[8] 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.

This made British trading posts throughout Bengal increasingly insecure, as Siraj ud-Daulah was known to harbour anti-European views and to be likely to launch an attack once he took power.

For a while, Hastings remained in Murshidabad and was even used by the Nawab as an intermediary; but, fearing for his life, he escaped to the island of Fulta, where a number of refugees from Calcutta had taken shelter.

His role in the city was ostensibly that of an ambassador but as Bengal came increasingly under the dominance of the East India Company he was often given the task of issuing orders to the new Nawab on behalf of Clive and the Calcutta authorities.

Persons travelling under the unauthorised protection of the British flag engaged in widespread fraud and illegal trading, knowing that local customs officials would be cowed into not interfering with them.

Once on the throne Qasim proved increasingly independent in his actions, and he rebuilt Bengal's army by hiring European instructors and mercenaries who greatly improved the standard of his forces.

[18] He gradually felt more confident, and in 1764, when a dispute broke out in the settlement of Patna, he captured its British garrison and threatened to execute them if the East India Company responded militarily.

The Treaty of Allahabad (1765) gave the East India Company the right to collect taxes in Bengal on behalf of the Mughal emperor.

Eventually, an appeal to Sulivan's rival Robert Clive secured Hastings the position of deputy ruler at the city of Madras.

During his time at Madras, Hastings initiated reforms of trading practices which cut out the use of middlemen and benefited both the Company and the Indian labourers, but otherwise the period was relatively uneventful for him.

[21] By this stage, Hastings shared Clive's view that the three major British presidencies (settlements) – Madras, Bombay and Calcutta – should be brought under single rule rather than being governed separately as they currently were.

In Britain, moves were underway to reform the divided system of government and establish single rule across all of British-controlled regions in India with its capital in Kolkata (Calcutta).

He created an efficient postal service, backed a proper cartographical survey of India by James Rennell and built a series of public granaries, including the great Gola at Patna, to make sure the famine of 1770-71 was never repeated ...

This short campaign, while enlarging the Company's main ally in northern India, was the first of several wars which harmed Hastings's reputation.

[27][28][29] In 1773, Hastings responded to an appeal for help from the Raja of the princely state of Cooch Behar to the north of Bengal, whose territory had been invaded by Zhidar, the Druk Desi of Bhutan the previous year.

His opponent Jigme Senge, the regent for the seven-year-old Shabdrung (the Bhutanese equivalent of the Dalai Lama), had supported popular discontent.

Zhidar was unpopular for his corvee tax (he sought unreasonably to rebuild a major dzong in one year), as well as for his overtures to the Manchu emperors, who threatened Bhutanese independence.

Meanwhile, the Sixth Panchen Lama, who had imprisoned Zhidar, interceded on behalf of the Bhutanese with a letter to Hastings, imploring him to cease hostilities in return for friendship.

Hastings saw the opportunity to establish relations with both the Tibetans and the Bhutanese and wrote a letter to the Panchen Lama proposing "a general treaty of amity and commerce between Tibet and Bengal".

Hastings proposed sending a mission to Tibet with a message of congratulation, designed to strengthen amicable relations established by Bogle on his earlier visit.

[32] Turner returned to the Governor-General's camp at Patna in 1784 where he reported he had been unable to visit the Tibetan capital at Lhasa, but received a promise that merchants sent there from India would be encouraged.

They were transported to Hasting's menagerie in Calcutta and on the Governor-General's return to England, the yaks went too, although only the male survived the difficult sea voyage.

Noted artist George Stubbs subsequently painted the animal's portrait as The Yak of Tartary and in 1854 it went on to appear, albeit stuffed, at The Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in London.

At first thought unlikely to succeed,[35] the prosecution was managed by MPs including Edmund Burke, encouraged by Sir Philip Francis, whom Hastings had wounded during a duel in India,[22] Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

[41] In the last quarter of the 18th century, many senior administrators realised that to govern Indian society it was essential to learn its various religious, social, and legal customs and precedents.

The importance of such knowledge to the colonial government was in Hastings' mind when he remarked in 1784, in his introduction to the English translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Wilkins:[51] Every accumulation of knowledge and especially such as is obtained by social communication with people over whom we exercise dominion founded on the right of conquest, is useful to the state... it attracts and conciliates distant affections; it lessens the weight of the chain by which the natives are held in subjection; and it imprints on the hearts of our countrymen the sense of obligation and benevolence.... Every instance which brings their real character... home to observation will impress us with a more generous sense of feeling for their natural rights, and teach us to estimate them by the measure of our own.

But such instances can only be obtained in their writings: and these will survive when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased to exist, and when the sources which once yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrance.

This allowed Brahmin advisors to mould the law, as no Briton thoroughly understood Sanskrit until Sir William Jones, and even then, a literal translation was of little use: it needed to be elucidated by religious commentators well versed in the lore and its application.

[56] "Warren Hastings and His Bull", a short story by the Indian writer Uday Prakash, was adapted for stage under the same title by the director Arvind Gaur.

[58] Some scholars have seen parallels between Hastings and Colonel Brandon in Austen's Sense and Sensibility: both left for India at age 17; both may have had illegitimate daughters named Eliza; both participated in a duel.