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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They invaded those countries they conquered them they forced those places to surrender and then turn them into vassal States.
Basically they went in and they kept killing people until they said “hey this is our land and you can live here as long as you give us all the stuff you have.”
It wasn’t like they smooth talked them out of their land and property they conquered them and they took it.
Imagine you are living in a country and one day a bunch of people show up on your shore and setup a camp.
You don’t really mind because there’s plenty of space, and you even trade with them. It turns out that they’ve got a lot of high tech stuff that will make your life easier and by chance they want the products that you make.
But more and more of them keep showing up, and they really want the stuff that you make.
Eventually you decide that this isn’t a good thing and you try to stop them from coming but they respond by showing up with guns, kill your leaders and basically take over the country. They have such overwhelming military force that you can’t really do anything, and if you try them murder a lot of you.
Next thing you know they are kicking you off your own land to make room for their people. So long as you do what they tell you they treat you ok, but if you don’t they imprison or murder you. Or worse kidnap you, ship you half way across the world and force you into slavery.
Colonization was not pretty…
Generally, the lands the British colonized were not united. Suppose they land in a place with 10 warring kingdoms. None of the 10 kings have big enough armies to gain control of the whole land. But now the Brits show up with their ships, guns, and soldiers. And they are willing to support your side as long as you agree to all sorts of conditions, like letting them take what they want from your rivals. You get richer and more powerful than you were before (because the Brits declare you the ruler of the whole country), and most of the stuff they take is from people you didn’t really rule before.
If you say no, there are 9 other kings out there who might say yes.
European military technology was superior to most of the rest of the world. It will be Muslim nations like the ottoman empire that was on par.
Taking over land that is already occupied by other people likely requires force. Kill the ones that live there, force them away, force them to accept that you are the one in charge. People will likely resist that and then the result is violence. If you have enough technological advantage you do not need a lot of people to take control of a large area.
That said it is possible that is all starts with peaceful contact that initially is trade. Then you can get the right to set up a trading outpost and to use the land around too. You will likely need to pay for that. If you later what to control all of the land which usually is the case you need lily need at some point to use force. The trade outpost did not always grow large, Hong Kong and Macao in China did not. There was small French and Portuguese territories in India, Goa was the largest of them.
You can also exploit already existent grievances between different local groups. If you support one and arm them they can help you in conquering the land of their enemies. Give them some of the land and take the rest for yourself. You can let the one that cooperates with you remain semi-independent and under your protection. Total control is not always needed or what is best for you.
If you look at a map of India before 1947 you can see that a large part of it are princely state https://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/prepartitionmap.htm If the option for a leader is a war that you likely lose or not war but you loose some of your independence but you can still continue to live you like mostly like before it is not surprising that a lot of sovereign rulers selected to submit to the British. It is the independent nation of India that was formed in 1947 the take direct control of all of India.
The Europeans conquered the Americas with disease. From the wealth they gained by occupying now mostly empty land (casualty rates from disease were anywhere between 90-99%), Europe had an explosion of technological growth. There are very good arguments that Enlightenment thinking also stems from Native American thinkers as well, but that’s a whole rabbit hole. It is important though because paired with The Scientific Method and wealth, Europe had an explosion in technology that allowed them to take over the world. It’s hard to fight dudes with machine guns when you’ve got bows and arrows, or old muskets.
The Spanish were unable to hold their massive empire together because the technological gap between Spain and the colonies wasn’t large, and as population grew back in the colonies, they were able to break away and eventually fight some awful wars amongst themselves. Britain had a very different colonial model early on, by allowing colonists to own property and be armed. They maintained their British culture in the Anglosphere but the Brits couldn’t colonize places like Africa and India the same way because they were already highly populated and they couldn’t tolerate the disease as well, South Africa being a notable exception.
Contrary to popular belief, a lot of the places Britain conquered actually were united, or at least had a history of being united. The Indian subcontinent and cultural sphere was not fully united but shared a common culture, and had been kinda wrecked by wars with the Mughals. Three European powers fought for dominance over India, which has never been particularly expansionist and did not have matching military tech. Africa was behind in tech by the mid 1800s, whereas they hadn’t been so much in the 1500-1600s. That’s part of why the colonization of Africa hadn’t happened until later, along with a lack of navigable rivers.
They didn’t
The British empire was made up on conquered territories but not nations in any modern sense of the word.
The British Empire relied for its governance on the cooperation of local traditional rulers who, in many ways, benefitted both financially and politically from the situation even if their people didn’t.
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.
The british typically had the most, or second most, powerful military in the world. They even fought two entire wars with China because China wanted to make opium illegal and the Brits wanted the income from selling opium to the addicted Chinese. They overruled nations by threatening them with a terrifying military.
The short answer is the same way the Romans did. They cut deals with local rulers (who didn’t have the power to fight them really) and they shot the dissenters.
It ended up not working in places like America (eventually) because the founding fathers were able to unite enough influential people to make a proper fight over it and we became more trouble than we were worth
Idk about other nations but India wasn’t a united nation then it was various different kingdoms that hated each other. They came in 1608 and asked permission from the king with the largest territory in India to set up a factory for trading there, and after many rounds of persuasion and English wine he agreed lol. Then as that company started making huge profits it started keeping an army and helping one kingdom vs another(usually other one was helped by French), then they defeated the French in various battles and were left as sole trading partner there, well not sole but the largest I guess. Then in 1757 they fought a war with the most powerful king of India at that time(Nawab of Bengal) and won the right to collect revenues from India. Boom! Now they can collect taxes from Indian people and use that taxes to further strengthen their army, also to buy cotton from India and send it to England for manufacturing and then importing it to India, for selling it in the Indian market and that’s how drain of wealth happened from India to Britian. And that’s how Britian became the most powerful power in the Indian region.
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