Consider the following events and arrange them in chronological order starting from the earliest :
1. Vellore Mutiny
2. Death of Nana Fadnavis
3. Recall of Wellesley
4. Anglo-Nepalese War
Select the c

Question

Consider the following events and arrange them in chronological order starting from the earliest :
1. Vellore Mutiny
2. Death of Nana Fadnavis
3. Recall of Wellesley
4. Anglo-Nepalese War
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, 2, 3, 1, 4. Put the four events on a date line and the sequence settles itself. (2) Nana Fadnavis, the Phadnavis or finance minister who had held the Maratha confederacy together from Poona for a quarter of a century, died on 13 March 1800 — the earliest of the four, and the event that historians treat as the moment the Maratha state lost its last competent central hand. (3) Richard Colley Wellesley's term as Governor-General ran from 18 May 1798 to 30 July 1805; the Court of Directors of the East India Company had turned against the expense and the high-handedness of his expansionist wars and his commercial and educational schemes, and he sailed home in the autumn of 1805, Cornwallis being sent out to replace him. (1) The Vellore Mutiny broke out on 10 July 1806 inside Vellore Fort in the Madras Presidency, when sepoys of the Madras Native Infantry rose against new dress regulations issued in November 1805 — no caste marks on the forehead, beards to be shaved, and a round hat with a leather cockade in place of the turban. (4) The Anglo-Nepalese or Gurkha War began on 1 November 1814, when Lord Hastings declared war on Nepal over the Tarai border, and ended with the Treaty of Sugauli on 4 March 1816. So 1800 → 1805 → 1806 → 1814, which is 2, 3, 1, 4 — option (a). Note the internal logic the examiner has built in: Wellesley's recall (1805) comes before Vellore (1806) precisely because the offending dress order of November 1805 was issued under his successor's watch at Madras, and the mutiny is what got the Governor of Madras, Lord William Bentinck, and the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John Cradock, recalled in their turn.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Exactly reverses the true order. It puts the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814–16 first and the death of Nana Fadnavis in 1800 last, which is a fourteen-year error at both ends. This is the standard 'reverse sequence' decoy that UPPSC plants in every chronology item, and it is worth checking the first and last entries against a single known date before reading any further.  (c) Gets the first two right — Nana Fadnavis (1800) then Wellesley's recall (1805) — and then swaps the last pair, placing the Anglo-Nepalese War (begun 1 November 1814) before the Vellore Mutiny (10 July 1806). This is the trap for a candidate who remembers that both belong to the early nineteenth century but cannot fix which came first. The Vellore rising is eight years the earlier of the two, and comes under Governor-General Sir George Barlow, whereas the Nepal war belongs to Lord Hastings.  (d) Opens with the recall of Wellesley (1805) and pushes the death of Nana Fadnavis (13 March 1800) into third place, after the Vellore Mutiny of 1806. Nana Fadnavis died five years before Wellesley left India — indeed his death in 1800 is one reason the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–05 went the way it did for Wellesley. The order of the first three items is therefore wrong.

Concept: The years 1798–1818 are the two decades in which the East India Company turned from one power among several into the paramount power in India. Wellesley's Subsidiary Alliance system, the Second Anglo-Maratha War, the Vellore Mutiny, the war with Nepal and finally the Third Anglo-Maratha War all fall inside them. A UPPSC chronology question on this period is really asking whether you can date the Company's expansion, so the examinable unit is not the event alone but the event plus its year and the Governor-General in office. The Governor-General sequence for these two decades runs Wellesley (1798–1805) → Cornwallis, who died within months → Sir George Barlow (acting, 1805–07) → Lord Minto (1807–13) → Lord Hastings (1813–23).

State PCS 2024 Q137 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q137 — History PYQ with Answer