The Bureaucratic Corruption Leading to the Fall of Bengal (1700-1757)

Abstract

Bureaucratic corruption causes the breakdown of the chain of
command among the administrators, resulting in the weakness and fragility
of state machineries. Consequently, they lose sovereignty, and they submit
to or are dominated by foreign corporate and political powers. This paper
adopts methods of historical analysis to explore the endemic forces which
led to Bengal falling under the suzerainty of the rapacious British East India
Company. The paper argues that the central administration failed to allocate
and discharge various executive offices and responsibilities, due to extreme
dependencies among both the central and provincial governments. The present
work maintains that administrators’ wholesale rigging attitude exacerbated the
already declining politico-economic condition of the Muslim ruling elites of
the region, eventually facilitating a power shift away from the traditional elite
toward the British colonizers by 1757.