Anglo-Mysore Wars

1. Mysore’s rise and the struggle for southern India

Mysore emerged as a major regional power during the eighteenth-century weakening of Mughal authority and the fragmentation of politics in the Deccan and Carnatic. Haidar Ali, a military commander who rose through the Mysore army, became the kingdom’s effective ruler in 1761. He retained the nominal authority of the Wodeyar dynasty while concentrating military and administrative power in his own hands. Expansion into Bednur and the Malabar region increased Mysore’s resources and access to western coastal trade.

Mysore’s growth threatened several neighbours, not merely the British. The Marathas sought tribute and territorial influence; the Nizam of Hyderabad feared an expanding southern rival; and the East India Company wished to secure Madras, its commercial interests and its position in the Carnatic. Alliances were therefore unstable. Indian powers sometimes cooperated with the Company against Mysore, but at other moments resisted British expansion themselves.

Haidar and his son Tipu combined mobile cavalry with infantry, artillery and European military expertise. Their coastal interests and contacts with the French gave the conflict a wider imperial dimension. Nevertheless, the wars should not be reduced to an Anglo-French contest: they were fundamentally struggles over territory, revenue and regional predominance. Mysore represented a powerful indigenous obstacle to the Company’s expansion beyond its coastal settlements.

• Strategic geography: the Mysore plateau, Carnatic plains, Western Ghats passes and Malabar ports connected inland power with coastal commerce.
• Srirangapatna, an island fortress on the Kaveri, was the political and military centre of Haidar and Tipu’s state.

2. First Anglo-Mysore War, 1767–1769

The first war grew out of British efforts to contain Mysore through arrangements with the Nizam and the Marathas. These alignments did not remain intact. Haidar used negotiation, payments and military pressure to prevent a durable coalition from operating against him. The Nizam’s shifting position illustrates the fluidity of eighteenth-century diplomacy: hostility to Mysore did not automatically produce lasting loyalty to the Company.

Fighting spread across the Carnatic, where Haidar’s mobility challenged the Company’s armies. In 1769, he advanced rapidly towards Madras, exposing the vulnerability of the British presidency’s headquarters and compelling a negotiated settlement. The Treaty of Madras, signed on 4 April 1769, provided broadly for mutual restitution of conquests and assistance if either party was attacked.

The mutual-defence undertaking became a major source of later distrust. When the Marathas attacked Mysore, the Company failed to provide the assistance Haidar expected under the treaty. Thus, the first war did not establish British supremacy or settle the underlying rivalry. Instead, it demonstrated Mysore’s capacity to threaten Madras and left Haidar convinced that British treaty commitments could not be relied upon.

• Exam association: First war — Haidar Ali — Treaty of Madras — mutual assistance.
• The treaty was not a subsidiary alliance, and Mysore did not become a British dependent in 1769.

3. Second Anglo-Mysore War, 1780–1784

The immediate background included British action against French settlements after the Anglo-French conflict widened during the American War of Independence. In 1779, the Company captured Mahé on the Malabar coast, a French settlement under Haidar’s protection and an important connection for supplies. Combined with the earlier breach of trust, this helped bring Mysore into renewed war. Haidar sought cooperation with the Marathas and the Nizam, although a coordinated anti-British coalition did not endure.

Haidar invaded the Carnatic in 1780. At Pollilur in September, Mysorean forces inflicted a devastating defeat on a British detachment commanded by Hector Munro’s subordinate, Colonel William Baillie. British fortunes subsequently improved under Sir Eyre Coote, who defeated Haidar at Porto Novo in 1781. The campaign nevertheless remained difficult, with neither side securing a decisive settlement through military operations alone.

Haidar died in December 1782, and Tipu Sultan continued the war. Fighting included operations around Mangalore and the western coast. The Treaty of Mangalore, signed on 11 March 1784, provided for reciprocal restoration of captured territories and the release of prisoners. It is commonly described as a settlement on terms of equality rather than a British victory. For examination purposes, distinguish the founder of Mysore’s military ascendancy, Haidar, from Tipu, who concluded this treaty.

• Exam association: Second war — Mahé and Pollilur — Haidar’s death — Treaty of Mangalore.
• The war occurred during Warren Hastings’s governor-generalship; Cornwallis belongs to the third war.

4. Third Anglo-Mysore War, 1790–1792

The immediate trigger was Tipu’s attack on Travancore’s defensive lines in December 1789. Travancore enjoyed British protection, while its disputes with Mysore involved frontier security and dealings with Cochin and the Dutch. Governor-General Lord Cornwallis treated the attack as grounds for war. Unlike earlier unstable alignments, the British now secured effective cooperation from the Nizam and the Marathas, placing Mysore under pressure from several directions.

The initial British campaign was conducted by General William Medows. Cornwallis subsequently assumed direct command, captured Bangalore in 1791 and advanced towards Seringapatam. Supply difficulties disrupted an early advance, but renewed campaigning and allied pressure forced Tipu to negotiate in 1792. This sequence demonstrates the importance of logistics, siege warfare and diplomatic isolation alongside battlefield performance.

Under the Treaty of Seringapatam in March 1792, Tipu surrendered approximately half his dominions, which were divided among the Company, the Nizam and the Marathas. The Company acquired important territories including Malabar, Dindigul and the Baramahal. Tipu also agreed to pay an indemnity of about three crore rupees. Two of his sons were delivered as hostages to guarantee fulfilment of the settlement and were later returned. The treaty substantially weakened Mysore’s territorial and fiscal base, but did not extinguish its independence.

• Exam association: Third war — Travancore — Cornwallis — loss of half the kingdom.
• Do not confuse the two princes’ temporary hostage status in 1792 with the removal of Tipu’s dynasty after 1799.

5. Fourth war and the consequences of conquest

Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798, pursued a more aggressive policy of British predominance. Tipu’s attempts to obtain French support, including contacts with the French administration in Mauritius, heightened British suspicions. Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 sharpened these anxieties, although no substantial French army reached Mysore. Meanwhile, the Nizam entered a subsidiary alliance with the British in 1798, further narrowing Tipu’s diplomatic options.

In 1799, Company armies advanced into Mysore with Hyderabad’s support. General George Harris commanded the principal invading army; Arthur Wellesley was a subordinate commander, not the Governor-General. British troops stormed Seringapatam on 4 May 1799, and Tipu died defending the fortress. Unlike the earlier wars, this conflict ended with the destruction of the existing regime rather than a negotiated treaty with Tipu.

Mysore was partitioned. The Company and the Nizam received territories, while a reduced kingdom was placed under the young Krishnaraja Wodeyar III and bound by a subsidiary alliance. Mysore therefore was not wholly annexed in 1799. Its subordination removed a major obstacle to British power in southern India. Tipu’s resistance, revenue reforms, commercial initiatives and military technology remain significant, but his policies must be studied within the coercive and competitive setting of eighteenth-century state-building rather than through anachronistic national categories.

• Structural explanation for defeat: diplomatic isolation, territorial losses after 1792, the Company’s expanding resources and coordinated military pressure.
• Long-term consequence: British strategic predominance in the south strengthened the Company’s position in subsequent struggles with the Marathas.

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