|
India and east to Singapore |
|
|
|
|
Page 1 of 2 THE BRITISH EMPIRE
INDIA
SUMMARY
The English set up The East India Company in 1600 as a monopoly company to develop trade with India, the Spice Islands(Indonesia) and China. Trading forts on Indian territory were built in Bombay, Madras and Calcutta about the same time as similar French stations and about 100 years after the Portuguese. Compared to North America which was being exploited by the English and French (and Spanish) at exactly the same time we have:
- India's population circa 200 million compared with America's 20 million, England's 5m and Frances 20m
- India's population similar to Europe in economic and social development whereas the "Red Indians" of North America were still a stone age society.
- India had two main religions, Hinduism and Islam which together were less hateful of each other than Christian Catholics and Protestants. The combination of Islam and Hinduism had produced economic, artistic and cultural advancements well ahead of their near neighbours and different to but on balance, certainly not behind Europe. China at the time was the world's leader in all these fields.
- In America, the Europeans expanded by kicking any local Indians off their land with little opposition and survived as farmers. In India trade was the sole purpose of the European settlements. Initially the trade was mainly purchases in India of their superior fabrics for clothing both for their cottons and their colours. The English also used India to grow the drug opium to sell in China to finance the purchase of China Tea and delicate porcelains to drink it out of.
- By 1750 the English had ruined the Indian fabric expertise and transferred it to England. Indeed with cotton grown cheaply by slaves in America and made into fabrics in Lancashire the English were selling in India what the Indians had taught them to make. Also by this time the British East India Company had financed its own local army, initially to defend its small settlements but soon under Baron Robert Clive to retaliate against French aggression and effectively remove them from the Indian Subcontinent. 1757.
- At the same time Clive beat off an attack from the local ruler of Bengal, even though he had an army ten times larger and forced all the inhabitants of this, the then wealthiest part of India, to pay taxes to the British. The British East India Company was now almost as wealthy as England itself and could afford to finance a huge standing army made up largely of locals under British officer control. The scene was set for a slow take over of the whole of India.
- English Protestants have never been known for treating people of other religions with interest, kindness and courtesy. Certainly the English local hierarchy who generally at this time came on short secondment without their wives were very taken by the local custom of multiple wives plus a few concubines with sexual skills unheard of in the Christian world. Other religious differences were largely ignored like the reverence the locals saw in cows or the abhorrence of eating pigs. This contributed to the Indian Army riot of 1857 when it was rumoured that the grease used in the military firearms was made from a mixture of pic and cow grease.
- The Indian Army Mutiny of 1857 took fourteen months to quell and it could have been much longer bearing in mind the small number of British officers actually in India. The British government took the opportunity of removing the "right" the East India company to both trade and rule and commenced direct rule from London. And so commenced the British Raj.
- Even so India was by far the most important colony contributing hugely the England's trade revenues and overall tax income. Most importantly the Indian Army provided the British Empires military strength from East Africa through the North West Frontier (effectively against Russia), to Malay-Singapore. Vital against the Japanese in the Second World War.
- It was inevitable that as the country was taught English ways, that educated Indians felt they could do with out England and run their own affaires. Independence was achieved after World War Two in 1948 but was immediately followed by a religious blood bath between Hindus and Muslims culminating in India being split into Muslim Pakistan and largely Hindu India.
<< Start < Previous 1 2 Next > End >>
|
