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India became part of the British empire in 1858. That year, the British Parliament passed the Government of India Act, which dissolved the East India Company and absorbed India into British rule....
These settlements had evolved from 'factories' or trading posts into major commercial towns under British jurisdiction, as Indian merchants and artisans moved in to do business with the Company and with the British inhabitants who lived there. The East India Company's trade was built on a sophisticated Indian economy.
The British Presence in India in the 18th Century. At the start of the 18th century, the East India Company's presence in India was one of trade outposts. But by the end of the century, the Company was militarily dominant over South India and rapidly extending northward.
By then the British had established a military dominance that would enable them in the next fifty years to subdue all the remaining Indian states of any consequence, either conquering them or forcing their rulers to become subordinate allies. ...India became the focal point of the Company's trade.
December 31, 1600The English East India Company was incorporated by royal charter on December 31, 1600 and went on to act as a part-trade organization, part-nation-state and reap vast profits from overseas trade with India, China, Persia and Indonesia for more than two centuries.
Notes: Hector was the first ship of the East India Company of England which arrived in India on August 24, 1600 AD. Sir William Hawkins was the commander and it anchored at Surat.
End of Company rule The Crown also directly appointed the governor-general, or viceroy, and provincial governors in India. The East India Company itself was formally dissolved by Act of Parliament in 1874. Thus began the British Raj, direct imperial rule of India by the British state.
1947In 1947 the British withdrew from the area and it was partitioned into two independent countries - India (mostly Hindu) and Pakistan (mostly Muslim).
The East India Company set its foot in Bengal in 1633 when a factory was established at Hariharpur on the Mahanadi delta. On 2 February, the English obtained a farman from Emperor shahjahan permitting them to pursue trade and commerce in Bengal.
Finally, in 1765 the Mughal emperor appointed the Company as the Diwan of the provinces of Bengal. The Diwani allowed the Company to use the vast revenue resources of Bengal. This solved a major problem that the Company had earlier faced. From the early eighteenth century its trade with India had expanded.
About: Following the 1857 Rebellion, the East India Company's rule in India came to an end. Queen Victoria's Proclamation of 1 November 1858 declared that thereafter India would be governed by and in the name of the British Monarch through a Secretary of State.
Government of India Act, 1858 was passed to end the rule of company and transferred it to the British crown which was the outcome of 1857 revolt. The British Governor-General of India was given the title of viceroy who became the representative of the monarch.
1600: Royal Charter forms the East India Company, setting in motion a process that ultimately results in the subjugation of India under British rule. 1605: Akbar the Great dies at age 63. His son Jahangir succeeds him as fourth Mughal Emperor.
15th August 1947On the 15th August 1947, India ceased to exist as a British colony. In its place were created two separate sovereign states, India and Pakistan.
Due to the Naval Mutiny, Britain decided to leave India in a hurry because they were afraid that if the mutiny spread to the army and police, there would be large scale killing of Britishers all over India. Hence Britain decided to transfer power at the earliest.
British RajIndia1858–19471909 Map of India, showing British India in two shades of pink and Princely states in yellowStatusImperial political structure (comprising British India and the Princely States.).CapitalCalcutta (1858–1911) New Delhi (1911/1931–1947)31 more rows
By the 1920s, a movement towards India's independence began gaining momentum. In 1947, the country became an independent nation.
During the time of British rule, roughly 300 million Indians were governed by approximately 20,000 British officials and soldiers, who brought British forms of medicine, railways and irrigation.
The British Presence in India in the 18th Century. At the start of the 18th century, the East India Company's presence in India was one of trade outposts. But by the end of the century, the Company was militarily dominant over South India and rapidly extending northward.
The East India Company's trade was built on a sophisticated Indian economy. India offered foreign traders the skills of its artisans in weaving cloth and winding raw silk, agricultural products for export, such as sugar, the indigo dye or opium, and the services of substantial merchants and rich bankers. During the 17th century at least, the ...
In part, they acted on behalf of their companies. By the 1740s rivalry between the British and the French, who were late comers to Indian trade , was becoming acute. In southern India the British and the French allied with opposed political factions within the successor states to the Mughals to extract gains for their own companies and to weaken the position of their opponents. Private ambitions were also involved. Great personal rewards were promised to the European commanders who succeeded in placing their Indian clients on the thrones for which they were contending. A successful kingmaker, like Robert Clive, could become prodigiously rich.
Cotton cloth woven by Indian weavers was being imported into Britain in huge quantities to supply a worldwide demand for cheap, washable, lightweight fabrics for dresses and furnishings.
Monument at the Plassey battlefield © The Anglo-French conflicts that began in the 1750s ended in 1763 with a British ascendancy in the southeast and most significantly in Bengal.
In the first half of the century, the British were a trading presence at certain points along the coast; from the 1750s they began to wage war on land in eastern and south-eastern India and to reap the reward of successful warfare, which was the exercise of political power, notably over the rich province of Bengal.
On the contrary, men like Warren Hastings, who ruled British Bengal from 1772 to 1785, believed that Indian institutions were well adapted to Indian needs and that the new British governments should try to restore an 'ancient constitution', which had been subverted during the upheavals of the 18th century.
From the late 19th century, some of its political elites in northern India felt increasingly threatened by British devolution of power, which by the logic of numbers would mean the dominance of the majority Hindu community.
Successive viceroys in India and secretaries of state in London were appointed on a party basis, having little or no direct experience of Indian conditions and they strove to serve two masters. Edwin Montagu was the first serving secretary of state to visit India on a fact-finding mission in 1917-1918.
What was less ambiguous was that it was the economic interests of Britain that were paramount, though as the 20th century progressed, the government in India was successful in imposing safeguards. For instance, tariff walls were raised to protect the Indian cotton industry against cheap British imports. Top.
But the 'Great Rebellion' did more to create a racial chasm between ordinary Indians and Britons. This was a social segregation which would endure until the end of the Raj, graphically captured in EM Forster's 'A Passage to India'.
1,200 civil servants could not rule 300 to 350 million Indians without indigenous 'collaborators'. Broadly speaking, the Government of India combined a policy of co-operation and conciliation of different strata of Indian society with a policy of coercion and force.
1858: Beginning of the Raj. In 1858, British Crown rule was established in India, ending a century of control by the East India Company. The life and death struggle that preceded this formalisation of British control lasted nearly two years, cost £36 million, and is variously referred to as the 'Great Rebellion', ...
The foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 as an all India, secular political party, is widely regarded as a key turning point in formalising opposition to the Raj.