235\. The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)
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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. We are going 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.

breakfast, lunch and dinner, in fact. Yes, I know. All of them. Let's not be discriminatory here. It was quite pervasive of all. 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, food,

property and income. And in fact, that's what they had to start the opium trade, wasn't it? And fight the opium wars. But that is another story. 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 is 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 Alexandra 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 schtick

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Fare 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 quay I sailed away and landed here. But yesterday, me shoes and breeches and shirts are now in all that's in my kit. I've dropped in to tell you now the sights 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? 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 Nen Asab, 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, welcome to Empire with me Anita Arnon. And me, William Durham-Port. I just got very excited to read this. Our guest again is Professor Jane Olmire, 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 emigres having to flee after the famine, landing up in America. - Oh, they're peeing in the poods 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 that 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 Patmos' Emigre in America, New York in particular and Philadelphia. And the reference to, and I just thought, my God, 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 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 idea

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 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 a peep.

We don't normally do that at all. Not a peep. I was counting. I was like, when's she going to get up 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 had 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...

reeling from the massacres they see it of their innocent women and children on the 11th of May 1857 and then in Kanpur and so on

It is Nicholson who really leads the counterattack and does so with the most astonishing violence. Unleashes what they then term the devil's wind, which reaps so many lives. So Nicholson we're going to talk about. And who's the third person you picked out for us? 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 a shrine to Lord Dufferin. And when I had a show on East India Company paintings in London, a lot of it was borrowed from Lindy Dufferin, who's our mutual friend. Are you dedicated to your book?

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. Yes. 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

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 Dungannon. A more controversial figure. Yeah. And Lisburn, without any context, I visited the one in Lisburn 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 Indianise, and not that frankly anyone remembers this story here really anymore, but

Certainly in terms of Indian history, this is slightly like putting up a statue of Goebbels or Himmler or something. This is a guy who's really genuinely responsible for 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 Lion of the Punjab.

Yeah, yeah. You know, the hero of Delhi. So a huge- There's a autobiography 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, though, start with what the world is like and why these men are suddenly leaving Ireland and

Because they had enough on their plates. You know, they had Ulster. They were setting down their routes. 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 wreaked 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 Acts 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 Acts. All that lovely Irish butter and all this lovely Irish bacon. Salt beef, salt pork. Yeah.

Ireland feeds the Caribbean, but it's also very important for the ships going to Asia because they'll often- They're not exactly on the way. 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 India 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 Cromwell off Ainger goes spends brief time in Goa then straight up to Surat and

where he rises through the ranks very quickly at the English factory in Surat. We should just explain what the factory is. The factory is not a kind of a smokestack in the Victorian sense. Manufacturing 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 them a huge favour because they pivot to something that's going to matter to angel. So the earliest Indian 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 called kalamkari that are painted hangings that you might find in a Venetian palace hanging from a four-post bed, down to very, very simple things like piece cotton goods, which just means long, long rolls of cotton, which is the cheapest and the best in the world. But it's 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 Surat 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 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 poster beds. Well, 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...

for the company. He answers to who and how much autonomy does he have to do whatever he wants. Well, by 1669, he's the president of the factory in Surat, 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 Braganza, 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-Y-E. And there's a big debate in Whitehall about exactly where Bombay is. And they assume it must be somewhere in South America. Brazil. Brazil. Actually, 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 and

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. We know what it looks like. It's one of these star-shaped, Tracy Tallien, 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 a

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 affair. 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 Machalipatnam, Mazulipatam. 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 Anger 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 colonize Bombay the way his grandparents have colonized Ireland. So in other words, we see this language of colonization, plantation in his correspondence. And he sets up the legal system in Bombay. Including, if I'm not wrong, witch trials. Yes.

I'm not sure about that. You keep on saying that. I must check that. 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 them down from Surat. It's all a

at 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 business person. 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. Absolutely.

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. 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 laboratories repeating. 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 a

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 bandarines and moors under two standards march before him.

He goes sometimes in his coat, drawn by large white oxen, sometimes on horseback, and at other times palanquins, carried by colours of Muslim and 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 parasol. Back in Ireland, they'd say he's got notions. He's got notions. Listen to this.

that's exactly what I meant by sort of being a dandy. I mean, he's 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. Right. And of course, Ainger writes back saying, oh, I've only ever done what you told me to do. Right. So they do fall out. That's all. And they're about to fire him. And

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 Mughal gardens where they have 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 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 Surat exactly at this time called John Vanbrugh. And he then goes back shortly afterwards and designs the domes of Castle Howard. Oh, how interesting. But the other thing that I find so fascinating, I'm not too sure about the dancing girls in Anger. He's a very zealous, committed Protestant. I've 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 Parsi's Aroastrian tracts, which he has copied and then sent back to the British Library and to Edward Hyde, who's actually the librarian at the Bodleian. But the other thing he does, he brings a printing press to Bombay to print Brahminy texts. Oh, wow.

Okay, that's interesting. So he's extraordinarily 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. Okay, that's not there. He has a deep respect for the people around him. That's interesting. 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 companies says, for God's sake, don't send any more tigers back because they eat everything. It's very important to remember that at this point in the 1640s and 1650s,

the English are not in a position to be that snooty about the Mughals. The Mughals have got the money. The Mughals have got the money. The Mughals have got the high culture. This is Thomas Rowe worrying about what he's going to give this. And while there is unease 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 Ainger because he prints his own coinage and he has a lot of dealings with Shivaji. He actually sends one of his men... So Shivaji being the Grand Maratha, the Maratha leader who actually harries and pushes back against the Mughals. And indeed burns Surat at this time. And Ainger is the one who leads the attacks against...

him in 1670. Shivaji's coronation, one of Ainger's men is there. Up on Rajgir, up on the hill. 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 the 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 spirits of Maharashtra and the local gods. And he brings Brahmins from Varanasi who, in a sense, sort of talk to Lord Shiva, Lord Vishnu and the great cosmic gods. And this is today not unrecognizable.

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 coinage.

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? 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 bred in Ireland. Do they look

down on him and more they're jealous of him but you do get other examples of irish men who do well in the east india 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 paraphrasing barely better than the natives he's irish these kind of descriptions of irish people working no you do yeah you do but anger 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 new suburb, Dublin's first suburb, which is off Dame Street. It's called Angers Street, but

after Gerald Ainger. It's the poshest suburb in Dublin. And all of that is built on the back of Indian money that's remitted. Basically, Ainger is Ireland's first nabob. 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

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. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. In a society that glorifies independence, it's easy to forget that we're all better when we have a support system behind us.

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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 squadrons. Looking ahead by the 1880s, this is the barrack room ballads that Kipling is writing. Why are they joining up in

such great numbers. Cannon 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 peasants. So you do have these, you know, these people are not signed up to empire. They need the king's shilling. What kind of condition are they living in when they get to India? I mean, 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 taken care of. They're part of that imperial machine. So as well as the squaddies 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 Tipu Sultan and drags Hyderabad into the English system. And then his younger brother, who is Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. For whom his Irishness is an embarrassment. For both of them, I think. No, completely. So tell us about that. That's interesting. Why? Why?

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 gets given an Irish period. Then Clive,

gets his own back by changing the name of his Irish estate to Plassey and calling himself Clive of Plassey and it's not actually referring to Plassey as in the battlefield it's Plassey 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 Welsh days a bit more because I'm really fascinated by them would they

have had Irish accents? How identifiably, or if you were a high Irish Protestant and you want to be English, would you sort of rinse the Irish off you? 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 Eton.

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, 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 things and calling me Irish. I mean, how

we know that he's he finds it's an embarrassment for him his whole life lord wellesley is is about pomp and display and and he has this anxiety about not being quite grand enough because actually the wellesley's are not a premier duke or family or anything they are well they're a little bit grand because he was born in what is now the marion hotel in dublin which is one of the poshest hotels in dublin so let's not you know yeah but

he has this chip on his shoulder and definitely and the reason he ends up getting sacked by the east india company is because he builds himself kettleston in the middle of calcutta without consulting what he regards the cheesemakers of leaden hall street he calls them uh and he doesn't want to be kind of answering to these merchants yeah the headquarters in case anyone's wearing leaden hall street the headquarters of the east india company and he builds himself you know he chooses oh he looks through the true of his britannicus which is this sort of uh

book full of architectural plans. He says, oh, I like that one. So he chooses Kedleston, which is the grandest house. Kedleston is Curzon's house, isn't it? Curzon is born in Kedleston. But Lord Wellesley models government house in Calcutta just out of a book of plans and chooses Kedleston. So when Curzon

a century later. Who was a most ridiculous pompous man. Who was the most pompous man, most superior person. My name is Lord Nathaniel Kirsten, I am a most superior person. And when he arrives in Cullis, it's like he's come home. I recognise this, this is weird. This 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 peerage, again, like Clive, and he feels stubbed 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.

background. So, 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 he, you know, 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 learned 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, just reveling in the cruelty. I mean, his way in was the Bengal infantry of the East Indian 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 in 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. And 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 Indians. And Muslims in particular. Can I share a very odd story about Nicholson? So he does inspire a Hindu sect by accident, the Nikal Sains, 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 Nicolseans, and it's really a little bit weird about how they come to being, but they are inspired by Nicolson, 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 o' nine tails. Good God. I know. Three dozen lashes of the cat o' nine tails. Yeah. 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 robber chieftain, then keeps the man's head on his desk. I mean, this is psychopathic. This is a man in a jacket that does up at the back. 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 were 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 Meerut,

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 tortures 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. His statues are up. Well, his statue is up in Lisburn 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, he was a good man of Lisburn. And you're saying, well, actually, 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. 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 we talked about the Welslies and we talked about Ainger and others who don't want to be seen as Irish because that's somehow a rung below. But

But was Ireland proud of Nicholson? Like, you know, were they saying he's a good old son? Certain communities in Ireland would have been proud of Nicholson. Accurate at the time, because today it's certain communities, it's the Protestants, 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. Yeah, they go and fight under his name.

You know, then that's, he's regarded as a hero. So, yes. That's the valid sense. Well, absolutely. We fought in Delhi. So, you know, this is a slipstream of betterment and preferment for whether you're a 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 Concord and stuff, yeah. So what we 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 learned 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

Exactly.

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 East India 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've been promised the right to loot Delhi at the end of all this. And Nicholson is also in charge of the intelligence department.

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, to 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 of the officers. What's aconite? Aconite's poison.

Right. And that he'd fed it to a monkey. The monkey had writhed 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 who are out to get them. Even then, you have other people. And this is another Irishman, Edward Armani, who comes across Nicholson. He's heard all these stories about this sort of superhuman hero.

And Ebud Imani, absolutely fascinating figure because he's the only survivor of his family and his sisters are among those who were 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 can recognise that even among, that he's crossed every sort of boundary. Killing a child. He's famously shot in.

in the assault on Delhi. 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 order deli, is thinking of retreating. And he tells his palaquin parents, take me to Wilson's tent and I'll shoot him if he orders a retreat. This is a man who's in his last hours. And then famously, as he's dying, he's got his pistol beside his tent. And if anyone talked too loudly, just shoot through the tent at them.

So he's a 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 Sikh soldiers told to go run at them with bayonets, cut their hands off, you know, hurt them and cut them in as many ways as possible and leave them to die in agony. And he's appalled. He's appalled by that. 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, carowinds, o'gradies, o'mahonees. And it really brings home the fact that in addition to these officers, mostly of Ulster 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, am I going to feel all right talking about him? He doesn't slaughter anyone. He doesn't stuff people into camels. He burns the palace of Mandalay in Burma. 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 families. He's born in Ireland and

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 that

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 viceregal 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 Skibbereen during the Great Famine of 1857, or Home Rule. And we see then the rise of both Indian...

and Irish nationalism and Dufferin 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 Dufferin 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 of Irishmen in the top civil service jobs you know sort of lieutenant governors you have 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 who are taking over but can I just say at this point a third of people doing the exams for the East India Company are

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 to 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 are Scottish, a couple of Englishmen, the rest Irish. LAUGHTER

And so it's the Scots and the Irish, and 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 who take the jobs upcountry 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 Klandyboi, we have 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 romanticizing him 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 Barsha Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, gets sent to exile.

in Burma, in Rangoon, where he dies and is buried near the Shwedagon 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'm going to side 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 soirees. And it was a civilized time where you could be British and impose all your Englishness

in India and they look at Dufferin I'm ruffling my I'm ruffling my 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 that was a lovely time we need to get back to that time to be an imperialist and running and running other people's countries the golden age for them for the likes of Michael O'Dwyer and others Dufferin is the model everyone else needs to emulate 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 and I's rare disagreements here. I think you're romanticising this period, but I think there's a lot of exploitation, looting and pillaging, 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. We can agree on that. The parties are great. They bring pianos over and have lawn sundowners. I mean, this is the start of all of that. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Drew.

Hi there, I'm Al Murray, co-host of We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the world's premier Second World War history podcast from Goldhanger. And I'm James Holland, best-selling World War II historian, and together we tell the best stories from the war. We have ways of making you talk.

This time, we're doing a deep dive into the last major attack by the Nazis on the West, the Battle of the Bulge. And what's so fascinating about this story is we've been able to show how quite a lot of the popular history about this battle is kind of the wrong way round, isn't it, Jim? The whole thing is a disaster from the start. Even Hitler's plans for the attack are insane and divorced from reality.

Well, you're so right. But what we can do is celebrate this as an American success story for the ages. From their generals at the top to the GIs on the front line, full of gumption and grit, the bold should be remembered as a great victory for the USA. And if this sounds good to you, we've got a short taste for you here. Search We Have Ways wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks.

Yeah. Anyway, so who is Obersturmbannfuhrer Joachim Peiper? But I see his jaunty hat and I just think... And his SS skull and crossbones. Well, I see his reputation and I think, you know, you might be a handsome devil, but the emphasis is on the devil bit rather than the handsome. Anyway.

Be that as may, he's 29 years old and he's got a very interesting career, really, because he comes from a pretty right-wing family, let's face it. He's joined the SS at a pretty early stage. He's very international socialism. He's also been Himmler's adjutant. He took a little bit of time off in the summer of 1940 to go and fight with the 1st Waffen-SS Panzer Division.

Yeah. Did pretty well. Went back to being Himmler's adjutant. Then went off and commanded troops in the Eastern Front. Rose up to be a pretty young regimental commander. I mean, there's not many people that age. Or an Obersturmbannfuhrer, which is sort of colonel. Yes, I... You see, what must it have been like if you're in...

If Himmler's adjutant turns up and he's been posted to you as an officer, do you think, well, he only got that job because of his connections? For Piper, it must have been always, he's always having to prove himself, surely, because he has turned up. He's not worked his way through the ranks of the Waffen-SS. He's dolloped in, having come from head office, as it were.

It must be a peculiar position to be in, right? He's got lots to prove, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, and he's from a sort of middle-class background as well. Yeah. But he's got an older brother who's had mental illness and attempted suicide and never really recovers and actually has died of TB eventually in 1942. He's got a younger brother called Horne.

He's also joined the SS and Toten Kopf Verbande and died in a never really properly explained accident in Poland in 1941. Piper gains a sort of growing reputation on the Eastern Front for being kind of very inspiring, fearless, you know, obviously courageous. You know, all the guys love him, all that kind of stuff. But he's also orders the entire the destruction of entire village of Krasnaya Polyana in a kind of revenge killing by Russian partisans.

Yeah. And his unit becomes known as the Blowtorch Battalion because of his penchant for touching Russian villages. So he's got all the gongs. He's got Iron Cross, Second Class, First Class, Cross of Gold, Knight's Cross. Did very well at Kursk. Briefly in Northern Italy, actually. Then in Ukraine. Then in Normandy, he suffers a nervous breakdown. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's relieved of his command on the 2nd of August. And he's hospitalized from September to October. So he's not in command during Operation Lutich. And then he rejoins 1st SS Panther Regiment as its commander again in October 1944. It's really, really odd. I mean... But isn't that interesting, though? Because if you're a Lancer, if you're an ordinary soldier, you're not allowed to have a nervous breakdown. You don't get hospitalized. You don't get time off.

How you could interpret this is this is a sort of Nazi princeling, isn't he? He's him as adjutant. He's demonstrated the necessary Nazi zeal on the Eastern Front and all this sort of stuff. It comes to Normandy where they're losing. Why else would he have a nervous breakdown? He's shown all the zeal and application in the Nazi manner up to this point, and they're losing, you know. And because he's a knob, you know, because he's well connected, he gets to be hospitalized if he has a nervous breakdown. He isn't told like an ordinary German soldier, there's no such thing as combat fatigue, mate.

go back to work. Yes, and it's a nervous breakdown, not combat fatigue. Well, yes, of course. But, you know, what's the difference? One SS soldier said of him, Piper was the most dynamic man I ever met. He just got things done. Yeah. You get this image I have of him of having this kind of sort of

slightly manic energy, kind of. He's virulently National Socialist. He's got this great reputation. He's damned if anyone's going to tarnish it. You know, he's a driver, you know, all those things. He's trying to make the will triumph, isn't he? He's working towards the Fuhrer. He's imbued with, he knows what's expected of him, extreme violence and cruelty and pushing his men on. I mean, he's sort of, he's the Fuhrer Princip writ large, isn't he? As an SS officer. Yeah. Yeah.

which is why cruelty and extreme violence are bundled in to wherever he goes, basically.