Empire: World History - 235. The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)

Episode Date: March 6, 2025

Ireland may have been England’s first colony but, by the 17th century, Irishmen were carving out their own imperial legacies in India. Gerald Aungier, an ambitious East India Company official, saw Bombay as a new frontier for plantation and trade. Drawing from his family’s plantation experience in Ireland, he laid the foundations for the establishment of the legal and economic framework that would define colonial rule in India for centuries. A hundred years later, John Nicholson, an Ulster-born soldier, became a symbol of British military might - and brutality. Known for his extreme violence during the 1857 uprising, Nicholson led savage campaigns against Indian rebels, earning both devotion from his men and horror from his enemies. His actions, once celebrated in Britain, are now remembered as some of the worst atrocities of colonial rule. At the height of the Raj, another Irishman, Lord Dufferin, presided over India as Viceroy. Deeply aware of Ireland’s own history under British rule, he feared that Indian nationalism would follow the same path as Ireland’s Home Rule movement. So, how did these Irishmen shape the empire that once subjugated their own people? Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Professor Jane Ohlmeyer, author of Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism and the Early Modern World, to uncover the contradictions of Irish imperial history. _____________ Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, and a weekly newsletter! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. Email: [e-mail] Instagram: @empirepoduk  Blue Sky: @empirepoduk  X: @empirepoduk goalhanger.com Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Anouska Lewis Senior Producer: Callum Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes, reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community, discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcasts, add free listening, and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Empire listeners, I am very excited to tell you that our sold-out London live show, booze and brews, is going on a UK tour and tickets are on sale now. to tell the story of all your favourite drinks and how they are linked to Empire, from Indian pale ale to G&D. Look, I know the clink of a drink. It's not a sound we're unfamiliar with, but it is the appearance of these drinks in history and the stories that inform them. So we want to take a little bit of a

closer look at all of that. Yes, we've got all sorts of strange stories for you from early East India Company men who were so afraid of drinking the water in India that they drank alcohol for breakfast, a breakfast, lunch and dinner in fact. Yes, I know. All of them. Let's not be discriminatory here. It was quite pervasive of all me. It was an equal meal opportunity. Don't worry, if you don't drink, we're also going to be looking at the extraordinary history of tea. And I'm going to tell you what, if you think the British love tea now, you should have seen the 18th and 19th centuries. They imported so much tea from China that taxes on it earned the same amount of money for the government as all tax on land, property and income. And in fact, that's what they had to start the opium trade,

wasn't it, in fact, the opium wars. But that is another story. It is, I feel like we're telling too much. But look, we're just bursting. You can tell we're bursting with stories. And that's not the only thing that's going to be bursting on our show, because I've got the story of one of my ancestors who exploded out of a barrel of rum. Yes, I know. It's actually my favourite Dalrymple story. You know I get sick of him talking about Dalrymples. This one blows up, though, so I'm quite happy. We're going to be at the Theatre Royal in Glasgow on the 30th of May. We're going to be at the Alexandria Theatre in Birmingham on the 1st of June, the barbican in York on the 2nd of June, and we finish off at the Beacon in Bristol

on the 3rd of June. So we will be doing our schick full of amazing and surprising historical insights, answers to your fantastic questions, and we sold out very quickly last year, so don't wait around for your tickets. Yes, I cannot stress this enough. We are always reeling by how quickly the tickets go within a day in some cases. So tickets are on sale now. Don't hesitate. just go to Empirepoduk.com, Empirepodukuk.com to get yours. Make sure you don't miss that because, you know, we'll miss you if you're not there. Yes, get your tickets now and see you in the summer. Fair you well, Port Erin's Isle. I now must leave you for a while. The rents and taxes are so high, I can no longer stay. From Dublin's key, I sailed away and landed here, but yesterday, my shoes and breeches and shirts are now in all that's in my kit.

I've dropped in to tell you now the sites I've seen before. I go. Where is the nation or the land that reared such men as Paddy's land? Where's the man more noble than he, they call poor Irish Pat? We fought for England's Queen and beat her foes wherever seen. We've taken the town of Delhi, if you please. Come tell me that. We pursued the Indian chief, the Nenisar, the cursed thief who skivered babies and mothers and left them in their gore. But why should we be so oppressed in the land of St. Patrick's blessed? Hello, by the way. Welcome to Empire. Hello. Hello, welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan.

And me, William Durinpaw. I just got very excited to read this. I guess, again, is Professor Jane Olmeyer, author of Making Empire, Ireland, imperialism, and the early modern world. And I've been banging on about this to Jane for a while, that I found this ballad hugely popular in America. And it's all about sort of Irish emigraise having to flee after the famine, landing up in America. about it, isn't it? Yeah, you know. This land of weeping effigies and this sort of stuff. And it goes on, it's quite large.

But the thing that struck me, and it's from about, I think, circa 1906, is where this particular sheet music was that was published in Philadelphia. But even by then, it was quite a popular ballad, Paul Patmas Emigrate, in America, in New York in particular, and Philadelphia. And the reference to, and I just thought,

this is exactly what Jane was talking about, the reference to, we did imperialism for you, you did imperialism to us, when does it end? I thought it was exactly what we were kind of touching on in our early episode. And Jane, you've written this extraordinary book, Making Empire, which makes the case at some length and very convincingly, to me, I have to say, that Ireland is basically the blueprint, the roadmap, the laboratory. Laboratory for what the English will then go and do on a far bigger scale,

on a far more enriching expedition. But the methods and the ideas and in many cases, the actual people are formed by the Irish experience. But then also this very complicated and interesting thing that the Irish like the Scots, who love both to be the kind of the brave hearts against the English, are completely complicit in some of the very, very worst atrocities. Yeah, as the ballad says, you know, from mutiny onwards,

we've fought for you. Why are you being like this? So first of all, what are we talking about in this episode? Because we've not even heard your voice. We've just gone on and on and on. Not heard of peep. We didn't really do that at all right. Not a peep. I was counting. I was like, God, when did she poor woman going to get it to speak? So what are we talking about today? We're going to talk about three really interesting figures of Ireland. One is a man called Gerald Ainger, who's the founding father of Bombay. He is living in India in the 1660s and 1670s. And that's really when Ireland's first serious engagement with India begins, obviously through the East India Company. Then we're going to fast forward and talk about John Nicholson, that imperial psychopath of yours

I have lots of fun with him in the last movie because he's kind of the most, well, as one of his contemporaries said, he's the very incarnation of violence. And in this moment when the British are reeling from the massacre, as they see it, of their innocent women and children, on the 11th of May, 1857, and then in camp, poor and so on. It is Nicholson who really leads the counterattack and does so with the most astonishing violence. Unleashes what they then termed the devil's wind, which reaps so many of life. So Nicholson we're going to talk about, and who's the third person he picked out for us? And then we're going to talk, an incredible diplomat, a man called Lord Dufferin. And Lord Dufferin is a

Scottish planter stock, and his family home is in Clandyboy, which is in County Down. And you and I are friends of the family. We are friends of the family indeed. And that house is really shrine to Lord Dufferin. And when I had a show on East India Company paintings in London, a lot of it was borrowed from Linde Dufferin, who is our mutual friend. Are you dedicated to your book to part of it? Indeed, yes, sadly the late, much loved. I know the name Dufferin because of, and actually it's associated with good things,

Lady Dufferin's hospitals. I mean, I've read a lot about her hospitals through 1920s and 30s that they still exist. I'm so glad you mentioned Harriet Dufferin because what she does for women's health in India is truly important. And of course, the fact that so many of those Dufferin hospitals still survive. But Dufferin's name

is still on roads in India. And of course, then in Belfast, there's a big statue of Dufferin outside Belfast City Hall, as indeed we have of Nicholson in Dunganan. A more controversial figure. Yeah.

And Lisburn, without any context, I visited the one in Lisbon, recently, William, there's no context of what he did in India. And if I'm not wrong, one of the statues of Nicholson was taken from India and taken back to Northern Ireland.

It was. And that's actually in his old school, which is in Dungannon, which is in County Tyrone. And that's where that one is. And to Indianize, and not that frankly that anyone remembers this story here really anymore. But certainly in terms of Indian history, this is slightly like putting up a statue of gerbils or Himmler or something. This is a guy who is really genuinely responsible of some of the most blood-curdling atrocities ever committed by British imperialists anywhere in the world.

Oh, completely. But he's also then a great Victorian hero, you know, the line of the Punjab. Yeah, yeah. You know, The Hero of Delhi. So a huge... It's a true biography of him called The Hero of Delhi. Oh, is there? Yeah. So, look, if I weren't holding a microphone, I would be rubbing my hands with interest

because this sounds like really fascinating stuff. And it also sounds like that bridge between being the oppressed to becoming the oppressors, certainly by the time we get to people like Nicholson, there's no doubt about that. So can we, first of all, they start with what the world is like and why these men are suddenly leaving Ireland? Because they had enough on their plates. You know, they had Ulster. They were setting down their roots.

At what point do they start sort of looking outside the realms of their own country? And just remind us, in a sense, where we've left early 17th century Ireland. What is the world that these guys are leaving and why are they going to India? Well, Cromwell has obviously wrecked havoc on Ireland. We've seen the expropriation of 8 million Irish acres and a revolution in landholding. And really that Protestant ascendancy now is very much the name of the game in an Irish context. but it's more than that. We now have a form of economic imperialism.

The whole Irish economy is there to serve empire with the Navigation Acts. Just explain what the Navigation Acts are. The Navigation Act are legislation passed by the Westminster Parliament that says Ireland has to export everything via London. In other words, London controls the Irish economy. But it's more than that. It creates a subservient economy. And what we find in this period is that Ireland really is all about provisioning

empire and that comes out of the navigation ice. All that lovely Irish butter and all this lovely Irish bacon. Yeah. Ireland feeds the Caribbean but it's also very important for the ships going to Asia because they'll often. Well they stop on the way back often because they need water or supplies but some also will stop on the way out and some of the timbers there's actually ships for East Indy company built in County Cork. So there is a connection there as well But going back, Ireland at this point, obviously is offering lots of opportunities because of the massive transfer of land. But younger sons or those seeking adventure want to be part of if you want these westward and eastward enterprises.

And this brings us to Gerald Ainger, who was born probably in the 1630s. And he's a younger son. His grandfather has been a legal imperialist, one of these men on the make who did very well during the plantation. His other grandfather was the Archbishop of Dublin. So he goes to London and now we're talking during the 1650s and he has an entree into the East India Company. One of the most important figures in the East India Company basically takes him under his wing

and he then is signed up as a factor or an agent. And then in 1661, by which point Charles II is now back on the throne, got rid of Oliver Gromwell, off Ainger goes, spends brief time in Goa, then straight up to Surat, where he rises through the ranks very quickly at the English factory in Surat. You should just explain what the factory is. The factory is not a kind of a smokestack in the Victorian industry centre. It's like an Oxbridge college full of English factors. Factors and basically a huge warehouse where they store goods that they then ship back to London.

William, you know, and you've talked about this before and you've written about it really well, but this is a really interesting pivot point in Indian history and what they're actually trading. So it used to be spices, and then they get sort of booted out by the Dutch from Indonesia, which is the most lucrative market. But it actually does some of huge favour because they pivot to something that's going to matter to Ainger.

So the early East Indy company is not about India at all. It's the company of London merchants trading with the East Indies, which in 16th century speak actually means Indonesia. And it's only after they have a squabble with the Dutch that suddenly they pivot. away from spices and Indonesia towards textiles and India. And this is the point at which India is gearing up to become the world dominant force in the textile market. Both fancy fancy textiles like things are called Kalamkari's that are painted hangings

that you might find in a Venetian palace hanging from a four post to bed, down to very, very simple things like piece cotton goods, which just means long, long rolls of cotton. That's a rough linen, yeah. in the best in the world. But it also used to buy enslaved people. So a lot of that coarse cotton is actually used in the slave trade. As a currency.

As a currency. And Ainger moves in at exactly this moment. And the calico craze is attributed to him. So it's really thanks to the time that he's spending in Surrett, that we see what is known then as this calico craze. And calico is not some sort of fancy arts and craft thing like it sounds. It actually means the most expensive, super luxury. textiles, which the East India Company quickly dominates the market for, and it sells to Europe.

So when you go now to Versailles or go to some palace in Venice, it is East India Company textiles that now hang from four post to beds. Well, I mean, it does sound like it's sort of like the Bitcoin of its time. It's sort of internationally used, doesn't recognise any borders. And it's so integral in the slave trade as well as wealth creation in Britain. Angel, where does he sort of position himself? Because he's working for the company. He answers to who and or how sort of how much autonomy does.

you have to do whatever he wants. Well, by 1669, he's the president of the factory in Surrup, but he also then becomes the second governor of this new colony, Bombay, that has come to the crown when Charles II has married Catherine of Raganza, the Portuguese princess. And there's a very comical moment when this document arrives in London from the Portuguese, and somehow the map has got detached. So all there is is this marriage contract saying, we offer you, I think, Tangiers and Bombay, spelt in the document, B-U-M-B-U-M-B-Y-E. And there's a big debate in White Tool about exactly where Bambi is, and they assume it must be somewhere in South America. Brazil.

Brilliant. Actually fact, of course, it's the best harbour in the whole west coast of India and to become a major, major naval asset for the English in the next two centuries. And Ainger realises its potential instantly, but it's not just about trade. and, you know, he lays the foundation for trade there. First thing he has to do is secure Bombay. So he builds these incredible forts. And William you'll have seen Worley Fort, which is Angers Fort as you drive in from the airport.

That's actually him. Oh, that's Angers Fort. Just describe what it looks like. It's one of these star-shaped Tracy Talien, new style fortifications. Absolutely formidable. A bit like Mombasa, very formidable, or Aguada near Goa. Built specifically against artillery, the new style of warfare. And built more against.

fellow Europeans. He wants to keep the wretched Dutch out, as well as obviously the Mughals. And this is a period when the Dutch just going down in India and the English are rising up. But it's not, I mean, we know that now looking back. But it's not a settled to fare. But it's not a settled thing. And there's also, at the same time, a lot of Dutch hanging out, particularly on the East Coast at places like much Lepadnam, Mazuli Patam. Cochin. Cochin. And at any moment, you know, the Dutch could be defeating the English in India as they have done in Indonesia. and actually in fact they now go into decline.

And Ainger is the force that is sort of driving the English conquest of the trade of India. Right. I mean, on the one hand, he seems like a really militarily sound bloke. But he's a bit of a dandy. And he likes a party as well. I mean, just give us this other side of his character. Can I just say it's not just that he's very smart in terms of the fortifications. This man sets out to plant and colonise Bombay the way his grandparents have colonised Ireland.

So in other words, we see this language. of colonisation, plantation in his correspondence. And he sets up the legal system in Bombay. Including, if I'm not wrong, witch trials. I'm not sure about that. You keep on saying that, I must check that. It's Phil Stern. It's in Phil Stern's book. Yeah, yeah, we'll have to check that. But what he does is he lays the foundations basically of the English legal system in Bombay. And if you go to the high court today, they credit Ainger as the founding father of the legal system, Not just in Bombay in India, because of course it's later copied in Madras and Calcutta. But the other thing that he does that is so important is he attracts diamond merchants up from Goa.

He brings in textile workers. And then he does a lot of drainage. So improvement is very much his mantra. So he really lays the economic foundations, brings in Parsis. It's he who gives the Malabar Hill Tower of Silence to Parsis to encourage him down from Surat. it's all about religious toleration. Why? Because that's good for business. And Ainger may be a committed Protestant, but he's absolutely committed to having this diverse cosmopolitan community. And that actually attracts people in. He's also looking for new products. So he's out there saying, you know,

can anyone find any opium, any bang we can send back to England? In addition to doing all this for the company, he has five of his own ships. So he's doing an awful lot in terms of private trading. So this man is an extraordinary businessperson. And in a single voyage, a French priest comes to visit in Bombay. And he says, you know, Anger's in terrible mood because one of his ships has been taken. And it had cargo worth £45,000 on it. You can understand why he might be a bit pissed off. Well, that's an absolute fortune.

So you're dealing with somebody who is making a vast amount of money very, very quickly. But someone who is also putting in place, if you want the economic, infrastructure. And we talked about dairy. You know, this is the Indian equivalent of the dairy plantation. So he's seen it. They've done it. And you're exactly your example of the laboratory is repeated. He must have felt like he was on top of the world and untouchable then. Well, he did. And of course, it takes 18 months for communications to go back and forth between London and Mumbai, or Bombay as it is then. So he's tremendously allowed to use his own initiative. The company does complain, though. We should say that at this point, a lot of the company servants are living

in a very hybrid lifestyle. Exactly. In 1642. there are two East India company men who convert to Islam and run off in the Agra factory and join the Mughals. And this is exactly the same period as Angels in Bombay. And we have this description in your book of him at meals. He has his trumpets, usher in his courses and soft music at the table. If he moves out of his chamber, the silver staves await him. And downstairs, the guards received him. If he goes abroad, the banderines and moors under two standards march before him.

He goes sometimes in his coach, drawn by large white oxen, sometimes on horseback, and at other times palankeens, carried by colours and Muslim porters, always having a sombrero of state carried over him. Now the sombrero of state means an umbrella, which is what a mogul general would do. It's a parisole. Back in Ireland, they'd say he's got notions. Listen, that's exactly what I meant by sort of being a dandy. I mean, he kind of feels like he's a man on the verge of being out of control.

And you said the East India Company didn't like it. He's setting himself as a de facto mogul, but he's meant to be working for them. And that's what they say. They say profit, not pleasure is what we're about. And of course, Ainger writes back saying, oh, I've only ever done what you told me to do. So they do fall out. That's all. And they're about to fire him and he resigns.

But he actually dies of some dysenteric disease. And he's actually buried in Surat. So next time you're at the English graveyard in Surat, he's got the most extraordinary grave. It's this Indo-Islamic two-story structure with this exquisite blue and white tiles in this sort of little roof. It's extraordinary. And this is one of these things that we forget is that the English at this time and the Dutch on this coast, they have their mogul gardens where they have their often their dancing girls. And this is an acceptable form of concubinage. And we have descriptions of the dancing girls being brought in and all these gentlemen disappearing off into the mango groves. And then we also have

have these tombs at the end of their lives when they're basically buried in sort of baroque mughal tombs and both the dutch and the english have these and they're very elaborate and their sketch this is one very nice little link the english and the dutch graveyards are sketched by another young englishman who's in sarat exactly at this time called john vanbrough and he then goes back shortly afterwards and designs the domes of castle howd oh how interesting but the other thing that i find so fascinating i'm not too sure about the dance I'm never, he's a very zealous committed Protestant. So I never stopped anyone.

Well, that's true. But you know what I'm very interested in is the way he has this tremendous interest in indigenous peoples. So he collects Parsis, Arroastrian tracts, which he has copied and then sent back to the British Library and to Edward Hyde, who's actually the librarian at the Bodleon. But the other thing he does, he brings a printing press to Bombay to print Brahmini texts. Oh wow. Okay.

That's interesting. So he's extraordinary learned. He's a scholar as well as being a party man. But this is not what we would associate with somebody who is sort of rapacious about making money. That idea of racial superiority hasn't yet entered. He's still interested. That comes later. He has a deep respect for the people around him. And I think he has the languages as well. And that's one reason why he's so successful. But he's always worried about gifts and presents. So a lot of the correspondence is about that. And then sending gifts home because company says, for God's sake, don't send him more tigers.

buy because they eat everything. It's very important to remember that at this point in the 1640s or 1650s, the English is not in a position to be that snooty about the muggles. The muggles have got the money. The muggles have got the high culture. This is Thomas Rowe worrying about what he's going to give. Exactly. And while there is unies and the sense that these are foreigners and they have different customs,

there's also the sense that these guys are a million times richer than anyone will ever be in Britain. But the Mughals don't like Ager because he prints his own coinage. And he has a lot of dealings with Shivaji. He actually sends one of his men. So Shik Chivaji being the Grand Marata, the Maratha leader, who actually harries and pushes back against the Mughal. And indeed, it burns Surat at this time. And Ager is the one who leads the attacks against him in 1670.

Shivaji's coronation, one of Ainger's men is there. So... Up on Rajge. Yeah. And you've got this wonderful account. again in the archive of the East India Company in London, of Shivaji's coronation. We should say that this is a crucial moment in, in a sense, in the history of Hindu nationalism, in that Shivaji is very consciously at the time pushing back against Muslim rule,

and he brings two different sets of Brahmins onto the hilltop. There are the local Brahmins who are there to propitiate the local nature of spirits of Maharashtra and the local gods, and he brings Brahmin's from Varanasi, who in a sense sort of talk to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and the great cosmic gods. And this is today not unfairly looked on as a major break in Indian history when you have the beginning of Hindus taking back their own land.

That's certainly how it's interpreted in India today. Yeah. And Ainger has very good dealings with both Shivaji and also with the Mughals, even though he irritates them when he issues his own coin. But just one other thing that I have to say about him, he remains very loyal to Ireland. His siblings are there and he's making an absolute fortune.

Would he have described himself as Irish or English? No, he describes himself as English, but his colleagues in the East Indy Company call him Irish. Interesting. It's really interesting. This man is born and bread in Ireland. Do they look down on him? More they're jealous of him. But you do get other examples of Irish men who do well in the East Indy company and they are looked down on because of their Irishness.

I've seen them. I've seen sort of like letters written about, I'm a paraphrase. phrasing, barely better than the natives. He's Irish. These kind of descriptions of Irish people working in India. You do, but Ager not so much. And what happens is throughout the 1670s, Anger is sending gifts back to Dublin, including things like mangoes. I cannot tell you how exotic a mango would have been in a 17th century Dublin.

But he also sends his fortune back to Dublin. And that allows his brother, who's the Earl of Longford, to develop a whole. whole new suburb, Dublin's first suburb, which is off Dame Street. It's called Anger Street, after Gerald Anger. It's the poshest suburb in Dublin. And all of that is built on the back of Indian money that's remitted. Basically, Anger is Ireland's first neighbour. And he's made a fortune in India. Are his cousins who've stayed in Dublin and are involved in the plantations making any money or not? Not nearly as much. Not nearly as much. And actually his money, turbocharges their activity. It's time to take a break and join us after the break. These are such interesting

people and living in such interesting times. We will bring you another Irishman and we'll see how much done good in India. Join us then. Welcome back. So we're now heading into the 19th century. And tell me, Jane, how much more has Ireland filled the ranks of the East India Company Army and the East India Company Civil Service? So Ireland is hugely important for, both Williams. So two-thirds of both the armies of the East India Company and the Raj are made up of Irish Catholic squadies. Looking ahead by the 1880s, this is the Barakrum ballads that Kipling is writing. Why are they joining up in such a while? Canon fodder. But also I think you have to remember just how poor Ireland is. And it's very interesting. Indian

visitors go to Ireland and they say, you know, the Irish peasants are poorer than the Bengali presence. So you do have these, you know, these people are not signed up to empire. They need the king shilling. What kind of condition are they living in when they get to India? And are they suddenly fed and looked after in a way that they wouldn't have been if they'd stayed at home? Well, many of them, of course, die either on the journey out or two monsoons of the life of a man. Many of them die in India. But they are taking care of. They're part of that imperial machine. So as well as the squadies and the cannon fodder at the bottom of the imperial system, you've also got Anglo-Irish at the very top. And of course, the two most famous are Lord Wellesley,

who is the man who actually masterminds three quarters of the East India Company's conquest of India defeats both the Marathas and Tebus Sultan and drags hydraband into the English system. And then his younger brother, who is Arthur Welsley, the Duke of Wellington. For whom his Irishness is an embarrassment. For both of them, I think. No. No, completely. Yeah. So tell us by that. That's interesting. How do you know? These guys are brought up in Ireland, but they don't want to be Irish.

But that's par for the course. The Protestants of Ireland see themselves as English. It's the English who don't want to see them as English and call them Irish. And even in the 18th century, if you were sitting in Downing Street and distributing honours, if you were wanting to pass off people with a kind of second degree honour, you'd give them an Irish. period. And that's what Clive gets. So Clive Clive gets given an Irish British then gets his own back by changing the name of his Irish estate to Plassy

and calling himself Clive of Plassy. And it's not actually referring to Placie as in the battlefield, it's Placie as in where is it? It's in Limerick. It's actually the University of Limerick is based on Clive's estates. Can I talk about the Wales states a bit more because I'm really fascinated by them. Would they have had Irish accents? Would they, I mean, How identifiably, or if you were a sort of high Irish Protestant and you want to be English, would you sort of, you know, rinsed your, you know, rins the Irish off you. See, we've no recordings of these people. It's so hard to say that.

I would have thought it's extremely unlikely because they went to Eat. Yeah. And they were very boringly proud of being Etonians, and they keep referring to it in their letters. They might have done. But if their childhood was in Ireland, you don't just shrug it off. And it is always the marker that sets you apart. And remember, many of these men would have been raised by Irish nurses, including some wet nurses. they might have been bilingual.

When you get into the 19th century, less so. But they certainly would have been surrounded by Irish speakers. And when Lord Wellesley, who has conquered most of India, is the single most successful. He conquers more land in India than Napoleon conquers in Europe. When you put it like that, that's extraordinary. And then he comes home and he's offered what he calls his gilt Irish potato, which is an Irish peerage. So again, he's pissed off because he hasn't got what he sees as a proper peerage. Does he ever actually write about it?

I wish they would stop giving me Irish. calling me Irish. How do we know that he's... He finds it. It's an embarrassment for him. His whole life, Lord Wellesley, is about pomp and display. And he has this anxiety about not being quite grand enough. Because actually the Wellsis are not a premier, duke or family or anything.

Well, they're a little bit grand because he was born in what is now the Merrian Hotel in Dublin, which is one of the poshest hotels in Dublin. So that's not... Yeah. But he has this chip on his shoulder. Definitely. And the reason he ends up getting sacked by the East India Company is because he builds himself Kettlester in the middle of Calcutta without consulting what he regards to the cheesemakers of Leibn Hall Street, he calls them. And he doesn't want to be kind of answering to these merchants.

Yeah, the headquarters, in Levinhorstreet, the headquarters of the East India Company at the time. And he builds himself, you know, he chooses, oh, he looks through Vitruvis Britannicus, which is this sort of book full of architectural plans. He says, oh, I like that one. So he chooses Kettleston, which is the grandest house. Ketleston is Kersen's house, isn't it? Curzon is born in Kettleston, yeah. But Lord Wellesley models government house in Calcutta just out of a book of plans and chooses Ketleston.

So when Kersen, a century later... Who was a most ridiculous pompous man? Who was the most pompous man, most superior person. My name is Lord Nathaniel Kersen. I am a most superior person, yeah. And when he arrives in Kulner, it's like he's come home. Right, yeah. I recognise this.

This is weird. It looks like my house. Anyway, so Lord Wellesley, at the end of this, having been sacked, comes home and he's only given an Irish period. Again, like Clive, and he feels subbed and he goes into depression. Yeah, but let's get on to a man who you could spit teeth talking about, actually, and we probably will. John Nicholson. Now, born in Dublin, 1822, what kind of background? He's also Protestant.

He's very much of that Ulster Scottish planter background. Right. And many of these people are, actually, because we'll talk about, I don't know, the Lawrence brothers, come from these sort of ulster, they're planter stock. And his father dies young and he comes into the company as a very young man. But he's got a military genius that he really excels in India. I'll read a quote from the time. He had a stern sense of duty and learnt to expunge the word mercy from his vocabulary.

He was a man cast in a giant mould with a massive chest and powerful limbs and an expression ardent and commanding with a dash of roughness, features of stern beauty, a long black beard and a deep sonorous voice. There was something of immense strength, talent and resolution in his whole frame and manner, and the power of ruling men on high occasions, which no one could escape noticing, but to our eyes. He's a bit murdery. Well, he's a kind of imperial psychopath in the first order. A sadistic.

I mean, it's just utterly cruel. I mean, his way in was the Bengal infantry of the Eastern Company. So, I mean, he's come in at a very lowly level and worked his way up. Tell us what that would have been like. But he survived, you know, sort of dysentery and everything else and proved himself worthy and then come up the ranks. And then there's this life-changing moment when he's coming out of Afghanistan in the 1842 war, which is one of the great defeats of the British and India. And the British have gone in and sent this punitive expedition into Afghanistan to cut down the trees,

burn the fields, destroy Kabul and then retreat. on his way out, his brother, who is with him, is killed by the Afghans, and they cut off his genitalia and stick it in his mouth. And Nicholson, an hour later, comes around the bend, finds his brother there looking like this dead, mutilated. And it leaves him with this sort of psychopathic hatred, particularly of Afghans, but also of India. And Muslims in particular. Can I share a very odd story about Nicholson? So he does inspire a Hindu sect by accident, the Nicol Sainz S-E-Y-Ns, who thought of him as an incarnation of Vishnu. Now, that's quite a high honour.

He didn't really return the favour. I mean, do you know this story? I've heard it, but I mean, I find that extraordinary, utterly extraordinary. So this is what happens. So the Nicol-Sanes, and it's really a little bit weird about how they come to being, but they are inspired by Nicholson, the man. And they think, okay, there are incarnations of Vishnu, he must be one of them. He tolerates them.

He thinks it's fine as long as they shut up, and they never say anything in his presence. And there's a little quote about it. They prostrated themselves or began chanting. If they did begin chanting, they were taken away and whipped. Cat anite tails. God, I know. Three dozen lashes of the catanine tails. Yeah, crazy.

And then when he rises up the ranks and becomes a governor in the Northwest Frontier in the period before the outbreak of the great uprising of 1857, he personally decapitates a local Robert Chieftain, then keeps the man's head on his desk. I mean, this is psychopathic. This is a man-shoulding a jacket that does up at the back. Yeah, I mean, it really is. So then, when the 1857 uprising breaks out,

and the British regard this as sort of treachery, rather than seeing themselves as occupiers who are being thrown out through honest resistance, they are obsessed by the murder of their women and children, and they decide that there will be no mercy. And the person who is most murderous is Nicholson, and he, in the week of the outbreak of the mutiny and the news that women and children have been killed in Delhi and Meroot, says, I propose a bill for the flaying alive impalement or burning of the murderers of the British women and children of Delhi.

The idea of simply hanging the perpetrators of such an atrocity is maddening. I cannot, if I can help it, see fiends of that stamp let off with a simple hanging. As regards torturing the murders of women and children, if it be right, otherwise I do not think we should shrink from it. simply because it is a native custom. We are told in the Bible that stripes shall be meted out according to faults. And if hanging is sufficient punishment for such wretches, it is too severe for ordinary mutineers. If I had them in my power today, I would inflict the most excruciating torches I could think of on them with a perfectly easy conscience. Jane, what did people back at home make of Nicholson? Well, of course, he's regarded as a great imperial hero. Oh, not now,

but at the time today... His statues are up? Well, his statue is up in Lisbon. And I visited it recently, Anita, and I went into the library and I said, you know, there's no explanation of who John Nicholson is and what he did in India. And they said, no, no, you know, he was a good man of Lisburn. And you're saying, well, actually, you know, that's not the story. But I think he's still in certain loyalist slash unionist circles regarded as an imperial hero. And the fact that the statue of him that was outside the Kashmir gate at the Red Fort is now in his old school in Dungannon and still stands there. And so students walk past it all the time. In the Republic of Ireland, those sorts of statues obviously were all blown up or knocked down post-independence. Northern Ireland still has

them, including these of Nicholson. And this might sound like a really stupid question and forgive me if it is. But, you know, we talked about the Wales days and we talked about, you know, Angel and others who don't want to be seen as Irish because, you know, that's somehow a rung below, you But was Ireland proud of Nicholson? Like, you know, where they saying he's a good or son? Certain communities in Ireland would have been proud of Nicholson. Accurate at the time? Because today it's certain communities.

It's the Protestant. It's not the Catholics. In the 19th century? Not Catholics. Definitely not. Well, no, I shouldn't say definitely not because those who sign up for empire and some do. They go fight under his banner. Then, you know, that's he's regarded as a hero.

As the valid said. Well, absolutely. So, you know, this is a slipstream of betterment and preferment for whether you're Catholic or a Protestant if you're poor. So someone like Nicholson is the best Irishman if he's doing this. Can I also just say, Nicholson has grown up with stories about the 1641 rebellion and then of things like the Siege of Derry. Now, the 1641 rebellion is particularly important in this context because it was at that moment we see gratuitous violence committed by Catholic people against Protestant settlers. And that's obviously then retaliated. That's the narrative of concor and stuff.

So what you find is the events in Ireland in the 1640s are actually being compared to what's going on here. And that Nicholson would have been educated on a diet of that, including genital mutilation and extreme sexual violence. So Nicholson will have learnt about that growing up in Ireland. When the Afghans mutilate his brother. That's exactly what have happened in Ireland in the 1640s. He's seen it. He's got it in his muscle memory. And who would have done it to who?

Both sides? Both sides do it, but most accounts we have are of Catholics doing it against Protestants. So he would regard it as something that savages do to civilise people like him. Exactly. So I think that's also feeding into his response. A couple more Nicholson's stories before we leave him. There is this famous story that he's leading what's called the flying column, which is going to relieve Delhi. It is revolted against the into company, an expeditionary force is sitting on the ridge and they're being attacked every day. And Nicholson is going to relieve them and he marches down from the Punjab with all these

northwest frontier Pashtuns who have been promised the right to loot Delhi at the end of all this. And Nicholson is also in charge of the intelligence. And one night, the officers are sitting in the mess and their dinner doesn't come and the dinner doesn't come and there's another delay and the dinner doesn't come. And then Nicholson strides in and famously said, I'm sorry. gentlemen who have been keeping you waiting, I've been hanging your cooks. And the story is, according to Nicholson, that he'd been tipped off that the cooks were going to put aconite in the soup over the officers. What's aconite? Acconite's poison. Right. And that he'd fed it to a monkey.

The monkey had writhes and died almost immediately. So he then strung up all the cooks, regimental cooks, on a tree. And the officers then were taken to see Nicholson's designs. And this very much appeals to the spirit of the time. And the British love this. They see themselves as righteous. He's smart and clever and he's one step ahead, but also one step ahead of the murderous sort of natives. They were out to get them.

Even then you have other people. And this is another Irishman, Edward Amani, who comes across Nicholson. He's heard all these stories about this sort of superhuman hero. And Edward Imani, absolutely fascinating figure, because he's the only survivor of his family and his sisters are among those who are killed in Kanpur. So he comes to Delhi seeking revenge

and he's all set to sort of join in this bloodbath. And then he actually meets Nicholson and he says he shows himself off in reality to be a great brute. For instance, he thrashed a cookboy for getting in his way in the line of March. He has a regular man very muscular to perform this duty for him.

The boy complained, he was brought up again and died from the effects of the second thrashing. Even though that desire for revenge is there, he can recognise a nutter. He could recognise that even among, that he's crossed every sort of boundary. Killing a child. He's famously shot in the assault on Delhi.

Right. And his, even from his, I mean, for a writer, he's a fantastic character for a book. Because when he's shot down in Delhi and is dying slowly, I think he gets a bullet through the liver. So it's not a quick death. and he's sort of bleeding out in his stretcher.

And he hears that General Wilson, who's in charge of this alterty, is thinking of retreating. And he tells his palanquemperus, take me to Wilson's tent, and I'll shoot him if he orders the retreat. This is a man is in his last hours. And then famously, as he's dying,

he's got his pistol beside his tent. And if anyone talk too loudly, he just shoots through the tent at them. So he's kind of crazy, crazy imperial. It's also thanks to him that we know about Nicholson, sort of allowing great groups of men to have their hands tied behind their backs, taken into a sort of, you know, a secluded place and then seek soldiers told to go run at them with bayonets, cut their hands off, you know, to hurt them and cut them in as many ways as possible and leave them to die in agony. And he's appalled. And obviously, in modern history, we have parallels of places where also women and children have been attacked and terrible atrocities are to this day carried out as revenge. And people, like in Nicholson's time dehumanized the victim. Absolutely. And do you know something, William?

I visited his grave in the English graveyard just very close to where he fell at the Kashmir Gate. And what I was struck by was how a well-tended the grave is, but also then how it's surrounded by other Irish graves, which aren't so well-tended of butlers, Kerwans, O'Grady's, or Mahanis. And it really brings home the fact that in addition to these officers, mostly of all Alster background, you have these ordinary Irish Catholics who are there for very different reasons. Good point. Well made. So let's have a little bit of a palate cleanser. I'm hoping Lord Dufferin is not too particularly awful. I mean, I'm going to feel all right talking about him? He doesn't sloucher anyone. He doesn't, you know, stuff people into camera. He burns the palace of Mandalay in Burma.

Yeah, his forces do. So tell us who he is, where he's born. What's his origin story? So Lord Dufferin is basically of Ulster Scottish provenance as well from those planter family. He's born in Ireland and he's one of these boys that's educated, of course, in England. He's Anglo-Irish and he becomes a professional diplomat. So Dufferin has a whole series of really interesting diplomatic postings. He goes up into Iceland and writes these sort of travelogue of his voyages into the Antarctic. He's then sent to Syria, spends time in the Middle East, he's in Russia, he's in Istanbul. He becomes a great favourite of Queen Victoria.

What he really wants, though, is to be viceroy of India. And he finally gets it in the 1880s. Dufferin is the chief bottle washer in India. But what's so interesting to me? Because at this point, there are eight Indian provinces, and seven of the eight are ruled by men of Ireland with Dufferin as viceroy. And he's Dufferin of not just India, but also Burma. because, as William has said, he's the man who annexes northern Burma.

But when we think of the Vicerogel Lodge in Shimla, that actually was Dufferin's. And it's the first time you have electricity being used. And Lady Dufferin in her diary records the lights being switched on in Shimla and that sense of excitement. The other thing that I just find so interesting about Dufferin is he looks at India through the prism of Ireland. So everything he sees happening in India, whether it's famine, because he himself, has experienced and visited Skibberene during the Great Famine of 1857 or Home Rule. And we see then the rise of both Indian and Irish nationalism and deference sees everything through the lens of Ireland. Does he sort of fear that this is going to get out of control in India,

even though he knows it was controlled in Ireland? That's his fear. He is deeply concerned about that. He is really worried that India is going to go the way of Ireland and you're going to have a Home Rule movement that is going to cause as much trouble in India as it is causing back in Ireland. And Deference to me is kind of the start of something that then really does carry on, particularly in Punjab, which is my area of expertise, which is a relay race, an Irishman in the top civil service jobs, you know, sort of lieutenant governors, Louis Dane and then you have, you know, Michael O'Dwyer and others. And they do all come from this sort of mostly Protestant, but Irish Catholics as well who will. And we'll talk about that

more in the future. But it seems like a professional, they're not soldiers, They haven't come up through military might, but they are like Dufferin, you know, quite sort of bookish kind of sorts. But can I just say at this point, a third of people doing the exams for the East India Company are Irish. And at this point, we're also seeing Irish Catholics coming through those middle class Irish Catholics. My own university, Trinity, has actually developed a curriculum in engineering, another one in tropical medicine. The whole university is geared about training these men to go out. ready to go out. India. And at this point, Ireland would be 20% of the population of Britain and Ireland. So you're dealing with a disproportionately large number of Irish bureaucrats, doctors, engineers.

People think of Scotland. But actually, the Irish are there in very significant numbers. There's a wonderful quote by Alexander Fraser in about 1820 in the Delhi residency. And he says, there are about 20 of us around the table of an evening at the residency dinners. He said, at least half a Scottish, a couple of Englishmen, the rest Irish. And so it's the Scots and the Irish, particularly in the more remote provinces. The English tend to stay in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, where there are cricket clubs and this sort of thing. And it's often the Scots and the Irish, you take the jobs up country in the wilder areas. Yeah.

But the wonderful thing about Dufferin is that his archive is extant. So we have all of his papers in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. And then in his home in Clandyboy, we have. of a lot of the material culture, but also his library. He was a great friend of Kipling, a great friend of Tennyson. And all of this has been carefully kept throughout the ages. I think you're romanticising a wee bit, Jane, because at the same time, there are terrible atrocities in the conquest of Burma.

And famously, at the same time that the same time that Barasha Zaffa, the last Mughal emperor, gets sent to exile in Burma, in Rangoon, where he dies and is buried near the Schwedegong Pagoda. the last king of Burma and Mandalay is sent to India where he dies up in the uplands above Bombay. We're coming to an end, but I've got aside a little bit with Jane. It won't surprise you to know because that may well be the case. But I know for those who came afterwards all the way up beyond World War I,

they look back at that dufferin time mucking around with Kipling and having all these lovely sort of soirees. And it was a civilised time where you could be British and impose your, or your Englishness in India. And they look at Dufferin. I'm ruffling my... I'm ruffling my... No, no, no.

I'm talking about those who come in the civil service afterwards. When it does, you know, becomes sort of a Raj concern, they talk about Dufferin and go, that was a lovely time. We need to get back to that kind of time. The golden age...

The golden age. And running other people's countries. The golden age, for them, for the likes of Michael O'Dwire and others, Dufferin is the model. Everyone else needs to be. Oh, then I'm immediately worried. So you should be.

How do we end this? So what's next? We're going to have one of Anita's rare disagreements here. I think you're romanticising this period, but I think there's a lot of exploitation, looting and pillage and killing and death. That is 100% the case, but if you are on the, you know, looting and pillaging side, this is a golden age, man. This is great. The parties are great. They bring pianos over and have lawn sundowners. I mean, this is the start of all of that. Until the next time you meet is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye for me, William Durember.