During the late Middle Ages, European rulers dreamed of finding a shortcut to the riches of Asia. Europeans bought valuable goods from Asia, including spices, cotton, and silk, but these goods passed through many merchants before reaching Europe, making them expensive.
The Race to India
Portugal was determined to reach India by sea. In 1497, Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama set out with four ships to circumnavigate Africa. A year later, his arrival in India promised enormous profits, and other European nations soon followed.
Overseas trade was expensive and difficult, so wealthy European investors pooled their money to form huge trading companies, sharing the costs of ships, sailors, and supplies as well as any profits. These companies answered to their investors, unlike governments, which can be accountable to ordinary citizens.
The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. The Dutch are the people of the Netherlands, a small European nation that had become a center of international trade. When rival Dutch merchants competed against each other, their profits fell. The Dutch government solved this by giving one company total control—a monopoly—over all Dutch trade with Asia.
But this was no ordinary business. The company could build forts, make treaties, maintain its own army, and even wage war. Driven solely by profit for investors, it grew into one of the most powerful businesses in the world.
The British East India Company
In 1600, Queen Elizabeth I granted a similar charter to form the British East India Company. At first, British merchants could trade in India only with permission from the powerful Mughal rulers. But the balance of power changed as the Mughal Empire weakened during the 1700s. The British East India Company built its own army, hiring thousands of Indian soldiers called sepoys.
In 1757, company forces defeated the ruler of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey. Over the next century, the company used wars, alliances, and treaties to conquer most of India. A corporation that had come to India to make money now ruled it.
A century later, an 1857 uprising swept northern India. After crushing the rebellion, Britain replaced company rule and exiled the Mughal emperor. Nineteen years later, Queen Victoria became Empress of India.
Changing Indian Customs
The British initially had no interest in changing the Indian way of life, but they eventually made many reforms. They outlawed sati in 1829. Sati was the practice of a widow dying with her dead husband, usually by burning on his funeral pyre. The practice was never widespread throughout India, although British accounts sometimes presented it as a symbol of Indian society. Indians themselves disagreed over abolition. Some Indian reformers supported the ban, while others argued that colonial rulers had no right to change Indian customs.
The British built Asia’s largest railway network, paved roads, and dug irrigation canals. While officials claimed trains brought famine relief, the tracks primarily extracted wealth and moved troops, including hauling grain away from starving peasants for export. Colonial trade policies also favored British industry, crushing India’s textile weavers by forcing the subcontinent to export cheap raw cotton and import British manufactured cloth.
The Fight for Independence
Driven by deep anger over foreign exploitation and heavy taxation, a powerful independence movement arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although millions of Indians paid taxes and served in the British military, colonial authorities denied them basic voting rights and excluded them from high-ranking government posts. After decades of struggle, India won its independence from Britain in 1947.
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Mr. Donn has an excellent website that includes a section on India.