British East India

IT CAN BE ARGUED that Portuguese, Dutch, and French merchants exploited India; Britain remade the subcontinent. British East India grew from a series of coastal trading posts to encompass the part of the Indian subcontinent taken by the current states of INDIA, BANGLADESH, and PAKISTAN. The subcontinent’s southern peninsula extends to the HIMALAYAS mountains that separate the subcontinent culturally and geographically from the colder CHINA and MONGOLIA and Asia proper.

Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan cover 1.5 million square mi (3,885,820 square km ) of land. The climate ranges from tropical monsoon in the south to temperate in the north. Geographical features include the Deccan Plateau, the Baluchistan Plateau, the INDUS and GANGES Plains, as well as mountains and deserts. The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies received its charter from Queen Elizabeth on December 31, 1600. The first East India Company ship reached Surat in 1608, where the company established a factory in 1615. Along India’s east and west coasts, English communities were settled in Madras (1639), Bombay (1668) and Calcutta (1698.) The company used alliances and treaties with hundreds of local princes to control more of India while also exploiting the East Indies. Mostly, it left the people to themselves, except when it exploited or mismanaged laborers.

In 1717, the company won exemption from customs duties in Bengal. In 1748, the British defeated the French, removing their last European rival. At the Battle of Plassey (1757), Robert Clive bested the nawab of Bengal and became ruler of India instead of its trading partner. The company mismanaged Bengal, alienating the people. Military expenses became almost overwhelming, so the British government implemented Lord North’s India Bill, the Regulating Act of 1773, which established a British governor-general, the first of whom was Warren Hastings. The company continued to collect revenues, negotiate agreements, and expand its territory. The British took territory they considered poorly ruled. Sometimes a remaining native ruler had a British adviser. Under the practice of lapse, British India acquired all states with no successor on the death of their rulers. British India absorbed Sambalpur (1849), Baghat (1850), Jhansi (1853), Nagpur (1854), and Awadh (1856). Annexation, taxation, and desperation provoked the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857–58.

The wars ended company rule as the British occupied the 750,000 square mi (1,942,481 square km) inherited from the East India Company. By 1900, 100,000 British ruled 250 million Indians. Under the Raj (1858–1954), Queen Victoria promised to work for the welfare of the native people. The doctrine of lapse ended. The British recognized the princely states, roughly 562 of them with 40 percent of the territory and 20 to 25 percent of the population. In practice, outside British India, the states could not escape British political, cultural, and economic influence.