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 …show more content…
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 …show more content…
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