British Colonization Essay Example for Free

British Colonization Essay Europe expansion to India began in 18th century had great changes in various field such as economics politic, society, culture and so on. Especially, after British imperialism which became a ruler of India had great effect on India. As a result, there are many essential changes in language and customs in India and even thought they gained independence from British rule 200 years ago, the influence on the British colonial era has still remained in many ways. One of the most factors that the British lunched the colonization of India was the establishment of the East India Company. Throughout the 16th century to early 17th century, the demand for spices in Europe had continued to increase. At early 1600s, the Portuguese were the only European country which imported spices from the East. They dominated the spice trade with Asia because Vasco da Gama was the first European to arrive in India. Having arrived in Calicut he obtained from Saamoothiri Rajah permission to trade in the city. However the Dutch ousted the Portuguese from East and became the exclusive supplier of spices to Europe. British traders frequently engaged in hostilities with their Dutch and Portuguese counterparts in the Indian Ocean The East India Company had the unusual distinction of ruling an entire country. In 1600, the East India Company was chartered by Queen Elizabeth I for trade with Asia. They decided to head on to India for trade because at this time Portugal that had powerful trade with East Asia was losing control of East Asian Spice trade transformed by the European Age of Discovery. However, the East India Company had to confront and deal with the Dutch to increase the trade. At that point, The Dutch East India Company was a peak in 1669. They employed around 10000 soldiers, 40 warships and 150 merchant ships. and had a good position trading with Asia by reason of good ship captains, merchants, banker and financiers. Therefore, it was important for England to be done about the Dutch to increase trade. According to The East India Company Lobby, Charles ? ’ sought favorable terms for the East India Company in European nation and established the Council of Trade of 1660 to deal with their grievances. Parliament also helped the merchants. In 1663 it sanctioned exports of bullion and foreign currency for the first time. It tried to restrict Dutch commercial superiority in the fishing, spice, and wool trades. In short, the effort of the British government to help the Company against the Dutch provided benefits for many English traders. So they began to send ships to the Spice trade with India. In addition, the East India Company was comparatively easy to expand in India because of the decline of Mughal power. In that time, the Mughal Empire was an lslamic imperial power in Indian subcontinent which began in 1526. They were descendants of the Timurids and controlled most of the Indian Subcontinent. In 1612, The British got a major victory over the Portuguese in the Battle of Swally. And the East India Company decided to explore the feasibility of gaining a territorial foothold in mainland in India and requested the Crown to launch a diplomatic. In 1627, the Mughal Emperor Jahangir granted the India Company permission to build a fortified factory at the principal Mughal port of Surat. However, the factory at Bombay became the headquarters of the Company. Eventually the region was divided into the three presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. In consequence, they were still responsible to the Court of Directors in London and the East India Company garnered huge profits generated by a system of triangular trade that saw English gold and silver coins traded for Indian goods. It is not much say that British rule in India was originated from having begun in 1757. On June 23rd of that year, at the Battle of Plassey, a small village and mango grove between Calcutta and Murshidabad, the forces of the East India Company under Robert Clive defeated the army of Siraj-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Bengal. The battle lasted no more than a few hours, and indeed the outcome of the battle had been decided long before the soldiers came to the battlefield. The battle of plassey is said to be one of the pivotal battles leading to the formation of the British in South Asia. The British gained the enormous wealth from the Bengal treasury, and access to a massive source of foodgrains and taxes. It also allowed them to significantly strengthen its military might, and opened the way for British colonial rule, mass economic exploitation and cultural domination in nearly all of South Asia. In 1757, by reason of the victory at Plassey, where a military force led by Robert Clive defeated the forces of the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah, the East India Company had varied to be transformed from an association of traders to rulers exercising political sovereignty over a largely unknown land and people. So the Parliament of Great Britain imposed a series of administrative and economic reforms and by doing so clearly found its sovereignty and ultimate control over the Company. During this time, it ame into conflict with the Marathas, the British and the Nizam of Golconda which culminated in the four Anglo-Mysore wars. In 1779, Haider Ali had token parts of modern Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south, enlarging the Kingdom’s area to about 205. 000km. In 1779, Haider Ali invaded Karnataka with 80. 000 army, descending through the passes of the Ghats amid burning villages, before laying siege to British forts in northern Arcot starting the Second Anglo-Mysore War. That was to say that they did damage to the British but he died after 2 years his son Tipu Sultan succeed to the throne. Haider Ali’s successor, Tipu Sultan, kept to fight the war so the following year, he took many British army and officers dispatched from Bombay. As a result, the treaty of Mangalore was signed in 1784 bringing hostilities with the British to a temporary and uneasy halt and restored the other’s lands to the status quo ante bellum. The East India Company could gain control of all India by the aggressive policies of Lord Wellesley and the Marquis of Hastings without the Punjab, Sindh and Nepal. Also Indian Princes had become barons of the East India Company. However there were finances to the breaking point in the Company comparing with the expense of wars leading to the total control of India. The Company was extorted to petition Parliament of assistance. Certain Indian social or religious practices that the British found to be abhorrent were outlawed, such as aati in 1829, and an ethic of improvement was said to dictate British social policies. In the 1840s and 1850s, under the governal-generalship of Dalhousie and then Canning, more territories were absorbed into British India, either on the grounds that the native rulers were corrupt. , inept, and notoriously indifferent about the welfare of their subjects, or that since the native ruler had failed to produce a biological male heir to the throne, the territory was bound to â€Å"lapse† into British India upon the death of the ruler. The peace the company made to India helped undermine Indian society. In 1813, English Protestant missionaries were permitted by the company to come to India, establishing missions and schools among the Indian population. Increasingly British authority started to reform in India. For instance, William Bentinck who was governor general from 1833 to 1835 outlawed the practice of sati, by which a Hindu widow was burned on her dead husband’s funeral pyre. In the second of the 19th century, both the direct administration of India by the British crow and the technological change ushered in by the industrial revolution, had the effect of intertwining the economies of India and the Britain. Basically many of the important change in transport and communications had already begun before the Mutiny. The beginning of dispute between the company administration and the Indian governor-general came under the marquess of Dalhousie, who served from 1848 to 1856. He aggressively tried to increase lands under the company’s control by the doctrine of lapse that allowed the company to annex Indian principalities. So many points of friction culminated in a violent outbreak. According to the Revolt in Delhi and Its Afterlife written by Nayanjot Lahiri, in 1857, a sepoy mutiny broke out in Meerut, which was the headquarters of a division of the Bengal army. In less than a day, by the early hours of the morning of 11 May, the Meerut mutineers crossing the bridge of boats on the Yamuna river, reached Delhi. The garrison there, almost immediately, revolted, many British residents were massacred and Bahadur Shah ? , the Mughal king who resided in Helhi, accepted the nominal leadership of the rebellion. That was the start in the Sepoy Mutiny. The source of the Sepoy Mutiny, Sepoy Rebellion, was that The East India Company began recruiting native citizens as trios in 1667, in order to maintain control during their trading operations. In 1748, the British followed suit and began recruiting and training Indians to fight with their weaponry and methods. The Indian units were called â€Å"native sepoys† and became the largest part of the forces in India. After British had gained two-thirds of India’s land imperialism had begun to affect every part of Indian life, there was an incredible amount of tension that only needed a small spark to set off a huge revolt. The spark that came to begin the period of revolts was the introduction of new, more accurate breech-loading Enfield rifle. The first event was the bloody uprising at the garrison in Meerut, in which the mutineers murdered every European they found. Then they marched to Delhi and â€Å"placed themselves under the leadership of the impotent and bewildered Mogul Emperor Bahadur Shah†. The idea of rebellion spread through the Ganges valley, the Rajputna, Central India, and parts of Bengal. Then, Cawnpore had surrendered to Nana Sahib, and Lucknow, the only British-held outpost in Oudh, was besieged† and it was discovered that 200 European men, women, and children murderd a month earlier in the mutiny and siege at Cawnpore. Vengeance was swift and harsh: suspected mutineers were tied to cannons and executed. In six month, the mutiny had been broken, and, within the next year, British power was restored. In 1858, the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Rebellion, broke out. This was the huge threat posed to the British during the British India. At that time, they abolished the East India Company and replaced it with direct rule under the British. Large swathes of territory in the Gangetic plains had fallen to the rebel. Atrocities were conducted on both sides. British troops, which were units controlled by the East India Company and were paid for by their profis, recaptured Delhi in 1857 and the Emperor Mughals, Bahadur Shah, was put on trial for sedition and convicted. Finally the Rebellion had been crushed in 1858. The East India Company was disbanded by John Stuart Mill, the Commissioner of Correspondence at India House and the unacknowledged formulator of British policy with respect to the native states, furnished and elaborate but ultimately unsuccessful plea on behalf of the Company. Thus, India became a Crown colony of the British which governed directly by Paliament. Queen Victoria announced that she and her officers would work for the welfare of their Indian subjects. However there were some debates among Indians surrounding the policies like female education, widow remarriage, the age for marriage, the state of women, English education, the expansion of the government and more member of Indian joined government service. On the strength of that, there was a considerable increase in both English and Indian journalism and the Indian National Congress was founded in order that Indians who was educated well could gain a voice in the governance in India. But, they did not allow nationalist sentiments within the organization like the Congress. In 905, the British partitioned Bengal because it was the large size of the presidency and so provoked the first major resistance to British rule and administrative policies. During that time, Indians started many strategies of non violent resistance, boycott, strike and cooperation. Finally the British agreed to revoke the partition of Bengal. The partition attempted partly to divide with the Muslim area from Bengal which was Hindu and The capital in India was changed with Calcutta to Delhi. The railway was built by the British India government for military reasons and with the hope that it would stimulate industry. It was overbuilt and much too elaborate and expensive for the small amount of freight traffic it carried, The India railways system provided India with social savings of 9 percent of India’s national income. The Rowlatt Act that the British enacted to the Indian help in WWI allowed that the government could imprison anyone without a trial and a conviction. and thousands of people protested peacefully against the law and British troops coped with the protest by armored vehicle. As a result, more than thousands people, women and children, were massacred. The event also caused the non-cooperation movement against the British by Mathtma Ganhi in 1920 to 1942. Negotiations for some agreement with independence took place in 1930 in London. And finally, the British would grant India its independence. India got more deeply to effort the British during WWII. Also troops, the princely states donated substantial amounts of cash. By the end of the war, India had an incredible 2. 5 million man volunteer army. Approximately 8700 Indian soldier were killed in the war. As a result, the Indian independence movement was very strong by that time and the British rule was widely resented. 0000 Indian were recruited by the Germans and Japanese to fight against the Allies in exchange of their freedom. Indian fought in Burma, North Africa, Italy and so on. In 1946, there was a violent fighting broken out between Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta. And the trouble spread across India. The trouble flared again as independence approached and they agreed to divide India along sectatian lines. While Muslim areas in the north became the Pakistan, Hindu and Sikh stayed in India and by unprecedented horrors of partition, 500000 was killed and many women were abducted or raped. Finally it is true that the British made positive contributions to Indian life. During the British India, India inherited from the British their university, agriculture system and Industry but remains religious conflict. Social institutions like clubs and gymkhanas were a important factor of British. The Indian language was also developed well. The influential school of painting emerged in 19th century and can scarcely be understood without a reference to the creation of a modern market. In sports, cricket is the most famous in India. However, they also brought serious negative consequence with colonialism.