#Dalrymple’s #TheAnarchy Dalrymple’s new book stresses the event’s significance.

#Dalrymple’s #TheAnarchy

Dalrymple’s new book stresses the event’s significance. "The Anarchy" by historian @williamdalrymple.

The book releases on September 10th (bloomsbury india)

The Battle of Adyar, waged in the estuary of the river on October 24, 1746, just goes down in the history of Chennai as an event in which the French forces overcame the army of the Mughal Nawab of Carnatic, Anwar ud-Din.

But the battle carried enormous consequences for the Indian subcontinent, since it firmly established the supremacy of European warfare and the point is stressed by British historian William Dalrymple’s new book The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire (Bloomsbury Publishing).

“…the Battle of Adyar proved a turning point in the Indian history,” he writes, because “for the first time, techniques of 18th century European warfare, developed in Prussia and tested on the battlefields of France and Flanders, had been tried out in India,” writes Mr. Dalrymple, drawing on the rather elaborate diary entries of Ananda Ranga Pillai, the chief dubash of the French East India Company.

On European warfare

Mr. Dalrymple also points out how it was immediately clear that nothing in the Mughal armoury could match the techniques of 18th century European warfare, particularly the “invention of screws for elevating the guns gave the artillery greater precision and increased the fire power of the foot soldier, giving them an edge in the battle against the cavalry.”

It showed that a small body of infantry armed with the new flintlock muskets and bayonets and supported by quick-firing mobile artillery, could now scatter a whole army just as easily as they could in Europe.

The Battle of Adyar was launched by the Nawab because he was furious that the French Governor, Joseph Francois Dupleix, had attacked Madras without his permission and taken it. Robert Clive, who subsequently defeated the French and established the British rule in India, escaped in disguise at night, he recounts.

The Nawab sent his son Mahfuz Khan with the entire Mughal army of the Carnatic to fight the French.

But the 700 French sepoys defeated the Mughal Army of 10,000 troopers, which was seen never before in India.

Vivid description

The impact of the modern weapons is vividly described by Ananda Ranga Pillai, an eyewitness to the battle, in his diaries. “Mauhfuz Khan also ran on foot, until he reached his elephant, and mounting this, quickly made his escape. He and his troops did not cease their fight until they reached Kunattur. The rout was general, so much so that not a fly, not a sparrow, not a crow was to be seen in all Mylapore.” According to Mr. Dalrymple, even before witnessing the Battle of Adyar River, Ananda Ranga Pillai had told Dupleix that 1,000 such French soldiers with cannon and mines could conquer all of south India.

Dupleix had replied that half that numbers, and two cannons would suffice.

However, Madras was restored to the East India Company in 1749, following the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, signed between the Great Britain, France and the Dutch.

THE HINDU 

@B Kolappan 

23-09-2019.