Tipu's Tiger - Part 1

Tippoo's Tiger
The death of a young Englishman named Munro carried off by a man-eating tiger in 1792 was the inspiration for some of the strangest artefacts in the collections of any museum.
Munro was the son of Sir Hector Munro, one of the East India Company's generals. His death was seen by Tippoo, sultan of Mysore as divine retribution against the British invaders. He commissioned the famous mechanical toy depicting a tiger mauling its victim, which contained an organ to reproduce the appropriate roars and screams, as well as play a tune. It was certainly a peculiar idea for a palace entertainment but then Tippoo was no ordinary prince.

It was Tippoo's tenacity, military prowess and the adoption of the tiger as his personal symbol that earned him the title of the 'Tiger of Mysore'. Tippoo's father, Haider Ali, a commander-in-chief who had usurped the throne of Mysore began a career of military expansion in South India. Together father and son involved the British in no less than four wars.

Tippoo succeeded the throne in a turbulent era when the European powers were seeing the rise of revolution, first in America and then in France. Tippoo's ambassadors visited the court of Louis XVI and received among other gifts this bust of the king. But French power in India was on the wain and Tippoo also sought allies in Turkey, Afghanistan and Iran and among other Indian rulers. The British east India Company had fielded some impressive generals and administrators notably Sir Robert Clive and Warren Hastings who defeated the French and made allies of powerful leaders like the Nazim of Hyderabad.

Anne Buddle

The British for decades, indeed centuries, had had commercial interests in India. Tippoo was obviously a native ruler and resented the intrusion, a) of a foreign power and, b) what is more, of the infidel Christians and he was a Muslim, and he determined to lay down his life to rid his territories of what he saw as a usurping power and therefore I think conflict was indeed inevitable.

Dr Rajnarayan Chandavarkar

Well the main reason the British gave for their successful conquest, was related to the superiority of their civilisation, their technology of warfare their state craft, and Tippoo in a sense undermined all these myths not only because he often had British armies on the run, partly because he was a great moderniser and had very competent armies, his light cavalry were always capable of harrying and indeed did harry British troops. For all those reasons he was the obverse in a sense of the way the British presented themselves.

In 1780 at a time of shifting alliances Haider and Tippoo marched against the British with a huge army. Lieutenant Colonel Bailey with a detachment of 3000 troops was cut off en-route to join Munro's forces near Madras. The ensuing battle of Pollilur was a disaster for the British. Haider and Tippoo managed to concentrate their forces joining those of their French allies under Lally. They had superior numbers, their famous light cavalry, rockets and canon.