Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB MP FRS (25 September 1725 -- 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was a British officer who established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Bengal. He is credited with securing India, and the wealth that followed, for the British crown. Together with Warren Hastings he was one of the key early figures in the creation of British India. He also sat as a Tory Member of Parliament in Great Britain.

Robert Clive was born at Styche, the Clive family estate, near Market Drayton in Shropshire, on 25 September 1725 to Richard Clive and Rebecca Gaskell Clive. The family had held the small estate since the time of Henry VII. The family had a lengthy history of public service: members of the family included an Irish chancellor of the exchequer under Henry VIII, and a member of the Long Parliament. Robert's father, who supplemented the estate's modest income as a lawyer, also served in Parliament for many years, representing Montgomeryshire. Robert was their eldest son of thirteen children; he had seven sisters and five brothers, six of whom died in infancy.

In 1744 Clive's father acquired for him a position as a "factor" or "writer" in the service of the East India Company, and Clive set sail for India. After running aground on the coast of Brazil, his ship was detained for nine months while repairs were completed. This enabled him to learn some Portuguese, a language then in common use in India.[citation needed] At this time the East India Company had a small settlement at Fort St. George near the village of Madraspatnam, now the major Indian metropolis of Chennai, in addition to others at Calcutta, Bombay, and Cuddalore. Clive arrived at Fort St. George in June 1744, and spent the next two years working as little more than a glorified assistant shopkeeper, tallying books and arguing with suppliers of the East India Company over the quality and quantity of their wares. He was given access to the governor's library, where he became a prolific reader.

The India Clive arrived in was divided into a number of successor states to the Mughal Empire. Over the forty years since the death of the Emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the power of the emperor had gradually fallen into the hands of his provincial viceroys or soobedars. The dominant rulers on the Coromandel Coast were the Nizam of Hyderabad, Asaf Jah I, and the Nawab of the Carnatic, Anwaruddin Muhammed Khan. The nawab nominally owed fealty to the nizam, but in many respects acted independently. Fort St. George and the French trading post at Pondicherry were both located in the nawab's territory.

The relationship between the Europeans in India was influenced by a series of wars and treaties on mainland Europe, and by competing commercial rivalry for trade on the subcontinent. Through the 17th and early 18th centuries, the French, Dutch, Portuguese, and English had vied for control of various trading posts, and for trading