Robert Clive

Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. He is credited along with Warren Hastings for laying the foundation of the British Empire in India. He began as a writer for the East India Company (EIC) who established the military and political supremacy of the EIC by securing a decisive victory in Bengal and looting its treasury of an estimated £2.325 billion in modern terms. In return for supporting the Nawab of Bengal Mir Jafar on the throne, Clive was granted a jaghire of £30,000 per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax farming concession, when he left India he had a fortune of £180,000 which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company. Blocking impending French mastery of India, and eventual British expulsion from the continent, Clive improvised a military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. Hired by the EIC to return a second time to India, Clive conspired to secure the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England, he used his treasure from India to secure an Irish barony from the then Whig PM, Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle, and a seat for himself in Parliament, via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whigs in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).