MIR JA'FAR

in full Mir Muhammad Ja'far Khan born 1691? died Feb. 5, 1765, Bengal, India first Bengal ruler (175760; 176365) under British influence, which he helped bring about by working for the defeat of Mughal rule there. An Arab by birth, Mir Ja'far assisted his brother-in-law, Gen. 'Ali Vardi Khan, in seizing the government of Bengal in 1740. Discontented, he conspired with others in 1756 to depose Siraj-ud-Dawlah, the grandson and successor of 'Ali Vardi. In 1757 he assured Robert Clive, British governor of Madras, that he would enter into an alliance with the British to exclude the French from Bengal and pay 500,000 to the East India Company and 250,000 to the European inhabitants of Calcutta to compensate them for the loss of the city to Siraj the previous year, provided that the British support his bid to be ruler of Bengal. He also promised large gratuities to British military and naval forces and to the Calcutta city council members. He and his fellow conspirators took no active role in the Battle of Plassey (June 1757), in which Siraj was overthrown, but he was installed afterward as the nawab (Muslim ruler) of Bengal. Although he found the Bengal treasury unexpectedly small, Mir Ja'far undertook the fulfillment of his financial promises and issued free passes for the private trade of the English merchants, policies that led to the state's financial ruin and a demoralization of the East India Company's servants that marked the early years of British rule. After Clive's departure in 1760, he was deposed in favour of his son-in-law Mir Qasim. Reinstated in 1763 on the outbreak of war between the English and Mir Qasim, he made concessions to the English that led to his financial and political downfall. At his death he was addicted to opium and suffered from leprosy.