England And India
England and India have had a long and complicated relationship. Since the 1600s, England has been doing everything they could to get their hands on India’s resources. This paper will take a look at how the initial colonization, the revolt and transfer of power, and WWI, WWII, and India's independence as a series of events played a role in the understanding of these two countries' colonization timelines. They went about this from trading to stealing and the aftermath. Some important events in this timeline are: The East India Company is formed in 1600. In 1757, the War of Plassey happened. In 1877, Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. In 1939, World War II broke out with Germany’s invasion of Poland. And in 1947, India and Pakistan became self-governing.
When colonization was at its peak, European powers were rushing to colonize every piece of land in sight. One of them being the territories in what is now India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. After the Portuguese started setting up on the coasts of India to export items, Britain and France were close behind. Britain decided to send the East India Company to colonize for them, who happily obliged. The Company was government controlled and created purely to monopolize on the spice trade. The East India Company started by negotiating with locals for control and got increasingly more violent and demanding when necessary, recruiting an army as they went. Indian disapproval of the company slowly built, and burst out in the 1857 rebellion. Starting with one soldier, more and more rebelled and killed British officers. By the end of the ultimately unsuccessful rebellion, the East India Company was removed from rule and Britain took over directly. When England took over the rule of India, they continued to use that power as a monopoly on the resources. When England got involved in WWI, they used Indian money and troops to help fight. When the war ended, they were unwilling to give up any power over the country. When Europe broke out in fighting again in WWII, again indian resources and lives were used to help England in their fight. It wasn’t until after WWII and a lot of advocating for itself that India won its independence in 1947.
The British imperialism was able to deal with things more realistically than other colonial powers. Their motivation came from economics and not the Christian religions and beliefs and because of this, the British only westernized India to a limited degree. As far as the mass of the population was concerned, colonial rule brought few significant changes. The British educational effort was very limited. There were no major changes in village society, in the caste system, the position of untouchables, the joint family system, or in production techniques in farming.
England was the largest empire in modern history and held on to their power as long as possible. They colonized all around the world, taking advantage of the people who were already there. India was one of those colonies for about 200 years. Colonization had a large impact on both the countries themselves and their relationship. Britain drained as much of India’s resources as they could including using the indian population as bodies for european wars. India finally gained independence in 1947 but only after a large loss of life and resources. Today India and England’s relationship holds steady but has a very long history behind it.
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