First Carnatic War

Quality 0.50 · 3 views · Updated 2 months ago

1746–1748 war in India

title: "First Carnatic War" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["first-carnatic-war", "conflicts-in-1746", "conflicts-in-1747", "conflicts-in-1748", "wars-involving-the-mughal-empire", "wars-involving-the-kingdom-of-france-(987–1792)", "wars-involving-the-kingdom-of-great-britain", "colonial-india", "18th-century-in-india", "history-of-tamil-nadu", "military-history-of-india", "1746-in-india", "war-of-the-austrian-succession"] description: "1746–1748 war in India" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Carnatic_War" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary 1746–1748 war in India ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox military conflict"]

FieldValue
conflictFirst Carnatic War
partofthe War of the Austrian Succession
and the Carnatic Wars
imageSurrender of The City of Madras 1746.jpg
image_size300px
captionThe British surrender of Madras, 1746
date1744 or 1746
placeCarnatic region, South India
resultStatus quo ante bellum
combatant1Mughal Empire
[[File:Asafia flag of Hyderabad State.svg20px
combatant2Kingdom of France Kingdom of France
combatant3Kingdom of Great Britain Kingdom of Great Britain
commander1Anwaruddin Khan
Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah
commander2Joseph François Dupleix
Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais
commander3Stringer Lawrence
Edward Peyton
Edward Boscawen
campaignbox
::

| conflict = First Carnatic War | partof = the War of the Austrian Succession and the Carnatic Wars | image = Surrender of The City of Madras 1746.jpg | image_size = 300px | caption = The British surrender of Madras, 1746 | date = 1744 or 1746 –1748 | place = Carnatic region, South India | result = Status quo ante bellum | combatant1 = Mughal Empire [[File:Asafia flag of Hyderabad State.svg|20px|border]] Nizam of Hyderabad

Course of the war

In 1720 France effectively nationalised the French East India Company, and began using it to expand its imperial interests. This became a source of conflict with the British in India with the entry of Britain into the War of the Austrian Succession in 1744. Hostilities in India began with a British naval attack on a French fleet in 1745, which led the French Governor-General Dupleix to request additional forces. A fleet under La Bourdonnais arrived in 1746 to help him. In July of that year La Bourdonnais and British Admiral Edward Peyton fought an indecisive action off Negapatam, after which La Bourdonnais put in at Pondicherry for repairs and strategising with Dupleix. The fleets met again on 19 August, but Peyton refused battle, recognising that La Bourdonnais had acquired additional guns at Pondicherry, and retreated to Bengal. On 4 September 1746, La Bourdonnais led an attack on Madras. After several days of bombardment the British surrendered and the French entered the city. The British leadership was taken prisoner and sent to Pondicherry. It was originally agreed that the town would be restored to the British after negotiation but this was opposed by Dupleix, who sought to annex Madras to French holdings. The remaining British residents were asked to take an oath promising not to take up arms against the French; a handful refused, among them a young Robert Clive, and were kept under weak guard as the French prepared to destroy the fort. Disguising themselves as natives, Clive and three others eluded their inattentive sentry, slipped out of the fort, and made their way to Fort St. David (the British post at Cuddalore), some 110 mi to the south. Dupleix, in the meantime, had before the assault promised to turn over Fort St. George to the Nawab of the Carnatic Anwaruddin Khan, but refused to do so.

Anwaruddin responded by sending a 10,000-man army to take the fort from Dupleix by force. Dupleix, who had lost the support of La Bourdonnais over the status of Madras, had only 930 French troops. However, in the Battle of Adyar, this small force successfully repulsed the attacks of Anwaruddin's army. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Bombardement_de_Pondichery_en_1748_par_la_flotte_anglaise.jpg" caption="British Admiral [[Edward Boscawen]] besieged Pondicherry in late 1748"] ::

Dupleix then launched an assault on Fort St. David. Stung by his defeat at Adyar, Anwaruddin sent his son Muhammad Ali to assist the British in the defence of Cuddalore, and was instrumental in holding off a French attack in December 1746. Over the next few months Anwaruddin and Dupleix had made peace, and the Carnatic troops were withdrawn.

The French, under the command of De Brurie, launched another attempt to take Fort St. David, forcing the British defenders inside the fort's walls. The timely counterattack by the British and the Nawab, however, turned the tables and prompted the French to withdraw to Pondicherry.

In 1748 Major Stringer Lawrence arrived to take command of the British troops at Fort St. David. With the arrival of reinforcements from Europe, the British besieged Pondicherry in late 1748. Clive distinguished himself in successfully defending a trench against a French sortie: one witness of the action wrote "[Clive's] platoon, animated by his exhortation, fired again with new courage and great vivacity upon the enemy." The siege was lifted in October 1748 with the arrival of the monsoon, and the war came to a conclusion with the arrival in December of news of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. Under its terms Madras was returned to British control.

Consequences

The power of a small number of heavily-trained French and French trained Indian troops over larger Indian formations using older military tactics was not lost on Joseph Dupleix, and over the next several years he capitalised on this advantage to greatly expand French influence in south India. In the Second Carnatic War (1748–1754) he took advantage of struggles for succession to the Nizam of Hyderabad and Nawab of the Carnatic to establish strong French influence over a number of states in south India. The British East India Company, in contrast, did little to expand its own influence and only weakly attempted to oppose Dupleix's expansive activities. Robert Clive recognised that this threatened the entire livelihood of the Company in the area, and in 1751 engaged in a series of celebrated military exploits that cemented British control over Madras by the end of that conflict. There were no territorial gains for either the British or the French and the former territories were restored to these two parties. The war had also enhanced the prestige of the French in the Carnatic Region.

Naval Forces

French Royal Navy

The French naval squadron in the East Indies during the war included:

  • Commander, Bertrand-François Mahé, Comte de La Bourdonnais
  • Original Squadron
    • Achille (74 guns, only 70 guns on-ship)
    • Duc d'Orléans (56 guns, only 36 guns on-ship)
    • Bourbon (56 guns, only 34 guns on-ship)
    • Neptune (54 guns, only 34 guns on-ship)
    • Phoenix (54 guns, only 34 guns on-ship)
    • Sainte-Louis (44 guns, only 30 guns on-ship)
    • Lys (40 guns, only 28 guns on-ship)
    • Insulaire (30 guns, only 26 guns on-ship)
  • Joining in September
    • Centaure (74 guns)
    • Mars (56 guns)
    • Brillant (50 guns)

British Royal Navy

The British naval squadron in the East Indies during the war included:

Notes

References

References

  1. Parker, Geoffrey. (2000-09-11). "The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare". Cambridge University Press.
  2. Chaurasia, Radhey Shyam. (2002). "History of Modern India: 1707 A.D. to Upto 2000 A.D.". Atlantic Publishers & Dist.
  3. Singh. "Longman Panorama History 8". Pearson Education India.
  4. Naravane, M.S.. (2014). "Battles of the Honorourable East India Company". A.P.H. Publishing Corporation.
  5. Basu, Sucharita. (2019). "Frank Modern Certificate History and Civics". Frank Bros. and Co.
  6. [[George Nafziger]], ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20210830053709/https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/carl/nafziger/746NXAE.pdf][[France. French]] Squadron in the East Indies 1746,'' [[United States]] Army Combined Arms Center.
  7. [[George Nafziger]], [https://web.archive.org/web/20220202122514/https://usacac.army.mil/sites/default/files/documents/carl/nafziger/747NXAC.pdf ''Royal Navy Squadron in the East Indies 1747''], United States Army Combined Arms Center.

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

first-carnatic-warconflicts-in-1746conflicts-in-1747conflicts-in-1748wars-involving-the-mughal-empirewars-involving-the-kingdom-of-france-(987–1792)wars-involving-the-kingdom-of-great-britaincolonial-india18th-century-in-indiahistory-of-tamil-nadumilitary-history-of-india1746-in-indiawar-of-the-austrian-succession