the silver and 62 percent of the grain was awarded to Amon. The document demonstrates the economic power of the Theban
temples, for the tremendous landholdings of Amon’s estate throughout Egypt involved the labour of a considerable portion of the population; but the ratio of temple
to state income is not known, and the two were not administratively separate. In addition, the temple of Amon, which figures prominently in the papyrus, included
within its estates the king’s own mortuary temple, for Ramses III was himself deified as a form of Amon-Re, known as Imbued with Eternity.

The later Ramesside kings

The Ramesside period saw a tendency toward the formation of high-priestly families, which kings sometimes tried to counter by appointing outside men to the high
priesthood. One such family had developed at Thebes in the second half of the 19th dynasty, and Ramses IV tried to control it by installing Ramessesnakht, the son
of a royal steward, as Theban high priest. Ramessesnakht participated in administrative as well as priestly affairs; he personally led an expedition to the Wadi
Ḥammāmāt (present-day Wādī Rawḍ ʿĀʾid) quarries in the Eastern Desert, and at Thebes he supervised the distribution of rations to the workmen decorating the
royal tomb. Under Ramses V (ruled 1150–45 BCE), Ramessesnakht’s son not only served as steward of Amon but also held the post of administrator of royal lands
and chief taxing master. Thus, this family acquired extensive authority over the wealth of Amon and over state finances, but to what extent this threatened royal
authority is uncertain. Part of the problem in evaluating the evidence is that Ramesside history is viewed from a Theban bias, because Thebes is the major source of
information. Evidence from Lower Egypt, where the king normally resided, is meagre because conditions there were unfavourable for preserving monuments or
papyri.

A long papyrus from the reign of Ramses V contains valuable information on the ownership of land and taxation. In Ramesside Egypt most of the land belonged to
the state and the temples, while most peasants served as tenant farmers. Some scholars interpret this document as indicating that the state retained its right to tax
temple property, at an estimated one-tenth of the crop.

Ramses VI (ruled 1145–37 BCE), probably a son of Ramses III, usurped much of his two predecessors’ work, including the tomb of Ramses V; a papyrus refers to a
possible civil war at Thebes. Following the death of Ramses III and the disrupted migrations of the late Bronze Age, the Asian empire had rapidly withered away,
and Ramses VI is the last king whose name appears at the Sinai turquoise mines. The next two Ramses (ruled 1137–26 BCE) were obscure rulers, whose sequence

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has been questioned. During the reigns of Ramses IX (ruled 1126–08 BCE) and Ramses X (1108–04 BCE), there are frequent references in the papyri to the
disruptions of marauding Libyans near the Theban necropolis.

By the time of Ramses IX the Theban high priest had attained great local influence, though he was still outranked by the king. By Ramses XI’s 19th regnal year the
new high priest of Amon, Herihor—who seems to have had a military background and also claimed the vizierate and the office of viceroy of Cush—controlled the
Theban area. In reliefs at the temple of Khons at Karnak, Herihor was represented as high priest of Amon in scenes adjoining those of Ramses XI. This in itself was
unusual, but subsequently he took an even bolder step in having himself depicted as king to the exclusion of the still-reigning Ramses XI. Herihor’s limited kingship
was restricted only to Thebes, where those years were referred to as a “repeating of [royal] manifestations,” which lasted a decade.

With the shrinkage of the empire, the supply of silver and copper was cut off, and the amount of gold entering the economy was reduced considerably. During the
reign of Ramses IX the inhabitants of western Thebes were found to have pillaged the tombs of kings and nobles (already a common practice in the latter case); the
despoiling continued into the reign of Ramses XI, and even the royal mortuary temples were stripped of their valuable furnishings. Nubian troops, called in to
restore order at Thebes, themselves contributed to the depredation of monuments. This pillaging brought fresh gold and silver into the economy, and the price of
copper rose. The price of grain, which had become inflated, dropped.

The Ramesside growth of priestly power was matched by increasingly overt religiosity. Private tombs, the decoration of which had been mostly secular until then,
came to include only religious scenes; oracles were invoked in many kinds of decisions; and private letters contain frequent references to prayer and to regular visits
to small temples to perform rituals or consult oracles. The common expression used in letters, “I am all right today; tomorrow is in the hands of god,” reflects the
ethos of the age. This fatalism, which emphasizes that the god may be capricious and that his wishes cannot be known, is also typical of late New Kingdom
Instruction Texts, which show a marked change from their Middle Kingdom forerunners by moving toward a passivity and quietism that suits a less expensive age.

Some of the religious material of the Ramesside period exhibits changes in conventions of display, and some categories have no parallel in the less abundant earlier
record, but the shift is real as well as apparent. In its later periods, Egyptian society, the values of which had previously tended to be centralized, secular, and
political, became more locally based and more thoroughly pervaded by religion, looking to the temple as the chief institution.

While Ramses XI was still king, Herihor died and was succeeded as high priest by Piankh, a man of similar military background. A series of letters from Thebes tell
of Piankh’s military venture in Nubia against the former viceroy of Cush while Egypt was on the verge of losing control of the south. With the death of Ramses XI,
the governor of Tanis, Smendes, became king, founding the 21st dynasty (known as the Tanite).

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Egypt from 1075 BCE to the Macedonian invasion

The Third Intermediate period (1075–656 BCE)

The 21st dynasty

At the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt was divided. The north was inherited by the Tanite 21st dynasty (1075–c. 950 BCE), and although much of the southern Nile
River valley came under the control of the Theban priests (the northern frontier of their domain was the fortress town of Al-Hība), there is no indication of conflict
between the priests and the Tanite kings. Indeed, the dating of documents, even at Thebes, was in terms of the Tanite reigns, and apparently there were close family
ties between the kings and the Thebans. Piankh’s son, Pinudjem I, who relinquished the office of high priest and assumed the kingship at Thebes, was probably the
father of the Tanite king Psusennes I. Some members of both the Theban priestly and the Tanite royal lines had Libyan names. With the coming of the new dynasty,
and possibly a little earlier, the Meshwesh Libyan military elite, which had been settled mainly in the north by Ramses III, penetrated the ruling group, although it
did not become dominant until the 22nd dynasty.

Beginning with Herihor and continuing through the 21st dynasty, the high priests’ activities included the pious rewrapping and reburial of New Kingdom royal
mummies. The systematic removal of such goods from the royal tombs by royal order during the 20th dynasty necessitated the transfer of the royal remains in stages
to two caches—the tomb of Amenhotep II and a cliff tomb at Dayr al-Baḥrī—where they remained undisturbed until modern times. Dockets pertaining to the
reburial of these mummies contain important chronological data from the 21st dynasty.

Egyptian sculpture: face from a coffin
Face from an Egyptian coffin, wood,
gesso, and pigment, probably from
Thebes, c. 1070–945
BCE
; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Photograph by Lisa O'Hara. Brooklyn Museum,
New York, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund,
37.2037E
The burials of King Psusennes I (ruled c. 1045–c. 997 BCE) and his successor, Amenemope (ruled c. 998–c. 989 BCE),
were discovered at Tanis, but little is known of their reigns. This was a period when statuary was usurped and the
material of earlier periods was reused. At Karnak, Pinudjem I, who decorated the facade of the Khons temple, usurped
a colossal statue of Ramses II, and Psusennes I’s splendid sarcophagus from Tanis had originally been carved for
Merneptah at Thebes. Much of the remains from Tanis consists of material transported from other sites, notably from
Pi Ramesse.
After the demise of Egypt’s Asian empire, the kingdom of Israel eventually developed under the kings David and
Solomon. During David’s reign, Philistia served as a buffer between Egypt and Israel; but after David’s death the next
to the last king of the 21st dynasty, Siamon, invaded Philistia and captured Gezer. If Egypt had any intention of

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attacking Israel, Solomon’s power forestalled Siamon, who presented Gezer to Israel as a dowry in the diplomatic marriage of his daughter to Solomon. This is
indicative of the reversal of Egypt’s status in foreign affairs since the time of Amenhotep III, who had written the Babylonian king, “From of old, a daughter of the
king of Egypt has not been given to anyone.”

Libyan rule: the 22nd and 23rd dynasties

The fifth king of the 21st dynasty, Osorkon I (ruled c. 979–c. 973 BCE), was of Libyan descent and probably was an ancestor of the 22nd dynasty, which followed a
generation later. From Osorkon’s time to the 26th dynasty, leading Libyans in Egypt kept their Libyan names and ethnic identity, but in a spirit of ethnicity rather
than cultural separatism. Although political institutions were different from those of the New Kingdom, the Libyans were culturally Egyptian, retaining only their
group identity, names, and perhaps a military ethos. Toward the end of the 21st dynasty the Libyan leader of Bubastis, the great Meshwesh chief Sheshonk I (the
biblical Shishak), secured special privileges from King Psusennes II (ruled c. 964–c. 950 BCE) and the oracle of Amon for the mortuary cult of his father at Abydos.
The oracle proffered good wishes not only for Sheshonk and his family but, significantly, also for his army. With a strong military backing, Sheshonk eventually
took the throne. His reign (c. 950–929 BCE) marks the founding of the 22nd dynasty (c. 950–c. 730 BCE). Military controls were established, with garrisons under
Libyan commandants serving to quell local insurrections, so that the structure of the state became more feudalistic. The dynasty tried to cement relations with
Thebes through political marriages with priestly families. King Sheshonk’s son Osorkon married Psusennes II’s daughter, and their son eventually became high
priest at Karnak. By installing their sons as high priests and promoting such marriages, kings strove to overcome the administrative division of the country. But
frequent conflicts arose over the direct appointment of the Theban high priest from among the sons of Libyan kings and over the inheritance of the post by men of
mixed Theban and Libyan descent. This tension took place against a background of Theban resentment of the northern dynasty. During the reign of Takelot II, strife
concerning the high priestship led to civil war at Thebes. The king’s son Osorkon was appointed high priest, and he achieved some semblance of order during his
visits to Thebes, but he was driven from the post several times.

The initially successful 22nd dynasty revived Egyptian influence in Palestine. After Solomon’s death (c. 936), Sheshonk I entered Palestine and plundered
Jerusalem. Prestige from this exploit may have lasted through the reign of Osorkon II (ruled c. 929–c. 914 BCE). In the reign of Osorkon III (ruled c. 888–c. 860
BCE), Peywed Libyans posed a threat to the western delta, perhaps necessitating a withdrawal from Palestine.

The latter part of the dynasty was marked by fragmentation of the land: Libyan great chiefs ruled numerous local areas, and there were as many as six local rulers in
the land at a time. Increased urbanization accompanied this fragmentation, which was most intense in the delta. Meanwhile, in Thebes, a separate 23rd dynasty was
recognized.

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From the 9th century BCE a local Cushite state, which looked to Egyptian traditions from the colonial period of the New Kingdom, arose in the Sudan and developed
around the old regional capital of Napata. The earliest ruler of the state known by name was Alara, whose piety toward Amon is mentioned in several inscriptions.
His successor, Kashta, proceeded into Upper Egypt, forcing Osorkon IV (ruled c. 777–c. 750 BCE) to retire to the delta. Kashta assumed the title of king and
compelled Osorkon IV’s daughter Shepenwepe I, the God’s Wife of Amon at Thebes, to adopt his own daughter Amonirdis I as her successor. The Cushites stressed
the role of the God’s Wife of Amon, who was virtually the consecrated partner of Amon, and sought to bypass the high priests.

The 24th and 25th dynasties

Meanwhile, the eastern capital in the Nile River delta, Tanis, lost its importance to Sais in the western delta. A Libyan prince of Sais, Tefnakhte, attempting to gain
control over all Egypt, proceeded southward to Heracleopolis after acquiring Memphis. This advance was met by the Cushite ruler Piye (now the accepted reading
of “Piankhi," ruled c. 750–c. 719 BCE), who executed a raid as far north as Memphis and received the submission of the northern rulers (in about 730 BCE). In his
victory stela, Piye is portrayed as conforming strictly to Egyptian norms and reasserting traditional values against contemporary decay.

After Piye returned to Cush, Tefnakhte reasserted his authority in the north, where, according to Manetho, he was eventually succeeded by his son Bocchoris as the
sole king of the 24th dynasty (c. 722–c. 715 BCE). Piye’s brother Shabaka meanwhile founded the rival 25th dynasty and brought all Egypt under his rule (c. 719–
703 BCE). He had Bocchoris burned alive and removed all other claimants to the kingship.

In this period Egypt’s internal politics were affected by the growth of the Assyrian Empire. In Palestine and Syria frequent revolts against Assyria were aided by
Egyptian forces. Against the power of Assyria, the Egyptian and Nubian forces met with little success, partly because of their own fragmented politics and divided
loyalties.

Although the earlier years of King Taharqa (ruled 690–664 BCE), who as second son of Shabaka had succeeded his brother Shebitku (ruled 703–690 BCE), were
prosperous, the confrontation with Assyria became acute. In 671 BCE the Assyrian king Esarhaddon entered Egypt and drove Taharqa into Upper Egypt. Two years
later Taharqa regained a battered Memphis, but in 667 BCE Esarhaddon’s successor, Ashurbanipal, forced Taharqa to Thebes, where the Cushites held ground.
Taharqa’s successor, Tanutamon, defeated at Memphis a coalition of delta princes who supported Assyria, but Ashurbanipal’s reaction to this was to humiliate
Thebes, which the Assyrians plundered. By 656 the Cushites had withdrawn from the Egyptian political scene, although Cushite culture survived in the Sudanese
Napatan and Meroitic kingdom for another millennium.

The Late period (664–332 BCE)

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Assyria, unable to maintain a large force in Egypt, supported several delta vassal princes, including the powerful Psamtik I of Sais. But the Assyrians faced serious
problems closer to home, and Psamtik (or Psammetichus I, ruled 664–610 BCE) was able to assert his independence and extend his authority as king over all Egypt
without extensive use of arms, inaugurating the Saite 26th dynasty. In 656 Psamtik I compelled Thebes to submit. He allowed its most powerful man, who was
Montemhat, the mayor and the fourth prophet of Amon, to retain his post, and, in order to accommodate pro-Cushite sentiments, he allowed the God’s Wife of
Amon and the Votaress of Amon (the sister and daughter of the late king Taharqa) to remain. Psamtik I’s own daughter Nitocris was adopted by the Votaress of
Amon and thus became heiress to the position of God’s Wife. Essential to the settling of internal conflicts was the Saite dynasty’s superior army, composed of
Libyan soldiers, whom the Greeks called Machimoi (“Warriors”), and Greek and Carian mercenaries, who formed part of the great emigration from the Aegean in
the 7th and 6th centuries BCE. Greek pirates raiding the Nile delta coast were induced by Psamtik I to serve in his army and were settled like the Machimoi in
colonies at the delta’s strategically important northeastern border. Trade developed between Egypt and Greece, and more Greeks settled in Egypt.

The Saite dynasty generally pursued a foreign policy that avoided territorial expansion and tried to preserve the status quo. Assyria’s power was waning. In 655 BCE
Psamtik I marched into Philistia in pursuit of the Assyrians, and in 620 BCE he apparently repulsed Scythians from the Egyptian frontier. During the reign of his son
Necho II (610–595 BCE), Egypt supported Assyria as a buffer against the potential threat of the Medes and the Babylonians. Necho was successful in Palestine and
Syria until 605 BCE, when the Babylonian Nebuchadrezzar inflicted a severe defeat on Egyptian forces at Carchemish. After withdrawing his troops from Asia,
Necho concentrated on developing Egyptian commerce; the grain that was delivered to Greece was paid for in silver. He also built up the navy and began a canal
linking the Nile with the Red Sea. Under Psamtik II (ruled 595–589 BCE) there was a campaign through the Napatan kingdom involving the use of Greek and Carian
mercenaries who left their inscriptions at Abu Simbel; at the same time, the names of the long-dead Cushite rulers were erased from their monuments in Egypt.
Psamtik II also made an expedition to Phoenicia accompanied by priests; whether it was a military or a goodwill mission is unknown.

The next king, Apries (ruled 589–570 BCE), tried unsuccessfully to end Babylonian domination of Palestine and Syria. With the withdrawal of Egyptian forces,
Nebuchadrezzar destroyed the temple in Jerusalem in 586 BC. In the aftermath of his conquest, many Jews fled to Egypt, where some were enlisted as soldiers in the
Persian army of occupation. Apries’ army was then defeated in Libya when it attacked the Greek colony at Cyrene, some 620 miles (1,000 km) west of the Nile
delta; this led to an army mutiny and to civil war in the delta. A new Saite king, Amasis (or Ahmose II; ruled 570–526 BCE), usurped the throne and drove Apries
into exile. Two years later Apries invaded Egypt with Babylonian support, but he was defeated and killed by Amasis, who nonetheless buried him with full honours.
Amasis returned to a more conservative foreign policy in a long, prosperous reign. To reduce friction between Greeks and Egyptians, especially in the army, Amasis
withdrew the Greeks from the military colonies and transferred them to Memphis, where they formed a sort of royal bodyguard. He limited Greek trade in Egypt to
Sais, Memphis, and Naukratis, the latter becoming the only port to which Greek wares could be taken, so that taxes on imports and on business could be enforced.

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Naukratis prospered, and Amasis was seen by the Greeks as a benefactor. In foreign policy he supported a waning Babylonia, now threatened by Persia; but six
months after his death in 526 BCE the Persian Cambyses II (ruled as pharaoh 525–522 BCE) penetrated Egypt, reaching Nubia in 525.

As was common in the Middle East in that period, the Saite kings used foreigners as mercenaries to prevent foreign invasions. An element within Egyptian culture,
however, resisted any influence of the resident foreigners and gave rise to a nationalism that provided psychological security in times of political uncertainty. A
cultural revival was initiated in the 25th dynasty and continued throughout the 26th. Temples and the priesthood were overtly dominant. In their inscriptions the elite
displayed their priestly titles but did not mention the administrative roles that they probably also performed. Throughout the country, people of substance dedicated
land to temple endowments that supplemented royal donations. The god Seth, who had been an antithetic element in Egyptian religion, came gradually to be
proscribed as the god of foreign lands.

The revival of this period was both economic and cultural, but there is less archaeological evidence preserved than for earlier times because the economic centre of
the country was now the delta, where conditions for the preservation of ancient sites were unfavourable. Prosperity increased throughout the 26th dynasty, reaching
a high point in the reign of Amasis. Temples throughout the land were enhanced and expanded, often in hard stones carved with great skill. The chief memorials of
private individuals were often temple statues, of which many fine examples were dedicated, again mostly in hard stones. In temple and tomb decoration and in
statuary, the Late period rejected its immediate predecessors and looked to the great periods of the past for models. There was, however, also significant innovation.
In writing, the demotic script, the new cursive form, was introduced from the north and spread gradually through the country. Demotic was used to write a
contemporary form of the language, and administrative Late Egyptian disappeared. Hieratic was, however, retained for literary and religious texts, among which
very ancient material, such as the Pyramid Texts, was revived and inscribed in tombs and on coffins and sarcophagi.

frieze: feline on falcon heads
Feline on falcon heads, limestone relief
from Egypt, 664–630
BCE
; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Photograph by Stephen Sandoval. Brooklyn
Museum, New York, gift of the Egyptian
Antiquities Organization, 80.7.7
The Late period was the time of the greatest development of animal worship in Egypt. This feature of religion, which
was the subject of much interest and scorn among classical writers, had always existed but had been of minor
importance. In the Late and Ptolemaic periods, it became one of the principal forms of popular religion in an intensely
religious society. Many species of animals were mummified and buried, and towns sprang up in the necropolises to
cater for the needs of dead animals and their worshipers. At Ṣaqqārah the Apis bull, which had been worshiped since
the 1st dynasty, was buried in a huge granite sarcophagus in ceremonies in which royalty might take part. At least 10
species—from ibises, buried by the million, to dogs—were interred by the heterogeneous population of Memphis,
Egypt’s largest city.

Egypt under Achaemenid rule

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The 27th dynasty

According to the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in about 450 BCE, Cambyses II’s conquest of Egypt was ruthless and sacrilegious. Contemporary
Egyptian sources, however, treat him in a more favourable light. He assumed the full titulary of an Egyptian king and paid honour to the goddess Neith of Sais. His
unfavourable later reputation probably resulted from adverse propaganda by Egyptian priests, who resented his reduction of temple income. Darius I, who
succeeded Cambyses in 522 BCE and ruled as pharaoh until 486 BCE, was held in higher esteem because he was concerned with improving the temples and restored
part of their income, and because he codified laws as they had been in the time of Amasis. These stances, which aimed to win over priests and learned Egyptians,
were elements of his strategy to retain Egypt as a lasting part of the Persian Empire. Egypt, together with the Libyan oases and Cyrenaica, formed the sixth Persian
satrapy (province), whose satrap resided at Memphis, while Persian governors under him held posts in cities throughout the land. Under Darius I the tax burden
upon Egyptians was relatively light, and Persians aided Egypt’s economy through irrigation projects and improved commerce, enhanced by the completion of the
canal to the Red Sea.

Egypt under Persian rule
Egypt as part of Achaemenid (Persian)
Empire, 6th–5th century
The Persian defeat by the Athenians at Marathon in 490 BCE had significant repercussions in Egypt. On Darius I’s
death in 486 BCE, a revolt broke out in the delta, perhaps instigated by Libyans of its western region. The result was
that the Persian king Xerxes reduced Egypt to the status of a conquered province. Egyptians dubbed him the “criminal

BCE
Xerxes.” He never visited Egypt and appears not to have utilized Egyptians in high positions in the administration.
. Xerxes’ murder in 465 BCE was the signal for another revolt in the western delta. It was led by a dynast, Inaros, who
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. acquired control over the delta and was supported by Athenian forces against the Persians. Inaros was crucified by the
Persians in 454 BCE, when they regained control of most of the delta. In the later 5th century BCE, under the rule of
Artaxerxes I (ruled 465–425 BCE) and Darius II Ochus (ruled 423–404 BCE), conditions in Egypt were very unsettled, and scarcely any monuments of the period
have been identified.

The 28th, 29th, and 30th dynasties

The death of Darius II in 404 BCE prompted a successful rebellion in the Nile delta, and the Egyptian Amyrtaeus formed a Saite 28th dynasty, of which he was the
sole king (404–399 BCE). His rule was recognized in Upper Egypt by 401 BCE, at a time when Persia’s troubles elsewhere forestalled an attempt to regain Egypt.

Despite growing prosperity and success in retaining independence, 4th-century Egypt was characterized by continual internal struggle for the throne. After a long
period of fighting in the delta, a 29th dynasty (399–380 BCE) emerged at Mendes. Achoris (ruled 393–380 BCE), its third and final ruler, was especially vigorous,

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and the prosperity of his reign is indicated by many monuments in Upper and Lower Egypt. Once again Egypt was active in international politics, forming alliances
with the opponents of Persia and building up its army and navy. The Egyptian army included Greeks both as mercenaries and as commanders; the mercenaries were
not permanent residents of military camps in Egypt but native Greeks seeking payment for their services in gold. Payment was normally made in non-Egyptian
coins, because as yet Egypt had no coinage in general circulation; the foreign coins may have been acquired in exchange for exports of grain, papyrus, and linen.
Some Egyptian coins were minted in the 4th century, but they do not seem to have gained widespread acceptance.

Aided by the Greek commander Chabrias of Athens and his elite troops, Achoris prevented a Persian invasion; but after Achoris’s death in 380 BCE his son
Nepherites II lasted only four months before a general, Nectanebo I (Nekhtnebef; ruled 380–362 BCE) of Sebennytos, usurped the throne, founding the 30th dynasty
(380–343 BCE). In 373 BCE the Persians attacked Egypt, and, although Egyptian losses were heavy, disagreement between the Persian satrap Pharnabazus and his
Greek commander over strategy, combined with a timely inundation of the delta, saved the day for Egypt. With the latent dissolution of the Persian Empire under
the weak Artaxerxes II, Egypt was relatively safe from further invasion; it remained prosperous throughout the dynasty.

Egypt had a more aggressive foreign policy under Nectanebo’s son Tachos (ruled c. 365–360 BCE). Possessing a strong army and navy composed of Egyptian
Machimoi and Greek mercenaries and supported by Chabrias and the Spartan king Agesilaus, Tachos (in Egyptian called Djeho) invaded Palestine. But friction
between Tachos and Agesilaus and the cost of financing the venture proved to be Tachos’s undoing. In an attempt to raise funds quickly, he had imposed taxes and
seized temple property. Egyptians, especially the priests, resented this burden and supported Tachos’s nephew Nectanebo II (Nekhtharehbe; ruled 360–343 BCE) in
his usurpation of the throne. The cost of retaining the allegiance of mercenaries proved too high for a nonmonetary economy.

Agesilaus supported Nectanebo in his defensive foreign policy, and the priests sanctioned the new king’s building activities. Meanwhile, Persia enjoyed a resurgence
under Artaxerxes III (Ochus), but a Persian attack on Egypt in 350 BCE was repulsed. In 343 BCE the Persians once again marched against Egypt. The first battle was
fought at Pelusium and proved the superiority of Persia’s strategy. Eventually the whole delta, and then the rest of Egypt, fell to Artaxerxes III, and Nectanebo fled
to Nubia.

The 4th century BCE was the last flourishing period of an independent Egypt and was a time of notable artistic and literary achievements. The 26th dynasty artistic
revival evolved further toward more-complex forms that culminated briefly in a Greco-Egyptian stylistic fusion, as seen in the tomb of Petosiris at Tūnah al-Jabal
from the turn of the 3rd century BCE. In literature works continued to be transmitted, and possibly composed, in hieratic, but that tradition was to develop no further.
Demotic literary works began to appear, including stories set in the distant past, mythological tales, and an acrostic text apparently designed to teach an order of
sounds in the Egyptian language.

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The second Persian period

Artaxerxes dealt harshly with Egypt, razing city walls, rifling temple treasuries, and removing sacred books. Persia acquired rich booty in its determination to
prevent Egypt from further rebelling. After the murder of Artaxerxes III, in 338 BCE, there was a brief obscure period during which a Nubian prince, Khabbash,
seems to have gained control over Egypt, but Persian domination was reestablished in 335 BCE under Darius III Codommanus. It was to last only three years.

Edward F. Wente John R. Baines Peter F. Dorman

Macedonian and Ptolemaic Egypt (332–30 BCE)

The Macedonian conquest

In the autumn of 332 BCE Alexander the Great invaded Egypt with his mixed army of Macedonians and Greeks and found the Egyptians ready to throw off the
oppressive control of the Persians. Alexander was welcomed by the Egyptians as a liberator and took the country without a battle. He journeyed to Siwa Oasis in the
Western Desert to visit the Oracle of Amon, renowned in the Greek world; it disclosed the information that Alexander was the son of Amon. There may also have
been a coronation at the Egyptian capital, Memphis, which, if it occurred, would have placed him firmly in the tradition of the kings (pharaohs). The same purpose
may be seen in the later dissemination of the romantic myth that gave him an Egyptian parentage by linking his mother, Olympias, with the last king, Nectanebo II.

Alexander left Egypt in the spring of 331 BCE, having divided the military command between Balacrus, son of Amyntas, and Peucestas, son of Makartatos. The
earliest known Greek documentary papyrus, found at Ṣaqqārah in 1973, reveals the sensitivity of the latter to Egyptian religious institutions in a notice that reads:
“Order of Peucestas. No one is to pass. The chamber is that of a priest.” The civil administration was headed by an official with the Persian title of satrap, one
Cleomenes of Naukratis. When Alexander died in 323 BCE and his generals divided his empire, the position of satrap was claimed by Ptolemy, son of a Macedonian
nobleman named Lagus. The senior general Perdiccas, the holder of Alexander’s royal seal and prospective regent for Alexander’s posthumous son, might well have
regretted his failure to take Egypt. He gathered an army and marched from Asia Minor to wrest Egypt from Ptolemy in 321 BCE; but Ptolemy had Alexander’s
corpse, Perdiccas’s army was not wholehearted in support, and the Nile crocodiles made a good meal from the flesh of the invaders.

The Ptolemaic dynasty

Until the day when he openly assumed an independent kingship as Ptolemy I Soter, on November 7, 305 BCE, Ptolemy used only the title satrap of Egypt, but the
great hieroglyphic Satrap stela, which he had inscribed in 311 BCE, indicates a degree of self-confidence that transcends his viceregal role. It reads, “I, Ptolemy the

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satrap, I restore to Horus, the avenger of his father, the lord of Pe, and to Buto, the lady of Pe and Dep, the territory of Patanut, from this day forth for ever, with all
its villages, all its towns, all its inhabitants, all its fields.” The inscription emphasizes Ptolemy’s own role in wresting the land from the Persians (though the epithet
of Soter, meaning “Saviour,” resulted not from his actions in Egypt but from the gratitude of the people of Rhodes for his having relieved them from a siege in 315
BCE) and links him with Khabbash, who about 338 BCE had laid claim to the kingship during the last Persian occupation.

Ptolemy I Soter
Portrait of Ptolemy I Soter on a silver
tetradrachm coin, Alexandria, Egypt, 3rd
century
BCE
. dominate Egypt, its resources, and its people and at the same time to turn the power of Egypt firmly toward the context
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
Egypt was ruled by Ptolemy’s descendants until the death of Cleopatra VII on August 12, 30 BCE. The kingdom was
one of several that emerged in the aftermath of Alexander’s death and the struggles of his successors. It was the
wealthiest, however, and for much of the next 300 years the most powerful politically and culturally, and it was the last
to fall directly under Roman dominion. In many respects, the character of the Ptolemaic monarchy in Egypt set a style
for other Hellenistic kingdoms; this style emerged from the Greeks’ and Macedonians’ awareness of the need to
of a Mediterranean world that was becoming steadily more Hellenized.

The Ptolemies (305–145 BCE)

The first 160 years of the Ptolemaic dynasty are conventionally seen as its most prosperous era. Little is known of the foundations laid in the reign of Ptolemy I
Soter (304–282 BCE), but the increasing amount of documentary, inscriptional, and archaeological evidence from the reign of his son and successor, Ptolemy II
Philadelphus (285–246 BCE), shows that the kingdom’s administration and economy underwent a thorough reorganization. A remarkable demotic text of the year
258 BCE refers to orders for a complete census of the kingdom that was to record the sources of water; the position, quality, and irrigation potential of the land; the
state of cultivation; the crops grown; and the extent of priestly and royal landholdings. There were important agricultural innovations in this period. New crops were
introduced, and massive irrigation works brought under cultivation a great deal of new land, especially in Al-Fayyūm, where many of the immigrant Greeks were
settled.

The Macedonian-Greek character of the monarchy was vigorously preserved. There is no more emphatic sign of this
Hellenistic world, 2nd century
than the growth and importance of the city of Alexandria. It had been founded, on a date traditionally given as April 7,
BCE
331 BCE (but often cited as 332 BCE), by Alexander the Great on the site of the insignificant Egyptian village of
Egypt as part of the Hellenistic world, c.
Rakotis in the northwestern Nile River delta, and it ranked as the most important city in the eastern Mediterranean until
188
the foundation of Constantinople in the 4th century CE. The importance of the new Greek city was soon emphasized by
BCE
. contrast to its Egyptian surroundings when the royal capital was transferred, within a few years of Alexander’s death,
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Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. from Memphis to Alexandria. The Ptolemaic court cultivated extravagant luxury in the Greek style in its magnificent
and steadily expanding palace complex, which occupied as much as a third of the city by the early Roman period. Its
grandeur was emphasized in the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by the foundation of a quadrennial festival, the Ptolemaieia, which was intended to enjoy a status
equal to that of the Olympic Games. The festival was marked by a procession of amazingly elaborate and ingeniously constructed floats, with scenarios illustrating
Greek religious cults.

Ptolemy II gave the dynasty another distinctive feature when he married his full sister, Arsinoe II, one of the most powerful and remarkable women of the
Hellenistic age. They became, in effect, co-rulers, and both took the epithet Philadelphus (“Brother-Loving” and “Sister-Loving”). The practice of consanguineous
marriage was followed by most of their successors and imitated by ordinary Egyptians too, even though it had not been a standard practice in the pharaonic royal
houses and had been unknown in the rest of the native Egyptian population. Arsinoe played a prominent role in the formation of royal policy. She was displayed on
the coinage and was eventually worshiped, perhaps even before her death, in the distinctively Greek style of ruler cult that developed in this reign.

From the first phase of the wars of Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemies had harboured imperial ambitions. Ptolemy I won control of Cyprus and Cyrene and
quarreled with his neighbour over control of Palestine. In the course of the 3rd century a powerful Ptolemaic empire developed, which for much of the period laid
claim to sovereignty in the Levant, in many of the cities of the western and southern coast of Asia Minor, in some of the Aegean islands, and in a handful of towns
in Thrace, as well as in Cyprus and Cyrene. Family connections and dynastic alliances, especially between the Ptolemies and the neighbouring Seleucids, played an
important role in these imperialistic ambitions. Such links were far from able to preserve harmony between the royal houses (between 274 and 200 BCE five wars
were fought with the Seleucids over possession of territory in Syria and the Levant), but they did keep the ruling houses relatively compact, interconnected, and
more true to their Macedonian-Greek origins.

When Ptolemy II Philadelphus died in 246 BCE, he left a prosperous kingdom to his successor, Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221 BCE). Euergetes’ reign saw a very
successful campaign against the Seleucids in Syria, occasioned by the murder of his sister, Berenice, who had been married to the Seleucid Antiochus II. To avenge
Berenice, Euergetes marched into Syria, where he won a great victory. He gained popularity at home by recapturing statues of Egyptian gods originally taken by the
Persians. The decree promulgated at Canopus in the delta on March 7, 238 BCE, attests both this event and the many great benefactions conferred on Egyptian
temples throughout the land. It was during Euergetes’ reign, for instance, that the rebuilding of the great Temple of Horus at Idfū (Apollinopolis Magna) was begun.

Euergetes was succeeded by his son Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–205 BCE), whom the Greek historians portray as a weak and corrupt ruler, dominated by a powerful
circle of Alexandrian Greek courtiers. The reign was notable for another serious conflict with the Seleucids, which ended in 217 BCE in a great Ptolemaic victory at
Raphia in southern Palestine. The battle is notable for the fact that large numbers of native Egyptian soldiers fought alongside the Macedonian and Greek
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contingents. Events surrounding the death of Philopator and the succession of the youthful Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180 BCE) are obscured by court intrigue.
Before Epiphanes had completed his first decade of rule, serious difficulties arose. Native revolts in the south, which had been sporadic in the second half of the 3rd
century BCE, became serious and weakened the hold of the monarch on a vital part of the kingdom. These revolts, which produced native claimants to the kingship,
are generally attributed to the native Egyptians’ realization, after their contribution to the victory at Raphia, of their potential power. Trouble continued to break out
for several more decades. By about 196 BCE a great portion of the Ptolemaic overseas empire had been permanently lost (though there may have been a brief revival
in the Aegean islands in about 165–145 BCE). To shore up and advertise the strength of the ruling house at home and abroad, the administration adopted a series of
grandiloquent honorific titles for its officers. To conciliate Egyptian feelings, a religious synod that met in 196 BCE to crown Epiphanes at Memphis (the first
occasion on which a Ptolemy is certainly known to have been crowned at the traditional capital) decreed extensive privileges for the Egyptian temples, as recorded
on the Rosetta Stone.

The reign of Ptolemy VI Philometor (180–145 BCE), a man of pious and magnanimous character, was marked by renewed conflict with the Seleucids after the death
of his mother, Cleopatra I, in 176 BCE. In 170/169 BCE Antiochus IV of Syria invaded Egypt and established a protectorate; in 168 BCE he returned, accepted
coronation at Memphis, and installed a Seleucid governor. But he had failed to reckon with the more powerful interests of Rome. In the summer of 168 BCE a
Roman ambassador, Popillius Laenas, arrived at Antiochus’s headquarters near Pelusium in the delta and staged an awesome display of Roman power. He ordered
Antiochus to withdraw from Egypt. Antiochus asked for time to consult his advisers. Laenas drew a circle around the king with his stick and told him to answer
before he stepped out of the circle. Only one answer was possible, and by the end of July Antiochus had left Egypt. Philometor’s reign was further troubled by
rivalry with his brother, later Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Physcon. The solution, devised under Roman advice, was to remove Physcon to Cyrene, where he remained
until Philometor died in 145 BCE. It is noteworthy that in 155 BCE Physcon took the step of bequeathing the kingdom of Cyrene to the Romans in the event of his
untimely death.

Dynastic strife and decline (145–30 BCE)

Physcon was able to rule in Egypt until 116 BCE with his sister Cleopatra II (except for a period in 131–130 BCE when she was in revolt) and her daughter Cleopatra
III. His reign was marked by generous benefactions to the Egyptian temples, but he was detested as a tyrant by the Greeks, and the historical accounts of the reign
emphasize his stormy relations with the Alexandrian populace.

During the last century of Ptolemaic rule, Egypt’s independence was exercised under Rome’s protection and at Rome’s discretion. For much of the period, Rome
was content to support a dynasty that had no overseas possession except Cyprus after 96 BCE (the year in which Cyrene was bequeathed to Rome by Ptolemy Apion)

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and no ambitions threatening Roman interests or security. After a series of brief and unstable reigns, Ptolemy XII Auletes acceded to the throne in 80 BCE. He
maintained his hold for 30 years, despite the attractions that Egypt’s legendary wealth held for avaricious Roman politicians. In fact, Auletes had to flee Egypt in 58
BCE and was restored by Pompey’s friend Gabinius in 55 BCE, no doubt after spending so much in bribes that he had to bring Rabirius Postumus, one of his Roman
creditors, to Egypt with him to manage his financial affairs.

In 52 BCE, the year before his death, Auletes associated with himself on the throne his daughter Cleopatra VII and his elder son Ptolemy XIII (who died in 47 BCE).
The reign of Cleopatra was that of a vigorous and exceptionally able queen who was ambitious, among other things, to revive the prestige of the dynasty by
cultivating influence with powerful Roman commanders and using their capacity to aggrandize Roman clients and allies. Julius Caesar pursued Pompey to Egypt in
48 BCE. After learning of Pompey’s murder at the hands of Egyptian courtiers, Caesar stayed long enough to enjoy a sightseeing tour up the Nile in the queen’s
company in the summer of 47 BCE. When he left for Rome, Cleopatra was pregnant with a child she claimed was Caesar’s. The child, a son, was named Caesarion
(“Little Caesar”). Cleopatra and Caesarion later followed Caesar back to Rome, but, after his assassination in 44 BCE, they returned hurriedly to Egypt, and she tried
for a while to play a neutral role in the struggles between the Roman generals and their factions.

Cleopatra VII
Fragment of a relief of Cleopatra VII,
Egypt, c. 1st–c. 3rd century
Her long liaison with Mark Antony began when she visited him at Tarsus in 41 BCE and he returned to Egypt with her.
Between 36 and 30 BCE the famous romance between the Roman general and the eastern queen was exploited to great
effect by Antony’s political rival Octavian (the future emperor Augustus). By 34 BCE Caesarion was officially co-ruler

CE with Cleopatra, but his rule clearly was an attempt to exploit the popularity of Caesar’s memory. In the autumn
. Cleopatra and Antony staged an extravagant display in which they made grandiose dispositions of territory in the east
© DeA Picture Library to their children, Alexander Helios, Ptolemy, and Cleopatra Selene. Cleopatra and Antony were portrayed to the
Roman public as posing for artists in the guise of Dionysus and Isis or whiling away their evenings in rowdy and
decadent banquets that kept the citizens of Alexandria awake all night. But this propaganda war was merely the prelude to armed conflict, and the issue was decided
in September 31 BCE in a naval battle at Actium in western Greece. When the battle was at its height, Cleopatra and her squadron withdrew, and Antony eventually
followed suit. They fled to Alexandria but could do little more than await the arrival of the victorious Octavian 10 months later. Alexandria was captured, and
Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide—he by falling on his sword, she probably by the bite of an asp—in August of 30 BCE. It is reported that when Octavian
reached the city, he visited and touched the preserved corpse of Alexander the Great, causing a piece of the nose to fall off. He refused to gaze upon the remains of
the Ptolemies, saying “I wished to see a king, not corpses.”

Mark Antony
Government and conditions under the Ptolemies
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Mark Antony, detail of a marble bust; in The changes brought to Egypt by the Ptolemies were momentous; the land’s resources were harnessed with
the Vatican Museums, Vatican City.
unparalleled efficiency, with the result that Egypt became the wealthiest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Land under
Alinari/Art Resource, New York
cultivation was increased, and new crops were introduced (especially important was the introduction of naked
tetraploid wheat, Triticum durum, to replace the traditional husked emmer, Triticum dicoccum). The population,
estimated at perhaps three to four million in the late Dynastic period, may have more than doubled by the early Roman period to a level not reached again until the
late 19th century. Some of the increase was due to immigration; particularly during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, many settlers were attracted from cities in Anatolia
(Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, and large numbers of Jews came from Palestine. The flow may have decreased later in the Ptolemaic period, and it is often
suggested, on slender evidence, that there was a serious decline in prosperity in the 1st century BCE. If so, there may have been some reversal of this trend under
Cleopatra VII.

Administration
The foundation of the prosperity was the governmental system devised to exploit the country’s economic resources. Directly below the monarch were a handful of
powerful officials whose authority extended over the entire land: a chief finance minister, a chief accountant, and a chancery of ministers in charge of records,
letters, and decrees. A level below them lay the broadening base of a pyramid of subordinate officials with authority in limited areas, which extended down to the
chief administrator of each village (kōmarchēs). Between the chief ministers and the village officials stood those such as the nome steward (oikonomos) and the
stratēgoi, whose jurisdiction extended over one of the more than 30 nomes, the long-established geographic divisions of Egypt. In theory, this bureaucracy could
regulate and control the economic activities of every subject in the land, its smooth operation guaranteed by the multiplicity of officials capable of checking up on
one another. In practice, it is difficult to see a rigid civil service mentality at work, involving clear demarcation of departments; specific functions might well have
been performed by different officials according to local need and the availability of a person competent to take appropriate action.

By the same token, rigid lines of separation between military, civil, legal, and administrative matters are difficult to perceive. The same official might perform duties
in one or all of these areas. The military was inevitably integrated into civilian life because its soldiers were also farmers who enjoyed royal grants of land, either as
Greek cleruchs (holders of allotments) with higher status and generous grants or as native Egyptian machimoi with small plots. Interlocking judiciary institutions, in
the form of Greek and Egyptian courts (chrēmatistai and laokritai), provided the means for Greeks and Egyptians to regulate their legal relationships according to
the language in which they conducted their business. The bureaucratic power was heavily weighted in favour of the Greek speakers, the dominant elite. Egyptians
were nevertheless able to obtain official posts in the bureaucracy, gradually infiltrating to the highest levels, but in order to do so they had to Hellenize.

Economy
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The basis of Egypt’s legendary wealth was the highly productive land, which technically remained in royal ownership. A considerable portion was kept under the
control of temples, and the remainder was leased out on a theoretically revocable basis to tenant-farmers. A portion also was available to be granted as gifts to
leading courtiers; one of these was Apollonius, the finance minister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who had an estate of 10,000 arourae (about 6,500 acres [2,630
hectares]) at Philadelphia in Al-Fayyūm. Tenants and beneficiaries were able to behave very much as if these leases and grants were private property. The revenues
in cash and kind were enormous, and royal control extended to the manufacture and marketing of almost all important products, including papyrus, oil, linen, and
beer. An extraordinarily detailed set of revenue laws, promulgated under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, laid down rules for the way in which officials were to monitor the
production of such commodities. In fact, the Ptolemaic economy was very much a mixture of direct royal ownership and exploitation by private enterprise under
regulated conditions.

One fundamental and far-reaching Ptolemaic innovation was the systematic monetarization of the economy. The monarchy also controlled this from top to bottom
by operating a closed monetary system, which permitted only the royal coinage to circulate within Egypt. A sophisticated banking system underpinned this practice,
operating again with a mixture of direct royal control and private enterprise and handling both private financial transactions and those that directed money into and
out of the royal coffers. One important concomitant of this change was an enormous increase in the volume of trade, both within Egypt and abroad, which
eventually reached its climax under the peaceful conditions of Roman rule. There the position and role of Alexandria as the major port and trading entrepôt was
crucial: the city handled a great volume of Egypt’s domestic produce, as well as the import and export of luxury goods to and from the East and the cities of the
eastern Mediterranean. It developed its own importance as an artistic centre, the products of which found ready markets throughout the Mediterranean. Alexandrian
glassware and jewelry were particularly fine, Greek-style sculpture of the late Ptolemaic period shows especial excellence, and it is likely that the city was also the
major production centre for high-quality mosaic work.

glass bowl
Religion
Bowl of pressed mosaic glass, believed The Ptolemies were powerful supporters of the native Egyptian religious foundations, the economic and political
to be from Alexandria, Egypt, 1st century
power of which was, however, carefully controlled. A great deal of the late building and restoration work in many of
BCE
the most important Egyptian temples is Ptolemaic, particularly from the period of about 150–50 BCE, and the monarchs
; in the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London. appear on temple reliefs in the traditional forms of the Egyptian kings. The native traditions persisted in village temples
Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum and local cults, many having particular associations with species of sacred animals or birds. At the same time, the
Greeks created their own identifications of Egyptian deities, identifying Amon with Zeus, Horus with Apollo, Ptah
with Hephaestus, and so on. They also gave some deities, such as Isis, a more universal significance that ultimately resulted in the spread of her mystery cult
throughout the Mediterranean world. The impact of the Greeks is most obvious in two phenomena. One is the formalized royal cult of Alexander and the Ptolemies,
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which evidently served both a political and a religious purpose. The other is the creation of the cult of Sarapis, which at first was confined to Alexandria but soon
became universal. The god was represented as a Hellenized deity and the form of cult is Greek, but its essence is the old Egyptian notion that the sacred Apis bull
merged its divinity in some way with the god Osiris when it died.

Apis
Apis, the ancient Egyptian bull deity,
painted on the bottom of a wooden coffin,
c. 700
Culture
The continuing vitality of the native Egyptian artistic tradition is clearly and abundantly expressed in the temple
architecture and the sculpture of the Ptolemaic period. The Egyptian language continued to be used in its hieroglyphic

BCE
and demotic forms until late in the Roman period, and it survived through the Byzantine period and beyond in the form
; in the Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum, of Coptic. The Egyptian literary tradition flourished vigorously in the Ptolemaic period and produced a large number of
Hildesheim, Germany. works in demotic. The genre most commonly represented is the romantic tale, exemplified by several story cycles,
Bavaria-Verlag
which are typically set in the native, Pharaonic milieu and involve the gods, royal figures, magic, romance, and the
trials and combats of heroes. Another important category is the Instruction Text, the best known of the period being
that of Ankhsheshonq, which consists of a list of moralizing maxims, composed, as the story goes, when Ankhsheshonq was imprisoned for having failed to inform
the king (pharaoh) of an assassination plot. Another example, known as Papyrus Insinger, is a more narrowly moralizing text. But the arrival of a Greek-speaking
elite had an enormous impact on cultural patterns. The Egyptian story cycles were probably affected by Greek influence, literary and technical works were translated
into Greek, and under royal patronage an Egyptian priest named Manetho of Sebennytos wrote an account of the kings of Egypt in Greek. Most striking is the
diffusion of the works of the poets and playwrights of classical Greece among the literate Greeks in the towns and villages of the Nile River valley.

Thus there are clear signs of the existence of two interacting but distinct cultural traditions in Ptolemaic Egypt. This was certainly reflected in a broader social
context. The written sources offer little direct evidence of ethnic discrimination by Greeks against Egyptians, but Greek and Egyptian consciousness of the Greeks’
social and economic superiority comes through strongly from time to time; intermarriage was one means, though not the only one, by which Egyptians could better
their status and Hellenize. Many native Egyptians learned to speak Greek, some to write it as well; some even went so far as to adopt Greek names in an attempt to
assimilate themselves to the elite group.

Alexandria occupied a unique place in the history of literature, ideas, scholarship, and science for almost a millennium after the death of its founder. Under the royal
patronage of the Ptolemies and in an environment almost oblivious to its Egyptian surroundings, Greek culture was preserved and developed. Early in the Ptolemaic
period, probably in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, the Alexandrian Museum (Greek: Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) was established within the palace complex. The
geographer and historian Strabo, who saw it early in the Roman period, described it as having a covered walk, an arcade with recesses and seats, and a large house

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containing the dining hall of the members of the Museum, who lived a communal existence. The Library of Alexandria (together with its offshoot in the Sarapeum)
was indispensable to the functioning of the scholarly community in the Museum. Books were collected voraciously under the Ptolemies, and at its height the
library’s collection probably numbered 500,000 or more papyrus rolls, most of them containing more than one work.

The major poets of the Hellenistic period, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes, all took up residence and wrote there. Scholarship flourished,
preserving and ordering the manuscript traditions of much of the classical literature from Homer onward. Librarian-scholars such as Aristophanes of Byzantium and
his pupil Aristarchus made critical editions and wrote commentaries and works on grammar. Also notable was the cultural influence of Alexandria’s Jewish
community, which is inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch was first translated into Greek at Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period. One by-product of this kind
of activity was that Alexandria became the centre of the book trade, and the works of the classical authors were copied there and diffused among a literate Greek
readership scattered in the towns and villages of the Nile valley.

The Alexandrian achievement in scientific fields was also enormous. Great advances were made in pure mathematics, mechanics, physics, geography, and medicine.
Euclid worked in Alexandria about 300 BCE and achieved the systematization of the whole existing corpus of mathematical knowledge and the development of the
method of proof by deduction from axioms. Archimedes was there in the 3rd century BCE and is said to have invented the Archimedean screw when he was in
Egypt. Eratosthenes calculated Earth’s circumference and was the first to attempt a map of the world based on a system of lines of latitude and longitude. The school
of medicine founded in the Ptolemaic period retained its leading reputation into the Byzantine era. Late in the Ptolemaic period Alexandria began to develop as a
great centre of Greek philosophical studies as well. In fact, there was no field of literary, intellectual, or scientific activity to which Ptolemaic Alexandria failed to
make an important contribution.

Alan Edouard Samuel Alan K. Bowman

Roman and Byzantine Egypt (30 BCE– 642 CE)

Egypt as a province of Rome

“I added Egypt to the empire of the Roman people.” With these words the emperor Augustus (as Octavian was known from 27 BCE) summarized the subjection of
Cleopatra’s kingdom in the great inscription that records his achievements. The province was to be governed by a viceroy, a prefect with the status of a Roman
knight (eques) who was directly responsible to the emperor. The first viceroy was the Roman poet and soldier Gaius Cornelius Gallus, who boasted too
vaingloriously of his military achievements in the province and paid for it first with his position and then with his life. Roman senators were not allowed to enter
Egypt without the emperor’s permission, because this wealthiest of provinces could be held militarily by a very small force, and the threat implicit in an embargo on

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the export of grain supplies, vital to the provisioning of the city of Rome and its populace, was obvious. Internal security was guaranteed by the presence of three
Roman legions (later reduced to two), each about 6,000 strong, and several cohorts of auxiliaries.

In the first decade of Roman rule the spirit of Augustan imperialism looked farther afield, attempting expansion to the east and to the south. An expedition to Arabia
by the prefect Aelius Gallus about 26–25 BCE was undermined by the treachery of the Nabataean Syllaeus, who led the Roman fleet astray in uncharted waters.
Arabia was to remain an independent though friendly client of Rome until 106 CE, when the emperor Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE) annexed it, making it possible to
reopen Ptolemy II’s canal from the Nile to the head of the Gulf of Suez. To the south the Meroitic people beyond the First Cataract had taken advantage of Gallus’s
preoccupation with Arabia and mounted an attack on the Thebaid. The next Roman prefect, Petronius, led two expeditions into the Meroitic kingdom (c. 24–22
BCE), captured several towns, forced the submission of the formidable queen, who was characterized by Roman writers as “the one-eyed Queen Candace,” and left a
Roman garrison at Primis (Qaṣr Ibrīm). But thoughts of maintaining a permanent presence in Lower Nubia were soon abandoned, and within a year or two the limits
of Roman occupation had been set at Hiera Sykaminos, some 50 miles (80 km) south of the First Cataract. The mixed character of the region is indicated, however,
by the continuing popularity of the goddess Isis among the people of Meroe and by the Roman emperor Augustus’s foundation of a temple at Kalabsha dedicated to
the local god Mandulis.

Egypt achieved its greatest prosperity under the shadow of the Roman peace, which, in effect, depoliticized it. Roman emperors or members of their families visited
Egypt—Tiberius’s nephew and adopted son, Germanicus; Vespasian and his elder son, Titus; Hadrian; Septimius Severus; Diocletian—to see the famous sights,
receive the acclamations of the Alexandrian populace, attempt to ensure the loyalty of their volatile subjects, or initiate administrative reform. Occasionally its
potential as a power base was realized. Vespasian, the most successful of the imperial aspirants in the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was first proclaimed emperor at
Alexandria on July 1, 69 CE, in a maneuver contrived by the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander. Others were less successful. Gaius Avidius Cassius, the son
of a former prefect of Egypt, revolted against Marcus Aurelius in 175 CE, stimulated by false rumours of Marcus’s death, but his attempted usurpation lasted only
three months. For several months in 297/298 CE Egypt was under the dominion of a mysterious usurper named Lucius Domitius Domitianus. The emperor
Diocletian was present at the final capitulation of Alexandria after an eight-month siege and swore to take revenge by slaughtering the populace until the river of
blood reached his horse’s knees; the threat was mitigated when his mount stumbled as he rode into the city. In gratitude, the citizens of Alexandria erected a statue
of the horse.

The only extended period during the turbulent 3rd century CE in which Egypt was lost to the central imperial authority was 270–272, when it fell into the hands of
the ruling dynasty of the Syrian city of Palmyra. Fortunately for Rome, the military strength of Palmyra proved to be the major obstacle to the overrunning of the
Eastern Empire by the powerful Sāsānian monarchy of Persia.

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Internal threats to security were not uncommon but normally were dissipated without major damage to imperial control. These included rioting between Jews and
Greeks in Alexandria in the reign of Caligula (Gaius Caesar Germanicus; ruled 37–41 CE), a serious Jewish revolt under Trajan (ruled 98–117 CE), a revolt in the
Nile delta in 172 CE that was quelled by Avidius Cassius, and a revolt centred on the town of Coptos (Qifṭ) in 293/294 CE that was put down by Galerius,
Diocletian’s imperial colleague.

Administration and economy under Rome

The Romans introduced important changes in the administrative system, aimed at achieving a high level of efficiency and maximizing revenue. The duties of the
prefect of Egypt combined responsibility for military security through command of the legions and cohorts, for the organization of finance and taxation, and for the
administration of justice. This involved a vast mass of detailed paperwork; one document from 211 CE notes that in a period of three days 1,804 petitions were
handed into the prefect’s office. But the prefect was assisted by a hierarchy of subordinate equestrian officials with expertise in particular areas. There were three or
four epistratēgoi in charge of regional subdivisions; special officers were in charge of the emperors’ private account, the administration of justice, religious
institutions, and so on. Subordinate to them were the local officials in the nomes (stratēgoi and royal scribes) and finally the authorities in the towns and villages.

It was in these growing towns that the Romans made the most far-reaching changes in administration. They introduced colleges of magistrates and officials who
were to be responsible for running the internal affairs of their own communities on a theoretically autonomous basis and, at the same time, were to guarantee the
collection and payment of tax quotas to the central government. This was backed up by the development of a range of “liturgies,” compulsory public services that
were imposed on individuals according to rank and property to ensure the financing and upkeep of local facilities. These institutions were the Egyptian counterpart
of the councils and magistrates that oversaw the Greek cities in the eastern Roman provinces. They had been ubiquitous in other Hellenistic kingdoms, but in
Ptolemaic Egypt they had existed only in the so-called Greek cities (Alexandria, Ptolemais in Upper Egypt, Naukratis, and later Antinoöpolis, founded by Hadrian
in 130 CE). Alexandria lost the right to have a council, probably in the Ptolemaic period. When it recovered its right in 200 CE, the privilege was diluted by being
extended to the nome capitals (mētropoleis) as well. This extension of privilege represented an attempt to shift more of the burden and expense of administration
onto the local propertied classes, but it was eventually to prove too heavy. The consequences were the impoverishment of many of the councillors and their families
and serious problems in administration that led to an increasing degree of central government interference and, eventually, more direct control.

The economic resources that this administration existed to exploit had not changed since the Ptolemaic period, but the development of a much more complex and
sophisticated taxation system was a hallmark of Roman rule. Taxes in both cash and kind were assessed on land, and a bewildering variety of small taxes in cash, as
well as customs dues and the like, was collected by appointed officials. A massive amount of Egypt’s grain was shipped downriver both to feed the population of
Alexandria and for export to Rome. Despite frequent complaints of oppression and extortion from the taxpayers, it is not obvious that official tax rates were all that

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high. In fact the Roman government had actively encouraged the privatization of land and the increase of private enterprise in manufacture, commerce, and trade,
and low tax rates favoured private owners and entrepreneurs. The poorer people gained their livelihood as tenants of state-owned land or of property belonging to
the emperor or to wealthy private landlords, and they were relatively much more heavily burdened by rentals, which tended to remain at a fairly high level.

Overall, the degree of monetarization and complexity in the economy, even at the village level, was intense. Goods were moved around and exchanged through the
medium of coin on a large scale and, in the towns and the larger villages, a high level of industrial and commercial activity developed in close conjunction with the
exploitation of the predominant agricultural base. The volume of trade, both internal and external, reached its peak in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. However, by the
end of the 3rd century CE, major problems were evident. A series of debasements of the imperial currency had undermined confidence in the coinage, and even the
government itself was contributing to this by demanding increasing amounts of irregular tax payments in kind, which it channeled directly to the main consumers—
army personnel. Local administration by the councils was careless, recalcitrant, and inefficient. The evident need for firm and purposeful reform had to be squarely
faced in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine.

Society, religion, and culture

One of the more noticeable effects of Roman rule was the clearer tendency toward classification and social control of the populace. Thus, despite many years of
intermarriage between Greeks and Egyptians, lists drawn up in 4/5 CE established the right of certain families to class themselves as Greek by descent and to claim
privileges attaching to their status as members of an urban aristocracy, known as the gymnasial class. Members of this group were entitled to lower rates of poll tax,
subsidized or free distributions of food, and maintenance at the public expense when they grew old. If they or their descendants were upwardly mobile, they might
gain Alexandrian citizenship, Roman citizenship, or even equestrian status, with correspondingly greater prestige and privileges. The preservation of such
distinctions was implicit in the spread of Roman law and was reinforced by elaborate codes of social and fiscal regulations such as the Rule-Book of the Emperors’
Special Account. The Rule-Book prescribed conditions under which people of different status might marry, for instance, or bequeath property, and it fixed fines,
confiscations, and other penalties for transgression. When an edict of the emperor Caracalla conferred Roman citizenship on practically all of the subjects of the
empire in 212 CE, the distinction between citizens and noncitizens became meaningless; however, it was gradually replaced by an equally important distinction
between honestiores and humiliores (meaning, roughly, “upper classes” and “lower classes,” respectively), groups that, among other distinctions, were subjected to
different penalties in law.

Naturally, it was the Greek-speaking elite that continued to dictate the visibly dominant cultural pattern, though Egyptian culture was not moribund or insignificant.
One proof of its continued survival can be seen in its reemergent importance in the context of Coptic Christianity in the Byzantine period. An important reminder of
the mixing of the traditions comes from a family of Panopolis in the 4th century, whose members included both teachers of Greek oratory and priests in Egyptian

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cult tradition. The towns and villages of the Nile valley have preserved thousands of papyri that show what the literate Greeks were reading (e.g., the poems of
Homer and the lyric poets, works of the Classical Greek tragedians, and comedies of Menander). The pervasiveness of the Greek literary tradition is strikingly
demonstrated by evidence left by an obscure and anonymous clerk at Al-Fayyūm village of Karanis in the 2nd century CE. In copying out a long list of taxpayers,
the clerk translated an Egyptian name in the list by an extremely rare Greek word that he could only have known from having read the Alexandrian Hellenistic poet
Callimachus; he must have understood the etymology of the Egyptian name as well.

Alexandria continued to develop as a spectacularly beautiful city and to foster Greek culture and intellectual pursuits, though the great days of Ptolemaic court
patronage of literary figures had passed. But the flourishing interest in philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, had important effects. The great Jewish
philosopher and theologian of the 1st century, Philo of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus), brought a training in Greek philosophy to bear on his commentaries on the Bible.
This anticipated by a hundred years the period after the virtual annihilation of the great Jewish community of Alexandria in the revolt of 115–117 CE, when the city
was the intellectual crucible in which Christianity developed a theology that took it away from the influence of the Jewish exegetical tradition and toward that of
Greek philosophical ideas. There the foundations were laid for teaching the heads of the Christian catechetical school, such as Clement of Alexandria. And in the
3rd century there was the vital textual and theological work of Origen, the greatest of the Christian Neoplatonists, without which there would hardly have been a
coherent New Testament tradition at all.

Outside the Greek ambience of Alexandria, traditional Egyptian religious institutions continued to flourish in the towns and villages, but the temples were reduced
to financial dependence on a state subvention (syntaxis), and they became subject to stringent control by secular bureaucrats. Nevertheless, like the Ptolemies before
them, Roman emperors appear in the traditional form as Egyptian kings on temple reliefs until the mid-3rd century, and five professional hieroglyph cutters were
still employed at the town of Oxyrhynchus in the 2nd century. The animal cults continued to flourish, despite Augustus’s famous sneer that he was accustomed to
worship gods, not cattle. As late as the reign of Diocletian (285–305), religious stelae preserved the fiction that in the cults of sacred bulls (best known at Memphis
and at Hermonthis [Armant]) the successor of a dead bull was “installed” by the monarch. Differences between cults of the Greek type and the native Egyptian cults
were still highly marked, in the temple architecture and in the status of the priests. Priests of Egyptian cults formed, in effect, a caste distinguished by their special
clothing, whereas priestly offices in Greek cults were much more like magistracies and tended to be held by local magnates. Cults of Roman emperors, living and
dead, became universal after 30 BCE, but their impact is most clearly to be seen in the foundations of Caesarea (Temples of Caesar) and in religious institutions of
Greek type, where divine emperors were associated with the resident deities.

One development that did have an important effect on this religious amalgam, though it was not decisive until the 4th century, was the arrival of Christianity. The
tradition of the foundation of the church of Alexandria by St. Mark cannot be substantiated, but a fragment of a text of the Gospel According to John provides
concrete evidence of Christianity in the Nile valley in the second quarter of the 2nd century CE. Inasmuch as Christianity remained illegal and subject to persecution
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until the early 4th century, Christians were reluctant to advertise themselves as such, and it is therefore difficult to know how numerous they were, especially
because later pro-Christian sources may often be suspected of exaggerating the zeal and the numbers of the early Christian martyrs. But several papyri survive of the
libelli—certificates in which people swore that they had performed sacrifices to Greek, Egyptian, or Roman divinities in order to prove that they were not Christians
—submitted in the first official state-sponsored persecution of Christians, under the emperor Decius (ruled 249–251). By the 290s, a decade or so before the great
persecution under Diocletian, a list of buildings in the sizeable town of Oxyrhynchus, some 125 miles (200 km) south of the apex of the delta, included two
Christian churches, probably of the house-chapel type.

Egypt’s role in the Byzantine Empire

Diocletian was the last reigning Roman emperor to visit Egypt, in 302 CE. Within about 10 years of his visit, the persecution of Christians ceased. The end of
persecution had such far-reaching effects that from this point on it is necessary to think of the history of Egypt in a very different framework. No single point can be
identified as the watershed between the Roman and Byzantine period, as the divide between a brighter era of peace, culture, and prosperity and a darker age,
supposedly characterized by more-oppressive state machinery in the throes of decline and fall. The crucial changes occurred in the last decade of the 3rd century and
the first three decades of the 4th. With the end of persecution of Christians came the restoration of the property of the church. In 313 a new system of calculating and
collecting taxes was introduced, with 15-year tax cycles, called indictions, inaugurated retrospectively from the year 312. Many other important administrative
changes had already taken place. In 296 the separation of the Egyptian coinage from that of the rest of the empire had come to an end when the Alexandrian mint
stopped producing its tetradrachms, which had been the basis of the closed-currency system.

One other event that had an enormous effect on the political history of Egypt was the founding of Constantinople (now
Byzantine Empire, 6th century
Istanbul) on May 11, 330. First, Constantinople was established as an imperial capital and an eastern counterpart to
Egypt as part of the Byzantine Empire, c.
565 Rome itself, thus undermining Alexandria’s traditional position as the first city of the Greek-speaking East. Second, it
diverted the resources of Egypt away from Rome and the West. Henceforth, part of the surplus of the Egyptian grain
CE
. supply, which was put at 8 million artabs (about 300 million litres) of wheat (one artab was roughly equivalent to one
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. bushel) in an edict of the emperor Justinian of about 537 or 538, went to feed the growing population of
Constantinople, and this created an important political and economic link. The cumulative effect of these changes was
to knit Egypt more uniformly into the structure of the empire and to give it, once again, a central role in the political history of the Mediterranean world.

The key to understanding the importance of Egypt in that period lies in seeing how the Christian church came rapidly to dominate secular as well as religious
institutions and to acquire a powerful interest and role in every political issue. The corollary of this was that the head of the Egyptian church, the patriarch of

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Alexandria, became the most influential figure within Egypt, as well as the person who could give the Egyptian clergy a powerful voice in the councils of the
Eastern church. During the course of the 4th century, Egypt was divided for administrative purposes into a number of smaller units but the patriarchy was not, and
its power thus far outweighed that of any local administrative official. Only the governors of groups of provinces (vicarii of dioceses) were equivalent, and the
praetorian prefects and emperors were superior. When a patriarch of Alexandria was given civil authority as well, as happened in the case of Cyrus, the last patriarch
under Byzantine rule, the combination was very powerful indeed.

The turbulent history of Egypt in the Byzantine period can largely be understood in terms of the struggles of the successive (or, after 570, coexisting) patriarchs of
Alexandria to maintain their position both within their patriarchy and outside it in relation to Constantinople. What linked Egypt and the rest of the Eastern Empire
was the way in which the imperial authorities, when strong (as, for instance, in the reign of Justinian), tried to control the Egyptian church from Constantinople,
while at the same time assuring the capital’s food supply and, as often as not, waging wars to keep their empire intact. Conversely, when weak they failed to control
the church. For the patriarchs of Alexandria, it proved impossible to secure the approval of the imperial authorities in Constantinople and at the same time maintain
the support of their power base in Egypt. The two made quite different demands, and the ultimate result was a social, political, and cultural gulf between Alexandria
and the rest of Egypt and between Hellenism and native Egyptian culture, which found a powerful new means of expression in Coptic Christianity. The gulf was
made more emphatic after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 established the official doctrine that Christ was to be seen as existing in two natures, inseparably united.
The council’s decision in effect sent the Egyptian Coptic (now Coptic Orthodox) church off on its own path of monophysitism, which centred around a firm
insistence on the singularity of the nature of Christ.

Despite the debilitating effect of internal quarrels between rival churchmen, and despite the threats posed by the hostile tribes of Blemmyes and Nubade in the south
(until their conversion to Christianity in the mid-6th century), emperors of Byzantium still could be threatened by the strength of Egypt if it were properly
harnessed. The last striking example is the case of the emperor Phocas, a tyrant who was brought down in 609 or 610. Nicetas, the general of the future emperor
Heraclius, made for Alexandria from Cyrene, intending to use Egypt as his power base and cut off Constantinople’s grain supply. By the spring of 610 Nicetas’s
struggle with Bonosus, the general of Phocas, was won, and the fall of the tyrant duly followed.

The difficulty of defending Egypt from a power base in Constantinople was forcefully illustrated during the last three decades of Byzantine rule. First, the old
enemy, the Persians, advanced to the Nile delta and captured Alexandria. Their occupation was completed early in 619 and continued until 628, when Persia and
Byzantium agreed to a peace treaty and the Persians withdrew. This had been a decade of violent hostility to the Egyptian Coptic Christians; among other oppressive
measures, the Persians are said to have refused to allow the normal ordination of bishops and to have massacred hundreds of monks in their cave monasteries. The
Persian withdrawal hardly heralded the return of peace to Egypt.

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In Arabia events were taking place that would soon bring momentous changes for Egypt. These were triggered by the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca
to Medina and by his declaration in 632 CE of a holy war against Byzantium. A decade later, by September 29, 642, the Arab general ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ was able to
march into Alexandria, and the Arab conquest of Egypt, which had begun with an invasion three years earlier, ended in peaceful capitulation. The invasion itself had
been preceded by several years of vicious persecution of Coptic Christians by Cyrus, the Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria, and it was he who is said to have
betrayed Egypt to the forces of Islam.

The Islamic conquest was not bloodless. There was desultory fighting at first in the eastern delta, then Al-Fayyūm was lost in battle in 640, and a great battle took
place at Heliopolis (now a suburb of Cairo) in July 640 in which 15,000 Arabs engaged 20,000 Egyptian defenders. The storming and capture of Trajan’s old
fortress at Babylon (on the site of the present-day quarter called Old Cairo) on April 6, 641, was crucial. By September 14 Cyrus, who had been recalled from Egypt
10 months earlier by the emperor Heraclius, was back with authority to conclude a peace. Byzantium signed Egypt away on November 8, 641, with provision for an
11-month armistice to allow ratification of the treaty of surrender by the emperor and the caliph. In December 641 heavily laden ships were dispatched to carry
Egypt’s wealth to its new masters. Nine months later the last remnants of Byzantine forces left Egypt in ships bound for Cyprus, Rhodes, and Constantinople, and
ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ took Alexandria in the name of the caliph. The new domination by the theocratic Islamic caliphate was strikingly different from anything that had
happened in Egypt since the arrival of Alexander the Great almost a thousand years earlier.

Byzantine government of Egypt

The reforms of the early 4th century had established the basis for another 250 years of comparative prosperity in Egypt, at a cost of perhaps greater rigidity and
more-oppressive state control. Egypt was subdivided for administrative purposes into a number of smaller provinces, and separate civil and military officials were
established (the praeses and the dux, respectively). By the middle of the 6th century the emperor Justinian was eventually forced to recognize the failure of this
policy and to combine civil and military power in the hands of the dux with a civil deputy (the praeses) as a counterweight to the power of the church authorities.
All pretense of local autonomy had by then vanished. The presence of the soldiery was more noticeable, its power and influence more pervasive in the routine of
town and village life. Taxes were perhaps not heavier than they had been earlier, but they were collected ruthlessly, and strong measures were sanctioned against
those who tried to escape from their fiscal or legal obligations. The wealthier landowners probably enjoyed increased prosperity, especially as a result of the
opportunity to buy now state-owned land that had once been sold into private ownership in the early 4th century. The great landlords were powerful enough to offer
their peasant tenants a significant degree of collective fiscal protection against the agents of the state, the rapacious tax collector, the officious bureaucrat, or the
brutal soldier. But, if the life of the average peasant did not change much, nevertheless the rich probably became richer, and the poor became poorer and more
numerous as the moderate landholders were increasingly squeezed out of the picture.

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The advance of Christianity

The advance of Christianity had just as profound an effect on the social and cultural fabric of Byzantine Egypt as on the political power structure. It brought to the
surface the identity of the native Egyptians in the Coptic church, which found a medium of expression in the development of the Coptic language—basically
Egyptian written in Greek letters with the addition of a few characters. Coptic Christianity also developed its own distinctive art, much of it pervaded by the long-
familiar motifs of Greek mythology. These motifs coexisted with representations of the Virgin and Child and with Christian parables and were expressed in
decorative styles that owed a great deal to both Greek and Egyptian precedents. Although Christianity had made great inroads into the populace by 391 (the year in
which the practice of the local polytheistic religions was officially made illegal), it is hardly possible to quantify it or to trace a neat and uniform progression. It
engulfed its predecessors slowly and untidily. In the first half of the 5th century a polytheistic literary revival occurred, centred on the town of Panopolis, and there
is evidence that fanatical monks in the area attacked non-Christian temples and stole statues and magical texts. Outside the rarefied circles in which doctrinal
disputes were discussed in philosophical terms, there was a great heterogeneous mass of commitment and belief. For example, both the gnostics, who believed in
redemption through knowledge, and the Manichaeans, followers of the Persian prophet Mani, clearly thought of themselves as Christians. In the 4th century a
Christian community, the library of which was discovered at Najʾ Ḥammādī in 1945, was reading both canonical and apocryphal gospels as well as mystical
revelatory tracts. At the lower levels of society, magical practices remained ubiquitous and were simply transferred to a Christian context.

By the mid-5th century Egypt’s landscape was dominated by the great churches, such as the magnificent church of St. Menas (Abū Mīna), south of Alexandria, and
by the monasteries. The latter were Egypt’s distinctive contribution to the development of Christianity and were particularly important as strongholds of native
loyalty to the monophysite church. The origins of Antonian communities, named for the founding father of monasticism, St. Anthony of Egypt (c. 251–356), lay in
the desire of individuals to congregate about the person of a celebrated ascetic in a desert location, building their own cells, adding a church and a refectory, and
raising towers and walls to enclose the unit. Other monasteries, called Pachomian—for Pachomius, the founder of cenobitic monasticism—were planned from the
start as walled complexes with communal facilities. The provision of water cisterns, kitchens, bakeries, oil presses, workshops, stables, and cemeteries and the
ownership and cultivation of land in the vicinity made these communities self-sufficient to a high degree, offering their residents peace and protection against the
oppression of the tax collector and the brutality of the soldier. But it does not follow that they were divorced from contact with nearby towns and villages. Indeed,
many monastics were important local figures, and many monastery churches were probably open to the local public for worship.

The economic and social power of the Christian church in the Nile River valley and delta is the outstanding development of the 5th and 6th centuries. By the time of
the Arab invasion, in the mid-7th century, the uncomplicated message of Islam might have seemed attractive and drawn attention to the political and religious rifts
that successive and rival patriarchs of the Christian church had so violently created and exploited. But the advent of Arab rule did not suppress Christianity in Egypt.
Some areas remained heavily Christian for several more centuries.

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Alan K. Bowman

Citation Information
Article Title: Ancient Egypt
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 11 October 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/place/ancient-Egypt
Access Date: September 08, 2020

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9/9/2020 Egyptian Pyramids - Facts, Use & Construction - HISTORY

UPDATED: SEP 30, 2019 · ORIGINAL: OCT 14, 2009

Egyptian Pyramids
HISTORY.COM EDITORS

Built during a time when Egypt was one

CONTENTS of the richest and most powerful
civilizations in the world, the pyramids—
1. The Pharaoh in Egyptian Society especially the Great Pyramids of Giza—
are some of the most magnificent man-
2. The Early Pyramids made structures in history. Their massive
3. The Great Pyramids of Giza scale reflects the unique role that the
pharaoh, or king, played in ancient
4. Who Built The Pyramids?
Egyptian society. Though pyramids were
5. The End of the Pyramid Era built from the beginning of the Old
Kingdom to the close of the Ptolemaic
6. The Pyramids Today
period in the fourth century A.D., the
peak of pyramid building began with the
late third dynasty and continued until
roughly the sixth (c. 2325 B.C.). More than
4,000 years later, the Egyptian pyramids still retain much of their majesty, providing a
glimpse into the country’s rich and glorious past.

The Pharaoh in Egyptian Society

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During the third and fourth dynasties of the Old Kingdom, Egypt enjoyed tremendous
economic prosperity and stability. Kings held a unique position in Egyptian society.
Somewhere in between human and divine, they were believed to have been chosen by
the gods themselves to serve as their mediators on earth. Because of this, it was in
everyone’s interest to keep the king’s majesty intact even after his death, when he
was believed to become Osiris, god of the dead. The new pharaoh, in turn, became
Horus, the falcon-god who served as protector of the sun god, Ra.

Did you know? The pyramid's smooth, angled sides symbolized the rays of the sun
and were designed to help the king's soul ascend to heaven and join the gods,
particularly the sun god Ra.

Ancient Egyptians believed that when the king died, part of his spirit (known as “ka”)
remained with his body. To properly care for his spirit, the corpse was mummified,
and everything the king would need in the afterlife was buried with him, including
gold vessels, food, furniture and other offerings. The pyramids became the focus of a
cult of the dead king that was supposed to continue well after his death. Their riches
would provide not only for him, but also for the relatives, officials and priests who
were buried near him.

The Early Pyramids

From the beginning of the Dynastic Era (2950 B.C.), royal tombs were carved into rock
and covered with flat-roofed rectangular structures known as “mastabas,” which were
precursors to the pyramids. The oldest known pyramid in Egypt was built around
2630 B.C. at Saqqara, for the third dynasty’s King Djoser. Known as the Step Pyramid,
it began as a traditional mastaba but grew into something much more ambitious. As
the story goes, the pyramid’s architect was Imhotep, a priest and healer who some
1,400 years later would be deified as the patron saint of scribes and physicians. Over
the course of Djoser’s nearly 20-year reign, pyramid builders assembled six stepped
layers of stone (as opposed to mud-brick, like most earlier tombs) that eventually
reached a height of 204 feet (62 meters); it was the tallest building of its time. The
Step Pyramid was surrounded by a complex of courtyards, temples and shrines where
Djoser could enjoy his afterlife.

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After Djoser, the stepped pyramid became the norm for royal burials, although none
of those planned by his dynastic successors were completed (probably due to their
relatively short reigns). The earliest tomb constructed as a “true” (smooth-sided, not
stepped) pyramid was the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, one of three burial structures
built for the first king of the fourth dynasty, Sneferu (2613-2589 B.C.) It was named
for the color of the limestone blocks used to construct the pyramid’s core.

The Great Pyramids of Giza

No pyramids are more celebrated than the Great Pyramids of Giza, located on a
plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, on the outskirts of modern-day Cairo. The
oldest and largest of the three pyramids at Giza, known as the Great Pyramid, is the
only surviving structure out of the famed Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was
built for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops, in Greek), Sneferu’s successor and the second of the
eight kings of the fourth dynasty. Though Khufu reigned for 23 years (2589-2566 B.C.),
relatively little is known of his reign beyond the grandeur of his pyramid. The sides of
the pyramid’s base average 755.75 feet (230 meters), and its original height was 481.4
feet (147 meters), making it the largest pyramid in the world. Three small pyramids
built for Khufu’s queens are lined up next to the Great Pyramid, and a tomb was
found nearby containing the empty sarcophagus of his mother, Queen Hetepheres.
Like other pyramids, Khufu’s is surrounded by rows of mastabas, where relatives or
officials of the king were buried to accompany and support him in the afterlife.

The middle pyramid at Giza was built for Khufu’s son Pharaoh Khafre (2558-2532 B.C).
The Pyramid of Khafre is the second tallest pyramid at Giza and contains Pharaoh
Khafre’s tomb. A unique feature built inside Khafre’s pyramid complex was the Great
Sphinx, a guardian statue carved in limestone with the head of a man and the body of
a lion. It was the largest statue in the ancient world, measuring 240 feet long and 66
feet high. In the 18th dynasty (c. 1500 B.C.) the Great Sphinx would come to be
worshiped itself, as the image of a local form of the god Horus. The southernmost
pyramid at Giza was built for Khafre’s son Menkaure (2532-2503 B.C.). It is the
shortest of the three pyramids (218 feet) and is a precursor of the smaller pyramids
that would be constructed during the fifth and sixth dynasties.

Who Built The Pyramids?

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Though some popular versions of history held that the pyramids were built by slaves
or foreigners forced into labor, skeletons excavated from the area show that the
workers were probably native Egyptian agricultural laborers who worked on the
pyramids during the time of year when the Nile River flooded much of the land
nearby. Approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone (averaging about 2.5 tons each) had
to be cut, transported and assembled to build Khufu’s Great Pyramid. The ancient
Greek historian Herodotus wrote that it took 20 years to build and required the labor
of 100,000 men, but later archaeological evidence suggests that the workforce might
actually have been around 20,000.

The End of the Pyramid Era

Pyramids continued to be built throughout the fifth and sixth dynasties, but the
general quality and scale of their construction declined over this period, along with
the power and wealth of the kings themselves. In the later Old Kingdom pyramids,
beginning with that of King Unas (2375-2345 B.C), pyramid builders began to inscribe
written accounts of events in the king’s reign on the walls of the burial chamber and
the rest of the pyramid’s interior. Known as pyramid texts, these are the earliest
significant religious compositions known from ancient Egypt.

The last of the great pyramid builders was Pepy II (2278-2184 B.C.), the second king of
the sixth dynasty, who came to power as a young boy and ruled for 94 years. By the
time of his rule, Old Kingdom prosperity was dwindling, and the pharaoh had lost
some of his quasi-divine status as the power of non-royal administrative officials
grew. Pepy II’s pyramid, built at Saqqara and completed some 30 years into his reign,
was much shorter (172 feet) than others of the Old Kingdom. With Pepy’s death, the
kingdom and strong central government virtually collapsed, and Egypt entered a
turbulent phase known as the First Intermediate Period. Later kings, of the 12th
dynasty, would return to pyramid building during the so-called Middle Kingdom
phase, but it was never on the same scale as the Great Pyramids.

The Pyramids Today

Tomb robbers and other vandals in both ancient and modern times removed most of
the bodies and funeral goods from Egypt’s pyramids and plundered their exteriors as
well. Stripped of most of their smooth white limestone coverings, the Great Pyramids
no longer reach their original heights; Khufu’s, for example, measures only 451 feet
high. Nonetheless, millions of people continue to visit the pyramids each year, drawn
by their towering grandeur and the enduring allure of Egypt’s rich and glorious past.
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Citation Information
Article Title
Egyptian Pyramids

Author
History.com Editors

Website Name
HISTORY

URL
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/the-egyptian-pyramids

Access Date
September 9, 2020

Publisher
A&E Television Networks

Last Updated
September 30, 2019

Original Published Date

October 14, 2009

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Hieroglyphic writing
Hieroglyphic writing, a system that employs characters in the form of pictures. Those individual signs,
called hieroglyphs, may be read either as pictures, as symbols for pictures, or as symbols for sounds. TABLE OF CONTENTS

The name hieroglyphic (from the Greek word for “sacred Introduction
carving”) is first encountered in the writings of Diodorus Development of Egyptian hieroglyphic
Siculus (1st century BCE). Earlier, other Greeks had spoken of writing
sacred signs when referring to Egyptian writing. Among the Characteristics of hieroglyphic writing
Egyptian scripts, the Greeks labeled as hieroglyphic the script
Hieratic script
that they found on temple walls and public monuments, in
Demotic script
which the characters were pictures sculpted in stone. The
hieroglyphics Greeks distinguished this script from two other forms of Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing

Hieroglyphics on a temple wall at Karnak, Egyptian writing that were written with ink on papyrus or on
Egypt. other smooth surfaces. These were known as the hieratic,
© uwimages/Fotolia which was still employed during the time of the ancient Greeks for religious texts, and the demotic, the cursive script
used for ordinary documents.

Hieroglyphic, in the strict meaning of the word, designates only the writing on Egyptian monuments. The word has, however, been applied since the late 19th
century to the writing of other peoples, insofar as it consists of picture signs used as writing characters. For example, the name hieroglyphics is always used to
designate the monumental inscriptions of the Indus civilization and of the Hittites, who also possessed other scripts, in addition to the Mayan, the Incan, and Easter
Island writing forms and also the signs on the Phaistos Disk on Crete.

Because of their pictorial form, hieroglyphs were difficult to write and were used only for monument inscriptions. They were usually supplemented in the writing of
a people by other, more convenient scripts. Among living writing systems, hieroglyphic scripts are no longer used.

This article is concerned only with Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

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Development of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing

The most ancient hieroglyphs date from the end of the 4th millennium BCE and comprise annotations incised onto pottery jars and ivory plaques deposited in tombs,
presumably for the purpose of identification of the dead. Although by no means can all of these earliest signs be read today, it is nonetheless probable that these
forms are based on the same system as the later classical hieroglyphs. In individual cases, it can be said with certainty that it is not the copied object that is
designated but rather another word phonetically similar to it. This circumstance means that hieroglyphs were from the very beginning phonetic symbols. An earlier
stage consisting exclusively of picture writing using actual illustrations of the intended words cannot be shown to have existed in Egypt; indeed, such a stage can
with great probability be ruled out. No development from pictures to letters took place; hieroglyphic writing was never solely a system of picture writing. It can also
be said with certainty that the jar marks (signs on the bottom of clay vessels) that occur at roughly the same period do not represent a primitive form of the script.
Rather, these designs developed in parallel fashion to hieroglyphic writing and were influenced by it.

It is not possible to prove the connection of hieroglyphs to the cuneiform characters used by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia. Such a relationship is
improbable because the two scripts are based on entirely different systems. What is conceivable is a general tendency toward words being fixed by the use of signs,
without transmission of particular systems.

Invention and uses of hieroglyphic writing

The need to identify a pictorial representation with a royal individual or a specific, unique event, such as a hunt or a particular battle, led to the application of
hieroglyphic writing to a monumental context. Hieroglyphs added to a scene signified that this illustration represented a particular war rather than an unspecified
one or war in general; the writing reflected a new attitude toward time and a view of history as unique events in time. Beginning in the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–c. 2775
BCE), images of nonroyal persons were also annotated with their names or titles, a further step toward expressing individuality and uniqueness. The so-called
annalistic ivory tablets of the first two dynasties were pictorial representations of the events of a year with specifically designated personal names, places, and
incidents. For example, accompanying a scene of the pharaoh’s triumph over his enemies is the annotation “the first occasion of the defeat of the Libyans.”
Simultaneously, the writing of the Egyptians began to appear unaccompanied by pictorial representations, especially on cylinder seals. These roller-shaped incised
stones were rolled over the moist clay of jar stoppers. Their inscription prevented the sealed jar from being covertly opened and at the same time described its
contents and designated the official responsible for it. In the case of wine, its origin from a specific vineyard and often also the destination of the shipment were
designated, and, as a rule, so was the name of the reigning king.

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From the stone inscriptions of the 1st dynasty, only individual names are known, these being mainly the names of kings. In the 2nd dynasty, titles and names of
offerings appear, and, at the end of this dynasty, sentences occur for the first time. The discovery of a blank papyrus scroll in the grave of a high official, however,
shows that longer texts could have been written much earlier—i.e., since the early part of the 1st dynasty.

Relationship of writing and art

The form of these hieroglyphs of the Archaic period (the 1st to 2nd dynasty) corresponds exactly to the art style of this age. Although definite traditions or
conventions were quickly formed with respect to the choice of perspective—e.g., a hand was depicted only as a palm, an eye or a mouth inscribed only in front view
—the proportions remained flexible. The prerequisite of every writing system is a basic standardization, but such a standardization is not equivalent to a canon (an
established body of rules and principles) in the degree of stylistic conformity that it requires. A recognized canon of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing arose in the 3rd
dynasty and was maintained until the end of the use of the script.

In that hieroglyphic signs represented pictures of living beings or inanimate objects, they retained a close connection to the fine arts. The same models formed the
basis of both writing and art, and the style of the writing symbols usually changed with the art style. This correspondence occurred above all because the same
craftsmen painted or incised both the writing symbols and the pictures. Deviations from the fine arts occurred when the writing, which was more closely bound to
convention, retained patterns that the fine arts had eliminated. The face in front view is an example of this. This representation, apart from very special instances,
was eventually rejected as an artistic form, the human face being shown only in profile. The front view of the face was, however, retained as a hieroglyph from the
Archaic period to the end of the use of hieroglyphic writing. Similar cases involve the depiction of various tools and implements. Although some of the objects
themselves fell out of use in the course of history—e.g., the general use of clubs as weapons—their representations, mainly misunderstood, were preserved in the
hieroglyphic script. The hieroglyphs corresponding to objects that had disappeared from daily life were therefore no longer well known and were occasionally
distorted beyond recognition. But the style of representation in the hieroglyphs still remained closely bound to the art of the respective epoch. Thus, there appeared
taut, slender hieroglyphic forms or sensuous, fleshy ones or even completely bloated characters, according to the art style of the period.

Media for hieroglyphic writing

In historical times (2800 BCE–300 CE), hieroglyphic writing was used for inscribing stone monuments and appears in Egyptian relief techniques, both high relief and
bas-relief; in painted form; on metal, sometimes in cast form and sometimes incised; and on wood. In addition, hieroglyphs appear in the most varied kinds of metal
and wood inlay work. All these applications correspond exactly with the techniques used in fine art.

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Hieroglyphic texts are found primarily on the walls of temples and tombs, but they also appear on memorials and
gravestones, on statues, on coffins, and on all sorts of vessels and implements. Hieroglyphic writing was used as much
for secular texts—historical inscriptions, songs, legal documents, scientific documents—as for religious subject matter
—cult rituals, myths, hymns, grave inscriptions of all kinds, and prayers. These inscriptions were, of course, only a
decorative monumental writing, unsuitable for everyday purposes. For popular use, hieratic script was developed, an
abbreviated form of the picture symbols such as would naturally develop in writing with brush and ink on smooth
surfaces such as papyrus, wood, and limestone.
hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs on the temple at ancient Writing and religion

Ombos, near modern Kawm Umbu,
Egypt. The influence of religious concepts upon hieroglyphic writing is attested in at least two common usages. First, in the
© Icon72/Dreamstime.com 3rd millennium, certain signs were avoided or were used in garbled form in grave inscriptions for fear that the living
beings represented by these signs could harm the deceased who lay helpless in the grave. Among these taboo symbols
were human figures and dangerous animals, such as scorpions and snakes. Second, in all periods and for all uses of the writing, symbols to which a positive
religious significance was attached were regularly placed in front of other signs, even if they were to be read after them. Among these were hieroglyphs for God or
individual gods as well as those for the king or the palace. Thus, for example, the two signs , denoting the word combination “servant of God” (priest), are written
so that the symbol for God, , stands in front of that for servant, , although the former is to be read last. Moreover, theology traced the invention of hieroglyphic
writing back to the god Thoth, although this myth of its divine origin did not have an effect on the development of the script. In the late period, Egyptian texts
referred to hieroglyphic inscriptions as “writing of God’s words”; earlier, in contrast, they were simply called “pictures.”

Literacy and knowledge of hieroglyphic writing

At all periods only a limited circle understood the hieroglyphic script. Only those who needed the knowledge in their professions acquired the arts of writing and
reading. These people were, for example, officials and priests (insofar as they had to be able to read rituals and other sacred texts), as well as craftsmen whose work
included the making of inscriptions. Under Greek and especially under Roman rule, the knowledge declined and was entirely confined to temples where priests
instructed their pupils in the study of hieroglyphic writing. From the time of the rule of the Ptolemies (305 to 30 BCE), national consciousness became more and
more narrowly bound up with religion, and the tradition-filled hieroglyphic writing was an outward sign of pharaonic civilization—in the fullest sense, a symbol.
There was no lack of attempts to replace the hieroglyphic writing, cumbersome and ever more divergent from the spoken language, with the simpler and more

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convenient Greek script. Such experiments, however, remained ineffective precisely because of the emotional value that the old writing system had when the
country was under the foreign domination of the Macedonian Greeks and the Romans.

Christianity and the Greek alphabet

The situation was altered with the conversion of Egypt to Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. The new religion fought against the Egyptian polytheism and
traditions, and with its victory the Greek script triumphed. From the beginning, Egyptian Christians used the Greek alphabet for writing their spoken Egyptian
language. This practice involved enlarging the Greek alphabet with seven supplementary letters for Egyptian sounds not present in Greek. As a consequence, the
knowledge of hieroglyphic writing quickly declined. The last datable evidence of the writing system is a graffito from the island of Philae, from Aug. 24, 394,
during the reign of the emperor Theodosius I. The language, as well as the writing system, of the Egyptian Christians is called Coptic.

Characteristics of hieroglyphic writing

The hieroglyphic writing system consists almost entirely of signs that represent recognizable objects in the natural or constructed world, and these can be grouped
into three categories. The first is the logogram, in which a word is written (and read) by means of a single sign, providing both sound and meaning in itself.
Ideograms can be read as the object they represent, such as , “wood, stick,” or can have extended meanings, such as the sun disk, ☉, which can be understood as
“sun or (the solar god) Re” (in its phonetic reading “day” (read as H + r + w).

The second category is the phonogram, which represents a sound (or series of sounds) in the language. This group includes not only simple phonemes, which
usually derive from logograms of the objects they depict but which acquired purely phonetic character, but also a much larger corpus of biliteral and triliteral signs
(that is, signs that denote two or three sounds). Biliterals and triliterals, as well as logograms themselves, are often accompanied by the simple phonetic signs as a
reading aid.

The third category of signs consists of determinatives, which carry no phonetic significance but are employed to specify meaning and assist in word division. For
example, the phonetic writing p + r + t can signify the infinitive of the verb “to go,” the name of the winter season, or the word for “fruit, seed.” The meaning of the
word is signaled by a terminal determinative that also acts as a word marker: the walking legs ( ), the sun disk (☉), or the pellet sign (°), respectively. Generic
determinatives are those that are denoting walking, running, or movement; the man with a hand to his mouth signifies words for eating, drinking, feeling, and
perception; and the book roll is used for nouns pertaining to books, writing, and abstract concepts.

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Egyptian inscriptions usually employed a combination of all three categories of signs, with liberal allowance for variation in spelling and in the grouping of signs.
Egyptian generally avoided the writing of vowels aside from the semivowels i, y, and w; thus, the hieroglyphic system represents for the most part only the
consonants of words. Pronunciation of Egyptian, therefore, is imperfectly reflected in the hieroglyphic writing system.

Number of symbols
In the classical period of Egyptian writing, the number of hieroglyphs totaled approximately 700. Their number multiplied considerably in the late period (which
began about 600 BCE); this proliferation occurred because scholars began to invent new forms or signs. The additional hieroglyphs were, however, always in
accordance with the principles that had governed Egyptian writing from its beginnings. The hieroglyphic system remained flexible throughout all periods, always
open to innovation, even though, as with every writing system, convention played a preponderant role.

Direction of writing
Hieroglyphic inscriptions were preferentially written from right to left, with the direction of reading indicated by the orientation of the signs, which normally face
toward the beginning of the text. The right-to-left orientation in writing was scrupulously observed in the cursive form of the script, called hieratic (see below).
Reversals of orientation in the writing of individual signs are relatively rare and were incorporated for either religious or decorative purposes.

Because Egyptian monuments were decorated according to strict conventions of symmetry, temples and tombs are usually adorned with hieroglyphic texts that face
in both directions, to provide a visual sense of axial balance. Inscriptions could be written either in horizontal rows or in vertical columns, a feature that was ideally
suited for the decoration of monumental walls, doorways, and lintels. In two-dimensional scenes containing human or divine figures, hieroglyphic texts are closely
associated with the figures to which they pertain. That is, the identifying name, epithet, and utterance of an individual are oriented in the same direction in which the
figure itself faces. And as one might expect for a distinctly pictorial script, the preferential right-to-left orientation of the Egyptian writing system had an effect on
the development of three-dimensional art as well. For example, the striding male stance used for statuary requires that the left foot be placed forward, a visual pose
that derives from the prescribed stance of the human hieroglyphic figure in preferred right-oriented inscriptions.

Cryptographic hieroglyphic writing

That knowledge of the hieroglyphic system and the principles upon which it was devised had not become diluted with time is attested by two phenomena:
cryptography and the development of the hieroglyphic writing during the last millennium of its existence. From the middle of the 3rd millennium but more
frequently in the New Kingdom (from c. 1539 to c. 1075 BCE), hieroglyphic texts are encountered that have a very strange appearance. The absence of familiar word
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groups and the presence of many signs not found in the canon characterize these texts at first glance as cryptographic, or encoded, writing. This kind of hieroglyphic
writing was probably intended as an eye-catcher, to entice people to seek the pleasure of deciphering it. Composed according to the original principles of the script,
these inscriptions differed only in that certain features excluded when the original canon was formulated were now exploited. The new possibilities involved not
only the forms of the signs but also their selection. For example, the mouth was not drawn in front view ( ), as in the classical script, but in profile ( ), although it
had the same phonetic value. An example of a change in the choice of signs is the case in which a man carrying a basket on his head ( ), a determinative without

phonetic value in the classical script, was later to be read as f and was used in lieu of the familiar sign having this phonetic value, that of the horned viper. In the new
selection of the sign, the phonetic value is obtained from the word f + š + ỉ “to carry” (neglecting its two weak consonants), in accordance with a principle that the
inventors of the writing had applied in 3000 BCE. These cryptographic inscriptions prove that alongside the method of instruction in the schools, which was based on
memorization or recognition, not upon analytical understanding, there was another tradition that transmitted knowledge of the basic principles of the hieroglyphic
script. A command of the principles of hieroglyphics similar to that which the composers of the cryptic inscriptions had was presupposed for the puzzle-happy
decipherers.

The later development of hieroglyphic writing

About the middle of the 1st millennium BCE, Egyptian writing experienced new developments and a revival of interest. Again the inscriptions abounded with new
signs and sign groups unknown in the classical period, all generated according to the same principles as the classical Egyptian script and the cryptographic texts.
The writing of this late period was distinguished from the cryptograms in that this script, like every normal system of writing, developed a fixed tradition, being
intended not to conceal but to be read easily, whereas the cryptography strove for originality.

The development of hieroglyphic writing thus proceeded approximately as follows: at first only the absolutely necessary symbols were invented, without a
canonization of their artistic form. In a second stage, easier readability (i.e., increased rapidity of reading) was achieved by increasing the number of signs (thereby
eliminating some doubts) and by employing determinatives. Finally, after the second stage had endured, essentially unaltered, for about 2,000 years, the number of
symbols increased to several thousand about 500 BCE. This rampant growth process occurred through the application of hitherto unused possibilities of the system.
With the triumph of Christianity, the knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was extinguished along with the ancient Egyptian religion.

Tools
The tools used by the craftsmen for writing hieroglyphic symbols consisted of chisels and hammers for stone inscriptions and brushes and colours for wood and
other smooth surfaces. A modified form of hieroglyphic writing (called cursive hieroglyphs), in which certain details of the monumental signs were abbreviated,
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was used for the decorative and minor arts—that is, for inscriptions chased into metals, incised in wood, or lavishly painted onto papyrus. Only for the truly cursive
scripts, hieratic and demotic, were special materials developed. Leather and papyrus became writing surfaces, and the stems of rushes in lengths of 6 to 13 inches
(15 to 33 cm), cut obliquely at the writing end and chewed to separate the fibres into a brushlike tip, functioned as writing implements. The split calamus reed used
as a writing implement was introduced into Egypt by the Greeks in the 3rd century BCE.

Hieratic script
The Egyptian cursive script, called hieratic writing, received its name from the Greek hieratikos (“priestly”) at a time during the late period when the script was used
only for sacred texts, whereas everyday secular documents were written in another style, the demotic script (from Greek dēmotikos, “for the people” or “in common
use”). Hieratic, the cursive form of Egyptian hieroglyphs, was in fact employed throughout the pharaonic period for administrative and literary purposes, as a faster
and more convenient method of writing; thus, its Greek designation is a misnomer.

The structure of the hieratic script corresponds with that of hieroglyphic writing. Changes occurred in the characters of hieratic simply because they could be written
rapidly with brush or rush and ink on papyrus. Often the original pictorial form is not, or not easily, recognizable. Because their models were well known and in
current use throughout Egyptian history, the hieratic symbols never strayed too far from them. Nevertheless, the system differs from the hieroglyphic script in some
important respects:

1. Hieratic was written in one direction only, from right to left. In earlier times the lines were arranged vertically and later, about 2000 BCE, horizontally.
Subsequently the papyrus scrolls were written in columns of changing widths.
2. There were ligatures in hieratic so that two or more signs could be written in one stroke.
3. As a consequence of its decreased legibility, the spelling of the hieratic script tended to be more rigid and more complete than that of hieroglyphic writing.
Variations from uniformity at a given time were minor; but, during the course of the various historical periods, the spelling developed and changed. As a
result, hieratic texts do not correspond exactly to contemporary hieroglyphic texts, either in the placing of signs or in the spelling of words.
4. Hieratic used diacritical additions to distinguish between two signs that had grown similar to one another because of cursive writing. For example, the cow’s
leg received a supplementary distinguishing cross, because in hieratic it had come to resemble the sign for a human leg. Certain hieratic signs were taken into
the hieroglyphic script.

All commonplace documents—e.g., letters, catalogs, and official writs—were written in hieratic script, as were literary and religious texts. In the life of the
Egyptians, hieratic script played a larger role than hieroglyphic writing and was taught earlier in the schools. In offices, hieratic was replaced by demotic in the 7th

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century BCE, but it remained in fashion until much later for religious texts of all sorts. The latest hieratic texts stem from the end of the 1st century or the beginning
of the 2nd century CE.

Demotic script
Demotic script is first encountered at the beginning of the 26th dynasty, about 660 BCE. The writing signs plainly demonstrate its connection with the hieratic script,
although the exact relationship is not yet clear. It appears that demotic was originally developed expressly for government office use—that is, for documents in
which the language was extensively formalized and thus well suited for the use of a standardized cursive script. Only some time after its introduction was demotic
used for literary texts in addition to documents and letters; much later it was employed for religious texts as well. The latest dated demotic text, from Dec. 2, 425,
consists of a rock inscription at Philae. In contrast to hieratic, which is almost without exception written in ink on papyrus or other flat surfaces, demotic inscriptions
are not infrequently found engraved in stone or carved in wood.

The demotic system corresponds to the hieratic and hence ultimately to the hieroglyphic system. Alongside the
Ostracon with demotic inscription,
Ptolemaic dynasty, c. 304–30 traditional spelling, however, there was another spelling that took account of the markedly altered phonetic form of the

BCE words by appropriate respelling. This characteristic applied especially to a large number of words that did not occur in
. the older language and for which no written form had consequently been passed down. The nontraditional spelling
David Liam Moran could also be used for old, familiar words.

Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing

With the possible exception of Pythagoras, no Greek whose writings have survived seems to have understood the nature of hieroglyphic writing, nor did the Greeks
obtain guidance from their Egyptian contemporaries. Rather, the Greek tradition taught that hieroglyphs were symbolic signs or allegories. The Egyptian-born Greek
philosopher Plotinus interpreted hieroglyphic writing entirely from the viewpoint of his esoteric philosophy. Only one of the numerous works on the hieroglyphic
script written in late antiquity has been preserved: the Hieroglyphica of Horapollon, a Greek Egyptian who probably lived in the 5th century CE. Horapollon made
use of a good source, but he himself certainly could not read hieroglyphic writing and began with the false hypothesis of the Greek tradition—namely, that
hieroglyphs were symbols and allegories, not phonetic signs.

The Middle Ages neither possessed any knowledge of hieroglyphic writing nor took any interest in it. But a manuscript of Horapollon brought to Florence in 1422
stirred great interest among the humanists. Apparently without realizing that ancient Egyptian originals might be available in Rome, Renaissance artists designed

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hieroglyphs after Horapollon’s descriptions, as well as from their own imaginations. They used hieroglyphs as wisdom-laden symbols in architecture and also in
drawings and paintings.

Kircher’s attempts at decipherment

The great German scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–80) began his attempts at decipherment with the Coptic language and with the correct hypothesis that the
hieroglyphs recorded an earlier stage of this language. He also believed, again correctly, that the signs recorded phonetic values. In spite of this, he did not arrive at
correct results—with the exception of a single character. This failure can be attributed not only to Kircher’s erroneous assumption that the hieroglyphs must
correspond phonetically to an alphabet but primarily to the fact that he was most interested in the Renaissance conception of a supposed symbolic meaning
constituting the deeper significance of hieroglyphs. In his view the phonetic value of the hieroglyphs was merely the commonplace, superficial part of the sign.

Discovery of the Rosetta Stone

Both the intellectual and the physical prerequisites for the decipherment of the hieroglyphic script first presented themselves at the end of the 18th century. By
accident, a stone that exhibited three different scripts—hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek—was discovered by members of Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1799
near Rashīd (French: Rosette; English: Rosetta) on the Mediterranean coast. The Greek text stated clearly that the document set forth the same text in the sacred
script, the folk or popular script, and Greek. The stone was promptly made known to all interested scholars. Important partial successes in the effort of decipherment
were achieved by the Swede Johan David Åkerblad and by the English physicist Thomas Young, who mainly studied the demotic text, again beginning with the
false hypothesis that the hieroglyphs were symbols. Young succeeded in proving that they were not symbols—at least that the proper names were not—and that the
demotic signs were derived from the hieroglyphs. (He first published this result in the supplement to the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica.)
He was the first to isolate correctly some single-consonant hieroglyphic signs. But a wrong turn in the course of his investigations then prevented him from fully
deciphering the writing.

Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone, basalt slab from Fort
Saint-Julien, Rosetta (Rashīd), Egypt,
196
Champollion’s decipherment
This task of complete decipherment was first accomplished by the Frenchman Jean-François Champollion (1790–
1832) in 1822, after long years of intensive work and many setbacks. His success was due to the recognition that

BCE
hieroglyphic writing, exactly like the hieratic and demotic scripts derived from it, did not constitute a writing system of
; in the British Museum, London. symbols but rather a phonetic script. He arrived at this breakthrough by an exact comparison of the three Egyptian
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forms of writing, as well as by reference to Coptic, the late phase of the Egyptian language that was written with the
Greek alphabet and was thus directly readable. The Coptic language was also understood at that time. Starting, as had his predecessors, from Ptolemy and Cleopatra,
both ring-enclosed royal names, and adding the hieroglyphic spelling of Ramses’ name, Champollion determined, essentially correctly, the phonetic values of the
signs. Soon after, he also learned to read and translate a large number of Egyptian words. Since then, precise research has confirmed and refined Champollion’s
approach and most of his results.

Hellmut Brunner Peter F. Dorman

Citation Information
Article Title: Hieroglyphic writing
Website Name: Encyclopaedia Britannica
Publisher: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Date Published: 21 March 2019
URL: https://www.britannica.com/topic/hieroglyphic-writing
Access Date: September 09, 2020

https://www.britannica.com/print/article/265021 11/11