Why britain ruled india

The chaos of British rule helped turn late 19th Century India into one of the world's most famine-prone societies, as the political networks and mechanisms with which Indians supported each other in times of need were undermined by the British fear of political challenge. Famine relief was focused on protecting centres of British authority and keeping expenditure as low as possible. The initial strategy was to build famine camps to provide the starving with work far away from existing centres of settlement, so the poor didn't cluster and protest in imperial towns.

British rule ended amid a cycle of violence sparked by the Raj's paranoid concerns about its own security. The 20th Century's two world wars turned India into a massive self-financing barracks essential to defend Britain's position throughout Asia - but it also racked up anxiety in the face of challenge. The idea of dominating India had come to be woven into imperial families' very way of life; for some, any form of retreat involved a major existential crisis. The result was events like Gen Reginald Dyer's unplanned massacre of hundreds of people at Amritsar's Jallianwala Bagh in , which undermined the belief of many Indian nationalists that they could negotiate with the Raj.

The political strategy of Indian opponents to British rule was designed to create an ordered society in contrast to the chaos and violence they associated with imperial power. That, for example, was the aim of Mohandas Gandhi's strategy of non-violence. But amidst economic depression and world war, Indian society fragmented. The Raj's failure to provide protection to different social groups meant fear and a tendency towards retaliatory violence spread throughout north India.

The end of World War Two was marked by mass poverty and an unprecedented social collapse. By , Britons felt that their state could no longer uphold its core purpose, to maintain their own safety. Winston Churchill even remarked that before the British came, there was no Indian nation. If this is true, the empire clearly made an indirect contribution to the modernisation of India through its unifying role. However, is the grand claim about the big role of the Raj in bringing about a united India correct?

Yet it is a great leap from the proximate story of Britain imposing a single united regime on India as did actually occur to the huge claim that only the British could have created a united India out of a set of disparate states.

That way of looking at Indian history would go firmly against the reality of the large domestic empires that had characterised India throughout the millennia. The ambitious and energetic emperors from the third century BC did not accept that their regimes were complete until the bulk of what they took to be one country was united under their rule. Indian history shows a sequential alternation of large domestic empires with clusters of fragmented kingdoms.

We should therefore not make the mistake of assuming that the fragmented governance of midth century India was the state in which the country typically found itself throughout history, until the British helpfully came along to unite it. Even though in history textbooks the British were often assumed to be the successors of the Mughals in India, it is important to note that the British did not in fact take on the Mughals when they were a force to be reckoned with.

The nawab still swore allegiance to the Mughal emperor, without paying very much attention to his dictates. The imperial status of the Mughal authority over India continued to be widely acknowledged even though the powerful empire itself was missing. When the so-called sepoy mutiny threatened the foundations of British India in , the diverse anti-British forces participating in the joint rebellion could be aligned through their shared acceptance of the formal legitimacy of the Mughal emperor as the ruler of India.

The emperor was, in fact, reluctant to lead the rebels, but this did not stop the rebels from declaring him the emperor of all India. The year-old Mughal monarch, Bahadur Shah II, known as Zafar, was far more interested in reading and writing poetry than in fighting wars or ruling India. He could do little to help the 1, unarmed civilians of Delhi whom the British killed as the mutiny was brutally crushed and the city largely destroyed.

The poet-emperor was banished to Burma, where he died. The grave was not allowed to be anything more than an undistinguished stone slab covered with corrugated iron. I remember discussing with my father how the British rulers of India and Burma must evidently have been afraid of the evocative power of the remains of the last Mughal emperor. It was only much later, in the s, that Zafar would be honoured with something closer to what could decently serve as the grave of the last Mughal emperor.

I n the absence of the British Raj, the most likely successors to the Mughals would probably have been the newly emerging Hindu Maratha powers near Bombay, who periodically sacked the Mughal capital of Delhi and exercised their power to intervene across India. But the Marathas were still quite far from putting together anything like the plan of an all-India empire.

The British, by contrast, were not satisfied until they were the dominant power across the bulk of the subcontinent, and in this they were not so much bringing a new vision of a united India from abroad as acting as the successor of previous domestic empires.

British rule spread to the rest of the country from its imperial foundations in Calcutta, beginning almost immediately after Plassey. It was from Calcutta that the conquest of other parts of India was planned and directed.

The profits made by the East India Company from its economic operations in Bengal financed, to a great extent, the wars that the British waged across India in the period of their colonial expansion.

With the nawabs under their control, the company made big money not only from territorial revenues, but also from the unique privilege of duty-free trade in the rich Bengal economy — even without counting the so-called gifts that the Company regularly extracted from local merchants.

In , when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1. While most of the loot from the financial bleeding accrued to British company officials in Bengal, there was widespread participation by the political and business leadership in Britain: nearly a quarter of the members of parliament in London owned stocks in the East India Company after Plassey.

The robber-ruler synthesis did eventually give way to what would eventually become classical colonialism, with the recognition of the need for law and order and a modicum of reasonable governance.

But the early misuse of state power by the East India Company put the economy of Bengal under huge stress. Contemporary estimates suggested that about a third of the Bengal population died. This is almost certainly an overestimate.

The EIC became the single largest player on the British global market. The Company, with the backing of its own private well-disciplined and experienced army, was able to assert its interests in new regions in India without facing obstacles from other colonial powers, although it continued to experience resistance from local rulers. The first was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively comprised British India.

In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-thirds of India. When an Indian ruler who was able to secure his territory wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economical method of indirect rule that did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects.

In return, the company pledged to defend its allies. The style blended traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume, and recession.

In the early 19th century, the Indian question of geopolitical dominance and empire holding remained with the East India Company. First recruited from mercenaries and low-caste volunteers, the Bengal Army eventually became composed largely of high-caste Hindus and landowning Muslims.

Within the army, British officers always outranked Indians, no matter how long their service. Indian officers received no training in administration or leadership so they would remain dependent on the British officers.

The Indian Rebellion of , which eventually led to the dissolution of the EIC, had diverse political, economic, military, religious and social causes. A direct trigger was the grievances of the sepoys, a generic term used for native Indian soldiers of the Bengal Army, against the EIC administration, caused mainly by the ethnic gulf between the European officers and their Indian troops.

The spark that led directly to a mutiny in several sepoy companies was the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle. In , British officers insisted that the new cartridges be used by both Muslim and Hindu soldiers, but the cartridges were made from cow and pig fat. This insulted both Hindu and Muslim religious practices. Underlying grievances over British taxation and recent land annexations by the EIC were ignited by the sepoy mutineers and within weeks, dozens of units of the Indian army joined peasant armies in widespread rebellion.

The old Muslim and Hindu aristocracies, who were seeing their power steadily eroded by the EIC, also rebelled against the British rule. The Crown took over its Indian possessions, its administrative powers and machinery, and its armed forces.

The EIC was officially dissolved in and the rebellion led the British to reorganize the army, the financial system, and the administration in India. The country was thereafter directly governed by the Crown as the new British Raj.

Although dissolved following the Rebellion of , it stimulated the growth of the British Empire. Its armies were to become the armies of British India after , and it played a key role in introducing English as an official language in India. In the aftermath of the Indian Rebellion of , the British government dissolved the East India Company and established the formal colonial rule in India that would become known as the British Raj. Until the Battle of Plassey, the East India Company EIC or the Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable—town councils, all composed of merchants.

The councils barely had enough powers for the effective management of their local affairs and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall Company operations in India led to some grave abuses by Company officers and their allies. Consequently, the Parliament established regulations at aimed to manage the affairs of the EIC. From , the British government had the final word on all major appointments in India. With increased British power in India, supervision of Indian affairs by the British Crown and Parliament increased as well.

By the s, British nationals could transact business or engage in missionary work under the protection of the Crown in the three presidencies. This made the Company a part of British governance, but administration of British India remained the responsibility of Company officers. The first was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions that came to comprise British India. The British government took control of the Company and all power was transferred from the EIC to the British Crown, which began to administer most of India as a number of provinces.

What followed became known as the British Raj, the rule of the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent between and Bartholomew and Sons, Oxford University Press, The British Raj extended over almost all present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, except for small holdings by other European nations such as Goa and Pondicherry.

This area is very diverse, containing the Himalayan mountains, fertile floodplains, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, a long coastline, tropical dry forests, arid uplands, and the Thar desert.

The Government of India Act made changes in the governance of India at three levels: in the imperial government in London, in the central government in Calcutta, and in the provincial governments in the presidencies and later in the provinces. In London, it provided for a cabinet-level Secretary of State for India and a member Council of India, whose members were required, to have spent at least ten years in India no more than 10 years ago. He was, however, now responsible to the Secretary of State in London and through him to Parliament.

The Governor-General in the capital, Calcutta, and the Governor in a subordinate presidency Madras or Bombay was each required to consult his advisory council. Routine departmental decisions were made exclusively by the member, but important decisions required the consent of the Governor-General and in the absence of such consent, required discussion by the entire Executive Council.

This innovation in Indian governance was promulgated in the Indian Councils Act If the Government of India needed to enact new laws, the Councils Act allowed for a Legislative Council—an expansion of the Executive Council by up to twelve additional members, each appointed to a two-year term—with half the members consisting of British officials of the government termed official and allowed to vote and the other half comprising Indians and domiciled Britons in India termed non-official and serving only in an advisory capacity.

A princely state, also called native state, refers to a semi-sovereign principality during the British Raj that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by a local ruler, subject to a form of indirect rule on some matters.

The princely states varied greatly in status, size, and wealth. The remaining approximately states were influenced by agents answerable to the provincial governments of British India under a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or Chief Commissioner. In contrast, the courts of the princely states existed under the authority of the respective rulers of those states. By treaty, the British controlled the external affairs of the princely states absolutely. As the states were not British possessions, however, they retained control over their own internal affairs, subject to a degree of British influence which in many states was substantial.

Suzerainty over princely states, some of the largest and most important, was exercised in the name of the British Crown by the central government of British India under the Viceroy. The remaining approximately states were dependents of the provincial governments of British India under a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or Chief Commissioner as the case might have been.

By the beginning of the 20th century, relations between the British and the four largest states — Hyderabad, Mysore, Jammu and Kashmir, and Baroda — were directly under the control of the Governor-General of India in the person of a British Resident. Two agencies, for Rajputana and Central India, oversaw 20 and princely states respectively. The mission civilisatrice , a French term which translates literally into English as civilising mission , is a rationale for intervention or colonization, purporting to contribute to the spread of civilization and used mostly in relation to the colonization and Westernization of indigenous peoples in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The rationale was also used by the British in their Asian and African colonies. The European colonial powers argued it was their duty to bring Western civilization to what they perceived as backward people. The intellectual origins of the mission civilisatrice trace back to the European thinkers, who discussed the idea of social change by using a development metaphor.

In the 18th century, many saw history as a linear unending inevitable process of social evolutionism with the European nations running ahead. Racism underlined the arguments of two dominant lines of thought that emerged from this assumption.

Education in English became a high priority with the goal to speed up modernization and reduce administrative charges. Colonial authorities fervently debated the question of the best policy, falling roughly in one of the two main camps.

The orientalists believed that education should happen in Indian languages and favored classical or court languages like Sanskrit or Persian. Conversely, the utilitarians also called anglicists strongly believed that traditional India had nothing to teach regarding modern skills and the best education would happen in English.

One of the most influential reformers, Thomas Babington Macaulay — , belonged to the latter group. Macaulay was a historian and politician who represented the tradition of Whig history, according to which the past is an inevitable progression towards ever greater liberty and enlightenment, culminating in modern forms of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy.

In general, Whig historians emphasize the rise of constitutional government, personal freedoms, and scientific progress. Macauley went to India in and served on the Supreme Council of India until This aimed to create a class of anglicized Indians to serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indians. Macualay assumed that the creation of such a class was necessary before any reform of vernacular education. Under Macaulay, thousands of elementary and secondary schools opened, typically with all-male student bodies.

Missionaries opened their own schools that taught Christianity and the 3-Rs reading, writing, and arithmetic. Universities in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras were established in , just before the Rebellion.

By , some 60, Indians had matriculated, chiefly in the liberal arts or law. About a third entered public administration and another third became lawyers. The result was a very well-educated professional state bureaucracy. Of the 1, top-level positions, almost all were held by Britons, typically with Oxbridge degrees. By , the number of institutions had doubled and enrollment reached , The curriculum followed classical British standards et by Oxford and Cambridge and stressed English literature and European history.

All these benefits of education, however, went to the Indian elites and middle classes, who were expected to serve as loyal supporters of the British rule in India. Historians of Indian education have generally linked the idea of educational reform under the British rule to colonial dominance and control. Those who advocated actual reforms became less influential. This campaign served to strengthen imperial support at home and thus bolster the moral authority of the elites who ran the Empire.

Rajabai Clock Tower, seen here shrouded in scaffolding, was completed in The Indian Rebellion of known also as the Great Uprising of resulted from an accumulation of factors over time rather than from any single event.

New sepoys local soldiers, usually of Hindu or Muslim background were recruited and to forestall any social friction, the Company took action to adapt its military practices to the requirements of their religious rituals. Over time, however, sepoys developed a number of grievances.

After the annexation of Oudh Awadh by the EIC in , many sepoys were disquieted both from losing their perquisites as landed gentry and from the anticipation of any increased land-revenue payments that the annexation might bring about. Furthermore, by , some Indian soldiers, interpreting the presence of missionaries as a sign of official intent, were convinced that the Company was masterminding mass conversions of Hindus and Muslims to Christianity.

Finally, changes in the terms of professional service also created resentment. Moreover, the new recruits of the Bengal Army, who until had been exempted from overseas service in observance of certain caste rituals, were now required a commitment for general service.

There were also grievances over the issue of promotions based on seniority. This as well as the increasing number of European officers in the battalions made promotion slow, and many Indian officers did not reach commissioned rank until they were too old to be effective. The final spark was provided by the ammunition for the new Enfield P rifle. These used paper cartridges that came pre-greased. To load the rifle, sepoys had to bite the cartridges open to release the powder.

The grease used was rumored to include tallow derived from beef, offensive to Hindus, and pork, offensive to Muslims. There were rumors that the British sought to destroy the religions of the Indian people and forcing the native soldiers to break their sacred code certainly increased this concern. The Company was quick to reverse the effects of the policy in hopes that the unrest would be quelled.

This, however, convinced many sepoys that the rumors were true and that their fears were justified. Civilians developed their own grievances against the Company. The nobility, many of whom lost titles and domains under the Doctrine of Lapse which refused to recognize the adopted children of princes as legal heirs, felt that the Company had interfered with a traditional system of inheritance.

In the areas of central India where such loss of privilege had not occurred, the princes remained loyal to the Company, even in areas where the sepoys had rebelled. Rural landlords called taluqdars lost half their landed estates to peasant farmers as a result of the land reforms that came in the wake of annexation of Oudh.

Eventually, the civilian rebellion was highly uneven in its geographic distribution and historians still attempt to explain why some areas rebelled while others remained calm. At Meerut, a large military cantonment, 2, Indian sepoys and 2, British soldiers were stationed along with 12 British-manned guns. The station held one of the largest concentrations of British troops in India and this was later cited as evidence that the original rising was a spontaneous outbreak rather than a pre-planned plot.

The rebellion began as a mutiny of sepoys on May 10, , in the cantonment of the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions, largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh, and the Delhi region.

The large princely states of Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir, as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion. In some regions such as Oudh, the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against European presence. Some rebel leaders, such as Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, became folk heroes in the nationalist movement in India half a century later. In , for example, the British viceroy governor of India, Lord Curzon, said 'As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world.

If we lose it we shall straightway drop to a third rate power'. Did India gain or lose from British rule? Some recent research suggests that British rule did little for India in economic terms.

Britain gained hugely from ruling India, but most of the wealth created was not invested back into the country. For example, from to about , economic growth in India was very slow - much slower than in Britain or America. India actually started importing food under British rule, because Indians were growing 'cash crops' like cotton and tea to be sent to Britain.

It is extremely important not to forget the terrible famines that devastated India. These were partly the result of weather, but partly caused by British policies. Food shortages came about because Indians were growing cash crops. When famine struck in and the British system of government was completely overwhelmed and could not organise a big enough relief effort. As well as these massive famines, there were many other smaller, more localised famines.

This was much less than the French, Dutch and Germans took from their lands. They brought in an irrigation programme, which increased the amount of land available for farming by 8 times. They developed a coal industry, which had not existed before. Public health and life expectancy increased under British rule, mainly due to improved water supplies and the introduction of quinine treatment against malaria.

Big landowners, Indian princes, the Indian middle classes all gained in terms of job opportunities, business opportunities and careers in areas like the law. Ordinary Indians gained little, but the argument still continues about whether British rule made much difference to their lives. Many historians think that the majority of Indians would have remained poor even if they had been ruled by Indians.