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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You still have an Medival Mindset that Land = People = Power.
Since the Enlightenment Industrial Output is mostly decoupled from raw Land / People / Ressources. Ask yourself the question, what is worth more, a hand of Sand and Dirt, or an Iphone you can construct out of that Dirt if you have the know how, technology and Industry. Or in more cynical terms, who is contributing more to a war, a woman birthing 10 insurgance fighters in some 3rd world country, or the woman having a phd in engineering working for Lockheed Martin building Hellfire Missiles to blow hundreds of those fighters up?
Britain had its lead on the rest of Europe which had its lead on the rest of the World. So during colonial times each person in Britain was worth several people in the colonies in an economic and military sense.
And finally, we are living in very wierd time historicaly speaking in a population distribution sense. Before the invention of artificial fertilizer, land != land. Basically Europe China and India had nearly all good land, (with some “small” river lands like Egypt as the exception). Which meant that for a long time, Europe, India and China each had 20-25% of the world population, with the rest of the world sharing the remaining 25-33%. Thats as if today Europe would have 2B instead of 650M People (with Russia). So while Europe was Small, it was not that much smaller in population terms.
For India there is also the fact that India was divided into hundreds of small kingdoms during that time, so the East India Company basically became the go to mercenary company for the local kings, who made bank by selling out to EIC in return for being able to overthrow their local rivals. Britain did not conquer India. The local Rulers sold India out for their personal gain, EIC profited, the Kings that played ball profited, The Indian People suffered.
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