Why American Revolutionaries Admired The Rebels of Mysore - Aeon Essays

Why American revolutionaries admired the rebels of Mysore ...
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Revolutionary heroes
If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck,
George Washington might be known as the
Haider Ali of North America
Blake Smith
If the sultan of Mysore had had a bit more luck, George Washington
might be known as the Haider Ali of North America. As the ruler of
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Mysore, a kingdom in what is now southwestern India, Haider

fought a series of wars with Great Britain in the latter half of the
18th century, at the onset of the Age of Revolution. While Haider
was ghting his last battles against the British, Washington was
leading the forces of the nascent United States from the harsh
winter at Valley Forge to the nal victory at Yorktown.
The circumstances of Haiders childhood did not seem to mark the
young man out for greatness. Born around 1720, Haider soon lost
his father, a mercenary ocer who died on campaign. Haider
followed his fathers path, becoming an ocer for the Wodeyar
dynasty that ruled Mysore. After many years of service, he grew
indispensable to the ruling family, sidelining it entirely by the
1760s. It was a dangerous time to come to power in South Asia. The
British East India Company was expanding its power throughout
the Subcontinent, at the expense of rulers from Bengal in the east to
Haiders neighbours in the south. Allied with France, however,
Haider held o the British advance for another two decades, dying
in 1782, just a year before the US triumphed in its own rebellion
against Britain.
Haider and Washington never communicated directly with one
another, but they fought against a common enemy, and shared a
common ally. Like the Mysoreans, the American rebels were
members of a global coalition funded by the French government,
which saw both uprisings as a chance to humble Britain. In the
Seven Years War (1756-1763), Britain had ended nearly a century
of conict with its imperial rival in North America by seizing
Frances vast territories in Canada and the Mississippi River Valley.
Some French observers tried to minimise the extent of the defeat.
Voltaire dismissed loss of North America as a few acres of snow.
Yet French policymakers were well aware that Britain had greatly
increased its power. Too weak to confront it again on its own, the
French government wove a network of alliances, playing on
resentments against Britains growing control of global trade and
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rapidly expanding empire. Beginning in the mid-1770s, it sent

money and military advisors to both Mysore and the US, aiming to
avenge its defeat by stoking colonial rebellions against Britain.
The alliance with France proved critical to the survival of the
edgling US. The memory of French aid, and particularly of the
dashing Marquis de Lafayettes assistance to Washington, has for
more than two centuries served as a symbolic origins story of close
Franco-American relations. During the Revolutionary War, however,
Americans saw themselves not just as allies of France, but as part of
a coalition that included Mysore.
Even after the US made peace with Britain in 1783, the American
fascination with Haider and his son and successor, Tipu Sultan
(1750-1799) lived on. Mysores rulers became familiar references in
American newspapers, poems and everyday conversation. Yet,
within a generation, Americans lost their sense of solidarity with the
Indian Subcontinent. Mysore remained under British control,
written out of the story of the American Revolution. The US turned
its attention to the interior of North America, and to becoming an
imperial power in its own right.
E ven before the Revolutionary War, American interest in South Asia
was lively. In fact, Americans rebellion against Britain in part grew
out of the connections between America and the Subcontinent.
Before the 1770s, Americans were cheerleaders, rather than critics,
of British imperialism. The Philadelphia-born poet Nathaniel Evans
(1742-1767) commemorated the victory of the East India Company
at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which Robert Clive had seized
control of Bengal:
The world to British valour yields
How has bold Clive, with martial toil
Oer India born his conquring lance?
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Sharing in Britains glory in this way seemed natural to Americans,

who were proud to be part of the British Empire. The East India
Companys growing inuence in Bengal enabled it to export large
quantities of South Asian goods, particularly textiles, to American
ports such as Boston and Charleston. Colonial elites displayed them
in their homes with pride, signs that they were part of a global
British empire growing rich from the spoils of the Subcontinent.
While Americans were free to purchase these imperial commodities,
they were not free to join British merchants in South Asia. Britains
colonies served to provide the motherland with raw materials. They
were not supposed to have direct economic relations with each
other, but rather to send their exports to the great trading centre of
London. New England merchants in particular resented being
pushed to the side of the mercantile system. Following military
victories by the East India Company in South Asia, the companys
economic power within the British Empire, including North
America, grew even greater, and so too did New England
merchants resentment.
In 1773, the British government issued the Tea Act, a bill in eect
subsidising the East India Company so it could sell tea to North
America more cheaply than any other company. The Tea Act was
meant to save the Companys struggling nances, which were
sinking under the cost of its expensive wars. By allowing the
Company to sell its tea without paying the heavy taxes normally due
on tea exports to the colonies, British ocials thought they could
help the Company while also keeping Americans happy. Because of
the taxes levied on it, tea was expensive in the colonies, and
tea-loving New Englanders often resorted to buying theirs on the
black market. If the Company no longer had to pay these taxes, it
could pass the savings on to thirsty American consumers.
Seeing themselves as victims of Britains
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imperial oppression, Americans sympathised

with the empires other victims: South Asians
The colonists, however, did not respond as the British expected. By
granting the East India Company an exemption from the tax,
Parliament had conrmed that the tax on tea, passed without
Americans consent, was there to stay for all other merchants. And
the smugglers that the British government hoped to cut out of the
tea business were inuential members of New England society. On
16 December 1773, economic self-interest combined with
principled opposition to taxation inspired a group of protestors to
attack a Company shipment of tea, dumping its contents into the
ocean.
The Boston Tea Party marked Americans growing opposition to
British rule, and the beginning of a new perspective on South Asia.
The British government retaliated by stripping Massachusetts of its
right to self-government. Outraged colonists met in 1774 to form
the First Continental Congress. The following year, armed conict
between colonial militias and British soldiers broke out at
Lexington and Concord, and the American Revolution was
underway. Americans started to see themselves as victims of
Britains imperial oppression. They were soon sympathising with
the empires other victims, particularly South Asians.
The American revolt against Britain quickly took on international
dimensions. In 1776, the Continental Congress declared
independence, transforming the former British colonies into the
United States of America. American agents were soon busy seeking
international recognition and goodwill from countries including
Morocco, the Netherlands and, most importantly, France, Britains
imperial rival. Within a year, the French government began sending
aid to the edgling US. A year later, in 1778, France and the US
ocially became allies.
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The Continental Congress recognised that it was not Frances only

partner against Britain, and looked for ways to cooperate with
Mysore, Frances South Asian ally. In 1777, on the advice of Thomas
Conway, an Irish-born French military advisor, the American
patriots contemplated sending troops to join the French military
expedition to the Subcontinent. The provisional American
government lacked the resources for such a scheme, so instead it
encouraged American privateers to attack the East India Companys
shipping to weaken Britains economic grasp on South Asia.
Dierent state governments also made friendly gestures toward
Mysore. In 1781, the Pennsylvania legislature commissioned a
warship named the Hyder-Ally, an eccentrically spelled tribute to the
Sultan of Mysore. This ship sailed the North Atlantic only, far from
the Indian Ocean. Its existence, however, demonstrated the anity
American elites felt for Mysores cause. Philip Freneau, an ally of
Thomas Jeerson and one of the countrys leading poets, wrote a
poem in honour of the Hyder-Ally and its namesake, the sultan of
Mysore:
From an Eastern prince she takes her name,
Who, smit with freedoms sacred ame
Usurping Britons brought to shame,
His countrys wrongs avenging.
Clearly, nothing prevented these 18th-century Americans from

seeing faraway Asian peoples as exemplars of liberty.
D espite Freneaus optimistic vision, freedoms sacred ame did not
save South Asia. By the early 1780s, it was becoming clear that
Britain would lose the war. Many Americans happily imagined a
post-war world in which the East India Company would no longer
be a signicant force. Britain, however, managed to hold on to its
territory in the Subcontinent, resisting the combined forces of
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Mysore and France.

Frances military support for Mysore and the US helped drive it into
crippling debt and push French society toward its own, more radical
revolution. Meanwhile, Britains nances survived the conict
intact, allowing it to continue an aggressive policy in the
Subcontinent after 1783. The cash-strapped French, however, could
maintain only a token military presence in the region. The situation
left Mysores new ruler, Tipu Sultan, to his own devices. He resisted
mounting pressure from the British for nearly two decades,
succumbing only in 1799. He died beneath the walls of his citadel as
he fought a last-ditch battle against the East India Company.
The American government adjusted to the new realities of South
Asian politics. New England merchants eagerly sought to trade
directly with the Subcontinent. In the rst years after the end of the
Revolutionary War, they relied on the French colony of Pondicherry
on the southeastern coast of the Subcontinent as a port. They soon
realised however that they could not enter the regions most
lucrative markets without the permission of the British East India
Company. They lobbied for the establishment of American
consulates to foster goodwill for American interests. Responding to
their pressure, the US government created its rst consulate in
South Asia in 1792, in Calcutta. Two years later, in Madras, they
added another. American consuls in the region were responsible
only for relations with the Company. They had no contacts with
independent South Asian states such as Mysore, which the
American government, like the French, left to fend for itself.
Only recently an enemy of the British empire,

America had won independence and become
Britains junior partner in empire
On a state level, American interest in Mysore disappeared. But
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many Americans remained fascinated by Haider Ali and Tipu

Sultan. When Tipu sent a team of ambassadors to Paris in 1788, in
an unsuccessful attempt to restore the Franco-Mysorean alliance,
Jeerson, then the American minister to France, reported on the
event with keen interest. Like Jeerson, a wide range of Americans
were eager to learn more about Mysore. American newspapers of
the 1780s and 90s reported on the countrys desperate struggle
with Britain. American textbooks, including Jedidiah Morses
inuential The American Universal Geography (1793), included
sections on Mysore. Haider and Tipu seem to have approached the
status of household names. In Williams vs Cabarrus (1793), a lawsuit
brought before a circuit court in North Carolina, the two parties
disputed a wager made on a horse race. One of the horses was
named Hyder Ali in tribute to Mysores former ruler.
Even in the wake of Tipus nal defeat, in 1799, his struggle for an
independent Mysore continued to echo in the imagination of
Americans. In his sermon on 4 July 1800, John Russell, a Baptist
minister in Providence, warned his audience about the dangers of
British imperialism. While many Americans, such as Alexander
Hamilton, advocated for closer ties to Britain, Russell insisted that
Britain could not be trusted. The ultimate example of British
injustice, he argued, was its conquest of Mysore. Deeply moved by
what he saw as Tipus heroic resistance, Russell told his
congregation of Tipus death at the hands of British soldiers: here
the full heart must have vent [Tipu Sultan] defended his power
with a spirit which showed he deserved it. His death was worthy of a
king.
For Russell, Tipus end ought to warn America about the mortal
dangers of empire. By the early 19th century, however, America had
embarked on its own imperial project. American missionaries
fanned out across North America, travelled to the Levant, and
poured into South Asia, writing glowing reports back home on the
work that the British were doing to civilise the world, including the
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Subcontinent. Only recently an enemy of the British empire,

America had won independence and become Britains junior
partner in empire.
American diplomats, merchants and missionaries in South Asia
accepted Britains empire in South Asia, working alongside it to
prot from local trade or proselytise to potential converts. Over the
following decades, foreign policy ocials, commercial interests and
religious groups pushed for the US to acquire a colonial empire of
its own. Just like the British empire Americans had once rebelled
against, the US became an imperial power, with colonies stretching
from Puerto Rico and Guantnamo in the Caribbean to the
Philippines in the Pacic.
Today, with military bases in more than 70 countries across the
globe, the US remains an empire. Yet, the generation of Americans
who fought for independence from Britain and laid the foundations
of Americas identity saw the US as an anti-imperial cause and
nation. The founding generation and the children of the founders
were fascinated with Mysore and its leaders because they thought
Haider Ali and Tipu Sultan embodied American values of resistance
to empire and aspiration to freedom. If later generations of
Americans had continued to see Haider and Tipu as heroes, had
continued to identify with underdogs and anti-imperial causes, then
the US, and indeed the world, might look quite dierent today.
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Why American revolutionaries admired the rebels of Mysore ...