Robert Clive – hero or villain?
Clive of India has been distinctly wobbly on his perch in the Square in Shrewsbury amid calls to pull the statue down. But how much do those on both sides of the argument really know about him? Here Bishop's Castle writer, author and historian BOB FOWKE makes the case to let him be.
Like many great men, Robert Clive had big virtues and big vices. Recently there’s been much talk of his vices with not much to balance them. As one of Shropshire’s most famous sons, he deserves better.
He was a man of exceptional courage. His rise to fame started when he was 21 and he escaped French-occupied Chennai, trudging 50 miles south to British Fort St David, avoiding enemy troops, where he volunteered to join the British force without a salary.
Shortly after, it’s said he accused a man of cheating at cards, was challenged to a duel, shot and missed, and when his opponent pointed his pistol and ordered him to retract, Clive said, ‘I said you were a cheat and you are a cheat’.
His first big moment came when he was 34. He led a force of 500 men inland from Chennai, took the fort at Arcot and held it against an army of more than 100,000 men, including 600 French artillery men, for over three months.
It was this siege and the later Battle of Plassey that led to Britain becoming the foremost European power in India, rather than France.
His courage was part of the reason for his success and he faced death unflinchingly on many occasions. In fact, one of the affectionate Indian names for him was Bahadur, ‘the Brave’. Once, when wounded by a French sword slash, the two men supporting him were killed by a bullet passing through their heads. Clive, slumped half-conscious between them, escaped.
Later in Bengal, during the Bata Mutiny, he confronted a whole regiment of angry armed men, alone and unarmed – and persuaded them to back down.
He was not merely brave, he was humane. By comparison with other major figures, men such as Churchill, Napoleon or Wellington, few deaths resulted from Clive’s victories. Wellington counted the deaths in tens of thousands; Clive counted them in hundreds at worst.
During the dying days of the Moghul Empire in India when Clive was active, the figures speak for themselves: 1739, Persian sack of Delhi, 25,000 civilians massacred; 1741-51, Maratha invasions of Bengal, 400,000 civilians killed; 1757, Clive’s victory at Plassey, 500 dead; 1761, Battle of Panipat, Rohilla massacre of Maratha prisoners, 34,000 killed.
