British Imperialism in India

The British East India Company

While invasion and occupation of foreign lands date back to the beginning of recorded history, the British East India Company vastly expanded its interests in India since its inception in 1600, so much so that by 1720, more than 15% of all imports into Britain came from India, including rare goods such as cotton, silks, dyes, saltpeter and tea.

Maintaining order through the employment of Indian soldiers known as Sepoys, throughout the late 1700s, the British East India Company expanded its control over much of eastern India from its base in Bengal, enforcing its authority over the region with a Sepoy army of some 267,000 men by 1857. The company’s control over region ended that same year with the Sepoy Rebellion that would last until November 1st of 1858, leading to the deaths of roughly 6,000 Europeans and some 800,000 Indians.

Britain’s Government of India Act in 1858

In response, British Parliament passed the Government of India Act on August 2nd, 1858, ending the British East India Company, while transferring governance over India to the British Monarchy, leading to a period known as the “British Raj.” Lasting until the mid-20th century, the British Raj controlled most of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, dividing the continent into thirteen provinces, each under the control of a British administrative officer. Known as the “Jewel in the Crown,” India’s importance to Great Britain exploded during the Industrial Revolution, funneling raw materials into British factories, while importing food for a growing British population, at the same time turning India into a secondary market for British goods.

From a numbers standpoint, between 1765 and 1938, an estimated $45 Trillion in today’s currency was transferred from India to Great Britain, or approximately fifteen times Britain’s Gross National Income in 2019. While some historians have argued that Britain helped India transform itself into a modern economy—including the construction of canals, roads and the fourth largest railway system in the world—Britain’s sometimes harsh treatment of Indians combined with controversial economic policies, which forced Indians to produce crops for export to English factories instead of their own tables, leading to multiple famines that took the lives of an estimated 55 million Indians.

The abuses also saw the rise of nationalistic independence movements such as the Swadeshi Movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s, which saw Indians reject British imports in favor of garden-grown food-stocks and homemade goods. Indian nationalism came to head after Mahatma Gandhi’s return from South Africa in 1915, where he advocated for non-cooperation campaigns through civil disobedience and non-violent protests.

When Did British Imperialism in India End?

Britain eventually ceded power back to India in 1947, dividing the country into Pakistan for Islamic believers and India for Hindus and Sikhs, ending 89 years of British rule over the Indian subcontinent.