The Indian Rebellion

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Recommended: British colonization of India

In 1600 a group of London put in the East India Company. Queen Elizabeth I allowed it a monopoly of English commerce with ‘the East’ and at its height, it ruled half the world’s trade. Its first ships attained in India in 1608. For 250 years its trading activities - followed by hypnotization and colonization - profoundly affected both India and Britain, moving forward to the establishment of the British Empire (Raj).
The East India Company rapidly established plentiful trading bases along India’s coastline. Cheap cotton textiles and other goods were exported from Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. Until the East India Company ran its business from these major commercial towns, it was protected by private armies recruited in England.
For the first …show more content…

There were many reasons for this rebellion, and the Company’s rapid spread through the sub-continent during the 18th and early 19th century had not boosted matters.
The rebels, many of whom were the Indian troops within the Company’s army (which at this time was over 200,000 men strong, with around 80% of the force made up of Indian recruits) arrested their employers off guard and succeeded in killing many British soldiers, civilians and Indians loyal to the Company. In revenge for this rebellion, the Company killed thousands of Indians, both rebel fighters as well as a large number of civilians realized to be sympathetic to the insurgence. This was the Indian Rebellion of 1857.
The Indian uprising was to be the end of the East India Company. In the wake of this bloody rebellion, the British government effectively stamped out the Company in 1858. All of its administrative and taxing powers, along with its property and armed forces, were taken over by the Crown. This was the begin of the British Raj, a period of direct British colonial rule over India which carried on until independence in …show more content…

I. C monopoly, and at that time the efforts of provincial merchants to try to demolish these privileges had come tolittle. It had been sectarian London merchants and thoughtless E. I. C. officials who had brought the potential raw materials to the attention of parliament, so providing the basis for the import strategy of ministries. Stronger discipline and organization among the London merchants, and careful management of the information they provided to parliament, such as was accomplished by provincial interest, might have avoided of this view in governing

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