E-Paper
A Mysore nawab and his French Connection
The French East India Company (EIC) was late to the India party; it arrived in 1664, well after the British EIC (1600) and the Dutch EIC (1602).
After that weird, wonderful and very wet opening ceremony of the 33rd Olympiad, La Ville-Lumiere has once again exploded into our collective consciousness as a city we simply cannot ignore. It seems a good time, therefore, to examine one of our own city’s historical connections to la belle France – the 18th century military alliance forged by Nawab Hyder Ali with the French crown. Or did it, in fact, happen the other way around?
The French East India Company (EIC) was late to the India party; it arrived in 1664, well after the British EIC (1600) and the Dutch EIC (1602). It was also dispossessed earlier, reeling under the financial ruin caused by French governor Dupleix’s (1742-1754) imperial ambitions. (PS: Dupleix had raised a native sepoy infantry while in south India, of which a young Hyder Ali had been a part). Dupleix’s dream was shattered by a clerk in the British EIC called Robert Clive; in 1769, the French EIC was dismissed, and its territories taken over by the French crown.
Six years before, in 1763, the Treaty of Paris had ended the Seven Years’ War between the British and the French for control of North America. The British won, and the proxy battles that the two sides had fought all over the world, including in India, ceased. When the dust settled, the French, despite controlling five trading posts in India - Pondicherry, Mahe, Yanam, Karaikal and Chandernagore - thought of the subcontinent as ‘l’Inde perdue’ — India lost.
Things changed in 1776, when French support for the American Revolutionary War led to unexpected success against the British. Inspired, the French began seeking Indian allies to oust the British from India as well. One of the names that came up frequently in Versailles was ‘Hyder-ali-can, nabab de Mayssour’, who, in 1769, had famously won what we now call the First Anglo-Mysore War. Across the Atlantic, the Americans, hopeful that British losses in India would help their own cause, were also rooting for Hyder – John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and Ben Franklin were among those who kept track of Hyder’s exploits against British Admiral Edward Hughes, Lt Gen Eyre Coote, Col Baillie and Col Munro.
In 1782, the celebrated French admiral Pierre de Suffren arrived in India to fight on Hyder’s side in the Second Anglo-Mysore War. He won five naval battles against Admiral Hughes, thus ensuring French dominance of the seas off the Coromandel Coast. The history of south India – and Mysore – might have proceeded differently from there on if not for the signing of another Treaty of Paris in 1783, which granted independence to the American colonies and brokered the so-called Peace of Paris, marking the end of British-French hostilities across the globe.
By this time, Hyder was dead from cancer. The French summarily withdrew their support to his heir Tipu Sultan. Even though he had the upper hand in the battles at that point, Tipu was forced, in 1784, to accept the peace the EIC was offering.
But Tipu and the French were far from done. Soon after withdrawing support, Louis XVI sent diplomats to persuade Tipu to continue trade links with France. On his part, Tipu sent several embassies to the court of Louis XVI to request the services of French engineers (who helped build, among other things, the famous mechanical contraption called ‘Tipu’s Tiger’), artisans, gardeners, and manufacturers of porcelain. Well after the French monarchy was violently dismantled in 1789 – cue the headless Marie Antoinettes from the opening ceremony – Napoleon Bonaparte himself would extend a hand of friendship to Citoyen Tipu – Citizen Tipu – in 1798. Why that alliance never came to be is a story for another day.
(Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru)
