The Indian army was probably Britain's single greatest resource. It was the backbone of the power of the British empire. In , for example, the British viceroy governor of India, Lord Curzon, said 'As long as we rule India, we are the greatest power in the world. If we lose it we shall straightway drop to a third rate power'. Did India gain or lose from British rule?
Some recent research suggests that British rule did little for India in economic terms. Britain gained hugely from ruling India, but most of the wealth created was not invested back into the country. For example, from to about , economic growth in India was very slow - much slower than in Britain or America.
India actually started importing food under British rule, because Indians were growing 'cash crops' like cotton and tea to be sent to Britain. It is extremely important not to forget the terrible famines that devastated India. These were partly the result of weather, but partly caused by British policies.
Food shortages came about because Indians were growing cash crops. When famine struck in and the British system of government was completely overwhelmed and could not organise a big enough relief effort.
As well as these massive famines, there were many other smaller, more localised famines. This was much less than the French, Dutch and Germans took from their lands. They brought in an irrigation programme, which increased the amount of land available for farming by 8 times. They developed a coal industry, which had not existed before. Public health and life expectancy increased under British rule, mainly due to improved water supplies and the introduction of quinine treatment against malaria.
Big landowners, Indian princes, the Indian middle classes all gained in terms of job opportunities, business opportunities and careers in areas like the law. Ordinary Indians gained little, but the argument still continues about whether British rule made much difference to their lives.
Many historians think that the majority of Indians would have remained poor even if they had been ruled by Indians. The debate about British rule in India. The largest rebellion against British rule took place in It was known in Britain as the Indian Mutiny. This was because it began with a rebellion by Indian troops sepoys serving in the army of the British East India Company.
British rule in India was handled by the East India Company. New research by the renowned economist Utsa Patnaik — just published by Columbia University Press — deals a crushing blow to this narrative.
It happened through the trade system. Prior to the colonial period, Britain bought goods like textiles and rice from Indian producers and paid for them in the normal way — mostly with silver — as they did with any other country. But something changed in , shortly after the East India Company took control of the subcontinent and established a monopoly over Indian trade. The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues about a third to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use.
It was a scam — theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods. Had it been the same person, they surely would have smelled a rat. Some of the stolen goods were consumed in Britain, and the rest were re-exported elsewhere. Indeed, the Industrial Revolution depended in large part on this systematic theft from India.
After the British Raj took over in , colonisers added a special new twist to the tax-and-buy system. But Britain made sure that the payments for those goods nonetheless ended up in London. How did this work? Basically, anyone who wanted to buy goods from India would do so using special Council Bills — a unique paper currency issued only by the British Crown.
And the only way to get those bills was to buy them from London with gold or silver. So traders would pay London in gold to get the bills, and then use the bills to pay Indian producers. So, once again, they were not in fact paid at all; they were defrauded. Meanwhile, London ended up with all of the gold and silver that should have gone directly to the Indians in exchange for their exports. Finally, changes in the terms of professional service also created resentment.
Moreover, the new recruits of the Bengal Army, who until had been exempted from overseas service in observance of certain caste rituals, were now required a commitment for general service. There were also grievances over the issue of promotions based on seniority. This as well as the increasing number of European officers in the battalions made promotion slow, and many Indian officers did not reach commissioned rank until they were too old to be effective.
The final spark was provided by the ammunition for the new Enfield P rifle. These used paper cartridges that came pre-greased. To load the rifle, sepoys had to bite the cartridges open to release the powder.
The grease used was rumored to include tallow derived from beef, offensive to Hindus, and pork, offensive to Muslims. There were rumors that the British sought to destroy the religions of the Indian people and forcing the native soldiers to break their sacred code certainly increased this concern. The Company was quick to reverse the effects of the policy in hopes that the unrest would be quelled. This, however, convinced many sepoys that the rumors were true and that their fears were justified.
Civilians developed their own grievances against the Company. The nobility, many of whom lost titles and domains under the Doctrine of Lapse which refused to recognize the adopted children of princes as legal heirs, felt that the Company had interfered with a traditional system of inheritance. In the areas of central India where such loss of privilege had not occurred, the princes remained loyal to the Company, even in areas where the sepoys had rebelled.
Rural landlords called taluqdars lost half their landed estates to peasant farmers as a result of the land reforms that came in the wake of annexation of Oudh. Eventually, the civilian rebellion was highly uneven in its geographic distribution and historians still attempt to explain why some areas rebelled while others remained calm.
At Meerut, a large military cantonment, 2, Indian sepoys and 2, British soldiers were stationed along with 12 British-manned guns. The station held one of the largest concentrations of British troops in India and this was later cited as evidence that the original rising was a spontaneous outbreak rather than a pre-planned plot.
The rebellion began as a mutiny of sepoys on May 10, , in the cantonment of the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions, largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pradesh, western Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh, and the Delhi region.
The large princely states of Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, and Kashmir, as well as the smaller ones of Rajputana, did not join the rebellion.
In some regions such as Oudh, the rebellion took on the attributes of a patriotic revolt against European presence. Some rebel leaders, such as Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi, became folk heroes in the nationalist movement in India half a century later. In the Bengal Presidency, the revolt was entirely centered on Bihar, which experienced multiple disturbances in the Shahabad region where the revolt was led by Kunwar Singh.
In Punjab, the Sikh princes backed the Company by providing soldiers and support. In general, the rebels were disorganized, had differing goals, were poorly equipped, led, and trained, and had no outside support or funding. The rebellion was contained only with the Indian defeat in Gwalior on June 18, , during which Rani of Jhansi was killed.
By , rebel leaders Bakht Khan and Nana Sahib had either been slain or had fled. The rebellion and its aftermath resulted in the deaths of more than , Indians. The alleged killings of women and children by the rebels as well as wounded British soldiers left many British soldiers seeking revenge. The mutineers were hung or blown from cannon, an old Mughal punishment where sentenced rebels were tied over the mouths of cannons and blown to pieces when the cannons were fired.
Most of the British press, outraged by the stories of alleged rape and the killings of civilians and wounded British soldiers, did not advocate clemency of any kind. Incidents of rape allegedly committed by Indian rebels against European women and girls appalled the British public. These atrocities were often used to justify the British reaction to the rebellion. The consensus was that there was no convincing evidence of such crimes having been committed, although numbers of European women and children had been killed outright.
In August, by the Government of India Act , the company was formally dissolved and its ruling powers over India were transferred to the British Crown. A new British government department, the India Office, was created to handle the governance of India, and its head, the Secretary of State for India, was entrusted with formulating Indian policy.
On a political level, the British assumed that the previous lack of consultation between rulers and ruled was a significant factor in contributing to the uprising. In consequence, Indians were drawn into government at a local level, although on a limited scale.
Nonetheless, a new white-collar Indian elite comprised of a professional middle class was starting to arise, in no way bound by the values of the past.
The Bengal army dominated the Indian army before and a direct result after the rebellion was the scaling back of the size of the Bengali contingent. The Brahmin presence in the Bengal Army was reduced because of their perceived primary role as mutineers.
The rebellion transformed both the native and European armies of British India. The old Bengal Army almost completely vanished from the order of battle. There were also fewer European officers, but they associated themselves far more closely with their soldiers.
More responsibility was given to the Indian officers. The economy of British India was largely designed to protect and expand interests of the British economy, but the British collaborated closely with the Indian elites who, unlike the masses of ordinary Indians, benefited from the many economic changes. In the second half of the 19th century, both the direct administration of India by the British Crown and the technological change ushered in by the Industrial Revolution closely intertwined the economies of India and Great Britain.
Many of the major changes in transport and communications typically associated with Crown Rule of India began before the Indian Rebellion of Finished goods from England were transported back just as efficiently for sale in the burgeoning Indian markets. In the 17th century, India was a relatively urbanized and commercialized country with a buoyant export trade, devoted largely to cotton textiles but also including silk, spices, and rice.
Yet while the British cotton industry underwent technological revolution in the late 18th century, the Indian industry stagnated and industrialization in India was delayed until the 20th century.
Historians have suggested that occurred because India was still a largely agricultural nation with low wages. In Britain, wages were relatively high, so cotton producers had the incentive to invent and purchase expensive new labor-saving technologies. In India, by contrast, wages were low, so producers preferred to increase output by hiring more workers rather than investing in technology. British control of trade and exports of cheap Manchester cotton are cited as other significant factors.
Despite the unrivaled quality of Indian cotton, universally recognized as late as the end of the 18th century, Indian textile exports declined significantly over the 19th century. High tariffs against Indian textile workshops and British restrictions on Indian cotton imports quickly transformed India from the source of textiles to a source of raw cotton.
Industrial production as it developed in European factories was unknown until the s when the first cotton mills opened in Bombay, posing a challenge to the cottage-based home production system based on family labor. While other Indian mills produced cheap coarse yarn and later cloth using local short-staple cotton and cheap machinery imported from Britain, Tata imported expensive longer-stapled cotton from Egypt and bought more complex ring-spindle machinery from the United States to spin finer yarn that could compete with imports from Britain.
In the s, Tata launched plans to expand into heavy industry using Indian funding. It became the leading iron and steel producer in India, with , employees in A plan for a rail system in India was first put forward in A few short lines were built in the s, but they did not interconnect.
In , Governor-General Lord Hardinge allowed private entrepreneurs to set up a rail system in India. The colonial government encouraged new railway companies backed by private investors under a scheme that would provide land and guarantee an annual return of up to five percent during the initial years of operation. The companies were to build and operate the lines under a year lease, with the government having the option to buy them earlier.
Encouraged by the government guarantees, investment flowed in and a series of new rail companies were established, leading to rapid expansion of the rail system in India.
Soon several large princely states built their own rail systems and the network spread across regions. British investors and engineers built a modern railway system by the late 19th century.
It was the fourth largest in the world and was renowned for quality of construction and service. The government was supportive, realizing its value for military use in case of another rebellion as well as its value for economic growth. All the funding and management came from private British companies. The railways at first were privately owned and operated and run by British administrators, engineers, and skilled craftsmen.
At first, only the unskilled workers were Indians. Historians note that until the s, both the Raj lines and the private companies hired only European supervisors, civil engineers, and even operating personnel such as locomotive engineers.
Like hiring practices, building and maintaining the railways were designed to benefit mostly British companies. The government required that bids on railway contracts be made to the India Office in London, shutting out most Indian firms.
The railway companies purchased most of their hardware and parts in Britain. There were railway maintenance workshops in India, but they were rarely allowed to manufacture or repair locomotives.
It later transpired that there was heavy corruption in these investments, on the part of both members of the British Colonial Government in India and companies who supplied machinery and steel in Britain.
This resulted in railway lines and equipment costing nearly double what they should have. India provides an example of the British Empire pouring its money and expertise into a well-built system designed for military purposes after the Rebellion of with the hope that it would stimulate industry. The system was overbuilt and too expensive for the small amount of freight traffic it carried. However, it did capture the imagination of the Indians, who saw their railways as the symbol of an industrial modernity—but one that was not realized until after Independence.
The result was, on average, no long-term change in income levels. Agriculture was still dominant, with most peasants at the subsistence level. Extensive irrigation systems were built, providing an impetus for growing cash crops for export and for raw materials for Indian industry, especially jute, cotton, sugarcane, coffee, and tea.
Agricultural income imparted the strongest effect on GDP. Historians continue to debate whether the long-term impact of British rule was to accelerate or hinder the economic development of India. He vehemently attacked the EIC, claiming that Warren Hastings and other top officials had ruined the Indian economy and society.
Indian historian Rajat Kanta Ray continues this line of attack, arguing that the new economy brought by the British in the 18th century was a form of plunder and a catastrophe for the traditional economy of the Mughal Empire. Marshall shows that recent scholarship has reinterpreted the view that the prosperity of the formerly benign Mughal rule gave way to poverty and anarchy. He argues the British takeover did not make any sharp break with the past, which largely delegated control to regional Mughal rulers and sustained a generally prosperous economy for the rest of the 18th century.
Marshall notes the British went into partnership with Indian bankers and raised revenue through local tax administrators, keeping the old Mughal rates of taxation.
Many historians agree that the EIC inherited an onerous taxation system that took one-third of the produce of Indian cultivators. Instead of the Indian nationalist account of the British as alien aggressors, seizing power by brute force and impoverishing all of India, Marshall presents the interpretation supported by many scholars in India and the West that the British were not in full control but instead were players in what was primarily an Indian play and in which their rise to power depended upon excellent cooperation with Indian elites.
Marshall admits that much of his interpretation is still highly controversial among many historians. However, historians agree that the British rule did not change the divisive caste-based hierarchy of the Indian society and thus ordinary Indians remained excluded from the benefits of economic growth. The railway network in , when it was the fourth largest railway network in the world.
In , almost all the rail companies were taken over by the government. The following year, the first electric locomotive made its appearance. With the arrival of World War I, the railways were used to meet the needs of the British outside India. With the end of the war, the railways were in a state of disrepair and collapse. The Indian National Congress has dominated Indian politics since leading the Indian independence movement. In the post-independence era, it has remained the most influential political party in India under the continuous leadership of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty.
Its objective was to obtain a greater share in government for educated Indians and create a platform for civic and political dialogue between educated Indians and the British Raj. The first session was held in December and attended by 72 delegates. The rest were of Parsi and Jain backgrounds.
Within the next few years, the demands of the Congress became more radical in the face of constant opposition from the British government. The organization decided to advocate in favor of the independence movement because it would allow a new political system in which the Congress could be a major party. In , the Congress was split into two factions. The radicals, led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, advocated civil agitation and direct revolution to overthrow the British Empire and the abandonment of all things British.
The moderates, led by leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, wanted reform within the framework of British rule. Tilak was backed by rising public leaders like Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, who held the same point of view. Gokhale criticized Tilak for encouraging acts of violence and disorder. But the Congress of did not have public membership and thus Tilak and his supporters were forced to leave the party. Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in With the help of the moderate group led by Ghokhale, Gandhi became president of the Congress and formed an alliance with the Khilafat Movement, a pan-Islamic, political protest campaign launched by Muslims to influence the British government and increase Hindu Muslim unity.
In protest, a number of leaders resigned to set up the Swaraj Party. The Khilafat movement soon collapsed and in the years following World War I, the party became associated with Mahatma Gandhi, who remained its unofficial spiritual leader and icon.
The nationalist cause was expanded to include the interests and industries that formed the economy of common Indians. For example, in Champaran, Bihar, Gandhi championed the plight of desperately poor sharecroppers and landless farmers who were forced to pay oppressive taxes and grow cash crops at the expense of the subsistence crops that formed their food supply.
The profits from the crops they grew were insufficient to provide for their sustenance. Proposals aimed at eradicating caste differences, untouchability, poverty, and religious and ethnic divisions made the Congress a forceful group that dominated the Indian independence movement. Although its members were predominantly Hindu, it had members from other religions, economic classes, and ethnic and linguistic groups.
In the winter of , the British government allowed provincial elections in India that were held in eleven provinces.
The Congress gained power in eight of the provinces. In protest, the Congress asked all elected representatives to resign from the government. In Azad Hind, an Indian provisional government, was established in Singapore and supported by Japan. In response, the Congress helped to form the INA Defense Committee, which assembled a legal team to defend the case of the soldiers of the Azad Hind government.
Nehru emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement under the tutelage of Mahatma Gandhi and ruled India from its establishment as an independent nation in until his death in He is considered to be the architect of the modern Indian nation-state: a sovereign, socialist, secular, and democratic republic.
After Indian independence in , the Indian National Congress became the dominant political party in the country. In , in the first general election held after independence, the party swept to power in the national parliament and most state legislatures.
It held power nationally until It returned to power in and ruled until , when it was once again defeated. It formed the government in at the head of a coalition as well as in and , when it led the United Progressive Alliance. During this period, the Congress remained center-left in its social policies while steadily shifting from a socialist to a neoliberal economic outlook. During his tenure, Nehru implemented policies based on import substitution industrialization and advocated a mixed economy, where the government-controlled public sector co-existed with the private sector.
He believed the establishment of basic and heavy industries was fundamental to the development and modernization of the Indian economy. The Nehru government directed investment primarily into key public sector industries — steel, iron, coal, and power — promoting their development with subsidies and protectionist policies.
Nehru embraced secularism, socialistic economic practices based on state-driven industrialization, and a non-aligned and non-confrontational foreign policy that became typical of the modern Congress Party. Shastri died in , reportedly of a heart attack but the circumstances of his death remain mysterious. In the parliamentary elections held in , the Gandhi-led Congress won a landslide victory on a platform of progressive policies such as the elimination of poverty. Gandhi rejected calls to resign and announced plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.
She moved to restore order by ordering the arrest of most of the opposition participating in the unrest. This period of political oppression ended in , when Gandhi released all political prisoners and called fresh elections to the Lok Sabha.
The opposition Janata Party won a landslide victory over the Congress. Indira Gandhi, second-longest-serving Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office.
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