The Colonization of India – What Motivated the Colonization of India and How Was Colonial Rule Maintained?
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What motivated the colonisation of India and how was colonial rule maintained?
India has been colonised throughout its history by some of the great historical powers the world has ever seen but I am going to focus on that of the British East India Company and its influence on the Country. The start of Company involvement in India started around 1612 when Independent business men part of the East India Company came to India to trade and this was motivated by a desire to increase personal wealth and increasing the influence of the British Empire and creating a British Indian Empire, India had many valuable natural resources including people, spices and textiles. Obviously with a population as large as the one India had it would have been near impossible for the Company to Control all of them without some level of co-operation from the indigenous population. The Company controlled India through the use of Direct Rule, after dividing it carefully. The Company offered those in control in India a reason to co-operate, usually a chance to increase personal wealth by doing so. The line between where Imperial influences mixed with Individual gains during the period between the end of the East India Company and the start of British Imperial rule are at points blurred. I will attempt to outline the Company motives were for colonising India and to clear up some of that confusion on the blurring of the line.
“In much the same way, the British were, in Maines view, at once agents of progress, charged with setting India in the road to modernity, and at the same time custodians of an enduring India formed forever in antiquity” (Metcalf, 1995, pg66) This quote backs the idea that the British were there to impose modernity on a backward Country stuck in their old outdated ways.
The British in the form of the East India Company came to India in 1612 in search of Tea Spices Indigo Textiles Calico, muslin, silk, chintz Salt petre Opium. They were intent on expansion and by 1740 Imports of EIC goods to Europe had reached = £2 million
Initially they had to fight off completion from countries such as Portugal and Denmark to get a foothold in India but once that was achieved after the battle of Swally in 1612. The east India Company went forward after this with imperial patronage with the intent of expanding then creating a trade monopoly, in areas such as salt petre and Opium. These are products that would prove vital in attaining this total monopoly as they were to prove lucrative in the worldwide economy at the time.
The Company included a number of individuals who also wanted to increase their individual influence and knew India could play a key role in attaining that Power. The East India Companys trade was built on a sophisticated Indian economy. During the 17th century at least, the effective rule maintained by the Mughal emperors throughout much of the subcontinent provided a secure framework for trade.
The Mughal Empire had disintegrated and was being replaced by a variety of regional states. This did not produce a situation of anarchy and chaos, as used once to be assumed. Some of the regional states maintained stable rule. This being the case, the Company still saw an opportunity to further increases their influence in India.
There were, however, conflicts within some of the new states. Contestants for power in certain coastal states were willing to seek European support for their ambitions and Europeans were only too willing to give it.
Essentially the East India Company were motivated to colonise India as they saw an opportunity to make vast sums of money from an untapped source of potential wealth.
The East India Company did not start with motives to Control the people of India their motives were purely financial but by 1757 there motives had changed and their influence became severely more noticeable, the Companys actual rule began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey which was a minor battle between Company led soldiers under the command or Lord Clive against The Nawab of Bengal and its French Allies “The British conquest began in Bengal