In 1600, the British East India Company was given the right to a monopoly to trade with India. While the company's primary objective was to get spices from Indonesia (East Indies), they needed goods to trade for spices. The good they wanted was cotton, and they got it from India. In 1612, the English won a battle against the Portuguese. Because of this victory, they were able to gain the right to trade and establish factories in India from the Mughal Emporer. Because the Dutch controlled the East Indies, the English focused all their attention on India. The company traded for silk, sugar, and opium among other goods.
In 1786, …show more content…
They made English, instead of Persian, the official language The growing Indian discontent with British rule erupted on May 10, 1857. The sepoys, who were Indians trained by the British as soldiers, heard rumors that the cartridges for their new Enfield rifles were greased with lard and beef fat. Since the cow is sacred to Hindus, and the pig is abhorrent to Muslims, all the sepoys were outraged, and they mutinied. Although initially the mutiny was spontaneous, it quickly became more organized and the sepoys even took over the cities of Delhi and Kanpur.
This mutiny was harshly crushed by the British. On September 20, 1857, the British recaptured Delhi, and in the following months, the British recaptured Kanpur and withstood a Sepoy siege of Lucknow. The British victories were accompanied by widespread recrimination, and in many cases, unarmed sepoys were bayonetted, sown up in the carcasses of pigs or cows, or fired from