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The Suicide of Robert Clive of India: A strange end to a glorious life?
On the afternoon of November 22nd, 1774, Robert Clive — Lord Clive of India as he was commonly known — was found dead in the bathroom of his grand home at Walcot in the county of Shropshire. The same night, his body was taken to the nearby church at Moreton Say. There, with only a few mourners present at the funeral, he was interred, the exact location of his grave unknown. The details of his death were hidden from the public via vague information in the press, who, in turn, were suspicious as to what had taken place.
This was an ignominious end to the life of a man whose reputation — reflected in his own character — swung from one extreme to another. Either he was the greatest military figure in British history who single-handedly established an empire, or he was the man who personally plundered and pillaged the riches of a glorious country for his own gain. Perhaps a man of single-minded determination and courage or an “unstable sociopath” (in the words of William Dalrymple), whose statues deserve to be destroyed. The verdict of history continues to be disputed. Yet the arguments about Clive and his legacy are unambiguously not about history but about our own attitudes to current debates and perspectives on politics and international relationships.
Clive’s life story has been so frequently told as not to need repeating. What follows is about his personality and what may have led him to end his own life.
His character/personality traits
There is little doubt that Clive was an unstable personality. Deprived of his mother at a very young age, he became profoundly dependent on his aunt throughout his childhood. He loved fighting and, as a teenager, was known to have set up a protection racket with others in Shrewsbury, where he extorted small change or goods from local shopkeepers. In his early days in India, working in menial administrative roles, he became homesick, depressed, and lonely. A colleague found him at his desk one day holding a pistol. Clive asked the friend to test-fire it out of the window, which he did. Clive stated that he had twice pulled the trigger at his own head, but it had failed to fire.
Clive was also impulsive, headstrong, and foolhardy. It can be argued that such traits made…
