[00:00] - All of Congress listened
with rapt attention
[00:02] to a letter written by John Adams.
[00:04] His message provided a play by play
[00:06] of how the British were
holding up in the war,
[00:08] but not the war in America.
[00:10] The conflict that Congress
desperately wanted news of
[00:13] was happening in Southern India.
[00:14] The Americans understood that
they couldn't beat the British
[00:17] in the Revolutionary War
without international support.
[00:20] And when the founding fathers
needed to close the deal
[00:22] against the most powerful
empire on the planet,
[00:25] they got an unexpected
assist from Tipu Sultan,
[00:28] the legendary Tiger of Mysore.
[00:31] I'm Joel Cook, and this is Rogue History.
[00:34] So what exactly would unite
a group of American rebels
[00:37] with a Muslim ruler on the
other side of the world?
[00:40] The same thing that
unites millions of people
[00:42] to this very day- British imperialism.
[00:44] But more specifically, British tea.
[00:46] Let me spill a little for you.
[00:47] Most of us know about the Boston Tea Party
[00:50] where Americans dressed in
highly problematic disguises
[00:53] tossed 342 chests of
tea into Boston Harbor.
[00:57] The colonists were
furious about the Tea Act,
[01:00] a piece of legislation intended to rescue
[01:02] the struggling British East India Company
[01:04] by selling its massive stock
of tea at much cheaper rates
[01:07] than anything else on the American market.
[01:09] The only problem was that this monopoly
[01:12] risked putting American tea
sellers out of business,
[01:14] hence the whole throwing company tea
[01:16] into the harbor situation.
[01:18] But what was the British
East India Company
[01:20] and where did they get all this tea from?
[01:23] The company was founded in December 1600
[01:26] and served as the merchant arm
[01:27] of British imperialism in Asia.
[01:29] Imagine Amazon being in
charge of America's economy
[01:32] and you'd have the right idea.
[01:33] The company's dealings
with India, China, Persia,
[01:36] and Indonesia provided
Britain with tea, textiles,
[01:39] and piles of unused spices.
[01:42] But all those deals
they managed to pull off
[01:44] were because of a unique negotiating tool
[01:46] most corporations didn't have,
[01:48] a private army.
[01:49] If the company couldn't talk Asian powers
[01:51] into negotiating with them,
[01:52] they were all too willing
to march troops in
[01:54] to change their minds.
[01:56] That is until they ran
into the Kingdom of Mysore.
[01:59] You see, Mysore wasn't some young upstart
[02:02] like the Americans.
[02:03] When the company started
probing Mysore's borders
[02:05] in the 1760s,
[02:07] they were met by a brilliant Muslim leader
[02:09] named Hyder Ali.
[02:10] Hyder had recently taken control
of the South Indian Kingdom
[02:13] from a Hindu dynasty
established around 1399.
[02:17] As the newly crown sultan of Mysore,
[02:19] Hyder led a sophisticated economy
[02:22] and an army numbering in
the tens of thousands.
[02:24] The Mysoreans were one
of the biggest obstacles
[02:26] the British faced in South Asia.
[02:29] And Hyder was smart enough to
amplify his kingdom's power
[02:32] by forming an alliance with the French.
[02:34] But his most effective
weapon against the British
[02:36] wasn't his army or his alliances.
[02:38] It was his tiger-obsessed son Tipu.
[02:40] (tiger roaring)
The story behind the whole
[02:42] Tiger of Mysore thing isn't
completely locked down.
[02:45] Oral traditions and a
heck of a lot of murals
[02:48] commissioned by Tipu
[02:49] say that he was on a
wartime mission for his dad
[02:52] when he fought and killed
an attacking Bengal tiger
[02:54] with just a dagger.
[02:55] Now, I wasn't there, so I can't say
[02:57] whether Tipu exaggerated
the situation or not,
[03:00] but for a 15-year-old
trying to build street cred
[03:02] with his dad's veteran army,
[03:04] a tiger fighting story
is awfully convenient.
[03:06] Either way, Hyder's leadership
[03:08] and Tipu's eye of the tiger
mentality on the battlefield
[03:11] were catching the eye of a suitor
[03:13] on the other side of the world.
[03:14] By 1777,
[03:16] that little tea incident in Boston
[03:18] had spiraled into an all-out war
[03:20] against the mighty British Empire.
[03:22] The Americans knew they
needed allies in order to win,
[03:25] and they sent diplomats across the map
[03:27] in search of assistance.
[03:28] The French, of course, were
ready to support anything
[03:31] that stuck it to the British,
[03:32] so they offered the Americans
an intimate correspondence
[03:36] with a tall, dark, and handsome
friend from South Asia.
[03:39] Though the Americans were excited
[03:41] about building a relationship
with the Mysoreans,
[03:43] things didn't exactly take off.
[03:45] We all know how long
distance relationships are.
[03:47] You're both busy. You
can't agree on date night.
[03:49] There's a massive empire
trying to destroy you both.
[03:52] And to be honest,
[03:53] America didn't have much to
bring to the table anyway.
[03:56] Sure, they were keeping a large portion
[03:58] of the British military
occupied in North America,
[04:00] which definitely helped Mysore,
[04:02] but nobody, not even the
American rebels themselves,
[04:06] was sure they'd be able to keep it up.
[04:08] Prior to their victory
at Trenton, New Jersey
[04:10] in December 1776,
[04:12] the Americans hadn't won
a single major battle
[04:14] against the British.
[04:15] They thought about sending
their troops to help Mysore,
[04:18] but they realized they didn't
even have enough troops
[04:20] to fight their own war.
[04:21] The best they could do was
instruct their privateers
[04:24] and tiny Navy to attack
East India Company shipping
[04:27] out of solidarity.
[04:28] As much as I hate to admit it,
[04:29] for Mysore, Revolutionary
America truly was the guy
[04:33] sitting on the passenger side
of his best friend's ride.
[04:36] But for the time being,
[04:38] Tipu and Hyder didn't really need them.
[04:40] Throughout the 1770s,
[04:42] father and son built an army
[04:43] nearly a hundred thousand strong.
[04:45] And when the British threatened
[04:46] their French homies in India,
[04:48] the Tiger of Mysore showed everyone
[04:50] what a ride or die really looks like.
[04:52] On September 10th, 1780,
[04:55] Tipu wiped out one of
the East India Company's
[04:57] private armies at the Battle of Pollilur,
[04:59] killing 3,000 men
[05:01] and capturing hundreds
of British officers.
[05:03] It was an incredible victory for Mysore,
[05:05] but it also showed a side of Tipu
[05:07] that would cause problems for him.
[05:08] Many of the hired guns in
the East India Company's army
[05:12] were natives of rival kingdoms in India.
[05:14] And when a British officer
tried to surrender to save them,
[05:17] Tipu took scattered
gunfire from a few holdouts
[05:19] as an excuse to massacre those
who had already surrendered.
[05:22] Sometimes a tiger can become a man-eater.
[05:25] And the Tiger of Mysore
[05:26] was showing early signs of that behavior
[05:28] when it came to his political rivals.
[05:30] Still, the victory at Pollilur
[05:33] convinced the French to send
major military assistance
[05:35] to help Mysore,
[05:37] and that, along with wins Tipu
and Hyder kept delivering,
[05:41] had the domino effect
of forcing the British
[05:43] to send Royal Army and Navy units
[05:45] to help the East India Company.
[05:47] But more troops in India meant
less fighting the Americans.
[05:51] And that was a problem for the British
[05:53] because that scrub we talked about earlier
[05:55] was looking a lot more genuine.
[05:58] The glow up started in 1778
[06:00] when the American Army
fought the British to a draw
[06:03] at the Battle of Monmouth.
[06:04] The following year,
[06:05] a little known American
officer named John Paul Jones
[06:08] put the US Navy on the map
[06:10] when he defeated HMS
Serapis in British waters.
[06:13] If you'd like to know more about that,
[06:15] check out our episode on Jones.
[06:16] By July of 1780, French
troops arrived in the colonies
[06:20] and the Americans'
chances of winning the war
[06:22] were looking pretty good.
[06:24] But the Founding Fathers
still wanted to know
[06:26] what was happening in Mysore.
[06:28] John Adams' letter to Congress
[06:30] regaled the Founders with the exploits
[06:32] of the famous Hyder Ali in September 1780.
[06:36] All throughout the following
year of the Revolutionary War,
[06:39] a who's who of famous Americans
[06:41] chattered back and forth
across the Atlantic
[06:43] about the second Anglo-Mysore war.
[06:45] Even in 1782, when American
diplomats traveled to the Hague
[06:49] for peace negotiations,
[06:51] they were still checking
[06:52] the Britain versus Mysore scoreboard,
[06:54] the way we check Carolina
Panthers scores in church.
[06:57] The Americans understood that
though their war was over,
[07:00] their negotiating
leverage relied on Mysore
[07:02] continuing to wear the British down.
[07:04] But for the brave and sometimes
brutal Tiger of Mysore,
[07:08] things were about to
change in a major way.
[07:11] In December 1782,
[07:13] the French reinforcements
finally arrived in Mysore
[07:16] to assist Hyder and Tipu
in defeating the British.
[07:19] But by the time they got there,
[07:21] the dynamic duo was down to one.
[07:23] Hyder Ali died just six days
after Tipu's 31st birthday.
[07:27] For the newly crowned Tipu Sultan,
[07:29] it seems that his method for processing
[07:31] involved leaning very heavily
into his special interest.
[07:35] That is to say Tipu got way more tigery.
[07:38] After taking over his father's palace,
[07:39] Tipu upgraded the home decor
by adding a tiger throne
[07:42] with a life-sized tiger head,
[07:44] pillars capped with engraved tigers,
[07:46] oh, and how could I forget,
actual Bengal tigers.
[07:50] And it didn't stop there.
[07:51] The new Sultan ordered tiger stripes
[07:53] added to the Mysorean military uniform
[07:55] and engraved tigers on his guns, swords,
[07:58] and other possessions,
[07:59] but Tipu's best work
as an interior designer
[08:01] was a clear warning to the British
[08:03] that things weren't gonna
get any easier for them.
[08:06] Sometime after becoming Sultan,
[08:08] Tipu commissioned a nearly
life-sized automaton
[08:11] of a tiger eating a British soldier.
[08:13] The automaton included a
crank attached to a mechanism
[08:16] inside the tiger's body
[08:17] that simultaneously
lifted the dying man's arm
[08:20] and produced noises
imitating his final cries.
[08:25] Help me!
[08:26] Help me! Talk about committing to the bit.
[08:28] But fulfilling his special interests
[08:30] didn't distract Tipu from the war.
[08:32] He continued to attack the British
[08:34] and their native allies in Southern India,
[08:35] but with less success against the British
[08:38] and more brutal suppression
of his Indian rivals.
[08:40] And just when it seemed
things couldn't get any worse,
[08:43] France and America hit Mysore
[08:45] with the it's not you, it's me.
[08:48] In early 1783,
[08:49] both France and the United States
[08:52] signed peace treaties with Britain.
[08:54] But for Tipu and Mysore,
it was a harbinger of doom.
[08:57] Without the Americans
distracting the British
[08:59] and the French sending troops,
[09:00] Mysore now stood alone
[09:02] against the most powerful
empire in the world.
[09:04] Lord Charles Cornwallis,
[09:06] the very General George
Washington defeated
[09:09] to win the Revolutionary
War, was reassigned to India
[09:12] with instructions to destroy the Tiger
[09:14] and his kingdom once and for all.
[09:17] Now, before you get upset,
[09:18] you have to remember,
[09:20] America was a young country at this point.
[09:22] It managed to stand up to the
British and win absolutely,
[09:26] but holding onto their
freedom wasn't a guarantee.
[09:29] The revolutionaries who won the war
[09:31] were now the government officials
[09:32] nearly three million people
we're looking to for safety.
[09:35] Still, Tipu had to have been a little hurt
[09:38] when Washington's administration
[09:40] opened two consulates in India
[09:42] to foster goodwill and
trade with the British.
[09:44] Tipu once said that he would
rather live two days as a tiger
[09:48] than two centuries as a sheep.
[09:50] And when the British stormed
[09:51] the Mysorean capital in May 1799,
[09:53] he stayed true to his word,
[09:55] standing and fighting until the very end.
[09:57] The Kingdom of Mysore survived,
[09:59] but remained under British control
[10:01] until India gained its independence
nearly 150 years later.
[10:06] Though the American
Revolution is often told
[10:09] as a story of plucky colonists
[10:10] standing on their own against
the mighty British empire,
[10:13] that's only a fraction of the story.
[10:15] All across the world,
[10:16] various peoples worked
together as best they could
[10:19] to stop an imperial juggernaut
[10:21] from destroying their way of life.
[10:23] For some, like the Americans,
[10:25] this global revolution brought
them the time they needed
[10:28] to strengthen their resistance
and earn their freedom.
[10:30] And for others, like Tipu Sultan
and the Kingdom of Mysore,
[10:33] their revolution continued
on for over a century.
[10:36] When we think about the
American Revolution,
[10:39] what it means and who contributed,
[10:41] it's good to remember more
than just the big names
[10:43] like George Washington and
famous allies like the French.
[10:47] Beyond those icons
stand many lesser known,
[10:49] but equally impactful contributors,
[10:52] like the tiger-obsessed Sultan
[10:54] who gave America a chance
to win its freedom.
[10:57] Are there any other surprising influences
[10:58] on American history that come to mind?
[11:00] Tell us in the comments. Till next time.
[11:02] Before you go,
[11:04] we're excited to tell you
about PBS Documentaries,
[11:07] our newest YouTube channel.
[11:08] We're rebranding and expanding PBS Voices
[11:11] to now include everything
[11:12] from digital original series like "Ritual"
[11:15] to independent films
[11:16] to the best of PBS's
extensive documentary archive.
[11:20] This will be the best
place on the internet
[11:22] for documentary lovers.
[11:23] Check out the link in
the description. Thanks.
[11:26] (dramatic music)