colonial india
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Colonial India
Imperial entities of India
Dutch India 1605–1825
Danish India 1620–1869
French India 1769–1954
Portuguese India(1505–1961)
Casa da Índia 1434–1833
Portuguese East India Company 1628–1633
British India(1612–1947)
East India Company 1612–1757
Company rule in India 1757–1858
British Raj 1858–1947
British rule in Burma 1824–1948
Princely states 1721–1949
Partition of India 1947
Colonial IndiaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Colonial India is the part of the Indian subcontinent whichwas under the control of European colonial powers, throughtrade and conquest. The first European power to arrive inIndia was the Macedonian army of Alexander the Great in327–326 BC. The satraps he established in the north west ofthe subcontinent quickly crumbled after he left. Later, tradewas carried between Indian states and the Roman Empire byRoman sailors who reached India via the Red Sea andArabian Sea, but the Romans never sought tradingsettlements or territory in India. The spice trade betweenIndia and Europe was one of the main types of trade in theworld economy and was the main catalyst for the period of
European exploration.[1][2] The search for the wealth andprosperity of India led to the accidental "discovery" of theAmericas by Christopher Columbus in 1492. Only a fewyears later, near the end of the 15th century, Portuguesesailor Vasco da Gama became the first European to re-establish direct trade links with India since Roman times bybeing the first to arrive by circumnavigating Africa (1497–1499). Having arrived in Calicut, which by then was one of
the major trading ports of the eastern world,[3] he obtainedpermission to trade in the city from Saamoothiri Rajah.
Trading rivalries brought other European powers to India.The Netherlands, England, France, and Denmark establishedtrading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the MughalEmpire disintegrated in the early 18th century and then theMaratha Empire became weakened after the third battle ofPanipat, the relatively weak and unstable Indian states whichemerged were increasingly open to manipulation by theEuropeans through dependent "friendly" Indian rulers.
In the later 18th century Britain and France struggled fordominance through proxy Indian rulers and also by directmilitary intervention. The defeat of the redoubtable Indianruler Tipu Sultan in 1799 marginalised French influence. Thiswas followed by a rapid expansion of British power through the greater part of the subcontinent in the early 19thcentury. By the middle of the century, the British had already gained direct or indirect control over almost all ofIndia. British India contained the most populous and valuable provinces of the British Empire and thus becameknown as "the jewel in the British crown".
Contents1 Portuguese
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Evolution of Portuguese possessions in the
Indian Subcontinent
Vasco da Gama lands at Calicut,
20 May 1498.
1 Portuguese
2 Dutch
3 English and British India
3.1 Rivalry with the Netherlands
3.2 East India Company
4 French
5 Danish
6 Other external powers
7 Wars
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links
Portuguese
Long after the decline of theRoman Empire's sea-bornetrade with India, thePortuguese were the nextEuropeans to arrive for thepurpose of trade, first arrivingin May 1498. The closing ofthe traditional trade routes inwestern Asia by the OttomanEmpire and rivalry with theItalian states sent Portugal insearch of an alternate searoute to India. The firstsuccessful voyage to Indiawas by Vasco da Gama in1498, when he arrived inCalicut, now in Kerala.Having arrived in Calicut heobtained from SaamoothiriRajah permission to trade in
the city. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, but aninterview with the Saamoothiri (Zamorin) failed to produce any definitiveresults. Vasco da Gama requested permission to leave a factor behind incharge of the merchandise he could not sell; his request was refused, and theking insisted da Gama should pay customs duty, like any other trader, which
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Portrait of a European
European settlements in India (1501–1739)
strained relations.
The colonial era in India began in 1502, when the Portuguese Empireestablished the first European trading centre at Kollam, Kerala. In 1505 theKing of Portugal appointed Dom Francisco de Almeida as the firstPortuguese viceroy in India, followed in 1509 by Dom Afonso deAlbuquerque. In 1510 Albuquerque conquered the city of Goa, which hadbeen controlled by Muslims. He inaugurated the policy of marryingPortuguese soldiers and sailors with local Indian girls, the consequence ofwhich was a great miscegenation in Goa and other Portuguese territories inAsia. Another feature of the Portuguese presence in India was their will toevangelise and promote Catholicism. In this, the Jesuits played a fundamentalrole, and to this day the Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier is reveredamong the Catholics of India.
The Portuguese established a chain of outposts along India's west coast andon the island of Ceylon in the early 16th century. They built the St. Angelo
Fort at Kannur to guard their possessions in North Malabar.[4] Goa wastheir prized possession and the seat of Portugal's viceroy. Portugal's northern province included settlements atDaman, Diu, Chaul, Baçaim, Salsette, and Mumbai. The rest of the northern province, with the exception of Damanand Diu, was lost to the Maratha Empire in the early 18th century.
In 1661 Portugal was at war with Spain and needed support from England. This led to the marriage of PrincessCatherine of Portugal to Charles II of England, who imposed a dowry that included the insular and less inhabitedareas of southernBombay while the Portuguese managed to retain all the mainland territory north of Bandra up toThana and Bassein. This was the beginning of the English presence in India.
Dutch
The Dutch East India Company established trading posts ondifferent parts along the Indian coast. For some while, theycontrolled the Malabar southwest coast (Kodungallor, Pallipuram,Cochin, Cochin de Baixo/Santa Cruz, Quilon (Coylan), Cannanore,Kundapura, Kayamkulam, Ponnani) and the Coromandelsoutheastern coast (Golkonda, Bimilipatnam, Kakinada, Palikol,Pulicat, Parangippettai, Negapatnam) and Surat (1616–1795). Theyconquered Ceylon from the Portuguese. The Dutch also establishedtrading stations in Travancore and coastal Tamil Nadu as well as atRajshahi in present-day Bangladesh, Pipely, Hugli-Chinsura, andMurshidabad in present-day West Bengal, Balasore (Baleshwar orBellasoor) in Odisha, and Ava, Arakan, and Syriam in present-day
Myanmar (Burma). Ceylon was lost at the Congress of Vienna in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, where theDutch having fallen subject to France, saw their colonies raided by Britain. The Dutch later became less involved inIndia, as they had the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) as their prized possession.
English and British India
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Rabindranath Tagore is
Asia's first Nobel laureate
and composer of India's
national anthem
Swami Vivekananda was
a key figure in
introducing Vedanta and
Yoga in Europe and
USA,[5] raising interfaith
awareness and making
Hinduism a world
religion.[6]
Fort St. George was founded at Madras in
1639
Rivalry with the Netherlands
At the end of the 16th century, England and the UnitedNetherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly oftrade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies tofinance the voyages" the English (later British) East IndiaCompany, and the Dutch East India Company, whichwere chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. Thesecompanies were intended to carry on the lucrative spicetrade, and they focused their efforts on the areas ofproduction, the Indonesian archipelago and especially the"Spice Islands", and on India as an important market forthe trade. The close proximity of London and Amsterdamacross the North Sea, and the intense rivalry betweenEngland and the Netherlands, inevitably led to conflictbetween the two companies, with the Dutch gaining theupper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguesestronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, butwith the English enjoying more success in India, at Surat,after the establishment of a factory in 1613.
The Netherlands' more advanced financial system[7] andthe three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left the Dutch asthe dominant naval and trading power in Asia. Hostilities ceasedafter the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Dutch princeWilliam of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peacebetween the Netherlands and England. A deal between the twonations left the more valuable spice trade of the Indonesianarchipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India toEngland, but textiles overtook spices in terms of profitability, so thatby 1720, in terms of sales, the English company had overtaken the
Dutch.[7] The English East India Company shifted its focus fromSurat—a hub of the spice trade network—to Fort St. George.
East India Company
In 1757 Mir Jafar, the commander in chief of the army of the Nawab of Bengal, along with Jagat Seth, MaharajaKrishna Nath, Umi Chand and some others, secretly connived with the British, asking support to overthrow theNawab in return for trade grants. The British forces, whose sole duty until then was guarding Company property,were numerically inferior to the Bengali armed forces. At the Battle of Plassey on 23 June 1757, fought between theBritish under the command of Robert Clive and the Nawab, Mir Jafar's forces betrayed the Nawab and helped
defeat him. Jafar was installed on the throne as a British subservient ruler.[8] The battle transformed Britishperspective as they realised their strength and potential to conquer smaller Indian kingdoms and marked thebeginning of the imperial or colonial era in the subcontinent.
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An 1876 political cartoon of Benjamin
Disraeli (1804–1881) making Queen
Victoria Empress of India. The caption
was "New crowns for old ones!"
British policy in Asia during the 19th century was chiefly concerned with expanding and protecting its hold on India,
viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.[9] The East India Company drove theexpansion of the British Empire in Asia. The company's army hadfirst joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years'War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India:the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Javafrom the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819)
and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).[10]
From its base in India, the company had also been engaged in anincreasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s.This trade, unlawful in China since it was outlawed by the Qingdynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting fromthe British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver fromBritain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authoritiesat Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China inthe First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of the island of
Hong Kong, at that time a minor settlement.[11]
The British had direct or indirect control over all of present-dayIndia before the middle of the 19th century. In 1857, a localrebellion by an army of sepoys escalated into the Rebellion of 1857,which took six months to suppress with heavy loss of life on bothsides. The trigger for the Rebellion has been a subject ofcontroversy. The resistance, although short-lived, was triggered by
British East India Company attempts to expand its control of India. According to Olson, several reasons may havetriggered the Rebellion. For example, Olson concludes that the East India Company's attempt to annexe andexpand its direct control of India, by arbitrary laws such as Doctrine of Lapse, combined with employment
discrimination against Indians, contributed to the 1857 Rebellion.[12] The East India Company officers lived likeprinces, the company finances were in shambles, and the company's effectiveness in India was examined by theBritish crown after 1858. As a result, the East India Company lost its powers of government and British Indiaformally came under direct British rule, with an appointed Governor-General of India. The East India Company
was dissolved the following year in 1858. A few years later, Queen Victoria took the title of Empress of India.[13]
India suffered a series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century, leading to widespread famines in which atleast 10 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal withthe famines during its period of rule. This changed during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each
famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.[14]
The slow but momentous reform movement developed gradually into the Indian Independence Movement. Duringthe years of World War I, the hitherto bourgeois "home-rule" movement was transformed into a popular massmovement by Mahatma Gandhi, a pacifist. Apart from Gandhi, other revolutionaries such as Shaheed Bhagat Singh,Chandrashekar Azad, Subhas Chandra Bose,and Pradyumn Ananth Pendyala were not against use of violence tooppose the British rule. The independence movement attained its objective with the independence of Pakistan andIndia on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively.
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Conservative elements in England consider the independence of India to be the moment that the British Empireceased to be a world power, following Curzon's dictum that, "[w]hile we hold on to India, we are a first-ratepower. If we lose India, we will decline to a third-rate power."
French
Following the Portuguese, English, and Dutch, the French also established trading bases in India. Their firstestablishment was in Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India in 1674. Subsequent Frenchsettlements were Chandernagore in Bengal, northeastern India in 1688, Yanam in Andhra Pradesh in 1723, Mahein 1725, and Karaikal in 1739. The French were constantly in conflict with the Dutch and later on mainly with theBritish in India. At the height of French power in the mid-18th century, the French occupied large areas of southernIndia and the area lying in today's northern Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Between 1744 and 1761, the British andthe French repeatedly attacked and conquered each other's forts and towns in southeastern India and in Bengal inthe northeast. After some initial French successes, the British decisively defeated the French in Bengal in the Battleof Plassey in 1757 and in the southeast in 1761 in the Battle of Wandiwash, after which the British East IndiaCompany was the supreme military and political power in southern India as well as in Bengal. In the followingdecades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control. The enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal,Yanam, Mahé and Chandernagore were returned to France in 1816 and were integrated with the Republic of Indiain 1954.
Danish
Denmark was a one of the major colonial powers to set foot in India. It established trading outposts in Tranquebar,Tamil Nadu (1620), Serampore, West Bengal (1755), Calicut, Kerala (1752) and the Nicobar Islands (1750s). Atone time, the main Danish and Swedish East Asia companies together imported more tea to Europe than the Britishdid. Their outposts lost economic and strategic importance, and Tranquebar, the last Danish outpost, was sold tothe British in 1845.
Other external powers
The Spanish were briefly given territorial rights to India by Pope Alexander VI on 25 September 1493 by the bullDudum siquidem before these rights were removed by the Treaty of Tordesillas less than one year later. TheJapanese briefly occupied the Andaman and Nicobar Islands during World War II.
Wars
The wars that took place involving the British East India Company or British India during the Colonial era:
Anglo-Mysore Wars
First Anglo-Maratha War
Second Anglo-Maratha War
Third Anglo-Maratha War
First Anglo-Sikh War
Second Anglo-Sikh War
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Gurkha War
Burmese Wars
First Opium War
Second Opium War
First Anglo-Afghan War
Second Anglo-Afghan War
Third Anglo-Afghan War
World War I, see List of Indian divisions in World War I, Bombardment of Madras
World War II
See also
Maratha Empire
Sikh Empire
List of Indian Princely States
Hyderabad State
Rajput States
Kingdom of Calicut
Kingdom of Mysore
Kingdom of Travancore
Political warfare in British colonial India
Notes
1. ^ Corn & Glasserman 1999: Prologue
2. ^ Donkin, Robin A. (August 2003). Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the
Arrival of Europeans. Diane Publishing Company. ISBN 0-87169-248-1.
3. ^ Time. 20 August 2001 http://www.time.com/time/asia/features/journey2001/india.html |url= missing title (help).
4. ^ Nandakumar Koroth, History of Forts in North Malabar.
5. ^ Georg, Feuerstein (2002). The Yoga Tradition. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 600. ISBN 3-935001-06-1.
6. ^ Clarke, Peter Bernard (2006). New Religions in Global Perspective. Routledge. p. 209. ISBN 0-7007-1185-6.
7. ̂a b Ferguson 2004, p. 19.
8. ^ Wolpert, Stanley (1989). A New History of India (3rd ed.), p. 180. Oxford University Press.
9. ^ Olson, p. 478.
10. ^ Porter, p. 401.
11. ^ Olson, p. 293.
12. ^ Olson, p.653
13. ^ Olson, p.568
14. ^ Marshall, pp. 133–34.
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14. ^ Marshall, pp. 133–34.
References
Brian, Mac Arthur (1996) The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches ed. Penguin Books.
Kachru, Braj (1983) The Indianization of English, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moss, Peter (1999) Oxford History for Pakistan, a revised and expanded version of Oxford History Project Book
Three; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mubarak Ali, Dr, (Oct.5, 2008) 'Different Strokes' (pub) Sunday, Magazine, The daily Dawn, Karachi.
Ferguson, Niall (2004). Empire (http://books.google.com/books?id=luSjXeSByHEC). Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-
02329-0. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
Olson, James (1996). Historical Dictionary of the British Empire (http://books.google.com/books?
id=ol1bAAAACAAJ). Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-29366-X. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
Marshall, PJ (1996). The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (http://books.google.com/books?
id=S2EXN8JTwAEC). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-00254-0. Retrieved 2009-07-22.
Porter, Andrew (1998). The Nineteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III
(http://books.google.com/books?id=oo3F2X8IDeEC). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-924678-5. Retrieved
2009-07-22.
Further reading
Andrada (undated). The Life of Dom John de Castro: The Fourth Vice Roy of India. Jacinto Freire de
Andrada. Translated into English by Peter Wyche. (1664). Henry Herrington, New Exchange, London.
Facsimile edition (1994) AES Reprint, New Delhi. ISBN 81-206-0900-X.
Herbert, William; William Nichelson; Samuel Dunn (1791). A New Directory for the East-Indies
(http://www.archive.org/stream/newdirectoryfore00herb#page/n7/mode/2up). Gilbert & Wright, London.
External links
List of archaeological remains of Dutch, Danish and Portuguese India settlements
(http://www.colonialvoyage.com/remainsD.html)
gateway.for.india: British history (http://www.gatewayforindia.com/history/british_history1.htm)
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Categories: Colonial India European colonisation in Asia Former colonies in Asia
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