How did Great Britain have so much power and influence considering how small it is? How did they manage to colonise the entirety of India so easily?
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I might have the best possible perspective: I’m Indian and a history buff. Let me give you the short version.
So the British (East India Company) came to India in the 1700s to just do business. Items like spices, indigo, muslin fabric were worth their weight in gold, and they would turn a huge profit taking these back to Europe.
They aggressively increased their business here (port areas like current day Bengal and Maharashtra) until the kings at these places allowed them to set up their own manufacturing here. India was comprised of different kingdoms at that point in time, and they could be individually enticed to what the EIC required.
They slowly found more items for purchase, and wanted to set up manufacturing units for each of them for better profits. Labour was also cheap, and they used a mixture of bribery and seduction to get involved in local courts. They pushed for having military powers with the kings, citing reasons for protection required at their facilities, and EIC started to bring in soldiers from Britain for the same.
Soon enough they had armies large enough to start taking over kingdoms one by one. They weren’t battles at first, they used debt trapping, bribing, betraying trusts of the important court members. Battle of Plassey fought in Bengal was the last battle that literally turned the tide in their favour, and most of India was under them (the kings and kingdoms still existed, just in servitude to the EIC). Post that they just used Indians to create Indian products that could be sold abroad and then made Indians pay taxes for the same. They used ‘divide and rule’ political tactics to make sure Indians stay divided.
This was until 1857, when Indians united for a nation wide rebellion. This was quashed by the EIC with taking help from the British commonwealth, and due to having access to better military equipment they just about managed to do so. But the English royalty used this moment in time to take over administration from the EIC – which was a privately owned institution.
From then to 1947 they continued to rule is under the pretext of ‘civilising’ us from savagery. Since they didn’t understand the depth to which our culture, traditions, history, technology, arts, music worked – they treated us as savages and no less than slaves.
But by 1947 the Free India movement had taken an unstoppable force. Fuelled by the likes of Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Bhagat Singh (to name just a few) the British couldn’t control India and fight WW2 at the same time. August 15th 1947, India was finally free of the British.
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