Clive Wins the Battle of Plassey and the Company Gains Bengal
A cannonade decided by betrayal turns a trading company into the ruler of India's richest province
Quick facts
- Date
- June 23, 1757
- Company commander
- Robert Clive
- Opponent
- Siraj-ud-Daulah, Nawab of Bengal
- Diwani granted
- 1765, by Emperor Shah Alam II
What happened
On 23 June 1757, at the village of Plassey on the Bhagirathi-Hooghly River, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Clive's East India Company force of about 3,000 men, including 2,100 Indian sepoys, met the roughly 50,000-strong army of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, backed by French artillery officers. A downpour ahead of the main engagement disabled the Nawab's uncovered gunpowder while Clive's men kept theirs dry under tarpaulins; when Siraj's infantry advanced believing the Company's guns were equally silenced, they were met, in the National Army Museum's account, by a storm of fire and withdrew in disarray. At the decisive moment Mir Jafar, commanding the Nawab's cavalry, had secretly agreed with Clive and the Jagat Seth banking family to betray Siraj in exchange for being installed as the new Nawab, and he refused to engage. Clive routed the remaining forces, losing only 22 killed to over 500 Bengali and French casualties, and Mir Jafar had Siraj killed and took his place, now effectively a Company puppet. In 1765 Clive secured the diwani, the right to collect Bengal's tax revenue, directly from the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II.
Why it matters
Plassey turned the East India Company from one commercial power competing with the French into the ruler of Bengal, India's richest province, and the 1765 diwani grant gave the Company a legal claim, however hollow, to govern in the Mughal emperor's name. From this point the Company's expansion in India was backed by Indian tax revenue and a growing private army, setting the template for a century of British territorial conquest that the nominal Mughal emperor could no longer resist.
How we know
The battle's course, casualty figures, and the 1765 diwani grant are documented in East India Company records and British military accounts from the period; the National Army Museum's institutional history draws on these alongside a contemporary description of the battle by the Bengali writer Ghulam Husayn Khan, written in 1781.
Sources
- National Army Museum. Battle of Plassey · Reputable sourcenam.ac.uk · The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- National Army Museum. Battle of Plassey · Reputable sourcenam.ac.uk · The domain "nam.ac.uk" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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Related timelines
- The British Empire → · Plassey is the battle historians usually mark as the start of British territorial rule in India.