Asking this for my 5-year-old niece. I, myself am 21 years old, don’t know how exactly they did it and am exceptionally bad at Humanities.
I don’t quite understand how the Britishers convinced/bewitched/overruled the rulers of a nation. From what I understand, they struck deals and what-not. Can you please explain a **bird’s eye view** of the entire situation so that I can explain it to my niece?
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Every place that Britain colonised has its own story, but there are three main ways that colonisation was done.
First, the most straightforward: send the navy and the army, invade the place and force the rulers to do what they were told. This was the least favourite for the government in London. It cost money, British people could die. Sometimes lots of them, like when a British army went into Afghanistan. all those soldiers and ships sent to some far-off place weren’t around if they were needed to fight in Europe or defend Britain. It happened sometimes when things went wrong or when Britain felt it was in competition with another European country.
Second, if the population was small or spread out, colonisation was left to settlers. With a spread out population, land was fairly easy to borrow, buy or take. The government in Britain said that places like Australia didn’t really have any government or anyone living there, so it could just take the land. Because there weren’t many people around it was hard for them to fight back.
Over time there would be more and more settlers who would get more and more land. Sometimes by buying it or signing deals, but often by attacking the people who lived there. This was made much easier when lots of native people died because of diseases and when the British had advantages in fighting because of things like guns.
Last, sometimes there were lots of people in a place, and they had the kind of government that British people could recognise – they had something like a king, for example. Often they had a strong army, especially if they got modern guns. Also lots of places were dangerous for British people because of disease. And New Zealand was just a long long way away from Britain.
So Britain couldn’t just invade the place or take it over bit-by-bit with settlers.
In these places the British would make deals with the people in charge. Sell them things, give them gifts, help them with their enemies, give them advice, things like that. And in return they would get influence and power. Maybe they would be allowed to set up a little fortified town. Maybe some of the ministers in the country would be British people. Maybe the army would help the British against *their* enemies.
Over time, if things went well for Britain, it would get more influence and more power until the country depended on it and wasn’t really independent any more.
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