M&D-related: East India Company

[Mark Kohut]

That good but fear & trembling Christian Samuel Johnson hoped for some such
Crime and Punishment.

On 22 November 1774 Clive died, aged forty-nine, at his Berkeley Square
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Square> home in London. There was
no inquest on his death and it was variously alleged he had stabbed himself
or cut his throat with a penknife <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penknife> or
had taken an overdose of opium <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium>, while
a few newspapers reported his death as due to an apoplectic fit or stroke.
[53] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clive#cite_note-Bence-Jones-53> One
20th-century biographer, John Watney, concluded: "He did not die from a
self-inflicted wound...He died of a heart attack brought on by an overdose
of drugs".[54]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clive#cite_note-Watney-54> While
Clive left no suicide note <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_note>, Samuel
Johnson <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Johnson> wrote about his
motives, Clive, he wrote "had acquired his fortune by such crimes that his
consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat".[55]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clive#cite_note-55>Though Clive's
demise has been linked to his history of depression and to opium addiction,
the likely immediate impetus was excruciating pain resulting from illness
(he was known to suffer from gallstones
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallstone>) which he had been attempting to
abate with opium[*citation needed
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed>*]. Shortly
beforehand, he had been offered command of British forces in North America
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_America> which he had turned down.[56]
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Clive#cite_note-56> He was buried in
St Margaret's Parish Church at Moreton Say
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moreton_Say>, near his birthplace in
Shropshire <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shropshire>.

On Mon, Jun 1, 2020 at 6:21 AM Thomas Eckhardt <thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de>
wrote:

> https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/06/11/british-pillage-of-india/
>
> I didn't know that Clive of India committed suicide:
>
> 'He had, Samuel Johnson wrote, “acquired his fortune by such crimes that
> his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.”'
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>