Armenians, Clive and the Battle of Plassey

23 June, 2018

The Battle of Plassey was fought on June 23, 1757, exactly 261 years ago. Not many people know that Robert Clive’s victory was eased by support from one very unlikely quarter: the Armenians, a trading community that had fled persecution in Persia and settled in India in large numbers during the Mughal era.

On June 23, 1757, the Battle of Plassey led to the unlikely conquest of Bengal by Robert Clive’s army. George Bruce Malleson, in The Decisive Battles of India (1883), described Plassey as the most unheroic English victory. It was “Plassey which necessitated,” wrote Malleson, “the conquest and colonisation of the Cape of Good Hope, of the Mauritius, the protectorship over Egypt; Plassey which gave to the sons of her middle-classes the finest field for the development of their talent and industry the world has ever known… the conviction of which underlies the thought of every true Englishman.” Read more:

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