(a) The Carnatic Wars, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars had virtually eliminated the French from the contest of…

(a) The French and the Carnatic, Mysore and Maratha wars

The claim is largely correct, but the decisive blow came early and the later wars only removed the remains of French influence. The First Carnatic War (1746–48) and the Second (1749–54) showed the promise of Dupleix's alliance strategy, in which Indian rulers were backed with European-trained troops. Clive's capture and defence of Arcot (1751) and the recall of Dupleix in 1754 reversed that. The Third Carnatic War (1758–63) was the turning point: Eyre Coote defeated Lally at Wandiwash (1760), and Pondicherry fell in January 1761. The Treaty of Paris (1763) returned French factories but barred fortification and armed forces, making the French a commercial presence only. Forde's capture of Masulipatam (1759) and the British success in Bengal after Plassey (1757) supplied money and sea power that France lacked.

After that the French survived as an irritant. They aided Haidar Ali in the Second Mysore War (1780–84), which began partly when the British took Mahe (1779). Tipu sent embassies to France in 1787 and later relied on French artisans and advisers, and Wellesley used the French contacts as one pretext for war in 1799. In the Second Maratha War (1803), Sindhia's battalions were trained by French officers such as Perron, but they were destroyed at Assaye and Laswari.

The judgement is that these wars completed what the Carnatic wars began. France's weakness came from wider causes as well: its attention to European wars, inadequate state support for its company, and British command of the sea. The French kept enclaves such as Pondicherry and Chandernagore until 1954, but the contest for supremacy was over by 1763.

(b) 'A despotism controlled from home'

The remark by Charles Wood, the Secretary of State for India, candidly states the assumption behind the Indian Councils Act of 1861. After the 1857 rebellion the British realised that they needed Indian opinion, as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's Causes of the Indian Revolt (1859) had argued. The Act therefore enlarged the Viceroy's Legislative Council with six to twelve additional members, of whom at least half were non-officials, nominated by the Governor-General. Indian members, such as the Maharaja of Patiala and Raja of Benares, were nominated from princes and landowners.

Yet the council had little power. It met only when the Viceroy summoned it, could discuss only subjects he referred, could not question the executive or the budget, and had no control over the executive. The Viceroy could veto its measures and issue ordinances of his own for six months. The portfolio system (1859) made the Executive Council more like a cabinet. Above all, the Secretary of State and his Council in London controlled policy, and Parliament stood behind them.

There were also modest gains. The Act restored legislative powers to Bombay and Madras, and opened the way to councils in Bengal (1862), the North-West Provinces (1886) and Punjab (1897). It began the principle of association, which later Acts of 1892 and 1909 developed.

The judgement is that Wood's description was accurate. The Act decentralised legislation and co-opted elites, without giving Indians any real voice, and real power remained with the executive in India and London.

(c) The root of the Indigo Revolt

The statement identifies the central grievance but not the whole cause. Planters forced ryots in Nadia, Jessore and Barasat to cultivate indigo on their best land, through advances (dadan) that bound them to contracts. Prices paid were far below what the cost of cultivation warranted, so cultivation left them in debt. Planters used lathials, kidnapping and illegal confinement, and the courts and magistrates, many of them planters or friendly to them, gave the coercion legal cover.

The revolt of 1859–60, led by peasant leaders such as Digambar and Bishnucharan Biswas, began with refusal to sow. Bengal's intelligentsia supported it: Harish Chandra Mukherjee in the Hindoo Patriot, and Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil Darpan (1860). The Indigo Commission (1860) criticised the coercive system, and cultivation in Bengal collapsed within a few years, though planters' power continued in Bihar, where Champaran (1917) followed.

The price question was therefore central, but coercion, legal privilege and planter violence were inseparable parts of it.