British Imperialism In India

Colonization of any geographic area was usually due to the policy of imperialism, especially as the world entered a period of growth in the late eighteenth century. With Imperialism, a more powerful country attempts to take control of another country, or a land they previously had not had under their control. Most of this interest in taking control was for economic reasons, driven by the rising industrialism in the western world. With industry on the rise, production of material goods was also on the rise. This also meant that resources were being used up at a faster rate. Industrializing nations turned their eyes to lands that hadn’t yet been reaped for their resources. The British Empire’s interest in India goes back further than this age
of industrialism, however.

England set up the seeds of colonization in the 15th century, with trading posts.
These were set up by the British East India Trading Company. After the Murghal Empire began to collapse at the beginning of the 18th century, the British and the French joined forces to take control in 1757. The British would rule for almost a hundred years. The area was governed by the East India Trading Company, they themselves regulated by the British government, whose control was a little lax up until the 1800’s. The East India Company had an army staffed by British officers and Indian soldiers called sepoys. The British Empire used the Indian colony as a source for raw materials and as an economic dumping ground, utilizing the many Indian citizens as both workforce and consumer. The Indian people were only allowed to buy British goods and were not allowed to compete with Indian made goods on the economic market. Early British intervention in Indian systems of government was actually quite relaxed. Indians for the most part still controlled tax collection, which operated under their system of land taxation, where producers gave one third of their yield to collectors and other administrators, who could then keep some for themselves. British judges even served Hindu or Islamic law, as these were the practices that the Indian people based their laws on. Warren Hastings, in charge of Bengal in the years 1772-1785, was a firm believer in the Indian ‘ancient constitution’. This changed at the
end of the century, when the British began to attempt to ‘improve’ the Indians with modern western practices and Christian missionaries. Britain soon invested in a large railroad for India.
This enabled the carrying of goods at a faster rate. Events around the world caused a need for such crops, so both the railroad and the trade crops were a boon to the British. The British railroad was a boon to the Indian people as well. It helped develop their economy and united them. Modernization with railroads was coupled with telephone lines and other infrastructure like canals and dams. With infrastructure and a better education system, literacy and health improved. Trade crops, however, were strictly regulated and as such, reduced the amount of edible crops the farmers produced, leading to famine. Resentment of this control, the attempts to change their religion, and racism, the Indians rebelled. In 1857, the sepoy Indians heard a rumor that their new rifles were greased with pork and beef fat, and they had to bite the cartages of these rifles to replace them. Since eating beef and pork are forbidden in Hindu and Islamic religions, respectively, they sepoy’s refused the guns. The sepoys who refused were jailed, the other sepoy’s rebelled and captured the city of Delhi. It took a year for the British to regain control, and this time they were stricter. The Raj was British rule under Queen Victoria, where a London cabinet member was in charge of policy making and a governor-general, or viceroy after 1877, followed these
policies. The relationship between the British and the Indian people had worsened. Following the success of their campaign against the Indian uprising, the British felt assured in their superiority. Lord Kitchner said, “It is this consciousness of the inherent superiority of the European which has won for us India. However well-educated and clever a native person may be, and however brave he may prove himself, I believe that no rank we can bestow on him would cause him to be considered an equal of the British officer”.
The Indian people, in return, felt angry. The mood between the colonized and the colonists was grim, as shown by a pamphlet decrying the English peoples as “treacherous” and that they, the Indians, were being “ruined under the [English] tyranny and oppression”. This was not to say the Indian people were against all things western. Ram Mohan Roy, among others, wanted to modernize the Indian lifestyle. He wanted to move past practices that the western world viewed as “barbaric” and adopt a more Western culture. In this way, Ram Mohan Roy thought Indians might be able to take charge of their own country, and no longer be second class citizens. The desire for self-government was more loudly expressed by nationalist groups like the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress. The British, to counteract the cooperative nature of these groups, divided the Bengal province into Hindu and Muslim sections. The British had long coveted India for its location and valuable trade. As industrialization swept the western world, India became far more valuable as a provider of raw resources and millions of consumers. In order to maintain economic and governmental control over the many Indian people, the British used force and economic pressure. As the British pressured for more and more control, rising tensions caused the Sepoy Mutiny, which was put down after a yearlong struggle. This worsened relations between the two groups, and led to a call for Indian people to control their own country.