Prior to 1800, despite nearly 28 years of Orientalism as official policy, there was no fomral mechnaism for the training of all Company officers in Indian languages, history and cultural traditions. While there was a clearly articulated policy, everything was still done on a case-by-case basis. In 1798, however, the British hold on India was suddenly threatened (or was believed to be threatened) by the French invasion of Egypt. All of a sudden, many felt that something must be done quickly, or else the British would lose India. [1]
Thus, for these reasons, as well as desiring to finally codify Orientalist policy stemming originally from Hastings, Lord Wellesley--Cornwallis' successor as Governor-General--established the College of Fort William on July 9, 1800. The next day, he wrote a 28-page memorandum and position paper to the East India Company's Board of Control and its Court of Directors (its two administrative bodies in London) justifying the establishment of the College. He began by noting that the Company's possessions to that date constituted "...one of the more extensive and populous empires in the world" [2], and decried the lack of a suitable bureaucracy, writing:
- The civil servants of the English East India Company... are in fact the ministers and officers of a powerful sovereign.... Their duties are those of statesmen in every other part of the world, with no other characteristic differences than the obstacles opposed by an unfavourable climate, a foreign language [sic!], the peculiar usage and laws of India, and the manners of its inhabitants. [3]
While this represented a continuation of the quarter-century worth of policies beginning with Hastings, the system that Wellesley set up was also something completely different. For the first time, training in Indian languages, laws, history, culture, and life were required for three years for all recruits. It represented nothing else, David Kopf argues, than
- ...a unique experiment in the history of European colonialism. The youths that left London expecting to be sent immediately into the jungle districts of Bengal to mirror their predecessors' lives as nabobs were thrust instead into classrooms where veteran Orientalists strove to arouse in them a curiosity about their new environment and to offer them the means of communicating with its inhabitants. [4]
During the three years, these officers were to learn Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic, six venacular languages, Hindu and Muslim law, as well as the rudiments of a classical education: Greek and Latin, and European history. To be sure, Wellesley's proposal was unique in a few more additional respects. First, it was one of the first institutions designed specifically to create a meritocracy; even though all the recruits in 1800 were chosen by patronage, the College of Fort William was certainly an antecedent of the later Indian Civil Service exams.
