Battle of Plassey

The battle of Palashi (Plassey) was fought on 23 June 1757 between Nawab Sirajuddaula and the English East India Company, and is conventionally treated as the event that established the Company’s political ascendancy in Bengal. The military engagement was short; its significance is political, and the interpretation of how it was brought about is a matter on which the sources used here disagree.

Background

The East India Company had settled in Bengal from the early 1650s and was allowed to trade free of duty on an annual payment of three thousand taka, with early settlements at Hughli and Kasimbazar ¹. The Company purchased the zamindari rights over Kalikata, Govindapur and Sutanuti, established Fort William, and later purchased 38 more villages around Calcutta ¹. The farman of Emperor Farrukh Siyar in 1717 granted the Company duty-free trade, a mint at Calcutta and the right to purchase 38 villages; Nawab Murshid Quli Khan obstructed its implementation ¹.

Sirajuddaula was born in 1733, a grandson of Nawab Alivardi Khan; he was declared successor in May 1752, and Alivardi Khan died on 10 April 1756 at the age of eighty ². He acceded in April 1756, and his three main recorded grievances were the unauthorised fortifications of Fort William, illegal private trade and abuse of dastaks, and illegal shelter given to the nawab’s erring subjects ¹. His nomination caused the enmity of Ghaseti Begum, Raja Rajballabh, Mir Jafar Ali Khan and Shaukat Jang ².

The nawab captured the Kasimbazar factory and then attacked Calcutta and drove the English out; this attack led to the so-called Black Hole incident ². After reinforcements arrived from Madras, the Alinagar Treaty was signed, by which the nawab agreed to compensate the English for their losses at Calcutta ².

The Company’s preparation

The Company sent an expeditionary force under Robert Clive and Admiral Charles Watson from Fort St George in Madras; they recovered Calcutta in January 1757 and declared a manifesto of war ¹. The Fort George Council’s Instructions of 13 October 1756 recommended joining with any powers in Bengal dissatisfied with the nawab’s government or having pretensions to the nawabship ¹.

On 23 April 1757 the Select Committee in Calcutta adopted the coup d’état as its official policy; on 5 June 1757 Watts obtained the "red" and "white" agreements signed by Mir Jafar ¹. The retrieved entry also records that before Mir Jafar, Watts and Scrafton had pursued Yar Latif Khan as a candidate nawab, with the backing of diwan Ray Durlabh Ram and the Jagat Sheths, before shifting to Mir Jafar ¹. Clive himself wrote before sailing from Madras that Sirajuddaula was a weak prince and that most of his courtiers were dissatisfied ¹.

The battle

Clive set out for Palashi at dawn on 22 June 1757 and reached Palashi after midnight; the battle began about 8 a.m. on 23 June 1757 ¹. About two-thirds of the nawab’s army — under Mir Jafar, Yar Latif and Ray Durlabh Ram — stood by and watched, while the nawab’s troops under Mir Mardan, Mohanlal, Khwaja Abdul Hadi Khan and Naba Singh Hazari fought ¹. Around 3 p.m. a cannon ball struck and killed Mir Mardan; the battle was over by 5 p.m., after which Clive proceeded to Murshidabad ¹.

The retrieved entry states that the battle was, though a mere skirmish, magnified into a battle because its political consequences were far-reaching, and that it laid the foundation of British rule in Bengal ¹. It characterises the nawab’s defeat as political and not military ¹.

Aftermath

After his defeat Sirajuddaula fled; on his way to Patna he was caught by a partisan of Mir Jafar and killed by an Iranian guard at the instance of Miran, son of Mir Jafar, on the night preceding 3 July 1757 ². The Company installed Mir Jafar as the new nawab of Bengal ².

Could not verify

No numerical strengths of the opposing armies and no casualty figures appear in the retrieved text, and none are stated here. No Banglapedia entry titled "Mir Jafar" was located, so Mir Jafar’s role rests on the "Palashi, The Battle of" and "Sirajuddaula" entries. No standalone entry for the treaty terms of 1757 was retrieved; the agreements are described only generally as Watts’s red and white agreements of 5 June 1757.

Related articles

Mughal Bengal · Company Rule in Bengal · History of Bangladesh

Disputed points

The positions below are reported as their holders state them. This reference does not take a position on the disagreement, and none of the positions is presented as the default.

Whether the conspiracy was British-engineered or Indian-born. The Banglapedia entry, credited to K. M. Mohsin and Sushil Chaudhury, argues that without the active involvement of the British there would in all probability have been no Palashi revolution, and dismisses as hardly tenable any more the views that the conspiracy was Indian-born, that the British had no calculated plotting, or that the British conquest of Bengal was almost accidental ¹. The entry does not name the holders of the view it dismisses. This article records the entry’s position as the position of its authors and does not adopt it as the site’s own conclusion. [disputed]

Who initiated contact with Mir Jafar. The entry records a disagreement between two contemporary authorities. Orme, the Company’s official historian, states that Mir Jafar conveyed his proposal through the Armenian merchant Khwaja Petruse; Watts himself wrote that he applied to Mir Jafar, who entered his scheme with great willingness ¹. The two accounts are not reconciled by the retrieved pages. [disputed]

The characterisation of Sirajuddaula. The entry records that he was a little arrogant and perhaps also short-tempered, with limitations of lack of firm resolution, vacillation and bewilderment, while concluding that his name stands higher in the scale of honour than does the name of Clive ². These are the assessments of the entry and the historians it draws on, not neutral data, and this article reproduces them as attributed characterisations. [disputed]

The scale of the engagement. The entry calls Palashi a mere skirmish politically magnified into a battle and calls the nawab’s defeat political rather than military; accounts that treat it as a decisive military engagement take a different view. No troop counts or casualty figures appear in the retrieved text ¹. [disputed]

Rival claimants. The record that Yar Latif Khan was pursued as a candidate nawab before Mir Jafar indicates that the arrangement later described as the Mir Jafar conspiracy was not the only one in train ¹. [disputed]

Sources

2 sources cited. Tiers: T1 official or primary, T2 scholarly or curated, T3 media of record.

1. Palashi, The Battle of — Banglapedia, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (via Internet Archive Wayback Machine) (T2, accessed 2026-09-19). https://web.archive.org/web/2023id_/https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Palashi,_The_Battle_of
2. Sirajuddaula — Banglapedia, Asiatic Society of Bangladesh (via Internet Archive Wayback Machine) (T2, accessed 2026-09-19). https://web.archive.org/web/2023id_/https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Sirajuddaula

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Every factual claim above is attributed to a numbered source. Figures marked “as of” were retrieved on that date. Not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.