March 18, 1776

The London newspapers in January 1776 contained reports of a power struggle on the Coromandel Coast, along the southeastern edge of the Indian peninsula. Muhammad Ali Khan, the nawab or Muslim ruler of the Arcot or Carnatic State, was in his late fifties. But accounts suggested that he was declining, or “nearly in a state of dotage.” He apparently tried to use his alliance with the British East India Company to make his second son his successor, “in prejudice to the elder.” The correspondent who shared this news suggested that this was what happened when rulers become “alarmed at seeing their immediate successor too popular during their own lives.”

This news may have seemed far off for people in Philadelphia, but there was a connection between Khan and the American Revolution. He was mentioned by name in the 1763 Treaty of Paris: “in order to preserve future peace on the coast ofCoromandel and Orixa, the English and French shall acknowledge Mahomet Ally Khan for lawful Nabob of the Carnatick.” The treaty, making the end of the Seven Years’ War, also set up some of the disputes that fueled the colonists’ fight for independence.

Ultimately, Muhammad Ali Khan lived another two decades, and in 1795, he was succeeded by Umdat al-Umara, the second son whose “cruelty, pride, craft and duplicity” had been described in the London press in 1776.

Dunlap’s Pennsylvania Packet or, the General Advertiser
Printed by John Dunlap

LONDON. [...] Jan. 2. [...]

By the last advices from the coast of Coromandel we learn, that Mahomed Ali Khan, Nabob of Arcot, who is nearly in a state of dotage, had applied to our M—y for their assistance in fixing the succession of his government on Omiral Omrah, his second son, in prejudice to the elder: That this commission was entrusted to the conduct of some inferior servants of the Company, who had been promised their douceurs upon its success. Our correspondent, who favors us with this intelligence, is perfectly acquainted with the characters and dispositions of the two brothers, and wholly ascribes this conduct of the father to a jealousy inherent in Asiatic Princes in their decline, who are always then alarmed at seeing their immediate successor too popular during their own lives. He paints the eldest son in the most amiable, the second in the most odious colours, owing to his cruelty, pride, craft and duplicity. He trusts that our S—, who must have all the tender feelings of a father, will not stain his honor by joining in such an unnatural scheme.