• British Colonial Rule

The famous Kohinoor diamond has been doing rounds in the news. It was a prized possession of pre-colonial India which the British took with them on their way back home. The talks of taking it back have caused a stir in the recent past. However, it forms a very small fraction of what our colonizers took away. As a consequence, our country was in a grim state when they left. This forms the basis that governs our current policies and future prospects.

Suggested Videos

The pre-colonial state.

Before the advent of colonial rule , India was a self-sufficient and flourishing economy. Evidently, our country was popularly known as the golden eagle. India had already established itself on the world map with a decent amount of exports. Although primarily it was an agrarian economy, many manufacturing activities were budding in the pre-colonial India.

Indian craftsmanship was widely popular around the world and garnered huge  demands . The economy was well-known for its handicraft industries in the fields of cotton and silk textiles, metal and precious stone works etc. Such developments lured the British to paralyze our state and use it for their home country’s benefits.

Browse more Topics under Indian Economy On The Eve Of Independence

  • Agricultural Sector
  • Industrial Sector
  • Foreign Trade
  • Demographic Condition
  • Occupational Structure
  • Infrastructure

India: The British Colony

Image result for british rule in india

The British came to India with the motive of colonization. Their plans involved using India as a feeder colony for their own flourishing economy back at Britain. This exploitation continued for about two centuries, till we finally got independence on 15 August 1947. Consequently, this rendered our country’s economy hollow. Hence, a study of this relationship between the colonizers and its colony is important to understand the present developments and future prospects of India.

The colonial rule is marked with periods of heavy exploitation. The British took steps that ensured development and promotion of the interests of their home country. They were in no way concerned about the course of Indian economy. Such steps transformed our economy for the worse- it effectively became a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished goods.

The colonial kings robbed India of education, opportunities etc. reducing Indians to mere servants. Undoubtedly, they never tried to estimate colonial India’s national and per capita income. Some individuals like – Findlay Shirras, Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, V.K.R.V. Rao and R.C. Desai tried to estimate such figures.

Although the results were inconsistent, the estimates of V.K.R.V. Rao are considered accurate. Notably, India’s growth of aggregate real output was less than 2% in the first half of the twentieth century coupled with a half percent growth in per capita output per year. By and large, India faced a herculean task to recover from the blows that two centuries of colonial rule landed on its economy.

Solved Example for You

Q:   Name some individuals who tried to estimate colonial India’s per capita income.

Ans:   Some individuals like – Findlay Shirras, Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, V.K.R.V. Rao and R.C. Desai tried to estimate such figures. Although the results were inconsistent, the estimates of V.K.R.V. Rao are considered accurate. An estimate was the best that could be calculated. The estimate was that colonial India’s growth of output was less than 2%.

Customize your course in 30 seconds

Which class are you in.

tutor

Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence

One response to “foreign trade”.

can I ask who the author is and the date of the publishment? I want to cite it in my paper.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download the App

Google Play

An English grandee of the East India Company depicted riding in an Indian procession, 1825-1830.

Illusions of empire: Amartya Sen on what British rule really did for India

It is true that before British rule, India was starting to fall behind other parts of the world – but many of the arguments defending the Raj are based on serious misconceptions about India’s past, imperialism and history itself

T he British empire in India was in effect established at the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757. The battle was swift, beginning at dawn and ending close to sunset. It was a normal monsoon day, with occasional rain in the mango groves at the town of Plassey, which is between Calcutta, where the British were based, and Murshidabad, the capital of the kingdom of Bengal. It was in those mango groves that the British forces faced the Nawab Siraj-ud-Doula’s army and convincingly defeated it.

British rule ended nearly 200 years later with Jawaharlal Nehru’s famous speech on India’s “tryst with destiny” at midnight on 14 August 1947. Two hundred years is a long time. What did the British achieve in India, and what did they fail to accomplish?

During my days as a student at a progressive school in West Bengal in the 1940s, these questions came into our discussion constantly. They remain important even today, not least because the British empire is often invoked in discussions about successful global governance. It has also been invoked to try to persuade the US to acknowledge its role as the pre-eminent imperial power in the world today: “Should the United States seek to shed – or to shoulder – the imperial load it has inherited?” the historian Niall Ferguson has asked . It is certainly an interesting question, and Ferguson is right to argue that it cannot be answered without an understanding of how the British empire rose and fell – and what it managed to do.

Arguing about all this at Santiniketan school, which had been established by Rabindranath Tagore some decades earlier, we were bothered by a difficult methodological question. How could we think about what India would have been like in the 1940s had British rule not occurred at all?

The frequent temptation to compare India in 1757 (when British rule was beginning) with India in 1947 (when the British were leaving ) would tell us very little, because in the absence of British rule, India would of course not have remained the same as it was at the time of Plassey. The country would not have stood still had the British conquest not occurred. But how do we answer the question about what difference was made by British rule?

To illustrate the relevance of such an “alternative history”, we may consider another case – one with a potential imperial conquest that did not in fact occur. Let’s think about Commodore Matthew Perry of the US navy, who steamed into the bay of Edo in Japan in 1853 with four warships. Now consider the possibility that Perry was not merely making a show of American strength (as was in fact the case), but was instead the advance guard of an American conquest of Japan, establishing a new American empire in the land of the rising sun, rather as Robert Clive did in India . If we were to assess the achievements of the supposed American rule of Japan through the simple device of comparing Japan before that imperial conquest in 1853 with Japan after the American domination ended, whenever that might be, and attribute all the differences to the effects of the American empire, we would miss all the contributions of the Meiji restoration from 1868 onwards, and of other globalising changes that were going on. Japan did not stand still; nor would India have done so.

While we can see what actually happened in Japan under Meiji rule, it is extremely hard to guess with any confidence what course the history of the Indian subcontinent would have taken had the British conquest not occurred. Would India have moved, like Japan, towards modernisation in an increasingly globalising world, or would it have remained resistant to change, like Afghanistan, or would it have hastened slowly, like Thailand?

These are impossibly difficult questions to answer. And yet, even without real alternative historical scenarios, there are some limited questions that can be answered, which may contribute to an intelligent understanding of the role that British rule played in India. We can ask: what were the challenges that India faced at the time of the British conquest, and what happened in those critical areas during the British rule?

T here was surely a need for major changes in a rather chaotic and institutionally backward India. To recognise the need for change in India in the mid-18th century does not require us to ignore – as many Indian super-nationalists fear – the great achievements in India’s past, with its extraordinary history of accomplishments in philosophy, mathematics, literature, arts, architecture, music, medicine, linguistics and astronomy. India had also achieved considerable success in building a thriving economy with flourishing trade and commerce well before the colonial period – the economic wealth of India was amply acknowledged by British observers such as Adam Smith.

The fact is, nevertheless, that even with those achievements, in the mid-18th century India had in many ways fallen well behind what was being achieved in Europe. The exact nature and significance of this backwardness were frequent subjects of lively debates in the evenings at my school.

An insightful essay on India by Karl Marx particularly engaged the attention of some of us. Writing in 1853, Marx pointed to the constructive role of British rule in India, on the grounds that India needed some radical re-examination and self-scrutiny. And Britain did indeed serve as India’s primary western contact, particularly in the course of the 19th century. The importance of this influence would be hard to neglect. The indigenous globalised culture that was slowly emerging in India was deeply indebted not only to British writing, but also to books and articles in other – that is non-English – European languages that became known in India through the British.

Figures such as the Calcutta philosopher Ram Mohan Roy, born in 1772, were influenced not only by traditional knowledge of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian texts, but also by the growing familiarity with English writings. After Roy, in Bengal itself there were also Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Madhusudan Dutta and several generations of Tagores and their followers who were re-examining the India they had inherited in the light of what they saw happening in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their main – often their only – source of information were the books (usually in English) circulating in India, thanks to British rule. That intellectual influence, covering a wide range of European cultures, survives strongly today, even as the military, political and economic power of the British has declined dramatically.

The Gateway of India in Bombay, a monument commemorating the landing of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911.

I was persuaded that Marx was basically right in his diagnosis of the need for some radical change in India, as its old order was crumbling as a result of not having been a part of the intellectual and economic globalisation that the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution had initiated across the world (along with, alas, colonialism).

There was arguably, however, a serious flaw in Marx’s thesis, in particular in his implicit presumption that the British conquest was the only window on the modern world that could have opened for India. What India needed at the time was more constructive globalisation, but that is not the same thing as imperialism. The distinction is important. Throughout India’s long history, it persistently enjoyed exchanges of ideas as well as of commodities with the outside world. Traders, settlers and scholars moved between India and further east – China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and elsewhere – for a great many centuries, beginning more than 2,000 years ago. The far-reaching influence of this movement – especially on language, literature and architecture – can be seen plentifully even today. There were also huge global influences by means of India’s open-frontier attitude in welcoming fugitives from its early days.

Jewish immigration into India began right after the fall of Jerusalem in the first century and continued for many hundreds of years. Baghdadi Jews, such as the highly successful Sassoons, came in large numbers even as late as the 18th century. Christians started coming at least from the fourth century, and possibly much earlier. There are colourful legends about this, including one that tells us that the first person St Thomas the Apostle met after coming to India in the first century was a Jewish girl playing the flute on the Malabar coast. We loved that evocative – and undoubtedly apocryphal – anecdote in our classroom discussions, because it illustrated the multicultural roots of Indian traditions.

The Parsis started arriving from the early eighth century – as soon as persecution began in their Iranian homeland. Later in that century, the Armenians began to leave their footprints from Kerala to Bengal. Muslim Arab traders had a substantial presence on the west coast of India from around that time – well before the arrival of Muslim conquerors many centuries later, through the arid terrain in the north-west of the subcontinent. Persecuted Bahá’ís from Iran came only in the 19th century.

At the time of the Battle of Plassey, there were already businessmen, traders and other professionals from a number of different European nations well settled near the mouth of the Ganges. Being subjected to imperial rule is thus not the only way of making connections with, or learning things from, foreign countries. When the Meiji Restoration established a new reformist government in Japan in 1868 (which was not unrelated to the internal political impact of Commodore Perry’s show of force a decade earlier), the Japanese went straight to learning from the west without being subjected to imperialism. They sent people for training in the US and Europe, and made institutional changes that were clearly inspired by western experience. They did not wait to be coercively globalised via imperialism.

O ne of the achievements to which British imperial theorists tended to give a good deal of emphasis was the role of the British in producing a united India. In this analysis, India was a collection of fragmented kingdoms until British rule made a country out of these diverse regimes. It was argued that India was previously not one country at all, but a thoroughly divided land mass. It was the British empire, so the claim goes, that welded India into a nation. Winston Churchill even remarked that before the British came, there was no Indian nation. “India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator,” he once said.

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? Certainly, when Clive’s East India Company defeated the nawab of Bengal in 1757, there was no single power ruling over all of India. 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. There were major roles here for Ashoka Maurya, the Gupta emperors, Alauddin Khalji, the Mughals and others. 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 mid-18th century India was the state in which the country typically found itself throughout history, until the British helpfully came along to unite it.

An illustration of British soldiers capturing Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal emperor, in 1857.

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. British rule began when the Mughals’ power had declined, though formally even the nawab of Bengal, whom the British defeated, was their subject. 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 1857, 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 82-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 1,400 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.

As a child growing up in Burma in the 1930s, I was taken by my parents to see Zafar’s grave in Rangoon, which was close to the famous Shwedagon Pagoda. 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. The inscription on the grave noted only that “Bahadur Shah was ex-King of Delhi” – no mention of “empire” in the commemoration! It was only much later, in the 1990s, 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. Already by 1742, the East India Company had built a huge “Maratha ditch” at the edge of Calcutta to slow down the lightning raids of the Maratha cavalry, which rode rapidly across 1,000 miles or more. 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. As the company’s power expanded across India, Calcutta became the capital of the newly emerging empire, a position it occupied from the mid-18th century until 1911 (when the capital was moved to Delhi). 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.

What has been called “the financial bleeding of Bengal” began very soon after Plassey. 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. Those who wish to be inspired by the glory of the British empire would do well to avoid reading Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, including his discussion of the abuse of state power by a “mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies”. As the historian William Dalrymple has observed: “The economic figures speak for themselves. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By the peak of the Raj, those figures had more or less been reversed: India was reduced from the world’s leading manufacturing nation to a symbol of famine and deprivation.”

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 commercial benefits from Britain’s Indian empire thus reached far into the British establishment.

Calcutta in 1912, illuminated for the occasion of a British royal visit.

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. What the cartographer John Thornton, in his famous chart of the region in 1703, had described as “the Rich Kingdom of Bengal” experienced a gigantic famine during 1769–70. Contemporary estimates suggested that about a third of the Bengal population died. This is almost certainly an overestimate. There was no doubt, however, that it was a huge catastrophe, with massive starvation and mortality – in a region that had seen no famine for a very long time.

This disaster had at least two significant effects. First, the inequity of early British rule in India became the subject of considerable political criticism in Britain itself. By the time Adam Smith roundly declared in The Wealth of Nations that the East India Company was “altogether unfit to govern its territorial possessions”, there were many British figures, such as Edmund Burke, making similar critiques. Second, the economic decline of Bengal did eventually ruin the company’s business as well, hurting British investors themselves, and giving the powers in London reason to change their business in India into more of a regular state-run operation.

By the late 18th century, the period of so-called “post-Plassey plunder”, with which British rule in India began, was giving way to the sort of colonial subjugation that would soon become the imperial standard, and with which the subcontinent would become more and more familiar in the following century and a half.

H ow successful was this long phase of classical imperialism in British India, which lasted from the late 18th century until independence in 1947? The British claimed a huge set of achievements, including democracy, the rule of law, railways, the joint stock company and cricket, but the gap between theory and practice – with the exception of cricket – remained wide throughout the history of imperial relations between the two countries. Putting the tally together in the years of pre-independence assessment, it was easy to see how far short the achievements were compared with the rhetoric of accomplishment.

Indeed, Rudyard Kipling caught the self-congratulatory note of the British imperial administrator admirably well in his famous poem on imperialism:

Take up the White Man’s burden – The savage wars of peace – Fill full the mouth of famine And bid the sickness cease

Alas, neither the stopping of famines nor the remedying of ill health was part of the high-performance achievements of British rule in India. Nothing could lead us away from the fact that life expectancy at birth in India as the empire ended was abysmally low: 32 years, at most.

The abstemiousness of colonial rule in neglecting basic education reflects the view taken by the dominant administrators of the needs of the subject nation. There was a huge asymmetry between the ruler and the ruled. The British government became increasingly determined in the 19th century to achieve universal literacy for the native British population. In contrast, the literacy rates in India under the Raj were very low. When the empire ended, the adult literacy rate in India was barely 15%. The only regions in India with comparatively high literacy were the “native kingdoms” of Travancore and Cochin (formally outside the British empire), which, since independence, have constituted the bulk of the state of Kerala. These kingdoms, though dependent on the British administration for foreign policy and defence, had remained technically outside the empire and had considerable freedom in domestic policy, which they exercised in favour of more school education and public health care.

The 200 years of colonial rule were also a period of massive economic stagnation, with hardly any advance at all in real GNP per capita. These grim facts were much aired after independence in the newly liberated media, whose rich culture was in part – it must be acknowledged – an inheritance from British civil society. Even though the Indian media was very often muzzled during the Raj – mostly to prohibit criticism of imperial rule, for example at the time of the Bengal famine of 1943 – the tradition of a free press, carefully cultivated in Britain, provided a good model for India to follow as the country achieved independence.

Corpse removal trucks in Calcutta during the famine of 1943.

Indeed, India received many constructive things from Britain that did not – could not – come into their own until after independence. Literature in the Indian languages took some inspiration and borrowed genres from English literature, including the flourishing tradition of writing in English. Under the Raj, there were restrictions on what could be published and propagated (even some of Tagore’s books were banned). These days the government of India has no such need, but alas – for altogether different reasons of domestic politics – the restrictions are sometimes no less intrusive than during the colonial rule.

Nothing is perhaps as important in this respect as the functioning of a multiparty democracy and a free press. But often enough these were not gifts that could be exercised under the British administration during imperial days. They became realisable only when the British left – they were the fruits of learning from Britain’s own experience, which India could use freely only after the period of empire had ended. Imperial rule tends to require some degree of tyranny: asymmetrical power is not usually associated with a free press or with a vote-counting democracy, since neither of them is compatible with the need to keep colonial subjects in check.

A similar scepticism is appropriate about the British claim that they had eliminated famine in dependent territories such as India. British governance of India began with the famine of 1769-70, and there were regular famines in India throughout the duration of British rule. The Raj also ended with the terrible famine of 1943. In contrast, there has been no famine in India since independence in 1947.

The irony again is that the institutions that ended famines in independent India – democracy and an independent media – came directly from Britain. The connection between these institutions and famine prevention is simple to understand. Famines are easy to prevent, since the distribution of a comparatively small amount of free food, or the offering of some public employment at comparatively modest wages (which gives the beneficiaries the ability to buy food), allows those threatened by famine the ability to escape extreme hunger. So any government should be able stop a threatening famine – large or small – and it is very much in the interest of a government in a functioning democracy, facing a free press, to do so. A free press makes the facts of a developing famine known to all, and a democratic vote makes it hard to win elections during – or after – a famine, hence giving a government the additional incentive to tackle the issue without delay.

India did not have this freedom from famine for as long as its people were without their democratic rights, even though it was being ruled by the foremost democracy in the world, with a famously free press in the metropolis – but not in the colonies. These freedom-oriented institutions were for the rulers but not for the imperial subjects.

In the powerful indictment of British rule in India that Tagore presented in 1941, he argued that India had gained a great deal from its association with Britain, for example, from “discussions centred upon Shakespeare’s drama and Byron’s poetry and above all … the large-hearted liberalism of 19th-century English politics”. The tragedy, he said, came from the fact that what “was truly best in their own civilisation, the upholding of dignity of human relationships, has no place in the British administration of this country”. Indeed, the British could not have allowed Indian subjects to avail themselves of these freedoms without threatening the empire itself.

The distinction between the role of Britain and that of British imperialism could not have been clearer. As the union jack was being lowered across India, it was a distinction of which we were profoundly aware.

Adapted from Home in the World: A Memoir by Amartya Sen, published by Allen Lane on 8 July and available at guardianbookshop.com

This article was amended on 29 June 2021. Owing to an editing error, an earlier version incorrectly referred to Karl Marx writing on India in 1953. The essay was written in 1853.

  • The long read
  • British empire
  • Colonialism
  • History books

Most viewed

  • AsianStudies.org
  • Annual Conference
  • EAA Articles
  • Annual Conference March 14-17, 2024
  • AAS Community Forum Log In and Participate

Education About Asia: Online Archives

The british impact on india, 1700–1900.

The period 1700 to 1900 saw the beginnings, and the development, of the British Empire in India. Empire was not planned, at least not in the early stages. In a sense, it just happened. The first British in India came for trade, not territory; they were businessmen, not conquerors. It can be argued that they came from a culture that was inferior, and a political entity that was weaker, than that into which they ventured, and they came hat-in-hand. They would not have been viewed as a threat by the Indians—who most certainly would not have thought of themselves as “Indian,” at least in any political sense. National identity was to be established much later, during the Independence Movement (which, indeed, was also known as the Nationalist Movement). Identity was in terms of region and caste, which, to a considerable extent, it still is today. The British and the Indians would go on to affect each other in profound ways that still are important today. In what follows, because of limited space, the impact of Imperial Britain on India is addressed. Hopefully, a future useful essay on the impact of India on Great Britain will also be published in EAA.

The Roots of Empire

painting of a military procession with elephants and horses

While there is no 1492-type date for the commencement of empire, 1757, the date of the Battle of Plassey, is often used. The date of the British take-over of Delhi, 1803, is symbolic: the British occupied the Mughul capital and were not to leave. The empire was neither uniform—different policies responding to different events in different parts of India—nor static. It was upon the British and the Indians almost before they realized it. Its effects were ambiguous and ambivalent. A recent catalog advertising DVDs said about a presentation entitled “The British Empire in Color,”

The British Empire brought education, technology, law and democracy to the four corners of the globe. It also brought prejudice, discrimination, cultural bigotry and racism.  

The blurb goes on to state that the video “examines the complexities, contradictions, and legacies of empire, both positive and negative.” 1 To a degree, such is the intent of this article. Only to a degree, for an article this brief on a topic as complex and intricate as the British impact on India cannot be complete and faces the danger of becoming simply an inventory.

Trade and Power

In 1600, a group of English merchants secured a royal charter for purposes of trading in the East Indies. The Dutch, however, had fairly well sealed off trade in what is now Indonesia, and the merchants’ company, which was to become known as the East India Company (the Company), turned its attention to the vast expanse of India, with its cotton and spices (e.g., “pepper” and “ginger” are from south Indian words), as well as other commodities. Other powers, especially the French and Portuguese, were to become competitors. The Portuguese secured enclaves on the west coast, the most important of which was Goa, which they controlled until 1961, and which preserves a Portuguese flavor to this day. The French secured influence in the southeast, where Puducherry, formerly Pondicherry, is sometimes referred to as “The French Riviera of the East,” and was transferred to Indian jurisdiction in 1954.

The dominant power in India was the Mughal Empire. British adventurers had preceded the Company into India, including at the Mughal court. It needs to be emphasized that the purpose of the Company was trade. But a combination of factors and events were to draw the Company into Indian politics, especially with the decline of the Mughal Empire and the concurrent and resulting rise of regional powers, including that of the British, who had become ensconced at what is now Chennai (Madras), Mumbai (Bombay), and Kolkata (Calcutta). 2 It is noteworthy that these three cities were founded (or at least developed) by the British, and in recent years have each had their names de-Anglicized.

Mughal Decline

Two events, fifty years apart, had important consequences. The first was the death in 1707 of the last of the “Great Mughals,” Aurangzeb, who was followed by “lesser Mughals.” 3 In various ways, Aurangzeb’s own policies may have contributed significantly to the Mughal decline, but the importance of his demise is that it was followed by incapable successors and considerable instability.

painting of a man

The British took advantage of the instability and the resulting regional tensions, especially in 1757 at the Battle of Plassey in Bengal. Through machinations and intrigues, a force of eight hundred Europeans and 2,200 Indian troops under Robert Clive defeated an army of 50,000 belonging to the ruler of Bengal. Clive was able to wrest concessions from the Mughals, most importantly the right of land revenue, and, in retrospect, it appears that an empire was underway.

Other challenges arose for the Mughals, including the rise of regional and ethnic powers such as the Marathas, Sikhs, and Rajputs, and the sack of Delhi in 1739 by the Persian invader Nadir Shah. Meanwhile, the British were to win out in south India over the French, largely because of the Anglo-French wars in Europe and North America in the 1740s.

The Company

The Company’s increase in power and territory did not go unnoticed in London. In 1792, the Company applied for a loan from the government, which Parliament provided, but with strings attached: The Regulating Act of 1793, the first of a series of acts reining in the Company through parliamentary supervision. Nevertheless, Arthur Wellesley, as governor-general (1797–1805), exercised his intention to make the Company the paramount power in India. He was able to suppress what French influence remained (except for some small enclaves, such as Pondicherry), and to remove powerful Indian forces in both the north and the south. The British (that is the Company; in India the two were now to be almost synonymous until 1858) were paramount, and they developed a bureaucratic infrastructure, employing cooperating Indians, who came to constitute a new, urban class.

The title of Governor-General had been bestowed upon the governor of the Bengal presidency (Calcutta), who had been granted power and rank over the governors of the Bombay and Madras presidencies. This arrangement, provided in the Regulating Act, was felt to be necessary because of the long distance between London and India (the Suez canal did not yet exist) and the convenience of dealing with one governor rather than three: an administrative step toward unity which certainly aided the arrangement for empire.

The series of acts passed by Parliament banned private trading on the part of Company employees and separated judicial and administrative functions of the Company from commercial ones. The attempt was to regulate taxation, justice, rule, and bribery (the last being viewed by Company servants as an indispensable feature of doing business in India). The Company had acquired considerable political power (although consisting of only a fraction of one percent of the population of the subcontinent), over more people than there were in England. Parliament was concerned, and was to remain so. Empire may not have been, at this early stage, a governmental declaration, but the wheels were in motion and Parliament became a core part of it all. The India Act of 1784 created a council of six commissioners, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a newly-created Secretary of State for India. This group was constituted above the Company directors in London.

photo of a man in military uniform

With the transition of the Company to the role of ruler, the British attitude toward Indians degenerated. Previously, there had been some limited social mixing between the British and Indians, with no sense of superiority or inferiority. That changed. What earlier Englishmen had viewed with interest in Indian culture became abomination; thus, the parliamentary leader against the slave trade, William Wilberforce (1759–1833) felt Hinduism to be a greater evil than slavery. The opening of the Suez Canal (1869) allowed greater access to India by English women—who, of course, had to be “protected” from the hostile culture and barbarous Indian men. Biased concepts regarding non-Western cultures and non-white peoples, arising from so-called social Darwinism and evangelicalism, provided rationale for imperial rule. It is not coincidence that the heyday of imperialism was the Victorian age.

Although the foundation was provided by the Battle of Plassey (1757), 1803 is a good symbolic date for the start of empire. General Gerard Lake defeated the Marathas, perhaps the most important Indian power, and entered Delhi, the Mughal capital. By this time the emperor was mostly a figurehead, but symbolically important. He now became a pensioner of the British, with his realm reduced to the Red Fort. A British official, referred to as the Resident, became de facto ruler of Delhi. Company soldiers protected the city and commercial interests. Things were never to be the same. In a sense, the taking of Delhi was but part of a process, for, as Dilip Hiro, in his chronology of Indian history has asserted, “By the late 18th century it had become commonplace among the British, irrespective of class, to despise Indians.” This characterization has been affirmed by other observers. 4

Racism and Rebellion

Racism is a core characteristic of the British Empire in India, or, as it came to be known, the Raj (from a Sanskrit word, which found its way into vernacular languages, meaning to rule over, or the sovereign who does so). Historically, the term was applied to Hindu kings (as raja, or maharaja, great king). While implying political superiority, it did not have racial implications. Cultural and political factors were to add racial distinction to the concept under the British: Christian proselytizing and the great uprising, or rebellion, or mutiny, of 1857. This historic rebellion was not an insurrection, for it was not organized, and therein may have been its failure. 5

painting of men in military uniforms fighting

The rebellion was a bloody mess, involving Indian soldiers ( sepoys ), native rulers of “subsidiary” or “princely” states that were quasi-independent but in thrall to the Company (and in fear of loss of their principalities), and the Company armies, in vicious retaliation. In essence, it was an explosion of deep frustration and fear that had been building up for decades. It is significant that it was largely confined to north central India, where Company rule and British oppression were strongest and most obvious.

The causes were numerous, and included forcing the use of Western technologies—the railroad and telegraph—upon a highly traditional society, imposition of English as the language for courts and government schools, opening the country to missionaries (with the resulting fear of forced conversions), Company takeover of subsidiary states when a prince died without direct heir, increasing haughtiness and distance on the part of the rulers, and policies beneficial to the Company’s profits, but even inimical to the people, and so on. The spark was the introduction of the Enfield rifle to the sepoy ranks, which necessitated handling of cartridges packed in animal grease, anathema for both Hindus and Muslims, and considered as an attempt to Christianize the sepoys. Atrocities became commonplace on both sides, and were to be repeated by the British in the Amritsar Massacre of 1919.

The rebellion and the gruesome reaction to it were atrocious enough, but, as Maria Misra has observed, “The after-shock of the Rebellion was if anything even more influential than the event itself.” 6 A curtain had fallen, and the two sides would never trust each other again. British disdain increased, and for the Indians, resentment festered. Yet oddly enough, Western influence was eclectically accepted by many upper class urban Indians (to a large extent in imitation, but also as a means to, and result of, upward mobility). The apparent anomaly of interest in things Western is best illustrated by Calcutta, one of the three early centers of Company presence. The others were Madras and Bombay— cities that built up around the Company’s commercial establishment.

Indian Culture

Bengal historically has been marked by cultural pride, most justly so. Its position in Indian culture has been compared with that of Italy in European culture. Given different historical situations, the comparison might have gone the other way. Western impact was central to Calcutta (particularly noticeable in its architecture), the capital of British India, and provided the impetus for what is known as the Bengal Renaissance. As in Florence, it was business that made revival of the arts possible. In the case of Bengal, the revival involved religion as well. An almost perfect paradigm is that of the Tagore family. The modern founder was Dwarkanath Tagore (1794–1846), an entrepreneur with British partners and British friends, including women. His association with the relative freedom of English women, in contrast to the rigidly orthodox outlook of the women in his household, resulted in part with his becoming “a strong advocate of female education.” 7 The fortune he accumulated enabled his heirs to pursue other interests.

Dwarkanath’s son Debendranath (1817–1905) was active in social and religious reform, especially the revitalization of Hinduism, largely in response to missionary activity resulting in conversions of Hindus to Christianity. He was also active in the 1850s in forming the British Indian Association, a forerunner of the Indian National Congress.

Debendranath was father of the famed Rabindranath (1861– 1941), an artistic genius and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. Several other Tagores were active in the arts and influential in the revitalization of Bengali culture.

A fascinating example of this revitalization is a style of painting dating from about 1800. Kalighat painting originated around a temple dedicated to the goddess Kali in a neighborhood near the Hooghly River. The subject matter was in part religious, but in a sensual manner, and it also focused on daily life. A favorite topic was the babu, who in this context was a quasi-Westernized dandy obsessed with shady women. (The term babu has many connotations.) As a form, the art anticipated some Western developments, but received little recognition from Westerners, the general attitude being reflected by John Ruskin’s dismissal of all Indian art as that of “heathen people.” Missionaries showed a negative interest, viewing the paintings as childish and evil at the same time. The art was an urban twist upon folk tradition, yet with its own freshness and uniqueness.

There were decisive changes as a result of 1857. The Mughal dynasty was terminated, as was the Company. The British government took over direct rule, replacing the Company’s administrative apparatus with an Indian Civil Service (which became the Indian Administrative Service after independence). In 1877, Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, a symbolic exclamation point.

Governor-Generals, popularly referred to as Viceroys (after 1858), came and went, but the direction remained clear: Imperial rule for the profit of Britain, not for the welfare of the people of India—this was shown even in the governmental response to famines, and India became represented as the Jewel in the Crown. With the formation of the Indian National Congress (or, simply, Congress), some halfhearted concessions to change and inclusion occurred, albeit always seeming to be too little too late. This organization (curiously, initiated by a retired British official) might have seemed impotent at first, but it did demand that “the Government should be widened and that the people should have their proper and legitimate share in it.” 8 Perhaps most significantly, the initial meeting, held in Bombay in 1885, involved about seventy-two delegates, from various regions, and consisted mostly of upper class Hindus and Parsis (many of them lawyers) with only two Muslims in attendance. It was through this organization, under the leadership of lawyers such as Motilal Nehru and his son Jawaharlal (India’s first prime minister), and M. K. Gandhi, that India achieved independence.

Such a meeting, let alone the organization itself (or, for that matter, the nationalist/independence movement), would not have been possible had it not been for the English language as a lingua franca, which stemmed from the 1835 decision by the Governor-General to make English the official language of instruction. That decision opened a can of worms: men educated in English law saw the possibilities of constitutional democracy. No one Indian language could claim the majority of speakers, and English provided the bridge that made communication possible between the educated from different parts of India. The importance of this development cannot be overemphasized. Related developments included the establishment of universities (oddly, in 1857) in Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta; a vibrant (if often censored) press, and Indian literature in English. These all are evident and thriving yet today, and strongly so. The most important development might well have been that of nationalism, an attempt to override the British policy of divide-and-rule (which played on Hindu-Muslim antipathy). Of course, the creation of Pakistan showed that the dream was not completely successful—yet India today is a successful democracy. And the nationalist movement did bring the diverse cultures and languages, the religious sects and castes, into a new identity: Indian.

The date 1900 makes a good closing point. In 1899, Lord Curzon, the most imperial of the Viceroys, became Governor-General, and in 1901 the Queen-Empress, Victoria, died. The post-1857 developments were, of course, designed to keep empire supreme, but British tradition opened doors within the empire, and did so in spite of empire (e.g., the use of the Magna Carta by an Indian teacher in the classroom ). 9 Further, they really did not develop a coherent approach toward rule. The late Raghavan Iyer found it to be a mix of Trusteeship, Utilitarianism, Platonic Guardianship, and Evangelicalism. 10 The focus was on administration, not development, and that by as small a cadre as possible. Stalin is said to have observed that it was ridiculous . . . that a few hundred Englishmen should dominate India. Actually, the “few hundred” numbered just over a thousand, of whom one-fifth were at any time either sick or on leave. This, over a population of about 300 million in what is now India, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Bangladesh. 11 Although certainly not as cruel as the Belgians in the Congo, the servants of the Raj and their compatriots (families, businessmen, missionaries, etc.)— about 100,000 in 1900 12 —were viewed as “lofty and contemptuous.” 13 And they had their moments of cruelty as well.

The empire was a mix of the White Man’s Burden and Ma-Bap (“We are your mother and father”). Mix is a good word to describe the Raj. The British engaged in racism and exploitation, and they also provided the doors that would lead to Indian democracy and nationhood. Paul Scott, in the opening to The Jewel in the Crown , the initial novel of the Raj Quartet, wrote of two nations in violent opposition

. . . locked in an imperial embrace of such long standing and subtlety it was no longer possible for them to know whether they hated or loved one another, or what it was that held them together and seemed to have confused the image of their separate destinies. 14

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Video Collectables: The Very Best of British Entertainment , Summer 2008, 30. Web site: www.collectablesdirect.com.
  • The favored concept of the decay of the Mughal Empire as resulting in anarchy and a power vacuum that the British stepped into and righted with stability is not without challenge; e.g., Archie Baron, An Indian Affair (London: Channel 4 Books, 2001), 19. Be that as it may, Mughal power withered and British power grew, although not necessarily by design, even though regional or local economies may have prospered.
  • A very useful annotated chronology, to which I am indebted, is Dilip Hiro’s The Rough Guide Chronicle: India (London: Rough Guides Ltd, 2002).
  • Hiro, 227–233; quote from 227. This attitude is reflected in other works (e.g., Zareer Masani, Tales of the Raj —see notes 9 and 12 below—and Paul Scott’s “The Raj Quartet”) far too numerous to list.
  • There are problems with what to call this event—or series of events. Originally, the British referred to it as the Sepoy Mutiny. A sepoy, from the Hindi sipahi , or soldier, was an Indian, Hindu or Muslim, serving in the East India Company army. After independence, nationalists began to refer to it as the First War of Independence. Variations abound, trying to avoid either extreme. Perhaps the best is that of “the Great Rebellion,” as in the subtitle of an outstanding new study by Maria Misra, Vishnu’s Temple: India Since the Great Rebellion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
  • Misra, page 7; see 6–17 for an account.
  • Blair B. King, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 183. An informative article, “Jorasanko and the Thakur Family,” by Chitra Deb, appears in a rich collection of articles on historical Calcutta edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Calcutta: The Living City, Volume I: The Past (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990/1995), 64– 67. Jorsanko is the particular branch of the Tagore family, and Thakur is the literal transliteration of Tagore from Bengali.
  • As quoted by Hiro, 259.
  • Zareer Masani, Indian Tales of the Raj (London: BBC Books, 1987), 90. This a remarkable book for insight into the nationalist-independence struggle beyond the political level. The author is the son of nationalist leaders, who were neither Hindu nor Muslim, but Parsi. In his introduction, he provides a very apt observation: “the Indians who have been the most enduring legacy of the Raj—the Western-educated middle class whom the British fostered to serve their interests, but which eventually threw them out. ” (5)
  • Raghavan Iyer, Utilitarianism and All That: The Political Theory of British Imperialism (Santa Barbara: Concord Press, 1983).
  • David Gilmour, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005), xiii.
  • Maria Misra, “The New Statesman Essay—Before the Pith Helmets,” published 8 October 2001, available at www.newstatemen.com/200110080018. This small, concise article is highly worthwhile.
  • The Raj Quartet has gone through several publishings. The quote appears on page nine (the initial page of the work) of The Jewel in the Crown , Avon paperback edition of 1970 (first published 1966).
  • Latest News
  • Join or Renew
  • Education About Asia
  • Education About Asia Articles
  • Asia Shorts Book Series
  • Asia Past & Present
  • Key Issues in Asian Studies
  • Journal of Asian Studies
  • The Bibliography of Asian Studies
  • AAS-Gale Fellowship
  • Council Grants
  • Book Prizes
  • Graduate Student Paper Prizes
  • Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies Award
  • First Book Subvention Program
  • External Grants & Fellowships
  • AAS Career Center
  • Asian Studies Programs & Centers
  • Study Abroad Programs
  • Language Database
  • Conferences & Events
  • #AsiaNow Blog

Blighted by Empire: What the British Did to India

By omer aziz september 1, 2018.

Blighted by Empire: What the British Did to India

In seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided A continent for better or worse divided The next day he sailed for England, where he could quickly forget The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot.

[W]e in India have known racialism in all its forms ever since the commencement of British rule. The whole ideology of this rule was that of the  herrenvolk  and the master race, and the structure of government was based upon it; indeed the idea of a master race is inherent in imperialism. There was no subterfuge about it; it was proclaimed in unambiguous language by those in authority. More powerful than words was the practice that accompanied them and, generation after generation and year after year, India as a nation and Indians as individuals were subjected to insult, humiliation and contemptuous treatment. The English were an imperial race, we were told, with the God-given right to govern us and keep us in subjection.

LARB Contributor

LARB Staff Recommendations

Delightful listening: a conversation between viet thanh nguyen with arundhati roy.

Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose novel “The Sympathizer” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, speaks to novelist Arundhati Roy.

Viet Thanh Nguyen Jul 31, 2018

Politics and Economics

Reverse Robin Hood: The Historical Scam of Global Development

When a world system is based on the creation of scarcity, it is the meek that inherit that scarcity.

Levi Vonk Jul 19, 2017

Translation

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?

LARB  publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!

Question and Answer forum for K12 Students

British Colonial Rule: India Before and After Colonization with Examples

The compilation of these Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence  Notes makes students exam preparation simpler and organised.

British Colonial Rule

The famous Kohinoor diamond has been doing rounds in the news. It was a prized possession of pre-colonial India which the British took with them on their way back home. The talks of taking it back have caused a stir in the recent past. However, it forms a very small fraction of what our colonizers took away. As a consequence, our country was in a grim state when they left. This forms the basis that governs our current policies and future prospects.

The Pre-Colonial State

Before the advent of colonial rule, India was a self-sufficient and flourishing economy. Evidently, our country was popularly known as the golden eagle. India had already established itself on the world map with a decent amount of exports. Although primarily it was an agrarian economy, many manufacturing activities were budding in pre-colonial India.

Indian craftsmanship was widely popular around the world and garnered huge demands. The economy was well-known for its handicraft industries in the fields of cotton and silk textiles, metal and precious stone works, etc. Such developments lured the British to paralyze our state and use it for their home country’s benefits.

India: The British Colony

India The British Colony

The British came to India with the motive of colonization. Their plans involved using India as a feeder colony for their own flourishing economy back in Britain. This exploitation continued for about two centuries, till we finally got independence on 15 August 1947. Consequently, this rendered our country’s economy hollow. Hence, a study of this relationship between the colonizers and their colony is important to understand the present developments and future prospects of India.

The colonial rule is marked with periods of heavy exploitation. The British took steps that ensured the development and promotion of the interests of their home country. They were in no way concerned about the course of the Indian economy. Such steps transformed our economy for the worse- it effectively became a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished goods.

The colonial kings robbed India of education, opportunities, etc. reducing Indians to mere servants. Undoubtedly, they never tried to estimate colonial India’s national and per capita income. Some individuals like – Findlay Shirras, Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, V.K.R.V. Rao, and R.C. Desai tried to estimate such figures.

Although the results were inconsistent, the estimates of V.K.R.V. Rao are considered accurate. Notably, India’s growth of aggregate real output was less than 2% in the first half of the twentieth century coupled with a half percent growth in per capita output per year. By and large, India faced a herculean task to recover from the blows that two centuries of colonial rule landed on its economy.

Question: Name some individuals who tried to estimate colonial India’s per capita income. Answer: Some individuals like – Findlay Shirras, Dadabhai Naoroji, William Digby, V.K.R.V. Rao, and R.C. Desai tried to estimate such figures. Although the results were inconsistent, the estimates of V.K.R.V. Rao are considered accurate. An estimate was the best that could be calculated. The estimate was that colonial India’s growth of output was less than 2%.

A Timeline of India in the 1800s

The British Raj Defined India Throughout the 1800s

  • European History Figures & Events
  • Wars & Battles
  • The Holocaust
  • European Revolutions
  • Industry and Agriculture History in Europe
  • American History
  • African American History
  • African History
  • Ancient History and Culture
  • Asian History
  • Latin American History
  • Medieval & Renaissance History
  • Military History
  • The 20th Century
  • Women's History

essay on india before and after british rule

The British East India Company arrived in India in the early 1600s, struggling and nearly begging for the right to trade and do business. Within 150 years the thriving firm of British merchants, backed by its own powerful private army, was essentially ruling India.

In the 1800s English power expanded in India, as it would until the mutinies of 1857-58. After those very violent spasms things would change, yet Britain was still in control. And India was very much an outpost of the mighty British Empire .

1600s: The British East India Company Arrived

After several attempts to open trade with a powerful ruler of India failed in the earliest years of the 1600s, King James I of England sent a personal envoy, Sir Thomas Roe, to the court of the Mogul emperor Jahangir in 1614.

The emperor was incredibly wealthy and lived in an opulent palace. And he was not interested in trade with Britain as he couldn't imagine the British had anything he wanted.

Roe, recognizing that other approaches had been too subservient, was deliberately difficult to deal with at first. He correctly sensed that earlier envoys, by being too accommodating, had not gained the emperor's respect. Roe's stratagem worked, and the East India Company was able to establish operations in India.

1600s: The Mogul Empire at Its Peak

The Mogul Empire had been established in India in the early 1500s, when a chieftain named Babur invaded India from Afghanistan. The Moguls (or Mughals) conquered most of northern India, and by the time the British arrived the Mogul Empire was immensely powerful.

One of the most influential Mogul emperors was Jahangir's son Shah Jahan , who ruled from 1628 to 1658. He expanded the empire and accumulated enormous treasure, and made Islam the official religion. When his wife died he had the Taj Mahal built as a tomb for her.

The Moguls took great pride in being patrons of the arts, and painting, literature, and architecture flourished under their rule.

1700s: Britain Established Dominance

The Mogul Empire was in a state of collapse by the 1720s. Other European powers were competing for control in India, and sought alliances with the shaky states that inherited the Mogul territories.

The East India Company established its own army in India, which was composed of British troops as well as native soldiers called sepoys.

The British interests in India, under the leadership of Robert Clive , gained military victories from the 1740s onward, and with the Battle of Plassey in 1757 were able to establish dominance.

The East India Company gradually strengthened its hold, even instituting a court system. British citizens began building an "Anglo-Indian" society within India, and English customs were adapted to the climate of India.

1800s: "The Raj" Entered the Language

The British rule in India became known as "The Raj," which was derived from the Sanskrit term raja meaning king. The term did not have official meaning until after 1858, but it was in popular usage many years before that.

Incidentally, a number of other terms came into English usage during The Raj: bangle, dungaree, khaki, pundit, seersucker, jodhpurs, cushy, pajamas, and many more.

British merchants could make a fortune in India and would then return home, often to be derided by those in British high society as nabobs , the title for an official under the Moguls.

Tales of life in India fascinated the British public, and exotic Indian scenes, such as a drawing of an elephant fight, appeared in books published in London in the 1820s.

1857: Resentment Toward the British Spilled Over

The Indian Rebellion of 1857, which was also called the Indian Mutiny, or the Sepoy Mutiny , was a turning point in the history of Britain in India.

The traditional story is that Indian troops, called sepoys, mutinied against their British commanders because newly issued rifle cartridges were greased with pig and cow fat, thus making them unacceptable for both Hindu and Muslim soldiers. There is some truth to that, but there were a number of other underlying causes for the rebellion.

Resentment toward the British had been building for some time, and new policies which allowed the British to annex some areas of India exacerbated tensions. By early 1857 things had reached a breaking point.

1857-58: The Indian Mutiny

The Indian Mutiny erupted in May 1857, when sepoys rose up against the British in Meerut and then massacred all the British they could find in Delhi.

Uprisings spread throughout British India. It was estimated that less than 8,000 of nearly 140,000 sepoys remained loyal to the British. The conflicts of 1857 and 1858 were brutal and bloody, and lurid reports of massacres and atrocities circulated in newspapers and illustrated magazines in Britain.

The British dispatched more troops to India and eventually succeeded in putting down the mutiny, resorting to merciless tactics to restore order. The large city of Delhi was left in ruins. And many sepoys who had surrendered were executed by British troops .

1858: Calm Was Restored

Following the Indian Mutiny, the East India Company was abolished and the British crown assumed full rule of India.

Reforms were instituted, which included tolerance of religion and the recruitment of Indians into the civil service. While the reforms sought to avoid further rebellions through conciliation, the British military in India was also strengthened.

Historians have noted that the British government never actually intended to take control of India, but when British interests were threatened the government had to step in.

The embodiment of the new British rule in India was the office of the Viceroy.

1876: Empress of India

The importance of India, and the affection the British crown felt for its colony, was emphasized in 1876 when Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli declared Queen Victoria to be "Empress of India."

British control of India would continue, mostly peacefully, throughout the remainder of the 19th century. It wasn't until Lord Curzon became Viceroy in 1898, and instituted some very unpopular policies, that an Indian nationalist movement began to stir.

The nationalist movement developed over decades, and, of course, India finally achieved independence in 1947.

  • East India Company
  • The British Raj in India
  • The Indian Revolt of 1857
  • A Timeline of India's Mughal Empire
  • The Mughal Empire in India
  • The First and Second Opium Wars
  • The First Anglo-Afghan War
  • Biography of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore
  • Timeline of Indian History
  • The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857
  • What Was the Partition of India?
  • Images of British India
  • Seven Years' War: Major General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive
  • Britain's Disastrous Retreat from Kabul
  • Biography of Queen Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India
  • Which Asian Nations Were Never Colonized by Europe?

Colonialism in India was traumatic – including for some of the British officials who ruled the Raj

essay on india before and after british rule

Principal Lecturer in Political Communications, Nottingham Trent University

Disclosure statement

Colin Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Nottingham Trent University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

View all partners

essay on india before and after british rule

When India gained independence from Britain on August 15 1947, the majority of Anglo-Indians had either left or would leave soon after. Many within the Indian Civil Service would write of the trauma that they experienced from witnessing the violence of the years leading up to the end of British rule and the bloodbath that would follow as the lines of partition were revealed.

Colonialism was certainly a far more traumatising experience for colonial subjects than their colonisers. They suffered poverty, malnutrition, disease, cultural upheaval, economic exploitation, political disadvantage, and systematic programmes aimed at creating a sense of social and racial inferiority. While some may argue that any suffering on the part of the British colonialists ought to be met with little sympathy, this is not a reason to obscure it from history.

It was the very notion that Indian civil service servicemen were usurpers, full of privilege, in a foreign land that led to the sapped sense of humanity that many wrestled with – both during and after their India careers.

As my own forthcoming book details, some shut themselves off from the day-to-day lives of Indians, unless forced to engage for work purposes. Others escaped through drowning themselves in alcohol, opium or other drugs. Some convinced themselves of the intellectual superiority of the white man and his right to rule over “lesser races”, while a number found solace in Christianity. Several came to see their role as being a peacekeeper between various ethnic and religious groups, despite the irony of the British having encouraged and exploited the categorisation of colonial subjects on these grounds in the first place.

Underneath all of this sits a trauma that the coloniser had to either deal with – or resign their post and go home.

Serving the Raj

One serviceman of the late Raj who I have focused on in my research is an example of the coping mechanisms that British officials deployed. Andrew Clow entered the Indian Civil Service in 1912 at the age of 22 and would remain a civil servant until 1947 when he reached the mandatory retirement ceiling of 35 years. His most notable portfolios were as secretary of the Indian Labour Bureau in the late 1930s, followed by minister for communications and then governor of Assam from 1942 to 1947.

Clow, and his one thousand or so colleagues at any one time, effectively ruled India during the late Raj. This was a time of declining British prestige, and declining public and political opinion of colonialism as an acceptable social, economic and political practice. The rise of the Indian independence movement with Mohandas Gandhi as its nominal leader, coincided with the anti-British international propaganda concerning its empire that came from the Soviet Union and its sympathisers.

Doubt and self-loathing

In the early 1920s, the Indian independence movement grew in prominence and received a significant level of sympathy at home and abroad. In 1919, the Amritsar Massacre of unarmed protesters by British and Gurka troops received much public criticism. A year later, two of Clow’s civil service intake year group were assassinated in a market in Midnapore, West Bengal. From letters Clow wrote to a friend, we know he considered resigning on several occasions during the early 1920s. This period of reflection led him to fundamentally question his role within the colonial system, but he ultimately decided to continue his career.

Clow was a devout Christian and his life in India would develop into a religious cocoon of sorts where he used his relationship with God to suppress his trauma at being a colonial usurper.

As he became more senior within the administration he increasingly distanced himself from Indians, Indian culture and expressed little sympathy for the plight of people who suffered from British exploitation. He spent the vast majority of his time with other Europeans and his holidays at his house at the British hill station of Simla. His diaries throughout the 1930s and 1940s became almost entirely written prayers requesting salvation punctuated by private comments of self-loathing, written in confidence between himself and God.

Defender of British colonialism

Upon his retirement from the Indian Civil Service in 1947, Clow returned to Scotland and became chairman of the newly-created Scottish Gas Board. His private time was spent largely in the pursuit of the preservation of the legacy of British India. He voraciously read memoirs and other reflections by his former colleagues, and would lambast any critique of the British, even if those criticisms were rather sparse.

essay on india before and after british rule

Clow’s failure to concede publicly that colonialism was an exploitative practice is indicative of a complex reaction to his trauma at being a key part of a system of suppression. His heightened religiosity was a key part of his way of dealing with this. In many ways he “used” God to negate his discomfort at being one of the main figures of the British colonial enterprise.

Clow was typical of many within the Indian Civil Service who became troubled by their roles facilitating the exploitation of the Indian subcontinent for the British Empire. Yet, rather than resign his post and become a critic of colonial practices, Clow built a number of internal mechanisms so that he could carry on. Reactions like Clow’s go some way to explain the romance that many within British society have had for the age of empire. But today, 70 years on from the end of the Raj, public bodies and the British media are willing to engage in a much more robust critique.

  • Colonialism
  • Colonisation
  • British Empire
  • Colonialist
  • Indian Independence Anniversary
  • British Raj
  • India partition

essay on india before and after british rule

Research Assistant in Immunology and Virology

essay on india before and after british rule

General Manager | La Trobe University, Sydney Campus

essay on india before and after british rule

Lecturer / Senior Lecturer - Business Law & Taxation

essay on india before and after british rule

Newsletters and Social Media Manager

essay on india before and after british rule

Industrial Officer (Senior)

Logo

Essay on India Before Independence

Students are often asked to write an essay on India Before Independence in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on India Before Independence

Early civilizations.

India’s history begins with the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the world’s oldest urban civilizations. Flourishing around 2500 BC, it boasted sophisticated cities like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa.

Rule of Dynasties

India was ruled by mighty dynasties like the Maurya, Gupta, and Mughal. They contributed to India’s rich culture, architecture, and knowledge systems.

British Colonization

In the 17th century, the British East India Company arrived for trade, but soon took control. This period was marked by economic exploitation and social unrest.

Struggle for Freedom

The 19th and 20th centuries saw a surge in the freedom struggle. Figures like Mahatma Gandhi led non-violent protests, culminating in independence in 1947.

250 Words Essay on India Before Independence

The ancient glory.

India, before independence, was a land of rich cultural heritage and diverse history. The civilization can be traced back to the Indus Valley, around 2500 BCE, where urban culture and trade flourished. The Vedic age followed, laying the foundation for Hindu philosophy and societal norms.

Medieval India

The medieval period witnessed the rise of empires like the Maurya, Gupta, and Mughal, each contributing uniquely to India’s cultural and architectural landscape. The Mauryan period marked the advent of Buddhism, while the Gupta era is often referred to as the Golden Age of India, known for significant advancements in science, technology, engineering, art, dialectic, literature, logic, mathematics, astronomy, religion, and philosophy.

Colonial Era

The advent of the Europeans, primarily the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British, marked the beginning of the colonial era. The British East India Company gradually established its rule, exploiting India’s resources and creating a divide among the natives. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a significant event, after which the British Crown took direct control of India.

The Struggle for Independence

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of nationalist movements. Leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, and Jawaharlal Nehru emerged, advocating different methods to attain independence. The non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements, the Quit India campaign, and other significant events led to India gaining independence on August 15, 1947.

This brief overview of India before independence reveals a country that has weathered numerous invasions, exploitation, and internal divisions, yet has retained its unique cultural identity and resilience. The journey from ancient civilization to a colonized nation and finally to an independent country is a testament to India’s indomitable spirit and rich history.

500 Words Essay on India Before Independence

The historical background.

India, before its independence on August 15, 1947, was a nation under colonial rule. The British East India Company started its trade in South Asia in the 17th century. What began as a mere business venture, soon turned into political involvement, culminating in the establishment of British rule in India by the mid-19th century.

British Rule and Its Impact

The British introduced several reforms in India, including the modern education system, legal system, and infrastructure like railways, telegraph, and postal services. However, these reforms primarily catered to the colonial interests. The economic policies were exploitative, leading to deindustrialization and famines. The Indian society was also polarized on the lines of religion and caste, sowing seeds for future conflicts.

The 19th century marked the beginning of organized efforts against British rule. The Revolt of 1857, often termed as the First War of Independence, although unsuccessful, sparked a nationwide struggle for freedom. This period saw the emergence of several political and social organizations, including the Indian National Congress in 1885.

The Role of National Leaders

The early 20th century witnessed the rise of influential leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, and many others. Gandhi’s philosophy of Satyagraha (truth-force) and non-violence became the guiding principles of India’s freedom struggle. The Civil Disobedience Movement and Quit India Movement were significant milestones that galvanized the masses against the British rule.

Partition and Independence

The demand for a separate nation for Muslims led by the All India Muslim League culminated in the partition of India in 1947. The partition was accompanied by unprecedented violence and mass migrations. Finally, on August 15, 1947, India gained independence from British rule but was divided into two nations – India and Pakistan.

The era before independence was a period of struggle, sacrifice, and transformation for India. It was a time when the foundations of a modern nation were being laid amidst adversities. The journey from a colonized nation to an independent country was marked by a multitude of challenges and triumphs, which have significantly shaped the India we know today. This period in history serves as a stark reminder of the price that was paid for freedom and the responsibilities that come with it.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Historical Places in India
  • Essay on Future of Sports in India
  • Essay on Prime Minister of India

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Essay on British India

essay on india before and after british rule

The British entered India as traders and their primary objective was to earn profits by carrying on trade in India.

In order to earn maximum profits from Indian trade and commerce and to develop monopoly of trade and commerce they competed with other European powers.

By the beginning of the middle of the 18th century, the British crippled the French interests in India and became a dominant trading power.

British in India records released | News | findmypast.com.au

Image Source: blog.findmypast.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2014/01/britindia.jpg

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The British also developed political interest to push in their monopoly of trade and commerce and initiated the process of expanding their political power in Bengal by the victory in the battle of Plassey and obtained the power of Diwani by the victory of Buxar through the treaty of Allahabad of 1765.

From then on till 1857, the British East India Company through wars, diplomacy and administrative measures made it a policy to obtain more and more of economic benefits by fleecing the Indian farmer, artisan and small and medium traders. This process is called colonialism and India became a colony of the British.

This colonialism bled the Indians and made India a de-industrialized power. In this span of seventy-five years from 1772 to 1857, the process and pattern of colonialism underwent different stages because the Charter Act of 1813 made by the British Parliament and Crown abolished the monopoly of the British East India Company and opened the gates of trade and commerce to every British citizen.

Further, by Charter Act of 1833, the Governor General of Bengal became the Governor General of India with control over the presidencies of Bombay and Madras and the British citizens were permitted to own property in India and thereby we come across British landlords and planters of tea, coffee, indigo and cotton and also British capitalists investing surplus capital in Colonial India. Both these measures hastened the process of draining of the wealth of India by the colonialists with their colonial policies.

Along with the colonialist measures, the British intro­duced ideology of mercantilism, orientalism, evangelicalism, utilitarianism and liberalism to justify their colonialist policies in India. In the name of ‘improve­ment’, ‘progress’ and ‘Whiteman’s burden’ the British administrators made it their avowed objective to introduce British laws and revenue measures into India. Added to the above ideological and philosophical tenets, the modern­ization process of Dalhousie also acted as the last straw on the camel’s back, and the substance of colonialism remained the same throughout the period of seventy-five years.

The colonial administrative apparatus from top to bottom was controlled by the Crown and Parliament through their Acts and Charter Acts. The British East India Company enjoyed a unique position at England as King George III patronized it and its friends – fought with the help of the parliament. The British decided to control the company’s Indian administration in the interest of Britain’s influential elite group as a whole. The company was allowed to have monopoly “of the trade and Directors of the company” were given the control of Indian administration.

Before we take up in detail the administrative set-up of the colonial admin­istrative apparatus, we have to bear in mind the fact that the pre-colonial India had well established administrative structure at different levels – centre, provincial and local, suited to the needs and demands of the time, relevant to the socio-economic formations. Another factor to be noted is that all the earlier invaders who established their power in India like the Indo-Greeks to Sakas, the Kushans and the Muslims added their principles of administration and modified the administrative structure and thus we notice the process of conti­nuity and change in our administration in theory and practice.

The major factor of difference to be noticed is that the British East India Company replaced the old Indian administrative policies and introduced their system of law, justice, education, revenue and intellectual and social theories, in India. All these changes created a new value system. We also notice an evolution of the colonial administrative apparatus as per the reforms introduced by the earliest regulating Act of 1773 and ending with the Government of India Act of 1858.

The regulating Act of 1773 introduced provisions for the effective super­vision of the executive of the company. It introduced changes in the constitution of the Court of directors of the company and the company affairs were put under the control of the government.

The Governor of Bengal was made the Governor General of Bengal and a council with four members was constituted. The Governor General and council was given authority to supervise the presidencies of Bombay and Madras and the presidencies were brought under the control of Governor General in the council of Bengal. This Act provided for a Supreme Court of justice at Calcutta to take care of the justice of Europeans, employees and citizens of Calcutta.

The Governor General in council was empowered to make laws for Bengal. The Pitt’s India Act established a board of control with six members of whom two were to be cabinet ministers. This board was given power over the activities of the Court of directors. This Act provided three members to the Governor General in council and the Governor General was given a casting vote.

The importance of the Pitt’s India Act lies in the fact of laying the foundation for a centralized adminis­tration, a process which reached its climax towards the end of the 19th century and it tightened the control of parliament over the company. In 1786, the Presi­dencies were divided into districts and collectors were appointed.

A revenue board was created with four members with the right to manage the treasury. The Charter Act of 1793 gave powers to the Governor General to override his council and also empowered him to exercise effective control over the Presi­dencies. Through this Act the British introduced the concept of a civil law enacted by a secular human agency, i.e., the government and applied universally in place of the personal rule of the past rulers.

It is an important change to be noticed by everyone. The Charter Act of 1813 allowed the British subjects, access to Indian shore with their ships. By now the company’s power spread over the whole of India except the Punjab, Nepal and the Sindh. To whatever political and economical philosophy the British subscribed, every Britisher was interested in the stability and security of the British territorial power in India. The most important development to be recorded is the deprival of the monopoly of trade and commerce of the British East India Company and throwing open the trade of India to all the British citizens. The East India Company was allowed to have monopoly of trade with China.

Owing to the rapid growth of industrial revolution in Great Britain, the British followed laissez-faire philosophy in India which ultimately benefited the British indus­trialists and capitalists at the cost of the Indian farmers and artisans. There was a great demand in India for the abolition of the company rule and assumption of authority by the crown.

In this backdrop the Charter Act of 1833 was passed which made the Governor General of Bengal, the Governor General of India. The president of the board of control became the minister of India and the board of control was given the power to supervise Indian affairs on behalf of the crown. Bombay, Madras and Bengal regions were placed under the direct rule of the Governor General in Council of India.

Central government was given the power to exercise full control over revenue and expenditure of the British territories in India. The Governor General in Council was given legislative powers over the rest of the Indian presidencies which are applicable to everyone in India. By this Act, a new member by name law member was added to the executive council and the strength rose to four. Lord Macaulay, the new law member played a very crucial role in influencing the educational policy of the British.

The number of members of the councils of the presidencies was reduced to two. Bombay and Madras were to keep their separate armies under the commander-in-chief and were kept under the control of the central government. The laws of India were codified by this Act through a law commission appointed by the Governor General. As a result of their effort, the Indian penal code and codes of civil and commercial law were enacted.

The most significant aspect of this Act theoretically was abolishing discrimination towards Indians in appointments to the British East India Company, and it was more violated by non-implementation and it provided for Indians a sheet anchor towards agitations for equality of treatment to Indians. In the next two decades the political consciousness of Indians increased due to the introduction of Western education and realization among the Indians.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the Bombay Association and the Madras Native Association submitted petitions to the parliamentary select committee demanding for the end of the reactionary rule of the company. By 1853 Charter Act, one more member was added to the executive council of Governor General to enact laws. The consent of the Governor General was mandatory for all legislative proposals. They added one more member from each province to the central legislative body. The Chief

Justice of the Supreme Court of Calcutta was also made the ex officio member of the legislative council. The legislative council’s membership was limited to 12 the Governor General, Commander-in-Chief, four members of Governor General’s council and six legislative members. Thus, this Act separated the legislative body from the executive body and this legislative body became an Anglo-Indian House of Commons.

The 1857 Great Revolt opened the eyes of the British and made it clear how the Indians hated the British rule for all their evil deeds and an attempt was made by the British to rectify their blunder by the Government of India Act of 1858. The Act replaced the British East India Company as ruler and transferred the powers to the crown along with the army. It abolished the Court of directors and the Board of Control. Their place was filled up by the secretary of state and the Indian council. They were given the powers to rule in the name of Her Majesty. But yet the ultimate power rested with the Parliament.

India Council should consist of 15 members and it was to be an advisory body to the secretary of state. The Governor General is desig­nated as Viceroy or Crown’s representative and the Government of India’s strings were in London.

The administrative structure that evolved in India from 1773 to 1858 was the result of the initiatives of many British administrators, thinkers and philoso­phers. As already indicated, the earliest influence on the thinking of British administrators and thinkers was their idea of improvement or progress. This process was initiated by Cornwallis by introducing the permanent land revenue settlements.

Between 1830 and 1840, when Bentinckwasthe Governor General of India the initiatives of Benthamite reforms based on utilitarianism and Charles Grant’s idea of evangelicalism and the British interests of monopoly of trade and maximum profits created the framework of administrative machinery and structure in India. Thus, the British administration in India was motivated by the maintenance of law and order and the perpetuation of the British regime.

The British depended on three pillars, of civil service, the army and the police to achieve their objective. The term ‘Civil Service’ was first used in India by the company to distinguish military and ecclesiastical personnel from civil employees. In the beginning they were commercial-oriented but later on they became public servants.

The civil service was graded from the beginning as apprentices, writers, factors, junior merchants and then finally senior merchants. High officers in India were selected from among the senior merchants. This system of grading continued till 1839. It is Cornwallis who increased the salaries of the civil servants and debarred them from taking bribes.

It is Wellesley who introduced training for civil servants. For a long time, the civil servants were appointed through the process of patronage and in 1833, the selection through limited competition was introduced and by 1853 they selected civil servants through public competition and in 1858 the Civil Service Commission was started for the process of selection of civil servants. The chief officer in the district was the Collector and he was assisted by a Tahsildar, who was a native.

The Collector had both magisterial and chief police functions. By these changes the Collector obtained total authority over the districts. In between the Collector and the Tahsildar, the post of Deputy Collector was created.

It is Cornwallis who initiated the police system. Till then, the police functions were performed by the local Zamindars. The army was also disbanded along with stripping of the police functions of the Zamindars. The police force was organized into Thanas, headed by a Darogha, who was a native and these daroghas were kept under the supervision of the criminal judges. The post of district Superintendent of Police was created to head the police set-up in the district and sometime later the Collector controlled the police also.

The judicial system was one of the main pillars of administrative structure and framework of the British in India. It is Lord Cornwallis, who started building up of the administrative machinery in India, It is he who separated the judicial functions from the revenue functions and laid foundation for the judicial system. Broadly the structure of the judicial system is divided as follows: in civil cases Sadar Diwani Adalat followed by provincial courts followed by district courts presided over by a district magistrate from civil service was introduced.

A category of subordinate courts presided over by Indian judges called Munsiff and Amins was created. In criminal cases Sadar Nizamat Adalat in Calcutta and Sadar Faujdari Adalat in Madras and Bombay happened to be the highest, followed by the court of circuit presided over by civil servants followed by local courts presided over by Indian magistrates who are called principal Sadar Amins in Madras Presidency.

First, all these courts in hierarchical order were experi­mented in Bengal. Both the Sadar Diwani Adalt and Sadar Nizam Adah were located in Calcutta as the highest civil and criminal courts. The provincial courts of appeal both in civil and criminal cases, (circuit courts) were estab­lished in the towns of Calcutta, Dacca, Murshidabad and Patna.

While the British occupied the superior position, the Indians occupied subordinate positions such as Munisiffs, Amins, the Quazis and the Pandits advising the judges in the Hindu and the Muhammadan laws. In subsequent years, the same was extended to other states and after some time a whole network of laws through the process of enactment of laws and codification of old laws was developed. By the time of Bentinck, the Indian penal code and Indian criminal procedure code were prepared.

The entire judicial system was based on the notions of the ‘rule of law’ and ‘equality before law’ of the British. But in practice, the judicial system was not at all beneficial to the Indians as it became very costly and lengthy and Indians failed to comprehend the laws. To give an example of the lengthy process, the case in Madras Presidency may be quoted where a Zamindar went to a court of law in 1832 to settle inheritance and debt suits and the final judgment was delivered in 1896, i.e., after 64 years.

In spite of the above demerits the judicial system created a consciousness of oneness. Thus, what we see in India as a result of the measures, administrative machinery was a network of laws applicable throughout the country and a vast adminis­trative structure to implement the laws. In nature, the structure was modern and pan-Indian in its spread, while the administrative structure served the purpose of maintaining law and order in India from the British view point, it served as a ground to protest and challenge the authority of the British in India.

Related Articles:

  • Economic Drain during British India
  • Structure of Government during the British Rule in India
  • The British Administration in India
  • Essay on East India Company

India before the British

Desmond kuah, university scholars programme , national university of singapore.

[ Victorian Web Home —> Victorian Political History —> Victorian Social History —> The British Empire —> British India ]

Mogul Decline in the 18th Century

The new emperor, Bahadur Shah I (1707-12), thought more tolerant, was unable to prevent Mogul decline. He never abolished jizya, but his effort to collect the tax became ineffectual. Bahadur Shah I tried to impose greater control over the Rajput states of Amber and Jodhpur, but was unsuccessful. His policies toward the Hindu Marathas were also half-hearted conciliatory as they were never defeated by the Moguls and resistance to Mogul rule persisted in the south.

Political and Economic Decentralization During the Mogul Decline

With the decline of Mogul central authority, the period between 1707 and 1761 witnessed the rise of the provinces against Delhi. This resurgence of regional identity accentuated both political and economic decentralization as Mogul military powers ebbed. The provinces became increasing independent from the central authority both economically and politically. Aided by intra-regional as well as inter-regional trade in local raw produce and artifacts, these provinces became virtual kingdoms. Bengal, Bihar, and Avadh in Northern India were among the new independent regions where these developments were most apparent. Their rulers became almost independent warlords recognizing the Mogul Emperor in name only. These provinces laid the foundations for the princely states under the Raj .

The Rise of Princely States

In due course, the growth of the regions at the expanse of Mogul central authority, gave local land- and power-holders enough influence to take up arms against Mogul authority and declare their independence. This gave rise to the princely states of British India . More often than not, narrow and selfish goals prevented these rebels from consolidating their interests into an effective challenge to the empire. These princes relied on the support from their relatives, lesser nobility, and peasants. Their rule was very personalized with followers swearing allegiance to the ruler alone and not to the state. As such, with the death of a prince, allegiance was reshuffled and loyalty divided. Next, the selfish motives of each princely state, made cooperation impossible. Each local group stroved to maximize its share of the spoils at the expense of the others. The princes were thus never strong enough to dominate any sizeable territories and the Mogul Empire, shrank thought it was lasted till 1858 .

The Mogul rulers were not replaced by the princes. Their presence was necessary to act as a balance and arbitrator between the powerful princes, each having his own agenda. The princes in the regions, were always alert for opportunities to establish their dominance over the others in the neighborhood, yet at the same time feared and resisted similar attempts by the others. As such, they all needed for their vices a kind of legitimacy, which was conveniently available in the long-accepted authority of the Mogul Emperor. With Mogul authority so weak, the princes had no fear in collectively accepting the Mogul Emperor as the titular head-of-state.

Bibliography and Web Resources

  • Kamat's potpourri, "When the Moguls Ruled..."
  • Benton W. (1972), "India" and "Pakistan" Encyclopedia Britannica

Last modified 6 November 2000

  • IAS Preparation
  • NCERT Notes for UPSC
  • NCERT Notes Education System In India During British Rule

NCERT Notes: Education System In India During British Rule [Modern Indian History For UPSC]

NCERT notes on important topics for the UPSC civil services exam . These notes will also be useful for other competitive exams like banking PO, SSC, state civil services exams and so on. This article talks about the Education System in India during British Rule.

Modern education began in India under British rule. Before the British, India had its own educational systems like the Gurukulas and the Madrassas. The East India Company, during their first 60 years of rule didn’t care much for the education of those they ruled in India. (Even in England, universal education came about at a much later stage.)

Candidates can also download the notes PDF from the link given below.

Education System In India During British Rule (UPSC Notes):- Download PDF Here

Daily News

Three agents of modern education in India

  • The British Government (East India Company)
  • Christian missionaries
  • Indian intellectuals and reformers

To help ease the path of your IAS preparation, check out the Free NCERT Fundamentals Course– a comprehensive study program to help you cover the NCERTs effectively. Watch the video below to learn more:

essay on india before and after british rule

Development of Modern Education

  • The company wanted some educated Indians who could assist them in the administration of the land.
  • Also, they wanted to understand the local customs and laws well.
  • For this purpose, Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrassa in 1781 for the teaching of Muslim law.
  • In 1791, a Sanskrit College was started in Varanasi by Jonathan Duncan for the study of Hindu philosophy and laws.
  • The missionaries supported the spread of Western education in India primarily for their proselytising activities. They established many schools with education only being a means to an end which was Christianising and ‘civilising’ the natives.
  • The Baptist missionary William Carey had come to India in 1793 and by 1800 there was a Baptist Mission in Serampore, Bengal, and also a number of primary schools there and in nearby areas.
  • The Indian reformers believed that to keep up with times, a modern educational system was needed to spread rational thinking and scientific principles.
  • The Charter Act of 1813 was the first step towards education being made an objective of the government.
  • The act sanctioned a sum of Rs.1 lakh towards the education of Indians in British ruled India. This act also gave an impetus to the missionaries who were given official permission to come to India.
  • But there was a split in the government over what kind of education was to be offered to the Indians.
  • The orientalists preferred Indians to be given traditional Indian education. Some others, however, wanted Indians to be educated in the western style of education and be taught western subjects.
  • There was also another difficulty regarding the language of instruction. Some wanted the use of Indian languages (called vernaculars) while others preferred English.
  • Due to these issues, the sum of money allotted was not given until 1823 when the General Committee of Public Instruction decided to impart oriental education.
  • In 1835, it was decided that western sciences and literature would be imparted to Indians through the medium of English by Lord William Bentinck’s government.
  • Bentinck had appointed Thomas Babington Macaulay as the Chairman of the General Committee of Public Instruction.
  • Macaulay was an ardent anglicist who had absolute contempt for Indian learning of any kind. He was supported by Reverend Alexander Duff, JR Colvin, etc.
  • On the side of the orientalists were James Prinsep, Henry Thomas Colebrooke, etc.
  • Macaulay minutes refer to his proposal of education for the Indians.
  • English education should be imparted in place of traditional Indian learning because the oriental culture was ‘defective’ and ‘unholy’.
  • He believed in education a few upper and middle-class students.
  • In the course of time, education would trickle down to the masses. This was called the infiltration theory.
  • He wished to create a class of Indians who were Indian in colour and appearance but English in taste and affiliation.
  • In 1835, the Elphinstone College (Bombay) and the Calcutta Medical College were established.

essay on india before and after british rule

  • Sir Charles Wood was the President of the Board of Control of the company in 1854 when he sent a despatch to the then Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie.
  • This is called the ‘Magna Carta of English education in India.’
  • Regularise education system from the primary to the university levels.
  • Indians were to be educated in English and their native language.
  • The education system was to be set up in every province.
  • Every district should have at least one government school.
  • Affiliated private schools could be granted aids.
  • Education of women should be emphasised.
  • Universities of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay were set up by 1857.
  • University of Punjab – 1882; University of Allahabad – 1887
  • This despatch asked the government to take up the responsibility of education of the people.
  • Although there were a few Englishmen who wanted to spread education for its own sake, the government was chiefly concerned only with its own concerns.
  • There was a huge demand for clerks and other administrative roles in the company’s functioning.
  • It was cheaper to get Indians rather than Englishmen from England for these jobs. This was the prime motive.
  • No doubt it spread western education among Indians, but the rate of literacy was abysmally low during British rule.
  • The state of women education was pathetic. This was because the government did not want to displease the orthodox nature of Indians and also because women could not generally be employed as clerks.
  • In 1911, the illiteracy rate in British India was 94%. In 1921, it was 92%.
  • Scientific and technical education was ignored by the British government.

UPSC Questions about British Education Policy in India

Who introduced british education system in india, how did the british rule affect the education system in india.

UPSC Related Articles

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Request OTP on Voice Call

Post My Comment

essay on india before and after british rule

This information is really good and important this help in my project.

CAN U PLS TELL THE PORTION OF MATHS IN CSAT .

Hi Divya UPSC CSAT is a combination of different sections as you can refer in CSAT Syllabus . Questions from Data Interpretation and Basic Numeracy of class 10th level are asked in this exam, considering the Maths subject. The number of questions on Maths problems are balanced in a way, where a candidate with optimum practice, can score well. You can check links given below to help you with CSAT preparation: 1. CSAT Mock Test 2. CSAT Questions

Sir/mam there are only four topics like ancient medival and modern history and geography as well there is no data available regarding political science and economics etc. So where can I get the economics notes

Hi, 1. Polity Notes for UPSC 2. Economy Notes for UPSC

essay on india before and after british rule

IAS 2024 - Your dream can come true!

Download the ultimate guide to upsc cse preparation.

  • Share Share

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Register with byju's & watch live videos.

IndiaCelebrating.com

Know Who All Ruled India

Since the ancient time, India has remained under international spotlight, due to its immense wealth, spices, gold and an enormous expanse of natural resources, that’s why India was known as Golden Bird or Sone Ki Chidiya at one point of time. And to exploit its seamless wealth the country has been time and again invaded and ruled by numerous dynasties which include Sakas, Kushanas, Huns, Afghans, Turks, Khiljis, Lodhis and Mughals to the Britishers.

Even, Alexander- the great ruler of ancient Greek kingdom also voyaged across several miles along with a huge army of Yavans in 326BC to invade India. However, his impressive winning streak finally met with an unfortunate end at the Hydaspas River where the most powerful King Porus of Paurava Kingdom (spanned across the current Punjab region) engaged him in a bloody battle and pushed him back.

Overall, if we take a peek into the vast history of the rulers of India, we observe that India has witnessed the rule of several smaller kingdoms, while the power centres, mostly remained divided among the rulers of Magadha and Southern India. The bringing together of smaller states and kingdoms spanning from Himalayan region to Indian ocean, into one unified country was made possible only during the era of British rule.

Finally, the British rule in India also ended in the year 1947 after nearly 200 years of Indian freedom struggle. As far as the recorded history of the rulers in India is concerned – it goes back to the middle of the 6 th century BC when Haryanka Dynasty of Magadha emerged as the most powerful kingdom among its counterparts in North India. Here we present a brief history of the great emperors, who ruled over almost entire India.

Who Ruled India?

Haryanka Dynasty (c. 544 BCE- 413 BCE)

Haryanka Dynasty constituted the area currently known as Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bangladesh and Nepal together that was known as Magadha, the present day Patliputra. Founded by Bimbisara, the Haryanka Dynasty surfaced after defeating Barhadrath Dynasty founded by Brihadratha. The capital of Haryanka Dynasty was Rajgir and the most powerful king of this dynasty was Ajatshatru, the son of Bimbisara. Ajatshatru imprisoned his father Bimbisara and forcefully succeeded to the throne of Magadha. Ajatshatru later fought a war against the republic of Vaishali which was ruled by Licchchhavis. Ajatshatru conquered Vaishali and went on expanding the boundaries of his kingdom and he defeated almost all his neighbouring smaller kingdoms including Kosala and Kashi. Under the rulership of Ajatshatru, Magadha became the most powerful kingdom of North India. Nagadasaka was the last ruler of Haryanka Dynasty.

Shishunaga Dynasty (c. 544 BCE- 413 BCE)

Haryanka Dynasty was eliminated by Shishunaga Dynasty founded by Shishunaga who was an Amatya in Magadha. He led the revolt by the people against Haryanka Dynasty and captured the throne of Magadha and made Patliputra its capital. Shishunaga was the son of one of the Licchavi rulers of Vaishali. Shishunaga expanded his kingdom to present day Jaipur in Rajasthan, apart from Sindh, Karachi, Lahore, Herat, Multan, Kandahar and Vellore. Even Shishunaga Dynasty spread its wings to Madurai and Kochi in South to Murshidabad in East to Mand in West as well. Shishunaga was succeeded by his son Kakavarna, or Kalashoka followed by his ten sons. Later Nanda Empire captured the throne of this kingdom.

Nanda Dynasty (c. 345 BCE- 321 BCE)

Nanda Empire was established in Magadha in c.345BCE by Mahapadma Nanda, who apart from Shishunagas also defeated many other kingdoms like Haihayas, Kurus, Kalingas, etc and he even expanded his territory to far lying south to the Vindhya Range. Dhana Nanda, one of the nine sons of Mahapadma Nanda was the last ruler of Nanda Empire, a powerful kingdom with a vast army consisting of most powerful cavalry, elephants and infantry. Dhana Nand was the last Nanda emperor and he was defeated by Chandragupta Maurya who established Maurya Empire.

Maurya Dynasty (c. 321 BCE-184 BCE)

Chandragupta Maurya with the assistance of Chanakya established Maurya Empire in 322 BCE in Magadha and expanded it to over 5 million square kilometre, thus it was the largest ever kingdom in the world at that time in 316 BCE. Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya was another powerful emperor of Maurya dynasty who captured almost the entire Indian subcontinent and even expanded his kingdom to present day Asam, Balochistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

Ashoka later also conquered Kalinga, but after a severe battle which resulted into mass killings which left Ashoka into a stage of great sorrow and he became a follower of Buddhism to practice nonviolence. He ruled over next 36 years until his death. Maurya Empire continued to exist for the next 56 years. Brihadratha was the last Maurya ruler who was killed by his commander-in-chief Pushyamitra Shunga.

Saka Dynasty, or Indo-Scynthians (200 BCE- 400 CE)

Sakas who invaded and settled in north-western India were nomadic tribes of central Asia. Maus was the first Saka ruler in India and he made Taxila his capital. He was followed by Azes I and Azes II who extended their kingdom till Punjab. Saka rulers were called Saka Satraps. Saka Satraps of Mathura were famous for making great progress. Apart from North India, the Saka also entered in South and extended their kingdom to Kathiawar and Cutch in Gujarat, and till Maharashtra.

The Saka kingdom of Ujjain rulers of which were called as western straps had became most prominent in their region. Chastana was the founder of Saka kingdom of Ujjain. Saka King Rudradaman was a great warrior who conquered the present day Andhra Pradesh, defeating the Andhra King Sri Pulmavi. After the death of Rudradaman, Saka kingdom witnessed seventeen successors.

Shunga Dynasty (c. 185 BCE-73 BCE)

After assassinating the Maurya ruler Brihadratha in the year 185 BCE, Pushyamitra Shunga established Shunga Dynasty and ruled over the region for the next 36 years. Agnimitra, the son of Pushyamitra Shunga succeeded him. There were total ten Shunga rulers who succeeded the throne one after another until the Kanva Dynasty invaded and captured the throne in 73BCE.

Kanva Dynasty (c. 73 BCE-26 BCE)

Vasudeva, the Kanva ruler established Kanva Dynasty in Magadha. He was succeeded by his son Bhumimitra who ruled for the next fourteen years. Narayana, the son of Bhumimitra ruled for the next twelve years. Sushaman, the son of Narayana was the last king of Kanva Dynasty.

Kushan Kingdom (c. 30 to c. 230 CE)

Formed in the early first century, Kushan Empire was established by Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories and it spread further to Afghanistan and north India till Varanasi. The first most powerful ruler of Kushan dynasty was Kajula Kadaphises or, Kdaphises I who is known for issuing gold coins during his rule. Kanishka was one of the great kings of this dynasty, who expanded the kingdom southward towards the Indian subcontinent. The Guptas and the other contemporary Indian kingdoms invaded this empire fragmenting it into semi independent kingdoms.

Satavahana Dynasty (c. 271 BCE-220 CE)

Based in Deccan region, the Satavahana Dynasty was comprised of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh including Telangana, and their rule even extended to Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka. Gautamiputra Satakarni was one of the most powerful kings under this dynasty. He was succeeded by Vasisthiputra Pulamavi. After the death of Gautamiputra Satakarni, the kingdom began to fall and it ended in the early third century. Satavahana Dynasty had to face continuous invasions of Sakas and Kushanas. Satavahanas are well-known in the history for introduction of coins in their kingdom with portraits of their kings. The Satavahana Dynasty ended near the beginning of third century.

Gupta Kingdom (c. 220- c. 550 CE)

Initiating the golden age in Indian history, Sri Gupta founded the Gupta Kingdom which encompassed maximum part of India during 320 CE to 550 CE. During this period the Gupta kings were successful in ensuring peace and tranquillity in the entire region. It resulted into development and inventions in science and technology; art and engineering as well as in mathematics. Most importantly this period saw spread of Hindu culture. Chandragupta I and Samudragupta were well-known rulers of Gupta dynasty. Ajanta, Ellora and Elephanta are the famous monuments and sculptures of this period which has Buddhist, Jain as well as the impressions of Hindus in their creation. The Hindu Udayagiri caves and Dashavatara Temple at Devagarh are a few more eminent historical remains of this period.

Chalukya Empire (c. 543 – c. 753 CE)

It was a prominent south Indian dynasty which later expanded to central India. Pulakeshin II was one of the great rulers of Chalukya dynasty which is known for administrative excellence and overseas trade relations, besides architectural developments. During the rule of Chalukyas, Kannada and Telugu literature saw considerable development.

Chola Kingdom (c. 848 – c. 1251 CE)

Chola dynasty was considered as one of the greatest kingdom in south India which witnessed the golden era when Raja became the king in 985 CE. He extended his kingdom to Sri Lanka Island as well and his successor Rajendra Chola defeated Mahipala, the Pala king and captured the area surrounding the Ganga River.

Chera Kingdom (300 BC – AD 1102)

Chera Kingdom is also called the ancient Dravidian empire which prominently ruled Kerala and Tamilnadu. Chera rulers are also known in the history for establishing trade relations with West Asia, Rome and Greece. Sangam literature is the source of knowledge regarding Chera Kings. According to Sangam literature, Nedum Cheralathan was one of Chera rulers who ruled the kingdom for 58 years.

Delhi Sultanate (1206 AD – 1526 AD)

In the year 1206AD, Delhi Sultanate was founded by the Turks who came from Central Asia and captured most of the North India. Slave dynasty was founded by Qutb-ud-din-Aibak in India in the year 1206. In the year 1290 Jalal ud din Firoz Khilji founded Khilji dynasty in Delhi Sultanate while in the year 1321, Ghiyas ud-Din Tughluq founded Tughluq dynasty. From 1414 to 1451 Sayyid Dynasty succeeded tughluqus in Delhi Sultanate. In the year 1451 Lodi dynasty under headship of Bahlol Lodi captured Delhi Sultanate and ruled until they were replaced by Mughals in 1526. The most powerful Hindu states in that period were Vijaynagara, Rajput States, Mewar, Ahom, etc.

The following dynasties ruled one after another in the era of Delhi Sultanate which spanned from 1206 AD to 1526 AD:

  • Slave Dynasty or, Mamluk Dynasty (1206 AD- 1290 AD)
  • Khilji Dynasty (1290 AD- 1320 AD)
  • Tughlaq Dynasty (1320 AD- 1414 AD)
  • Sayyid Dynasty (1414 AD- 1451 AD)
  • Lodi Dynasty (1451 AD- 1526 AD)

Mughal Empire (1526 AD- 1858 AD)

After eliminating Lodi dynasty, the Mughal empire spread its wings and captured most of the India and ruled conveniently till 18th century until British annexation started by London-based East India Company. Mughal Empire was founded by Babur after defeating Ibrahim Lodi, the last ruler of Lodi Dynasty, in the year 1526 AD. The Mughal Empire witnessed most powerful Mughal rulers Humayun, Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb, among others. The Mughals not only successfully captured almost the entire India, but they also expanded their boundaries to Afghanistan. The Mughals are also known for shifting their capital many times during their rule. They frequently changed their capital from Agra to Shahjahanabad (Delhi) to Fatehpur Sikri and even to Lahore. Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last Mughal emperor who was later exiled to Rangoon (now Yangon) in the year 1858 by the British.

British Rule (1858 AD-1947 AD)

British East India company had started capturing different provinces of India in the guise of their protectors as early as in the year 1757 when they defeated Nawab of Bengal Sirajuddaulah in the battle of Palassey. In 1793 they captured Mughal’s Bihar-Bengal province and till 1857 the East India Company had captured almost the entire Mughal Empire. However, officially the British rule in India started in the year 1858, after they exiled the last Mughal emperor. British Raj lasted until 15th August 1947 when India got freedom after years of struggle. Since then the country is governed by the representative of its people called Prime Minister. Jawaharlal Nehru of Indian National Congress became the first Prime Minister of India.

Other Dynasties Who Ruled India

A vast country India (recognized as Indian subcontinent in the ancient history), has been ruled by several other dynasties, who were most prominent and powerful in their specific regions. Here we are providing you a glimpse of the other kingdoms including details of some which have been extracted from the Puranas that are part of Vedas:

Paurava Kingdom (890 BC- 322 BC)

Paurava Kingdom was an ancient Indian dynasty spread over the region surrounding river Jhelum (Hydaspes in Greek) extending to Chenab and Beas rivers spanning through parts of the area currently known as Punjab and Pakistan. The Paurava Kingdom is known in the history for averting Greek ruler Alexander’s plans to annex India. In the year 326 BC, King Porous of Paurava Kingdom engaged Alexander in a fierce battle on the banks of river Hydaspes in which Alexander’s army had to bear huge losses.

Vakataka Dynasty (c. 250 – c. 500 CE)

It was a Brahmin Dynasty which originated from Deccan region of India. Vakataka Dynasty is known for development of arts, architecture and literature in India. The Vakataka rulers enjoyed the most stable period in the history of Indian subcontinent and hence they led the development of art, literature and architecture. The world famous Ajanta Caves were constructed during this period. Vindhyashakti was the founder of Vakataka Dynasty and the other prominent Pravarasena I&II, Rudrasena I&II, Devasena and Harisena were among the prominent rulers of Vakataka Dynasty.

Pallava Dynasty (275 CE–897 CE)

The Pallava Dynasty was a South Indian empire known for building splendid temples and sculptures, besides rolling out Pallava script. The detailed history of Pallavas is found in Sangam literature “Manimekalai”.  Mahendravarman and Narsimhavarman were among the most prominent rulers of this dynasty. During Pallava era, Hiuen Tsang, the noted Chinese traveller also visited Kanchipuram, known currently as Kanchi in Tamil Nadu.

Western Ganga Dynasty (350–1000 CE)

Western Ganga Dynasty was an ancient kingdom in Karnataka which emerged due to weakening of the hold of Pallava Dynasty in South India. Settled along the Kaveri River, it witnessed the rule of more than 25 kings over the years and among them, Avinita, Durvinita and Sripurusha were the rulers who focussed on major social and cultural development across the region.

Maitraka Dynasty (c.470–c.776 CE)

Maitraka Dynasty was situated in the region currently known as Gujarat in Western India. Vallabhi was the capital of Maitraka Dynasty which later came under the umbrella of Harshavardhan Kingdom of Kannauj.

Shashanka Dynasty (600CE–626 CE)

Shashanka Dynasty was an ancient Kingdom in Bengal formed by the descendent of later Gupta dynasty. King Shashanka was a well-known king of this dynasty who issued Gold and Silver Coins by during his rule.

Pushyabhuti Dynasty (606–647)

Pushyabhuti Dynasty was a major South India dynasty founded by Pushyabhuti, according to the information provided by Harshacharita written by the great poet Bana. Harshavardhana was one of the strongest rulers of this dynasty who expanded its boundaries to North and North-western India as well.

Gurjar- Pratihara Dynasty (650–1036 CE)

Gurjar-Pratihara Dynasty marks more than four centuries rule in Western India in Rajasthan and Gujarat. It emerged after Gupta kingdom started losing ground. The empire later invaded by Mahmud of Ghazani who demolished temples and looted a lot of gold.

Some more dynasties who ruled some parts of India:

Western Kshatrapas (c. 35–405 CE), Harsha Dynasty (606–647), Rashtrakuta Dynasty (735–982), Pala Dynasty (c. 750–1174), Paramara Dynasty (9th to 14th Century), Kabul Shahi Dynasty (c. 500 CE –c.1026 CE), Hoysala Dynasty (1000–1346), Eastern Ganga Rulers (1078–1434), Kakatiya Dynasty (1083–1323 CE), Kalachuris Dynasty (1130–1184), Sutiya Dynasty of Assam (1187–1524), Ahom Dynasty of Assam (1228–1826), Bahmani Dynasty (1347–1527), Malwa Dynasty (1392–1562), Reddy Dynasty (1325–1448 CE), Vijayanagara Kingdom (1336–1646), Sangama Dynasty (1336–1487), Saluva Dynasty (1490–1567), Tuluva dynasty (1491–1570), Dynasty of Mysore (1761–1799), Kingdom of Cochin, Mewar Dynasty of Sisodias (currently Udaipur state), Suri Empire (1540–1545), Monarchs of Sikkim, Monarchs of Ldakh, Deccan Sultanates (1527–1686), Bijapur Dynasty (1490–1686), Ahmadnagar Sultanate (1490–1636), Maratha Dynasty (1674–1881), Golconda Sultanate (1518–1687), Kolhapur Dynasty (1700–1947), Bhosale Dynasty (1707–1839), Kingdom of Travancore (1729–1947), Holkar Dynasty (1731–1948), Sikh Empire (1799–1849), Scindias of Gwalior, Gaekwad Dynasty, Hyderabad State (1720–1948), Foreign emperors in north-western India .

FAQs Related to Who Ruled India

Rapid fire round questions and answers on who ruled India: Here in a nutshell we are providing the specific knowledge on who ruled India in sharp one liner questions and answers:

Who ruled India after Akbar?

After Akbar his eldest son Jahangir ruled India.

Who ruled India after Babar?

Humayun ruled India after Babar under Mugal dynasty.

Who ruled India after Bimbisar?

Ajatshatru imprisoned his father Bimbisar and forcefully succeeded to the throne of Magadh.

Who ruled India after Shah Jahan?

Aurangzeb imprisioned his father Shah Jahan and forcefully succeeded to the throne of Mugal Empire in 1618.

Who ruled India after Dhana Nand?

Dhana Nanda, one of the nine sons of Mahapadma Nanda was the last ruler of Nanda Empire which was later overthrown and captured by Chandragupta Maurya with the assistance of Chanakya.

Who ruled India after Haryanka Dynasty?

Haryanka Dynasty was eliminated by Shishunaga Dynasty founded by Shishunaga who was an Amatya in Magadh. Nagadasaka was the last ruler of Haryanka Dynasty.

Who founded Delhi Sultanate and which dynasty emerged first under its flagship?

Delhi Sultanate was founded by the Turks who came from Central Asia. Slave dynasty founded by Qutub-ud-din-Aibak in the year 1206 was the first flagship kingdom under Delhi Sultanate.

Who ruled India after Sayyid Dynasty?

In the year 1451 Lodi dynasty under headship of Bahlol Lodi captured Delhi Sultanate being ruled by Sayyid Dynasty and established Lodi Dynasty which ruled until they were replaced by Mughals in 1526.

Which languages flourished during the rule of Chalukya Empire?

During the rule of Chalukyas, Kannada and Telugu literature saw considerable development.

Which literature provides us knowledge on Chera Kingdom?

Sangam literature provides us knowledge on the ancient Dravidian empire known as Chera Kingdom.

Who ruled India after Mughals?

Spread over India and beyond the Mughal Empire came under the complete control of the British East India Company in the year 1857 when it successfully crushed the nationwide sepoy mutiny. Moreover, the East India Company later deposed and exiled the last Mughal ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar. Later in the year 1858, Government of India Act was passed in the parliament of United Kingdom and British Crown rule (British Raj) got established formally in India which continued till 1947.

Who ruled India before Mughal Empire?

Before Mughals, India was ruled by several kingdoms lead by both Hindu and Muslim Kings. It was in the year 1526, Babur an afghan ruler from Kabul annexed Delhi Sultanate ruled by Lodi Dynasty and established Mughal Empire which gradually spread its wings all across the country.

Who ruled India before the British?

Mughals Empire ruled India before the establishment of British rule in India.

Countries who ruled India?

India was invaded continuously by several foreign empires, but none of them other than British, French and Portuguese, could succeeded in settling their bases in the country. Portugal established their rule in Goa in 15 th century and then British and French also entered India. British rule in India ended in 1947, however the French left the country in 1954 and to end the rule of Portugal in Goa, the government had to take military action in the year 1961.

Who ruled India during the Mughal period?

Over twenty Mughal emperors ruled India one after another till British East India Company annexed this dynasty. They include Babur, Humayun, Akbar, Jehangir, Shahryar, Shah Jahan, Aurangzeb (Alamgir), Azam Shah, Bahadur Shah, Jahandar Shah, Farukhsiyar, Rafi-ud-Darajat, Shah Jahan II, Muhammad Shah, Ahmad Shah Bahadur, Alamgir II, Shah Jahan III, Shah Alam II, Akbar Shah II and Bahadur Shah Zafar.

Who ruled India during the time of the famine of Bengal?

Bengal has faced two great famines, first in the year 1770 and another in the year 1943. India was under British East India Company rule during the great famine of Bengal in 1770, while it was under British Crown rule when Bengal faced second major famine in 1943.  

Who ruled India during the medieval period?

India was thronged by several dynasties during the medieval period. In the early medieval period the major rulers in India included Rastrakuta, Chalukya, Chola, Kalachri, Hoysala, Kakatiya, besides different Rajput states, Eastern and Western Ganga dynasties while in the late medieval period, the country witnessed the rule of Delhi Sultanate, Vijaynagar Empire, Ahom and Reddy Kingdoms among others.

Who ruled India during the Vedic period ?

Vedic period in India can be classified under Early Vedic period during ca. 1500 to 1100 BCE and the Later Vedic period between 1100 to 500 BCE. The Early Vedic period is marked by the arrivals of Aryans in India while the later Vedic period witnessed the rule of Kuru Kingdom, Panchala Kingdom and Kingdom of Videha, etc.

Who ruled India after Gupta Empire?

India was ruled by various smaller kingdoms in different regions after Gupta Empire collapsed. The prominent one among them was Harsh Vardhana in North India while in South India, Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rastrakutas, Pandya were the main rulers.

Who ruled India first?

Samrat Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta Maurya who founded Maurya Dynasty in Magadha, was the first ruler of India who unified most of the North Indian states first. Later Ashoka embarked on his winning streak and extended the boundaries of the country to even Greeko Bacterians Empire. In this way, Ashoka captured almost the entire Indian subcontinent.

Who ruled India from 1947 to 1950?

Though India got independence in the year 1947, it remained under British Monarchy until the Constitution of India was prepared in the year 1950 and it became a republic nation.

Who ruled India for 150 years?

Kushan dynasty ruled India for nearly 150 years.

Who ruled India for 16 years?

The first Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru ruled India for more than 16 years. He assumed office on 15 th August 1947 and ruled the country until his death on 27 th May 1964. In all his tenure as a Prime Minister of India was 16 years, 286 days.

Who ruled India after Gupta dynasty?

Chalukya dynasty and Vardhan Dynasty (also known as Pushyabhuti Dynasty) ruled India in parts after the downfall of Gupta Dynasty. Later Pulkeshin II of Chalukya Dynasty defeated Harshvardhan, the last powerful and noteworthy King of Vardhan Dynasty.

Who ruled during India’s golden age?

The era of Gupta Empire is called India’s Golden age. Established by Sri Gupta, the Gupta Kingdom encompassed maximum part of India during 320 CE to 550 CE. The reason why the ruling period of Gupta dynasty is called the Golden age is that during this period the Gupta Kings were successful in ensuring peace and tranquillity in the entire region. It resulted into development and inventions in Science and Technology; art and engineering as well as in Mathematics.

Who ruled India in 1000 AD?

Hoysala Dynasty ruled in the current Karnataka region in India from 1000 AD to 1346 AD.

Who ruled India in 1600 AD?

British East India Company started ruling India in 1600 AD. However, simultaneously Mughal Dynasty also continued to rule the country. The formal British Raj was established in India in 1858 after the British successfully quashed the great Sepoy mutiny in 1857.

Who ruled India in 1st century?

Kushan Empire ruled India in the 1 st century. Kushan Empire was established by Yuezhi in the Bactrian territories and it spread further to Afghanistan and north India till Varanasi.

Who ruled India in 1400 AD?

Tughluq dynasty ruled India in 1400 AD?

Who ruled India the longest?

The Pandyan Dynasty ruled southern parts of India from 7-8 century BCE to middle of the 17 th century which means they ruled approximately 2400 years.

Who ruled India before Lodi dynasty?

Sayyid Dynasty ruled India before Lodi Dynasty.

Who ruled India most?

Ashok ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent.

Who ruled India after mauryas?

Shunga Dynasty ruled India after Mauryas. After assassinating Brihadratha, the last Maurya ruler, Pushyamitra Shunga established Shunga Dynasty in the year 185 BCE.

Who ruled India after Mahabharata?

After Mahabharata war, the Pandavas ruled India for the next 36 years.

Persian princess who ruled India?

Raziya Sultan or Raziya-al-Din was the princess who ruled the Persian speaking Delhi Sultanate. She was the only woman ever crowned as the Sultan of Delhi.

Queens who ruled India?

No queen other than Rajiya Sultan ruled Delhi Sultanate, which was considered the power centre across the country.

Who ruled India starting in the 1800s until 1947?

British annexation through East India Company had started making dominance in India by the years 1700 AD and by 1720 the Mughal Empire was completely reached the stage of collapse. By 1800, the British rule in India started making waves and among the public it was known as British Raj. It is therefore, India was under British rule starting in the 1800s until 1947.

Who ruled south India?

Satavahanas, Cholas, Cheras, Chalukyas, Pallavas, Rashtrakutas, Kakatiyas and Hoysalas were the dynasties who ruled South India during different periods.

Who ruled India after the sepoy rebellion?

British crown rule got established in the year 1858 after Sepoy rebellion was crushed in 1857 by East India Company.

Who ruled Indian villages?

It was during the rule of British Raj; the Indian villages were ruled by District Collectors.

British lords/ Viceroys who ruled India?

There were total 12 British Lords/Viceroys who ruled India as Viceroy of the country namely: Lord Clive (1757), Lord Hasting (1772), Lord Ripon (1880), Lord Curzon (1899), Lord Minto II (1905), Lord Harding (1910), Lord Chelmsford (1916), Lord Reading (1921), Lord Irwin (1926), Lord Willington (1931), Lord Wavell (1943), and Lord Mountbatten (1947).

Who ruled India when Christianity emerged in west Asia ?

It was around the year 1321 Christianity emerged in west Asia and at this time period Delhi Sultanate was under the rule of Tughlaq Dynasty.

Who ruled India during World War One ?

India was under British Rule during World War one broke out in the year 1914.

Kings who ruled whole India?

Samrat Ashok of Maurya Dynasty was the only king who ruled almost the entire India and he later expanded the boundaries of the country to the Greeko-Bacterian Empire, crossing over Afghanistan in the midway.

Who ruled India for 200 years?

British ruled India for 200 years.

Related Posts

Who was the first king of india, who was in india before the british, who was the first to invade india, when was ancient india found, when did the french come to india, when was the french east india company formed.

IMAGES

  1. Impact of British Rule on India During 1857-1867

    essay on india before and after british rule

  2. India after the British rule

    essay on india before and after british rule

  3. PPT

    essay on india before and after british rule

  4. British rule in India

    essay on india before and after british rule

  5. PPT

    essay on india before and after british rule

  6. Map Of India Before And After Partition

    essay on india before and after british rule

VIDEO

  1. British Rule and Quit India Movement! #britsh #rules #india #freedom #history #bhagatsingh #fact🇮🇳🇬🇧

  2. India before 1947😥...During British rule in India/ #britishraj #britishindia @PRTELUGUFACTS

  3. Canada India issue essay

  4. #Video 3 : UPSC EPFO Crash Course

  5. 5th#Ch-13#Beginning of British Rule in india#part-2

  6. Ch 1 Establishment of European and British Rule in India

COMMENTS

  1. British Colonial Rule: India Before and After Colonization with ...

    ( Source: Wikipedia) The British came to India with the motive of colonization. Their plans involved using India as a feeder colony for their own flourishing economy back at Britain. This exploitation continued for about two centuries, till we finally got independence on 15 August 1947. Consequently, this rendered our country's economy hollow.

  2. Amartya Sen: what British rule really did for India

    It is true that before British rule, India was starting to fall behind other parts of the world - but many of the arguments defending the Raj are based on serious misconceptions about...

  3. Condition Of India Before Arrival Of British History Essay

    The colonization of India was caused due to the conditions existed before arrival of British. British just took advantage of these conditions. As British started to enter India, Mughal empire started to decline. This decline, due to the internal problems, led to increase regional powers.

  4. British Rule In India History Essay

    It was in 1579 when a letter was written by a fellow English man by the name Thomas Stevens, in which he managed to motivate four of London's traders to travel to India (Chatterjee 1998: 11).

  5. The British Impact on India, 1700-1900

    Download PDF The period 1700 to 1900 saw the beginnings, and the development, of the British Empire in India. Empire was not planned, at least not in the early stages. In a sense, it just happened. The first British in India came for trade, not territory; they were businessmen, not conquerors.

  6. British raj

    British Empire India Pakistan Context: East India Company Government of India Acts Indian Mutiny Key People: Charles John Canning, Earl Canning James Andrew Broun Ramsay, marquess and 10th earl of Dalhousie Mahatma Gandhi John Laird Mair Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence

  7. A Summary of British Rule in India

    Updated on January 28, 2020. The very idea of the British Raj—the British rule over India—seems inexplicable today. Consider the fact that Indian written history stretches back almost 4,000 years, to the civilization centers of the Indus Valley Culture at Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Also, by 1850, India had a population of at least 200 million.

  8. PDF Impact of British Rule on India: Economic, Social and Cultural (1757-1857)

    This PDF document is a lesson on the impact of British rule on India's economic, social and cultural aspects from 1757 to 1857. It covers topics such as the decline of Indian industries, the rise of colonial economy, the changes in land revenue system, the social and religious reforms, and the cultural interactions between the British and the Indians. It is part of the secondary social science ...

  9. Blighted by Empire: What the British Did to India

    By Omer Aziz September 1, 2018. I. ON THE EVENING of August 14, 1947, as India prepared to declare its independence, the last British Viceroy in India was sitting alone in his study, when, as he ...

  10. India's Colonial History Essay Topics

    Compare and contrast any of Gandhi's actions as a revolutionary before and after British colonial rule ended in 1947 in India. The Mughal Empire ruled India until 1857, when the last Mughal ruler ...

  11. British Colonial Rule: India Before and After Colonization with

    July 3, 2021 by Laxmi The compilation of these Indian Economy on the Eve of Independence Notes makes students exam preparation simpler and organised. British Colonial Rule The famous Kohinoor diamond has been doing rounds in the news. It was a prized possession of pre-colonial India which the British took with them on their way back home.

  12. A Timeline of India in the 1800s (British Raj)

    The British Raj Defined India Throughout the 1800s. The British East India Company arrived in India in the early 1600s, struggling and nearly begging for the right to trade and do business. Within 150 years the thriving firm of British merchants, backed by its own powerful private army, was essentially ruling India.

  13. British colonialism in India

    Find out about British colonialism in India with BBC Bitesize History. For students between the ages of 11 and 14.

  14. The Impact of British Rule in India

    English agitation in India. At the same time, British rule made a lasting impact development of Indian languages and literatures. officials made important contributions to this. especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wealth of Indian languages and literatures was not even in India, much less abroad.

  15. Colonialism in India was traumatic

    When India gained independence from Britain on August 15 1947, the majority of Anglo-Indians had either left or would leave soon after. Many within the Indian Civil Service would write of the ...

  16. Essay on India Before Independence

    Struggle for Freedom The 19th and 20th centuries saw a surge in the freedom struggle. Figures like Mahatma Gandhi led non-violent protests, culminating in independence in 1947. 250 Words Essay on India Before Independence The Ancient Glory India, before independence, was a land of rich cultural heritage and diverse history.

  17. From Empire to Independence: The British Raj in India 1858-1947

    1858: Beginning of the Raj. In 1858, British Crown rule was established in India, ending a century of control by the East India Company. The life and death struggle that preceded this ...

  18. History of India

    The Indian rebellion of 1857 was a large-scale rebellion by soldiers employed by the British East India Company in northern and central India against the company's rule. The spark that led to the mutiny was the issue of new gunpowder cartridges for the Enfield rifle, which was insensitive to local religious prohibition.

  19. How Was British Rule In India Positive History Essay

    The British legal system was an improvement on what had gone before, as was the military infrastructure and health care system. Britain also provided India with modern technology, such as the railway network, electricity and, later with air transport. The British found it difficult to travel great distances between different places in India.

  20. Essay on British India

    Article shared by: The British entered India as traders and their primary objective was to earn profits by carrying on trade in India. In order to earn maximum profits from Indian trade and commerce and to develop monopoly of trade and commerce they competed with other European powers.

  21. India before the British

    The Moguls were Muslims who ruled over a Hindu majority. Akbar maintained his rule by his religious tolerance and Mogul military might, much like the British later. But after his death, the empire began to decline. This decline continued with the rule of Aurangzeb (1658-1707), who became emperor in 1658. Mogul control in south India came under ...

  22. NCERT Notes: Education System In India During British Rule [Modern

    The East India Company, during their first 60 years of rule didn't care much for the education of those they ruled in India. (Even in England, universal education came about at a much later stage.) Candidates can also download the notes PDF from the link given below. Education System In India During British Rule (UPSC Notes):- Download PDF Here.

  23. Know Who All Ruled India

    By Sujeet Kumar Since the ancient time, India has remained under international spotlight, due to its immense wealth, spices, gold and an enormous expanse of natural resources, that's why India was known as Golden Bird or Sone Ki Chidiya at one point of time.