“Imperialism is a global system that emerged out of a historically specific conjuncture of political and economic developments (Saccarelli, 17)”. In other words, imperialism is one country’s control over another through political and economic methods. It emerged in the late nineteenth century due to the change in capitalism, which included the change in monopolies, the dominance of finance capital, and the recurrence of economic crises. There are some misconceptions with the terms “imperialism” and “colonialism”. Both imperialism and colonialism coincide, but the difference is that imperialism does not depend on colonialism. Instead, colonialism focuses more on economic exploitation of another country. For example, colonialism in Spain led …show more content…
I focused on British imperialism of India because the study of British rule in India has a wider scope. The greatest searchlight ever thrown upon British character and British institutions were the policies and actions of the British authority in India. Both England and India were transformed by the interrelationships involved (Sanderson, 35). From studying British rule in India, we allow ourselves to observe every practice in India connected with imperial domination. When the British imperialized India, they left an ever-lasting influence. It is essential in knowing how and why British imperialism became possible in India, the shift in India’s political and economic system, and the aftermath. Before the British conquest, India was a place which featured rich religious and cultural diversity. After sixty centuries, many people had migrated from the original birth areas of white races in Asia into the Indian plains and valleys. Along with the cultural diversity, India was enhanced by nature. The …show more content…
The British were able to effectively rule the sub-continent for almost two centuries, until 1947, with relatively little opposition and unrest. Great Britain is quite a distance in proximity to India and has a lower population? How were they able to get to India and dominate it? The British first established an empire in India by starting trading post with the Indian nation. This trading post was meant to purchase spices which were in a high demand in Great Britain and other European countries. This led to the establishment of the British East India Company. At the end of the sixteenth century, one hundred and twenty-five English shareholders invested £72,000 in the East India Company, and in 1600 received from Queen Elizabeth a royal charter which granted them monopoly over trade in the Orient for fifteen years (Sanderson, 81). The successful advance of the British in India set fire to the Orient (Asian countries) and changed the history of every nation in the world. This was due to the British East India Company beginning economic conquest of the richest empire in the world (Sanderson, 84). Nevertheless, India was conquered by a chartered commercial monopoly and not by the Crown of England. Also, the constitution of the Indian Empire was written by the British East India Company. (Sanderson, 55). Over time, the company earned marvelous
Imperialism is the domination of a weaker country by a stronger country. For instance Britain dominated India and China in the mid 1880s to the beginning of the 20th century. Imperialism has had both a positive and negative effects on the countries involved. Britain was imperialistic for many reasons, it could dominate because it had the technology and power to do so. They also needed land to acquire raw materials for growing markets.
Not only did the inequality and separation of the Indian society frustrate the citizens of India, but the imperialism Britain had upon them as well. In the early 20th century, Indian nationalists wanted to take a stand against the British rule and make India independent. The British created unfair laws that created a nationalist movement in India to regain their freedom. He believed that there should not be a Caste System because of one’s birth.
The British considered Indian civilization to be inferior and implemented their western ways, overriding ancient Indian customs. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that British imperialism in India resulted in both positive as well as negative reforms in political, economic and social aspects of its new colony. To begin with, one can observe that the British colonizers did indeed improve Indian civilization by developing means of communication and transport. They built a great number of bridges, over 40,000 miles of railway and paving an astounding 70,000 miles of road (Doc. 4. The adage of the adage.
Imperialism in India British imperialism in India had many positive and negative effects on both the mother country, Britain and the colony, India. Many people would argue which effects were more prominent in these countries, and some would agree that they were equal. But in both cases, there were actually both. In India, the British colonization had more positive effects than negative. For instance, when the British colonized India they built 40,000 miles of railroad and 70,000 miles of paved roadway.
There is no doubt that British imperialism had a large impact on India. India, having previously been an group of independent and semi-independent princedoms and territories, underwent great change under British administration. Originally intended to consolidate their hold on India by establishing a population that spoke the same language as their rulers, the British decision in the 1830s to educate Indians in a Western fashion, with English as the language of instruction, was the beginning of a chain of events, including a rise in Indian nationalism, that led to Indian resentment of British imperialism and ultimately to the loss of British control over India.
" India was where the riches of the world came from, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. The British needed to dispel the threat of other Europeans in Africa to maintain control of India, and they did so efficiently. They quickly gained control of both the major sea routes to India and then turned their eyes to the rest of the continent. Whether the British were trying to foster public support or prevent another nation from becoming a threat, all British actions in Africa were directly or indirectly linked to India. The British were motivated by their desire to become powerful, and they skillfully combined enterprise and conquest to create a globe spanning empire centered around the wealth of India.
1 Moore, Robin J., "Imperial India, 1858-1914", in Porter, Andrew, Oxford History of the British Empire: The Nineteenth Century, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001a, p.422-446,
There is no doubt that British imperialism had a large impact on India. From positive affects to negative affects, British colonized India. It all started around the 1600’s when the British East India Company entered India. Only as traders, they entered what was known as the Mughal Empire. Around the 1757 Battle of Plassey the Mughal empire fell (Carrick) and it was only a matter of time until the British Raj took their once in a lifetime chance.
To learn why the British Raj was detrimental to the Indian subcontinent, one must first learn what the British Raj is and its history. The period of dominion of the British Raj lasted from 1858 to 1947. The British Raj separated India into the notorious
Nevertheless, during the 1600’s, Great Britain started to make an appearance in Indian history, and with this, came great unhappiness from the Indian side. Prior to Britain’s rule of India, India was governed by the Mughal Empire. This empire brought great political stability to India. However, during the seventeenth century, Great Britain began to present itself in India and, with this, came a great deal of changes political-wise, as well as economically and social-wise. In the year 1601, a man with the name of William Hawkins proposed the idea of establishing a British presence in India to the court of Jahangir.
British Imperialism in India deeply affected attitudes to politics, society, community, nation, and gender and intercommunity relations. This inevitably conditioned the thought process of the then common masses as well as the intelligentsia. Colonialism in India and also elsewhere made it impossible to understand the history of the country and what emerged was deconstructed notions largely conditioned and shaped by the imperialist’s missions to ‘civilize’ the colonized and the broad agenda of the ‘white man’s burden’. Studying Rabindranath Tagore from this broad rubric shall lead one to understand how Imperialism and colonialism moulded and shaped his entire career as the polymath who ventured into the arenas of literature, art, and politics and into the daily lives of common masses. Tagore’s political thoughts, apparently seeming dispassionate, can actually be studied vis-à-vis their dialogical relation with the socio- cultural conditions of India at the macrocosmic level and Bengal at the microcosmic level. He was the hybrid or the cosmopolitan man who took India to the rest of the world in her entire glory as well as agony. Ranajit Guha, the subaltern historian, regards him as “a most accomplished historian”, and is of the view that “the Indian past has been thematized in many different ways in his narrative poems, plays and novels” and his essays “stand for an original vision distanced no less from the colonialist historiography propagated by the Raj and the ideologues of imperialism than from the narrowly sectarian Hindu view of the past that had been influential in nationalist thought since its formulation by Bankimchandra Chatterjee in the 1870s.” (Guha 75, 76) Colonialism, with its baggage of vices, also ushered in th...
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
It was not until the Second World War when Gandhi proposed India had been brought into the war without having a choice, that Indians in the Navy, Air Force, and Army, took a stand against the British. These revolts forced the government to discuss the future of India under British rule, as it was becoming increasingly harder to provide the funds that would control India’s revolts, therefore, the only other solution was to begrudgingly allow India to become a free state, which finally happened in 1947. This provides evidence to suggest that the statement ‘when empires fall, it is always the case that internal decline precedes external attack,’ is not always correct. These fractures arose from the First World War, made even worse by the Second World War promoted internal decline. India did not achieve full independence until after the war when Britain was at its weakest and unable to stop dissent.
India was the first major Asian civilizations to fall victim to European predatory activities (Duiker 31). With conquering India, the British had various purposes behind it. Their main purpose was to achieve a monopolistic trading position (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). The second purpose was the control of India; this was a key element in the world power structure, in terms of geography, logistics and military manpower (The Economic and Social Impact of Colonial Rule in India). When the East India Company continued to trade under the British, huge armies were created, largely composed of Indian sepoys (Marshall). The armies were used to defend the Company’s territories protect the Indian states (Marshall).