Background
Warren Hastings was born on December 6, 1732 in Churchill, United Kingdom to a poor father, Penystone Hastings, and a mother, Hester Hastings, who died soon after he was born.
1788
The trial of Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings with his wife Marian in their garden at Alipore, c. 1784-87
Hastings painted by Johann Zoffany, 1783-1784
Hastings in the late 18th century, as painted by Lemuel Francis Abbott
His simple memorial in Daylesford churchyard
Warren Hastings was born on December 6, 1732 in Churchill, United Kingdom to a poor father, Penystone Hastings, and a mother, Hester Hastings, who died soon after he was born.
Warren Hastings attended Westminster School, where he coincided with the future Prime Ministers Lord Shelburne and the Duke of Portland and with the poet William Cowper.
He joined the British East India Company in 1750 as a clerk and sailed out to India, reaching Calcutta in August 1750. There he built up a reputation for diligence and spent his free time learning about India and mastering Urdu and Persian. His work won him promotion in 1752 when he was sent to Kasimbazar, a major trading post in Bengal, where he worked for William Watts. While there he gained further experience in the politics of East India.
In 1750 British contact with India was still the monopoly of the East India Company, which was engaged in buying and selling goods at small settlements in Indian ports. As one of the company’s servants, for the early part of his career Hastings was employed in the company’s commercial business. But after 1756 the outlook for both the company and its servants was radically altered. Hastings served as the company’s representative at the court of the nawabs of Bengal from 1758 to 1761 and then on the company’s Council, the controlling body for its affairs in Bengal, from 1761 to 1764. His career was cut short, however, by bitter disputes within the Council. Finding himself in a minority, Hastings resigned from the company’s service and returned to England in 1765.
Short of money, Hastings sought service in India again. In 1769 he was appointed second in Council in Madras. In what was to be the most constructive period of his administration, from 1772 to 1774, Hastings detached the machinery of the central government from the nawab’s court and brought it to the British settlement in Calcutta under direct British control, remodeled the administration of justice throughout Bengal, and began a series of experiments aimed at bringing the collection of taxation under effective supervision.
Hastings’s period of undisputed power in Bengal came to an end in 1774 with changes in the company’s government. He acquired the new title of governor-general and new responsibilities for supervising other British settlements in India. The new councilors immediately quarreled with Hastings. The quarrel between the new councilors and Hastings paralyzed the government of Bengal and produced a number of squalid episodes in which the newcomers, to discredit Hastings at home, encouraged Indians to bring accusations of malpractices against him, while his friends used various methods to deter such accusations.
In 1784, after ten years of service, during which he helped extend and regularise the nascent Raj created by Clive of India, Hastings resigned.Upon his return to England he was impeached in the House of Commons for crimes and misdemeanors during his time in India, especially for the alleged judicial killing of Maharaja Nandakumar. The house sat for a total of 148 days over a period of seven years during the investigation. The investigation was pursued at great cost to Hastings personally, and he complained constantly that the cost of defending himself from the prosecution was bankrupting him.The House of Lords finally made its decision on 24 April 1795, acquitting him on all charges. The Company subsequently compensated him with 4,000 Pounds Sterling annually.
In 1788 he acquired the estate at Daylesford, Gloucestershire, including the site of the medieval seat of the Hastings family. He also rebuilt the Norman church in 1816, where he was buried two years later.
In 1801 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society