May 5th, 2023
“In the beginning, there were two nations. One was a vast, mighty, and magnificent empire, brilliantly organized and culturally unified, which dominated a massive swath of the earth. The other was an undeveloped, semi feudal realm, riven by religious factionalism and barely able to feed its illiterate, diseased, and stinking masses. The first nation was India. The second was England.” – Shashi Tharoor
Among significant historical paradoxes, the British conquest of India is the most confusing to understand. How a tiny island nation with fewer than six million people and a desperate European power conquered a nation nine times its size in population and significantly more advanced on every metric is perplexing. From our modern perspective, most of us conform to our biases when analyzing colonial history. From this perspective, it is assumed that Britain was destined to conquer India because it possessed more economic power, better technology, larger capabilities, and deadlier diseases. However, on closer examination, these biases are unfounded. More accurate historical accounts indicate that by the early 17th century, India was a technologically advanced, wealthy, cosmopolitan empire with diseases known for killing Europeans while in comparison, Britain was a provincial, insignificant, comparatively impoverished, backwater nation. So, how does this impossible dynamic in power lead to British colonial rule over India for nearly an entire century?
To understand this paradox fully it is necessary to understand the global environment before Britain began its push for power in India. In 1600, the English Empire encompassed only Wales and parts of Ireland. Britain’s power was dwarfed by other imperial powers like France and Spain, and it also struggled to compete with lesser European powers like the Netherlands and Portugal. By the time the infamous British East India Company established its first trading post in India in 1618, the Portuguese had already established a presence a century earlier while the Dutch established a wealthy trading empire throughout Indonesia. When it comes to global empires, the English were far behind their European counterparts.
When Britain began establishing its presence, much of India was ruled by the Mughal Empire which descended from the Mongol conquerors centuries earlier. The Mughal Empire was possibly the most powerful confederation of states challenged only in size by China. The Mughal empire encompassed about 180 million people or 20% of the world’s population. They maintained armies consisting of thousands of garrisons with soldiers armed with modern rifles, cannons, and cavalry that included thousands of war elephants. It would take Europe two more centuries to build armies of the same size and scale. The Mughals oversaw a political and ruling system that drew wealth and power from land revenues, affording even lowly Indian rulers a lifestyle tenfold their equivalents in Europe. The Mughals successfully maintained their systems despite the diverse populace over which they ruled. The Mughal’s success created tremendous interest and fascination in Indian products and instilled in Indians an inward focus on maintaining their home position rather than seeking control over foreign territories. This internal focus may have inadvertently weakened the Mughal’s control as it welcomed European traders to continually grow their wealth.
The British East Indian Company played a significant role in Britain’s conquest of India. The EIC was formed in 1600 solely as a means of establishing trade with India. The first European country to establish trade with India was Portugal via Vasco de Gama’s discovery of the sea route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, although the European commodities they offered were met with nearly complete disinterest by Indian traders. Indian lack of interest in European goods created a disproportionate economic dynamic between Europe and the Mughals, requiring the Europeans to pay exuberant amounts of gold and silver extracted from the New World in exchange for Indian goods. The Dutch followed soon after the Portuguese but left India quickly after forming the world’s first official corporation, the VOC, which operated extremely lucrative trading posts in Indonesia. Once the Dutch exited India, competition for Indian trade thinned, with only the EIC and French CIO remaining as major traders.
The Mughals managed European trading organizations much like a parent disciplining a child. When European traders refused to follow local Indian arrangements or treaties, they were met with swift and violent repercussive actions. One significant example of this is the Black Hole of Calcutta. When an EIC officer refused to accept new regulations enacted by the Nawab of Bengal, 146 of his EIC agents were imprisoned in a 14’ by 16’ room for 24 hours. Only 23 agents survived, resulting in a chronicle shared back home in England which helped to precipitate a shifting of power on the Indian subcontinent.
Britain responded to the Black Hole of Calcutta by completely redesigning the EIC to include a militarized corporate structure and using sailing ships dedicated to transportation and naval warfare. The new EIC armada also employed sepoys or mercenaries recruited from Indian native populations. Sepoys shifted the power balance of Indian states. In the Mughal Empire, local potentates controlled smaller provinces autonomously but swore fealty and paid tributes to the emperor in return for protection, trade, and foreign policies. Soon after Britain redesigned the EIC, local Indian rulers discovered that sepoy protection was cheaper than paying the Mughal emperor. When local lords began turning against the Mughals and started serving as British protectorates, thus began the initial subconscious conquest of India.
Britain’s “conquest” of India was a serendipitous discovery of superiority. After years of cultivating support from local lords through the EIC, Britain finally realized that conquering Indian lands was possible, especially after their decisive victory in Bengal. This victory followed another British attempt to bypass the Nawab of Bengal’s mandates. Instead of meekly accepting punishment, the EIC’s army of sepoys soundly defeated the Nawab’s men and additional forces sent by the Mughal emperor. After its victory in Bengal, the British were awarded the Diwania which was the coveted position as the emperor’s official revenue collector. This gave the EIC control over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, essentially elevating Britain above its European counterparts, and sparking its dominion over India.
Following the EIC’s accession of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, Britain began its conquest of India. Control over many regions was gained by dishonoring treaties with local Indian lords, destructive forced famines and droughts, and inciting internal wars between Indian states. Shortly after Britain began its conquest, the Mughal Empire collapsed, with small Indian states fighting to maintain their autonomy both against British and local Indian forces. Under the East India Company Act of 1784, all EIC-controlled territories were transferred to the dominion of the English Crown and brought under the direct control of the British Empire. By 1858, the British Empire controlled the entire Indian subcontinent and maintained its rule for nearly a century. During Britain’s rule which focused on extracting India’s wealth, India became a neglected and enslaved nation where civilian lives were counted in pennies.
So, does the historical paradox still stand? In short, yes. The explanation offered here covers the most significant factors. However, more questions remain. How did Britain’s sepoy army fare so well against Indian armies in comparison to that of France or the Netherlands? Why did the sepoys allow Britain to conquer and engulf their homeland? Why did local Indian rulers not realize what has happening and ally together against the empowering British? And most importantly, why did the Mughal emperors fall to Britain when their army was far superior? In essence, the conquest of India is a historical paradox derived from a power dynamic between two states being flipped on its head, and not until its climax is reached does either nation realize the balance of power had shifted. In short, these historical events tell us much about what can transpire from what appears to be random human events that are deliberate actions stemming from greed and desperation for wealth of humans.
By Ethan Parkinson
Categories: Editorials
