UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 75 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2018 question on Subsidiary Alliance
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2018
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicAdvent of Europeans in India
- DifficultyMedium
- TypeDirect
Which one of the following statements does not apply to the system of Subsidiary Alliance introduced by Lord Wellesley?
Show answer
Answer: C. To secure a fixed income for the Company
Analysis
Securing a fixed income for the Company does not apply, so the answer is (c).
Under the subsidiary alliance, Indian rulers were not allowed independent armed forces. They were protected by the Company but had to pay for the subsidiary forces maintained for that protection, and if they failed to pay, part of their territory was taken as penalty. This confirms option (a), maintaining a large standing army at another's expense.
Option (d) also applies, since during this phase the British made almost all Indian States subordinate, obliging the princes to accept British paramountcy.
Option (b) applies too. Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 gave Wellesley a useful tool to soften London's resistance to expansion, though he never believed a French invasion of British India was likely. The policy let him control the internal affairs of Indian states without incurring direct imperial liability.
There was no component of fixed income under the system, which is why option (c) is the answer.
Source
B. L. Grover, Chapter 10 on Lord Wellesley; Shekhar Bandopadhyaya, Plassey to Partition, page 51.
How to crack it
Read the stem for its negative framing, since three options will be true and one false, the reverse of the usual task. The distinction that decides it is between payment for troops, which was the mechanism, and a fixed income, which was never guaranteed because payment defaults were settled in territory instead.