Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive,, also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal. He began as a writer for the EIC in 1744 and established Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £30,000 per year which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £180,000 which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.
Admiral of the Blue Edward Boscawen, PC was a British admiral in the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament for the borough of Truro, Cornwall, England. He is known principally for his various naval commands during the 18th century and the engagements that he won, including the siege of Louisburg in 1758 and Battle of Lagos in 1759. He is also remembered as the officer who signed the warrant authorising the execution of Admiral John Byng in 1757, for failing to engage the enemy at the Battle of Minorca (1756). In his political role, he served as a Member of Parliament for Truro from 1742 until his death in 1761 although, due to almost constant naval employment, he seems not to have been particularly active. He also served as one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty on the Board of Admiralty from 1751 and as a member of the Privy Council from 1758 until his death.
The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company, under the leadership of Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757. Robert Clive was paid £1 million by the Jagat Seth family – a rich Indian family business group – to defeat Siraj-ud-Daulah. The victory was made possible by the defection of Mir Jafar, Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah's commander in chief who was also paid by the Jagat Seths. The battle helped the British East India Company take control of Bengal in 1772. Over the next hundred years, they continued to expand their control over vast territories in the rest of the Indian subcontinent, including Burma.
The 8th (King's) Regiment of Foot, also referred to in short as the 8th Foot and the King's, was an infantry regiment of the British Army, formed in 1685 and retitled the King's on 1 July 1881.
French India, formally the Établissements français dans l'Inde, was a French colony comprising five geographically separated enclaves on the Indian subcontinent that had initially been factories of the French East India Company. They were de facto incorporated into the Republic of India in 1950 and 1954. The enclaves were Pondichéry, Karikal, Yanam on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast and Chandernagor in Bengal. The French also possessed several loges inside other towns, but after 1816, the British denied all French claims to these, which were not reoccupied.
Mir Syed Jafar Ali Khan Bahadur was a commander-in-chief or military general who reigned as the first dependent Nawab of Bengal of the British East India Company. His reign has been considered by many historians as the start of the expansion of British control of the Indian subcontinent in Indian history and a key step in the eventual British domination of vast areas of pre-partition India.
The Carnatic wars were a series of military conflicts in the middle of the 18th century in India's coastal Carnatic region, a dependency of Hyderabad State, India. The first Carnatic wars were fought between 1740 and 1748.
The Carnatic Sultanate was a kingdom in South India between about 1690 and 1855, and was under the legal purview of the Nizam of Hyderabad, until their demise. They initially had their capital at Arcot in the present-day Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Their rule is an important period in the history of the Carnatic and Coromandel Coast regions, in which the Mughal Empire gave way to the rising influence of the Maratha Empire, and later the emergence of the British Raj.
Events from the year 1759 in Great Britain. This year was dubbed an "Annus Mirabilis" due to a succession of military victories in the Seven Years' War against French-led opponents.
The 103rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Bombay Fusiliers) was a regiment raised in 1662. It transferred to the command of the Honourable East India Company in 1668 and to the command of the British Army in 1862. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 102nd Regiment of Foot (Royal Madras Fusiliers) to form the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1881.
The 101st Regiment of Foot (Royal Bengal Fusiliers) was an infantry regiment of the Bengal Army and British Army that existed from 1652 to 1881. The regiment was raised in India in 1652 by the East India Company as the company's first non-native infantry regiment. Over the following two centuries, the regiment was involved in nearly all of the East India Company's conflicts which consolidated British rule over India. The Royal Bengal Fusiliers was transferred to the command of the British Army in 1862 following the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the end of Company rule in India. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 104th Regiment of Foot (Bengal Fusiliers) to form the Royal Munster Fusiliers in 1881.
The Siege of Louisbourg was a pivotal operation of the Seven Years' War in 1758 that ended the French colonial era in Atlantic Canada and led to the subsequent British campaign to capture Quebec in 1759 and the remainder of French North America the following year.
The Seven Years' War (1756–1763) was a global conflict involving most of the European great powers, fought primarily in Europe and the Americas. One of the opposing alliances was led by Great Britain and Prussia. The other alliance was led by France, backed by Spain, Saxony, Sweden, and Russia. Related conflicts include the 1754 to 1763 French and Indian War, and 1762 to 1763 Anglo-Spanish War.
Roger Drake was a British administrator in the East India Company. He served as President of Fort William in Bengal between 1752 and 1756 and was later reprimanded for his actions during the Siege of Calcutta in 1756.
Madras, held by the British, was besieged between December 1758 and February 1759 by French forces under the command of Comte de Lally during the Seven Years' War. The British garrison was able to hold out until it was relieved.
Great Britain was one of the major participants in the Seven Years' War, which in fact lasted nine years, between 1754 and 1763. British involvement in the conflict began in 1754 in what became known as the French and Indian War. However the warfare in the European theatre involving countries other than Britain and France commenced in 1756. Britain emerged from the war as the world's leading colonial power, having gained all of New France in North America, ending France's role as a colonial power there. Following Spain's entry in the war in alliance with France in the third Family Compact, Britain captured the major Spanish ports of Havana, Cuba and Manila, in the Philippines in 1762, and agreed to return them in exchange for Spanish Florida. The Treaty of Paris in 1763 formally ended the conflict and Britain established itself as the world's pre-eminent naval power.
The Battle of Chinsurah, also known as the Battle of Biderra or the Battle of Hoogly, was a military engagement which took place on 25 November 1759 near Chinsurah during the Seven Years' War. It took place between a force of British troops mainly of the British East India Company and a force of the Dutch East India Company which had been invited by the Nawab of Bengal Mir Jafar to help him expel the British and establish themselves as the leading commercial company in Bengal.
The Battle of Condore took place near Masulipatam on 9 December 1758 during the Third Carnatic War, part of the Seven Years' War. An Anglo-Indian force under the command of Colonel Francis Forde attacked and defeated a similarly sized French force under the command of Hubert de Brienne, Comte de Conflans, capturing all their baggage and artillery. The victory allowed the British to lay siege to Masulipatam, which they stormed on 25 January 1759.
The Battle of Chandannagar (Chandernagore) was a successful attack on the French-held settlement of Chandernagore by a British force under the command of Robert Clive and Charles Watson on 23 March 1757 during the Seven Years' War. Chandernagore remained under military occupation by the British until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, which brought an end to the war.
British East India Company 
French East India Company 