The Colonial Era in India Class 8 Notes Social Science Chapter 4

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Class 8 The Colonial Era in India Notes

Class 8 SST Chapter 4 The Colonial Era in India Notes

Class 8 SST Chapter 4 Notes – The Colonial Era in India Notes Class 8

Introduction
The chapter introduces the British colonial era in India, revealing how the British gradually took control of several regions in India initially and later gained control over the entire country through trade and power. It tells us about the arrival of the East India Company and how they used their army and policies to expand their rule and thrive in India.

The Age of Colonialism

→ Colonialism is defined as one country controlling another, imposing its political, economic, and cultural systems, with roots in ancient empires and religious expansions.

→ The “Age of Colonialism” refers to Europe’s global expansion from the 15th century. European powers (Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Netherlands) colonised vast regions across Asia, Africa, Australia, the Pacific Islands & the Americas, often through military conquests involving massacres and enslavement of native people.

→ Europe’s expansion was driven by political competition, establishing global influence, gaining wealth, power, land, publicizing missionary activities (converting natives into Christians), and exploring new lands.

→ For colonised people, colonialism was a loss of freedom, exploitation, destruction of their cultural beliefs, and imposition of foreign traditional ways of life.

→ Colonialism declined after World War II as most colonised nations gained independence during this time due to strong resistance and revolt from the native people.

Europeans in India

→ India had a strong trade relationship with ancient powers such as the Greeks and Romans over 2000 years ago, exporting valuable goods such as spices, cotton, gems, sandalwood, etc.

→ As per the Historical estimates by economist Angus Maddison, India was a major economic power before the 16th century, contributing 25% of global GDP, with an advanced manufacturing and trade network.

→ Many European travellers called India a rich and thriving land, impressed by its industries, agricultural produce, and trade network.

→ European powers were attracted by India’s wealth (spices, cotton, ivory, gems, etc.), making it a prime target for colonisation.

The Portuguese: Commerce and Atrocities

→ Vasco da Gama’s arrival in 1498 marked the start of European colonisation in the Indian subcontinent.

→ The Portuguese captured key ports like Goa (1510), monopolised the spice trade between India and Europe via the cartaz system for around a century, and engaged in aggressive acts like seizing ships and bombarding Calicut.

→ They imposed the Goa Inquisition (1560-1822), oppressing non-Christians and Christian converts suspected of practicising their original faith, forcibly converting locals, and destroying Hindu temples.

The Dutch: Commerce and Competition

→ The Dutch arrived in the early 17th century, focusing on commercial dominance in the spice trade through the Dutch East India Company.

→ They established trading posts – Surat, Bharuch, Cochin (Kochi) on the west coast and Nagapattinam and Masulipatanam on the east, displacing the Portuguese in parts of the Malabar coast.

→ Their influence declined after the defeat (both on land and at sea) by Travancore’s King Marthanda Varma at the Battle of Colachel in 1741.

→ This battle was a rare example of an Asian power successfully defeating a European colonial force.

The French: Colonial Ambitions

→ The French established trading posts in Surat in 1688 and later in Pondicherry in 1744, aiming to build an empire under Dupleix, the Governor-General of French India.

→ Dupleix trained Indian soldiers (sepoys) in European tactics and used indirect rule via puppet rulers.

→ French ambitions were curtailed by losses in the Carnatic Wars (a series of conflicts between Britain and France from 1746 to 1763), leaving them only with Pondicherry and a few more areas.

→ Unlike the Portuguese, the French rarely interfered in Indian social or religious life, except a few rare incidents like the destruction of the Vedapurishwaran temple in 1748 in Pondicherry.

Enter The British
The British dominated India for nearly two centuries (from around 1741 to 1947), transforming from traders to rulers through the English East India Company.

From Traders to Rulers

→ Their conquest was gradual, calculated, and disguised as commercial activity rather than an obvious military invasion.

→ The East India Company started as a trader and received a royal charter (giving special powers to raise a private army) from Queen Elizabeth I, establishing coastal footholds on Surat, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta in the 17th century with minimal resistance from local rulers.

→ The charter made it more powerful – simply granted the permission to trade, make laws, and even fight wars in certain parts of the world.

The Strategy of ‘Divide and Rule’

→ They exploited political relationships, offering military support to local rulers to gain influence.

→ The British inserted themselves into Indian politics, acting as power brokers instead of an open invader.

→ The British encouraged rivalries between Indian rulers, societal divisions, and tension between religious communities to consolidate power.

→ The Battle of Plassey (1757) (Palashi, a place, 150 kilometres north of present-day Kolkata) proves the Britishers’ policy of divide and rule, where Robert Clive secured victory by conspiring with Mir Jafar to betray the Nawab of Bengal.

→ This strategy positioned the British as the kingmaker, gradually expanding control over large territories.

→ The infamous Doctrine of Lapse, introduced in the 19th century, enabled the British to expand their territory by either taking over princely states after the death of their king (in case of no male heir) or controlling them without direct rule, allowing them to build an empire at low cost.

→ Another strategy by the British called ‘subsidiary alliance’ installed a British resident in the courts of Indian rulers to protect them in exchange of maintaining their troops at their own expense.

→ At first, the ruler of Hyderabad entered such an alliance in 1798, and soon others followed.

→ The states involved in these alliances were called ‘an empire on the cheap,’ and if they break the alliance, they will face overwhelming exploitation.

From Paradise to Hell? Devastating Famines

→ Famines (Lack of food over a larger period in a large area, causing the death of many people).

→ After winning the battle of Plassey, the East India Company got the right to collect revenue in some of India’s richest regions such as Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha.

→ They took large revenues but invested nothing in governance and caused great suffering.

→ The company imposed a harsh revenue collection pattern in Bengal, including a high rate of tax in the form of cash and crops from the farmers, regardless of their poor harvest conditions around 1770-1772, causing a catastrophic famine and hunger crisis, which killed almost 10 million people.

→ During the Great Famine of 1876-1878, around 8 million Indians died in the south India (Deccan Plateau), but the export of grains didn’t stop then as well.

→ During the 1876-1878 famine, Lord Lytton, Viceroy of that time, passed an order that “the government should not interfere in any way to try to lower the prices of food, which could have given relief to the people.

→ Around 12 to 20 major famines occurred during British rule in India, and between 50 to 100 million people died, almost as many as in World War II.

→ India, especially rural parts, got into extreme poverty due to the famines during this brutal Colonial era.

The Drain of India’s Wealth

→ In 1895, the U.S. historian and political scientist Brooks Adams stated that the credit for the Industrial Revolution in Britain was possible because the British looted so much wealth from India.

→ Dadabhai Naoroji was the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons (the Elected Lower House of the Parliament of the United Kingdom).

→ Scholars like Dadabhai Naoroji and Romesh Chunder Dutt estimated billions of pounds were extracted from India, fuelling Britain’s Industrial Revolution, through their books (Poverty and Un-British Rule in India & Economic History of India).

→ An estimated 45 trillion U. S. dollars, or about 13 times Britain’s GDP in 2023, was extracted from India as per an estimate by an economist, Utsa Patnaik.

→ In short, India itself funded the colonial power’s expenditures on building the railways, telegraph network, and even the wars.

Changing Landscapes
Colonial rule damaged almost every part of India, as even the powerful Indian rulers thought they needed to be centralised according to the superior British ideology.

Decline of India’s Indigenous Industries

→ Before the 18th century, India excelled in advanced textile production such as cotton, silk, wool, jute, hemp, coir, and more.

→ Indian cotton fabrics were known for their vibrant colours, textures, and intricate designs, and were highly sought after globally.

→ British policies imposed heavy taxes on Indian textiles entering Britain while forcing India to accept British-produced goods with minimal tariffs.

→ In the 19th century, India’s textile exports fell sharply, and similar situations occurred with India’s steel, paper, and other goods.

→ India’s global GDP share dropped from -25% to -5% by Independence.

→ Due to the brutal British rule and policies, India, one of the richest lands of the world, became the poorest one.

Dismantling Traditional Governance Structures

→ Before British colonisation, the community affairs, disputes, public works, especially irrigation, roads, etc., were managed efficiently by the village councils in comparison to regional kingdoms.

→ The British replaced these traditional governance systems with a centralised bureaucracy focused on tax collection and maintaining order instead of promoting public welfare.

→ The British introduced new codes of law in India, disregarding traditional laws and systems that had governed Indian communities for generations, and the new judicial system was foreign, costly, and time-consuming for Indians.

Transforming Indian Education: Creating “Brown Englishmen”

→ Thomas Macaulay’s 1835 policy replaced traditional Indian educational systems such as pathashalas, madrasas, viharas, and many more forms of education, introducing the British education system.

→ In his conviction, Thomas B. Macaulay claimed that the European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia, aiming to shape the Indian mind with English taste and opinions.

→ By the passage of time, Indian traditional schools disappeared, and English became a symbol of prestige, creating a deep divide between the English-educated elite and the wider Indian population and fulfilling multiple colonial objectives.

Reshaping Economic Structures to Serve Imperial Needs

→ The British reshaped India’s economy from a self-sufficient agriculture into a supplier of raw materials for British industry and a market forced to purchase only British goods.

→ For instance, the railway system was designed primarily to transport goods efficiently and quickly to serve colonial economic interests and to move their armies quickly during a war, not for the welfare of the Indian public.

→ Railways and telegraphs, funded by Indian taxes, served British commercial and military interests, not local needs.

→ In a way, the Britishers ruled India by looting India’s own money and resources.

Early Residence Movements: Challenging Colonial Authority

→ Britishers nicknamed India as “the jewel in the crown of the British Empire” due to India’s enormous wealth and its vast natural & human resources.

→ Britishers declared that India would remain part of their empire forever.

→ Resistance movements against the British also started around India during this period.

The ‘Sannyasi-Fakir Rebellion’

→ After the terrible famine of 1770, the Sannyasi Rebellion took place in Bengal as Hindu and Muslim ascetics resisted British restrictions and harsh tax policies.

→ For over 30 years, they consecutively attacked British treasuries and tax collectors, but were eventually branded as bandits and suppressed by British forces.

→ This rebellion inspired Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath, which contained the song ‘Vande Mataram’, later becoming a powerful symbol in India’s freedom struggle and the national song.

Tribal Uprisings

→ The British restricted the access of forests, hills, and forest produce for India’s tribal communities, calling them “primitive”.

→ They replaced tribal councils with British legal systems, forcing the tribals to convert to Christianity while declaring hundreds of tribes ‘criminals’.

→ The Kol Uprising (1831-1832) in Chota Nagpur (present-day Jharkhand) began when British land policies favoured outsiders, leading the Mundas and Oraons to rebel and take control of their territory before being crushed.

→ The Santhal Rebellion (1855-1856) was led by two brothers, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, who fought against moneylenders and landlords supported by the British.

→ Despite the brutal British response, the Santhal Rebellion inspired other tribal resistance.

Peasant Uprisings Against Economic Exploitation

→ The Indigo Revolt (1859-1862) was a protest of Bengal peasants forced into indigo cultivation and exploitation.

→ They were tortured by the planters and got trapped in debt slavery.

→ Their revolt gained support from educated Bengalis and the press, pressuring the British to restrict the worst abuse.

The Great Rebellion of 1857

→ The British called this rebellion a “Sepoy Mutiny”, but the scholars debated and referred to it as “Great Rebellion of 1857”.

→ The revolt began with the discontent among the sepoys, fuelled by violations of religious activities like new uniform regulations and earlier issues like the Vellore Mutiny (1806), where British rules clashed with Hindu and Muslim beliefs.

→ The sepoys killed many British officers and troops. However, the British crushed the revolt, killing and executing hundreds of sepoys.

→ Even though the uprising failed, it planted the idea of rejecting foreign rul,e leading to a total change in British policies in 1858 to prevent further revolts. However, this time under the direct control of the British Crown.

→ Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi fought bravely against the British to save her kingdom. She was helped by Tatia Tope, a military advisor to Nana Saheb.

→ She escaped when Jhansi was attacked and captured the Gwalior fort, taking control of its treasury and weapons.

→ She died in a battle on 18 June 1858. A British officer described her as smart, generous, a strong leader, and the bravest among the rebels.

→ Tatia Tope kept fighting until 1859 but was betrayed and later hanged by the British.

→ Begum Hazrat Mahal ruled Awadh (in present-day Uttar Pradesh). After the British took over her kingdom, she joined the 1857 revolt, leading the defence of Lucknow against the British.

→ She refused British offers of safety in return for surrender and later took shelter in Nepal.

→ In 1858, Queen Victoria promised to respect religions and include Indians in governance.

→ Begum Hazrat Mahal warned people not to trust the British promises, saying they would never forgive any mistake, big or small.

The Legacy of European Colonialism in India

→ India suffered exploitation, famines, and cultural loss (e.g., stolen artefacts and conversions).

→ Some Indian culture spread worldwide, as Sanskrit texts were translated and historical sites documented, though this was mainly done for colonial interests.

→ Early resistance movements helped plant the idea of freedom, which later grew into India’s independence struggle.

→ Succumbed: To give up in any situation.

→ Colonialism: The practice where one country takes control of another region, establishing settlements and imposing its political, economic, and cultural systems.

→ Phenomenon: An interesting fact or opinion.

→ Settlements: Agreements that ends conflicts or disputes

→ Massacre: A brutal and indiscriminate killing of people.

→ Enslavement: Forcing someone to work for you, as a slave.

→ Undertake: To agree to do something.

→ Plunder: The act of taking goods or wealth by force, often associated with colonial exploitation of resources, as described in India’s case.

→ Accumulate: To collect something over time.

→ Demonised: To describe falsely or to mention someone/a group of people as a veiy weak person or in a negative manner.

→ Savage: Violent.

→ Primitive: An early stage of something.

→ Exploitation: To use someone or something unfairly.

→ GDP (Gross Domestic Product): The total value of all goods and services produced by a country in one year.

→ Navigator: A person who directs the routes over a ship.

→ Voyage: A long journey by sea.

→ Cartaz: A Portuguese system requiring ships in the Arabian Sea to purchase permits for navigation, ensuring their control over trade.

→ Persecution: Cruel treatment.

→ Inquisition: A tribunal set up by the Roman Catholic Church (e.g., in Goa, 1560-1812) to judge and punish supposed heretics (Christians suspected to oppose Christianity), involving persecution of non-Christians.

→ Conversions: To change from one form or system to another (In this chapter, especially religion).

→ Repelling: Giving back or taking a stand for yourself.

→ East India Company: A British trading company granted a royal charter, which evolved into an imperial power controlling large parts of India.

→ Sepoy: Indian soldiers trained in European military techniques, employed by colonial powers like the French and British.

→ Invasion: To enter a place and destroy it completely.

→ Divide and Rule: A British strategy of exploiting rivalries between Indian rulers or communities to maintain control.

→ Exemplifies: To give a very typical example of something.

→ Doctrine of Lapse: A British policy of annexing princely states if their ruler died without a natural male heir, disregarding Indian adoption traditions.

→ Annexation: To take over a territory.

→ Subsidiary Alliance: A British system where Indian rulers maintained British troops at their expense and ceded foreign relations to the British, effectively losing sovereignty.

→ Princely State: Regions in India ruled by Indian princes or nawabs under British protection, maintaining internal autonomy but subject to British influence.

→ Famine: Severe food shortages, often exacerbated by British revenue policies, leading to millions of deaths (e.g., Bengal Famine of 1770-1772).

→ Paradise: Heaven (In this chapter’s context, a happy place with wealth).

→ Revenue Collection: The British practice of extracting taxes, often harshly, from Indian farmers, contributing to economic distress and famines.

→ Extravagant: Something that is beyond reason.

→ Industrial Revolution: A period of rapid industrialization in Britain (starting -1760), partly funded by wealth extracted from India.

→ House of Commons: The elected Lower House of the United Kingdom is called the House of Commons.

→ Embossed: Decorated with a stamp or raised design/pattern, making it stand out.

→ Textile Industry: India’s pre-colonial manufacturing sector, known for cotton, silk, and other fabrics, was ruined by British trade policies.

→ Village Councils: Pre-colonial Indian systems of local self-governance, dismantled by the British in favour of centralized bureaucracies.

→ Dismantled: Gradually breaking down or starting to diminish.

→ Brown Englishmen: A term referring to Indians educated under British systems to adopt English tastes and values, as per Macaulay’s 1835 education policy.

→ Orientalist: Oriental means region from West Asia to the far east. (In this chapter, Orientalist refers to Indian scholars with knowledge of Sanskrit, Pali, Persian & other languages, now known as Indologists)

→ Minute on Indian Education: A 1835 policy by Thomas B. Macaulay promoting English education in India to create a class loyal to British interests.

→ Civilising Mission: The colonial claim of bringing “civilisation” to colonised regions, often a pretext for exploitation and cultural imposition.

→ Railway Network: Infrastructure built in colonial India, funded by Indian taxes, primarily to serve British economic and military interests.

→ Cantonments: Military quarters or camps.

→ Jewel in the Crown: A term used to describe India as the most valuable colony of the British Empire due to its wealth and resources (both natural and human).

→ Tribal Uprisings: Resistance by tribal communities (e.g., Kol Uprising, Santhal Rebellion).

→ Missionaries: Persons who are on a religious mission spreading it across the world.

→ Mutiny: Refers to internal revolt, like rebellion by Indian Soldiers in the British Army against the British.

→ Revolt: Forceful uprising against the authority.

→ Deindustrialisation: The deliberate destruction of India’s manufacturing sectors (e.g., textiles) by British policies to favour British goods.

→ The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, and the British were attracted to India primarily because of its great wealth.

→ They fought among themselves for dominance of the Subcontinent, with the British gaining the upper hand.

→ The British ruthless taxation policy inflicted great misery on the people, causing severe famines in particular and millions of deaths.

→ The deliberate deindustrialization of India devastated its once-thriving manufacturing sector.

→ Gradually, the British imposed their administrative structures, legal systems, and educational institutions to ensure total colonial control over the Indian society.

→ The Portuguese focused on religious conversion and cultural transformation in Goa, creating long-lasting social divisions.

→ The French policy of assimilation created a small elite of culturally French Indians in Pondicherry.

→ Several uprisings took place from the late 18th century onward, with the Great Rebellion of 1857 threatening the colonial rule for a while. Most of these uprisings were brutally repressed.

→ In the 19th century, India’s classical culture (in particular through translated Sanskrit texts) flowed back to the West, creating a lasting influence.

In the previous chapter, we saw the Marathas considerably weaken the Mughal Empire, before they succumbed to the British forces early in the 19th century. And yet, military campaigns were only one factor in India becoming the ‘jewel in the Crown’ of the British Empire, indeed, the empire’s largest colony.

The Age Of Colonialism
im-1
+ Colonialism refers to a system where one country dominates and exploits another’s politics, economy, and culture.
+ From the 15th century onwards, European nations such as Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands colonised vast regions across Asia,
Africa, Australia and the America, often using force.
+ Colonial power weakened after World War II, when strong resistance movements led to the freedom of many nations, including India.

Europeans In India
+ According to economist Angus Maddison, before the 16th century, India was one of the world’s richest economies, contributing nearly one- fourth (~25 %) of the global GDP.
+ This immense wealth attracted several European powers to its shores.
im-2

The Portuguese: Commerce and Atrocities
+ Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498, opening the sea route from Europe to India.
+ They introduced the Goa Inquisition (1560-1822), which persecuted non- Christians and even converts suspected of retaining their old faith, forcing conversions and destroying Hindu temples.

The Dutch: Commerce and Competition
+ The Dutch arrived in the early 17th century, established trading centres at Surat, Bharuch, and Cochin on the west coast, and at Nagapattinam and Masulipatnam on the east, pushing out the Portuguese in parts of the Malabar region.
+ Their power ended after they were defeated in 1741 by Travancore’s King Marthanda Varma at the Battle of Colachel.

The French: Colonial Ambitions
+ The French set up their bases in Surat and Pondicherry.
+ Under the leadership of Dupleix, they tried to expand politically, but were finally defeated by the British in the Carnatic Wars (1746-1763).
+ Unlike the Portuguese, the French usually avoided interfering in social and religious life, though rare incidents occurred, such as the destruction of a temple in Pondicherry in 1748.

Enter The British
From Traders to Rulers
im-3
+ The East India Company received a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I, which gave it the right to trade, raise armies, and even make its own laws.
+ They established strong trading bases in Surat, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.

The Strategy of ‘Divide and Rule’
+ The British took advantage of rivalries among Indian rulers to strengthen their position.
+ In the Battle of Plassey (1757), Robert Clive secured victory by bribing Mir Jafar to betray his Nawab.
+ Policies like the Doctrine of Lapse and the Subsidiary Alliance further helped the British expand their control over Indian territories.

From Paradise To Hell?
Devastating Famines
+ Heavy taxes and exploitative revenue collection led to severe famines, such as the Bengal famine (1770-1772) that killed about 10 million people.
4 The Great Famine (1876-1878) caused 8 million deaths in south India, yet grain exports to Britain continued.
4 In total, colonial mismanagement led to the deaths of 50-100 million Indians in famines.

The Drain of India’s Wealth
Historians argue that Britain’s Industrial Revolution was fuelled by resources looted from India.
4- Dadabhai Naoroji, the first Indian MP in Britain, and Romesh Chunder Dutt
explained how Britain drained India’s wealth through unfair policies and taxation.
4- Modern historians estimate that India lost nearly 45 trillion U.S. dollars to Britain during the colonial period.

Changing Landscapes
im-4
Decline of India’s Indigenous Industries
4* The British imposed heavy tariffs on Indian goods entering Britain, while allowing British goods into India at minimal cost.
4- As a result, Indian textile exports collapsed, and industries like steel and paper also declined.
4 India’s share of global GDP dropped from about 25% before colonisation to just 5% by Independence, reducing one of the world’s richest nations to one of the poorest.

Dismantling Traditional Governance Structures
4 The British replaced village councils with a centralised bureaucracy focused on revenue collection and maintaining order.
4 Traditional Indian laws were discarded, replaced with costly and strange judicial systems.

Transforming Indian Education: Creating ‘Brown Englishmen’
In 1835, Thomas Macaulay introduced English education, which replaced traditional Indian systems of learning.
4 This policy created a small class of Indians who imitated British culture, but it also deepened the gap between elites and ordinary people.

Reshaping Economic Structures to Serve Imperial Needs
+ The British built railways and telegraphs, but these were mainly designed to serve their army and transport raw materials to British factories.
+ Essentially, India was ruled using its own wealth and resources to benefit the colonisers.

Early Resistance Movements: Challanging Colonial Authority
+ The British called India the “jewel in the crown” of their empire because of its vast wealth and resources.
+ They even declared India would remain under their rule forever.
im-5
The ‘Sannyasi-Fakir Rebellion’
+ Hindu sannyasis and Muslim fakirs rose in revolt after the Bengal famine devastated the people.
+ They opposed Britishers harsh pilgrimage- tax policies by consecutively attacking their treasuries and revenue agents.
+ This movement later inspired Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath and the patriotic song Vande Mataram.

Tribal Uprisings
+ The British forced tribals to convert to Christianity and often mentioned them as ‘primitive’.
+ The Kol Uprising (1831-32) in Chota Nagpur was sparked by unfair land policies.
+ The Santhal Rebellion (1855-56), led by Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, was one of the most significant tribal uprisings against British exploitation.

Peasant Uprisings Against Economic Exploitation
+ The Indigo Revolt (1859-62) in Bengal forced the British to change oppressive indigo farming practices after widespread

The Great Rebellion Of 1857
im-6
+ The revolt began when Indian sepoys refused to use cartridges greased with cow and pig fat, which offended both Hindu and Muslim soldiers.
+ The rebellion spread rapidly across North India but was eventually crushed with great brutality.
+ Despite its failure, ¡t is remembered as the First War of Indian Independence.

The Legacy Of European Colonialism In India
+ Under British rule, India’s wealth was plundered, industries were destroyed, ft and millions died in repeated famines.
+ Parts of Indian culture spread to other countries, like translations of Sanskrit books and records of important monuments, though many of these were done for colonial purposes.
+ Early resistance movements planted the seeds of nationalism, eventually growing into the struggle for independence.

The Age of Colonialism Class 8 Notes

Before we proceed, we must step back in time and consider the phenomenon of colonialism. Its usual definition is the practice where one country takes control of another region, establishing settlements there, and imposing its political, economic, and cultural systems. This is not a recent occurrence: colonialism can be traced back to the time of the great empires in the 1st millennium BCE. In the 1st millennium CE, the spread of Christianity and Islam also involved the colonization of territories converted to the new faiths.

But the ‘Age of Colonialism’ usually refers to Europe’s expansion from the 15th century onward, which, within a few centuries, extended to large parts of the world. As you will discover in higher grades, European powers in particular, Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, and the Netherlands established colonies across Africa, Asia, the Americas, Australia, and many Pacific islands, after conquering large parts of those regions of the world. Often, the conquests were achieved through military campaigns that involved the massacre or enslavement of native populations.

What impelled those nations to undertake such campaigns?
Political competition between European powers created a race for territorial expansion and global influence. Territorial expansion had obvious economic advantages: access to new natural resources, new markets, and new trade routes and, often, plunder, as we will see. Converting indigenous populations to Christianity was another powerful motivation. A lesser one, but significant nonetheless, was scientific inquiry, the desire to explore unknown lands so as to accumulate knowledge of the planet’s geography and natural history.

While colonisers often claimed they had the ‘civilising mission’ of bringing ‘progress’ to the colonised peoples, who were often demonised as ‘savage’, ‘primitive’ or ‘barbaric’, the reality was very diffrent: loss of independence, exploitation of resources by the colonisers, the destruction of traditional ways of life, and the imposition of foreign cultural values. It is true that the colonial age brought the world together, saw a rapid growth of economies and technologies, but the benefits were mostly for the colonisers; many historical studies have documented the immense hardships that the colonised people had to endure.

In many of the colonised regions, resistance built up against the colonisers. The phenomenon of colonialism declined in the mid-20th century, especially after World War II; many factors contributed to rapid worldwide decolonisation, with most colonised countries attaining independence. Here, however, we will focus on the special case of India.

Europeans in India Class 8 Notes

India traded with the Greeks and the Romans over two millennia ago. Indian goods, spices, cotton, ivory, gems, sandalwood, teakwood, wootz steel, among other commodities, were highly sought after in the Mediterranean world. Until the 16th century CE, when European powers began sailing to the Indian Subcontinent, India was a vibrant economic and cultural powerhouse. Historical estimates (by economist Angus Maddison, in particular) suggest that India contributed at least one-fourth of the world’s GDP during this whole period, making it one of the two largest economies globally, alongside China (whose contribution was of the same order). It is remarkable that from the 16th century onward, many European travellers to India described her as ‘flourishing’ and noted her manufacturing capabilities, diverse agricultural output, and extensive internal as well as external trading networks. However, this economic prosperity also made India an attractive target for European colonial ambitions. Let us survey Europe’s first colonial powers in India.

The Portuguese: Commerce and Atrocities
The Portuguese explorer and navigator Vasco da Gama’s arrival at Kappad (near Kozhikode in Kerala) in May 1498 paved the way for the beginning of European colonisation in India. Though he was well received, his aggressive ways failed to establish friendly relations with the local rulers. During his second voyage, four years later, he seized, tortured, and killed Indian merchants and bombarded Calicut from the sea. The Portuguese captured strategic ports, including Goa (in 1510), which became the capital of their colony in India, as well as several trading posts along the Malabar and Coromandel coasts.

A few centuries ago, the port town of Ullal (in present-day southern Karnataka) was an important trading point controlled by Rani Abbakka I. In the latter half of the 16th century, the Portuguese repeatedly attempted to take it over, but Rani Abbakka I formed strategic alliances with neighbouring kingdoms and thwarted their attempts. She was eventually captured and died fighting in prison. Her successor, Rani Abbakka II is reported to have created fireballs out of coconut shells and set several ships of the Portuguese navy on fire. Their inspirational stories are remembered even today through the Yakshagana, a traditional form of dance-drama.

The Portuguese implemented a system known as cartaz (pass), requiring all ships in the Arabian Sea to purchase Portuguese permits for navigation. Ships without these permits were seized. This naval dominance allowed them to monopolise the spice trade between India and Europe for nearly a century.

Alongside commercial exploitation, the Portuguese presence in western India was characterised by religious persecution. In Goa, they established the Inquisition in 1560, which severely persecuted Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christian converts suspected of practising their original faith. Such persecution was accompanied by forced conversions and the destruction of many Hindu temples, among other forms of abuse of the native population. (The Goa Inquisition was only abolished in 1812.)

The Dutch: Commerce and Competition
The Dutch arrived in India in the early 17th century and, unlike the Portuguese, focused primarily on commercial dominance, particularly in the spice trade. They established a Dutch East India Company, with trading posts in various parts of India, including, on the west coast, Surat, Bharuch, Cochin (Kochi), and on the east coast, Nagapattinam and Masulipatnam (present-day Machilipatnam). Their most significant presence was in the Malabar region of Kerala, where they displaced the Portuguese from several trading centres.

The Dutch presence in India was ultimately limited; it declined significantly after their defeat at the Battle of Colachel in 1741, where the forces of Travancore under King Marthanda Varma decisively defeated the Dutch both on land and at sea (the Travancore kingdom was in the southern part of present-day Kerala). This battle was a rare instance of an Asian power successfully repelling a European colonial force.

The French: Colonial Ambitions
The French entered India later, establishing their first trading post at Surat in 1668 and subsequently at Pondicherry (present-day Puducherry) in 1674, where they established their East India Company (Compagnie des Indes Orientales) and developed ambitious plans to establish a French empire in India. Dupleix, who served as Governor-General of French India from 1742 to 1754, pioneered several colonial strategies that would later be adopted by the British. In particular, he trained Indian soldiers in European military techniques, creating disciplined infantry soldiers known as sepoys. Dupleix also developed the strategy of indirect rule through puppet Indian rulers, who were installed through interventions in local succession disputes.

The French colonial ambitions in India were ultimately checked during the Carnatic Wars (1746-1763), a series of conflicts between Britain and France. Despite initial successes under Dupleix, who captured Madras (present-day Chennai) in 1746, the French ultimately lost ground to the British, and their colony was reduced to Pondicherry and a few smaller enclaves. Like the Dutch and unlike the Portuguese, the French colonial powers did not intervene much in Indians’ social and religious life. A rare exception was the destruction in 1748 of Pondicherry’s large Vedapurishwaran temple, ordered by Dupleix on the persistent request of Pondicherry’s Jesuit priests and Dupleix’s wife, to assert the dominance of Christianity. Generally, however, the French had to be content with a modest amount of trade with India.

Enter the British Class 8 Notes

Britain dominated the Indian subcontinent for nearly two centuries. How did this happen? Many books have dissected the methods of the British rulers; we will not attempt to tell a complete story, but will focus on the main aspects of their colonial presence in India.

From traders to rulers
The British conquest of India is one of history’s most remarkable examples of how a trading company could transform into an imperial power. Unlike classic conquests, the British takeover of India was gradual, calculated, and often disguised as a commercial enterprise rather than a military invasion. The English East India Company was established as a trading company and was granted a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I, which gave it special powers to raise a private army, for instance. Nevertheless, its agents initially kept up a pretence of being mere traders, which allowed them, in the 17th century, to establish footholds along India’s coast with minimal resistance: Surat, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta among the first. Local rulers did not mind these trading posts, as they generally welcomed foreign trade (which, let us recall, was a longstanding practice in India). These modest beginnings concealed the Company’s long-term ambitions.

The Strategy of ‘Divide and Rule’
While maintaining an appearance of traders, the Company’s agents cultivated political relationships with local rulers, offering military support to some against their rivals, thus inserting themselves into Indian political conflicts and emerging as power brokers rather than foreign invaders. They would also play on rivalries between regional rulers or succession disputes within ruling houses, to benefit from these conflicts, the ‘divide and rule’ policy. The British were equally skilled at exploiting existing divisions within Indian society: they identified and often encouraged tensions between religious communities, for instance.

The Battle of Plassey (1757) exemplifies this approach. When tensions arose between Siraj-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, and the East India Company officials led by Robert Clive, the latter identified disgruntled elements within the Nawab’s court. Clive hatched a conspiracy with Mir Jafar, the Nawab’s military commander, promising to install him as the new Nawab in exchange for his betrayal. The battle took place at Palashi (Plassey as the British spelt it), some 150 kilometres north of present-day Kolkata. Some French forces assisted the Nawab, but Mir Jafar’s force,s constituting the majority of the Nawab’s army, stood aside, ensuring a British victory despite their smaller number. Even today, ‘Mir Jafar’ in India remains a synonym for ‘traitor’!

By positioning themselves as a kingmaker, the East India Company gradually established control over increasingly large territories. In the 19th century, it went a step further and introduced the infamous Doctrine of Lapse, according to which any princely state would be annexed if its ruler died without a natural male heir. This deliberately disregarded the Hindu tradition of adoption, which was a legitimate means of succession in Indian royal houses.

In the Indian context, a princely state was a region that remained under the rule of an Indian prince, maharaja or nawab, but which had accepted British protection and guidance in exchange for maintaining internal autonomy. There were hundreds of them, from large ones (such as Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, or Jammu & Kashmir) to smaller ones. At the time of India’s Independence, there were over 500 princely states, covering about 40 per cent of the Subcontinent.

The Doctrine of Lapse led to the annexation of numerous states, contributing to the expansion of the territorial control of the British. This created much resentment in sections of Indian society and contributed to the 1857 Rebellion (to which we return below). Another stratagem (known as ‘subsidiary alliance’) was to install a British ‘Resident’ in the courts of Indian rulers to protect them against internal or external threats; in exchange, they would have to maintain British troops at their own expense and conduct foreign relations only through the British. While appearing to preserve the sovereignty of princely states, the system effectively transferred real power to the British while burdening Indian rulers with the costs of their subjugation! The ruler of Hyderabad was among the first to enter such an alliance in 1798; several others soon followed. These so-called alliances allowed the British to control vast territories without the administrative costs of direct rule, creating what was called ‘an empire on the cheap’. Once a state entered the system, exiting it was virtually impossible, as any attempt to break free would face an overwhelming British military response.

From Paradise to Hell? Class 8 Notes

Devastating Famines
A few years after its victory at Plassey, the East India Company secured the right to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha, some of India’s richest regions. Clive described Bengal in particular as ‘the paradise of the earth’. The Company’s agents extracted maximum revenue while investing minimally in governance or development, with devastating consequences for the population.

In 1770-1772, coming on top of two years of crop failure, the harsh revenue collection targets imposed by the East India Company in Bengal requiring farmers to pay a high rate of cash taxes on the produce of their lands, regardless of harvest conditions caused a catastrophic famine which killed nearly one-third of its population or an estimated 10 million people. The Company maintained harsh revenue collection targets, even increasing the land tax during the famine. Such cruelty was denounced later not only by Indian personalities but by some British officials and public intellectuals (such as William Digby, whom we quoted at the start of this chapter). For instance, a century later, W.W. Hunter, an official, wrote:

“While the country every year became a total waste, the English government constantly demanded an increased land-tax. … All through the stifling summer of 1770, the people went on dying. The husbandmen [farmers] sold their cattle; they sold their implements of agriculture; they devoured their seed-grain; they sold their sons and daughters, till at length no buyer of children could be found; they ate the leaves of trees and the grass of the field. … Day and night a torrent of famished and diseasestricken wretches poured into the great cities.”

Such tragic famines were going to recur throughout the British rule in India. During the Great Famine of 1876-1878, for instance, up to 8 million Indians perished, mostly in the Deccan plateau. Disregarding the severity of the crisis, some Indian traders would hold on to their stocks in the hope of a price rise, causing an artificial scarcity, and the British administration continued to export grain to Britain, about one million tonnes of rice alone per year during the three years of the famine.

Apart from the factors mentioned above, the British economic policy of ‘free market’, which left prices of commodities free to fluctuate, contributed to the severity of the famines. Thus, Lord Lytton, Viceroy of India during the 1876-1878 famine, issued an order that “there is to be no interference of any kind on the part of the Government with the object of reducing the price of food.” At the same time, in 1876, at the height of the Great Famine, Lytton organised an extravagant durbar in Delhi which involved ‘a week-long feast for 68,000 officials, satraps and maharajas’.

The precise numbers of severe famines during the entire British rule vary from a dozen to over 20. According to several Famine Commissions and other reports, it has been estimated that the total number of human victims (‘human’ since millions of cattle and other animals also died) is anywhere between 50 and 100 million, nearly the number of deaths caused by World War II. The British administration did open famine relief camps in some cities, but far too few and with inadequate supplies. Some officials argued that famine relief should be deliberately kept very low; the Famine Commission of 1878-80, for example, stated: “The doctrine that in time of famine the poor are entitled to demand relief… would probably lead to the doctrine that they are entitled to such relief at all times.” We should note that famines in India had occurred throughout history, caused by droughts, floods, military campaigns, and other factors, but never on such a scale. During the colonial era, India, especially rural India, sank into deep poverty and never recovered.

The Drain of India’s Wealth
As we saw earlier, the economic exploitation of India formed the foundation of British colonial policy. In 1895, the U.S. historian and political scientist Brooks Adams noted: “Very soon after [the Battle of] Plassey, the Bengal plunder began to arrive in London, and the effect appears to have been instantaneous, for all authorities agree that the ‘industrial revolution’ … began with the year 1760. … Possibly since the world began no investment has ever yielded the profit reaped from the Indian plunder.” In other words, according to Adams, the Industrial Revolution in Britain, which required much investment, was made possible at least partly by the ‘stolen wealth from India’ (this phrase is by the U.S. historian Will Durant).

Taking his cue from scholars such as Adams and Digby, Dadabhai Naoroji, a respected political figure, authored in 1901 Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, in which he compiled from British reports the wealth estimated to have been drained out of India. About the same time, Romesh Chunder Dutt, a historian, did a similar exercise in his Economic History of India. All these studies showed that the colonisers had extracted many billions of pounds from India. A more recent estimate (by Utsa Patnaik) for the period 1765 to 1938 comes to 45 trillion U.S. dollars (in today’s value), or about 13 times Britain’s GDP in 2023! This was extracted not just through taxes, but by charging Indians for the colonial power’s expenditures on building the railways, the telegraph network, and even on wars! Had this wealth remained invested in India, it would have been a very different country when it attained Independence.

Let us return to this painting, but now with some clues to its symbolism. Note how Britannia (a symbolic figure for Britain) sits higher than the colonies, pointing to her superior power; contrast with the lower position and bent posture of the colonies. Did they really ‘offer’ their wealth? Or did Britain seize it by force or ruse? Note also the Indians’ dark complexion (in contrast with that of Britannia), reflecting the belief in the superiority of white people over the dark-skinned ‘natives’.

Changing Landscapes Class 8 Notes

The expanding colonial rule impacted nearly every aspect of Indian life, as the rulers were convinced that India should be reshaped according to their ‘superior’ conceptions. Let us briefly look at a few of those impacts.

Decline of India’s Indigenous Industries
Before the 18th century, India was renowned for its manufacturing capabilities, particularly in textiles, cotton, silk, wool, jute, hemp, and coir being the chief ones. Indian cotton textiles, in particular, with rich and intricate designs, bright colours, and textures ranging from ultra-thin muslins to richly embossed fabrics, were in high demand in many parts of the world. British policy imposed heavy duties on Indian textiles imported into Britain while forcing India to accept British-manufactured goods with minimal tariffs. Moreover, Britain now controlled most of the sea trade as well as exchange rates, so Indian traders found it difficult to export as earlier. The result was the ruin of the Indian textile industry.

In the 19th century, India’s textile exports fell sharply, while Britain’s imports into India grew even more sharply. Communities of skilled artisans who had practised their craft for generations were reduced to poverty and forced to return to subsistence agriculture on increasingly overtaxed land. As William Bentinck, then Governor-General of India, observed in 1834, “The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India.” Similar scenarios unfolded for India’s manufacturers of iron, steel, paper, and other goods. India’s share of the world GDP kept declining throughout the colonial rule, reaching hardly 5 per cent at the time of Independence. In less than two centuries, one of the richest lands of the world had become one of the poorest.

Dismantling Traditional Governance Structures
Before British colonisation, India possessed well-organised systems of local self-governance. Village councils managed community affairs, resolved disputes, and organised public works such as irrigation, roads, etc. Regional kingdoms maintained complex administrative structures that had evolved over centuries to address local needs and conditions. Charles Metcalfe, an acting Governor-General in the 1830s, described the system and its efficiency in this important statement: “The village communities are little republics, having nearly everything they want within themselves. They seem to last where nothing else lasts. Dynasty after dynasty tumbles down; revolution succeeds to revolution, but the village community remains the same. This union of the village communities, each one forming a separate little state in itself, has contributed more than any other cause to the preservation of the people of India.”

The British systematically dismantled these indigenous governance systems, replacing them with a centralised bureaucracy designed primarily to facilitate tax collection and maintain order, rather than promote public welfare. This transformation destroyed centuries-old mechanisms of community decision-making. The introduction of British codes of law disregarded customary laws and practices that had governed Indian communities for generations. While presented as modernisation, this imposition of a foreign system unsuited to India alienated ordinary Indians from the judicial system, creating courts that were expensive, time-consuming, and conducted in a foreign language.

Transforming Indian Education: Creating ‘Brown Englishmen’ Education became a powerful tool for the creation of a class of Indians who would serve British interests. In earlier centuries, India had diverse educational traditions pathashalas, madrasas, viharas, and many forms of apprenticeship learning. These institutions transmitted not only practical knowledge but also cultural values and traditions. Even in the early 19thcentury, British reports reported hundreds of thousands of village schools across India (for instance, 100,000 to 150,000 of them in Bengal and Bihar up to 1830!) “where young natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic, upon a system so economical, … and at the same time so simple and effectual…”

A sharp turning point in India’s educational history was marked by the notorious 1835 ‘Minute on Indian Education’ of British historian and politician, Thomas B. Macaulay. In it, although he admitted that he had “no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic,” he expressed his conviction that European knowledge was vastly superior to India’s: “I have never found one among them [Orientalists] who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” Indians, therefore, needed British education, whose objective would be to create a class of Indians who would be “Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and intellect.”

Although a few prominent British Orientalists argued that Indian students should be left to study in their languages, Macaulay’s policy gained the upper hand and India’s traditional schools slowly disappeared, while English became a language of prestige associated with the colonial masters, resulting in lasting divisions in Indian society between English-educated elites and the masses. The new education system served multiple colonial objectives. It created a pool of Indian clerks and minor officials who could staff the lower ranks of the colonial administration at a fraction of the cost of British personnel. It also sidelined traditional sources of knowledge and authority, creating generations of Indians disconnected from their cultural heritage.

Reshaping Economic Structures to Serve Imperial Needs
The British transformed India’s economy from a self-sufficient agricultural system supplemented by craft and manufacturing production into a supplier of raw materials for British industry and a market forced to buy British goods. Without going into the technical details of this economic transformation, let us take the example of the construction of India’s vast railway network, often cited as a colonial blessing. While the railways did bring people closer together and integrate India’s internal market, it was designed primarily to move raw materials from the interior to ports for export and to distribute British-manufactured goods throughout India. Railway routes largely ignored existing trade patterns to serve colonial economic interests. Another purpose was to move armies quickly from their cantonments if they had to fight a distant rebellion or war.

Besides, the construction of India’s railways was not a gift from the colonial rulers to India. Most of it was paid for by Indian tax revenue, which means that Indian funded infrastructure that primarily served British strategic and commercial interests, instead of being focused on serving the people’s needs. The same can be said of the telegraph network. Even the administrative costs of colonialism were borne by Indian subjects. The colonial administrative apparatus, military installations, and the lavish lifestyles of British officials in India were all financed by Indian taxation. In short, Indians funded their subjugation.

Early Resistance Movements: Challenging Colonial Authority

India was such an enormous source of wealth, natural and human resources for the British that they nicknamed her ‘the jewel in the crown of the British Empire’. And they asserted that India would forever remain part of the British Empire, “on which the sun never sets.” However, almost from the beginning of the British conquest of India, resistance movements manifested to try and repel this self-imposed ‘guest’. We will briefly survey a few such movements, but before we do so, let us have a good look at the map of the British Indian Empire. The red and pink territories are those directly under British administration, while the yellow ones are the princely states we discussed earlier. (The black lines stand for the railway lines.)

The ‘Sannyasi-Fakir Rebellion’
One of the earliest organised resistance movements, often called the ‘Sannyasi (or Sannyasi-Fakir) Rebellion’, began in Bengal after the terrible famine of 1770. Groups of sannyasis (Hindu ascetics) and fakirs (Muslim ascetics), who traditionally travelled freely for pilgrimage and charity, found their movements restricted by the British East India Company policies, especially by the new land and taxation policies. The precise motivations of the sannyasis and fakirs have been debated, but over the next three decades, they attacked British treasuries and tax collectors. The British called them ‘bandits’, executed some of them, and used their superior forces to eventually defeat them. This rebellion later inspired the Bengali writer Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath (1882); it contained the song ‘Vande Maaram’, which would inspire Indians during the struggle for freedom in the early 20th century and, after Independence, became India’s national song.

Tribal Uprisings
India’s tribal communities faced unique threats as the British expanded into forests and hills, disrupting their traditional way of life. The British described tribals as ‘primitive’, restricted their access to forests and forest produce, sometimes acquiring tribal land or turning it into private property, imposing cash taxes, catching tribals in debt traps, replacing traditional tribal councils with the British legal system, and encouraging missionaries to ‘civilise’ and convert tribals to Christianity. Besides, a colonial law categorised hundreds of tribal communities as ‘criminal tribes’, causing them to be unjustly harassed for decades.

Some of the above abuses led some tribes to rise in rebellion against the colonial power. Among the first such events, the Kol Uprising (1831–1832) in Chota Nagpur (in present-day Jharkhand) started when the British introduced land policies that favoured outsiders over the original tribal inhabitants. The Kol tribes (which included the Mundas and Oraons, among others) temporarily established their control over significant territory before being defeated by the British forces. The Santhal Rebellion of 1855-1856, a widespread uprising of the Santhal people across parts of present-day Jharkhand, Bihar, and West Bengal, was led by two brothers, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, and rebelled against moneylenders and landlords who were taking away their ancestral lands with British support. The Santhals declared their government and vowed to ‘fight to the last drop of blood’. The British response was brutal; after some initial losses, they burned entire villages and killed thousands of Santhals, including, eventually, the rebel leaders. However, the daring Santhal rebellion inspired other tribal communities to resist colonial rule.

Peasant Uprisings Against Economic Exploitation
Even without famines, peasants suffered under the unfair British revenue collections, often losing their lands to moneylenders or new landlords. The Indigo Revolt (1859-1862) illustrates this exploitation. European planters forced peasants in the northern parts of Bengal to abandon food crops and, instead, grow indigo plants, as the indigo dye was then in great demand in Europe. From planters to traders, everyone earned huge profits except the peasants, who were so poorly paid that they got trapped in debt slavery. When they refused to grow indigo, they faced imprisonment, torture, and destruction of their property. Their uprising was directed mostly at the planters, who retaliated by hiring mercenaries to attack the peasants. Their cause was supported by educated Bengalis and the Bengali press; the British authorities were eventually forced to restrict some of the worst abuses. There are several more notable examples of uprisings across the Subcontinent, which, along with the other aspects of the British rule that we saw earlier, built up to the largest uprising of the 19th century. Let us turn to it.

The Great Rebellion of 1857 Class 8 Notes

The British called it the ‘Sepoy Mutiny’. ‘Sepoys’, let us recall, were the Indian soldiers enrolled in the East India Company’s British Army; its officers, of course, were almost all British. After India’s Independence, historians rejected the term ‘Sepoy Mutiny’, proposing a few others instead; following many scholars, we will call the event the ‘Great Rebellion of 1857’. But what exactly happened?

Even earlier, there were several signs of severe discontent among the sepoys, beginning with the so-called ‘Vellore Mutiny’ of 1806, which erupted when the British introduced new uniform regulations that violated the religious practices of both Hindu and Muslim sepoys. For example, they were forbidden from wearing religious marks on their foreheads and were required to shave their beards. The sepoys seized the Vellore fort (in present-day Tamil Nadu) and killed many British officers and troops; the British, however, crushed the revolt, killing or executing hundreds of sepoys.

We should also keep in mind that most sepoys were from agricultural families, which had been suffering great hardship owing to the British policies on land revenue. After decades of increasing frustration, in 1857 rumours spread across northern and central India that rifle cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat, offending the Hindu and Muslim sepoys’ religious sensibilities. At Barrackpore (in present-day West Bengal), the sepoy Mangal Pandey attacked British officers. His execution spread further discontent among the sepoys. In Meerut (in present-day Uttar Pradesh), some of them killed their British officers and marched to nearby Delhi, where they proclaimed the elderly but politically powerless Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader (his ‘empire’ was limited to a small area in Delhi). The military decisions were, however, taken by the commanders. The revolt quickly spread across northern and central India, with sepoys capturing key cities like Kanpur, Lucknow, and Jhansi. At Kanpur, rebel forces under Nana Saheb initially agreed to give safe passage to British civilians, but then massacred over 200 men, women, and children for reasons that are still debated.

The British response was systematic and extremely brutal, beginning with the recapture of Delhi in September 1857, where the British forces conducted house-to-house massacres. At Kanpur, they conducted mass executions designed to strike terror in the population. In a long punitive campaign, they burned villages and destroyed crops, causing countless deaths vastly more than those inflicted by the rebels. According to some historians, the Great Rebellion failed because the sepoys lacked a unified command and a consistent strategy, despite some heroic leaders.

The uprising failed, but it marked a turning point, especially in sowing a seed for the idea that foreign domination was unacceptable. The seed would grow early in the 20th century into a full-fledged struggle for freedom, though with different methods. Meanwhile, in 1858, the British Crown took direct control of India from the East India Company, initiating the period of the British Raj. British policies shifted from aggressive territorial expansion to the consolidation of control. The Indian Army was reorganised so as to prevent unified resistance in the future.

The Legacy of European Colonialism in India Class 8 Notes

The European (mostly British) conquest and rule of India was not a ‘civilising mission’; India’s civilisation was much older than Europe’s. It was a process of subjugation and exploitation executed systematically, with brutal repression if necessary. Except for a small Indian elite who accepted British rule as inevitable, the Indians suffered the fate of many of the world’s colonised populations: abuse, exploitation, violence, and uprooting.

Two Heroines
Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi fought bravely to save her kingdom from British annexation; assisted by the Maratha Tatia (or Tantia) Tope, Nana Saheb’s military adviser, Rani Lakshmibai managed to escape a besieged Jhansi and to conquer the Gwalior fort, seizing the treasury and the arsenal. She was killed on 18 June 1858 on the battlefield. The British army officer who commanded the attack on Jhansi noted that the Rani was “remarkable for her beauty, cleverness, perseverance, and generosity to her subordinates. These qualities, combined with her rank, rendered her most dangerous of all the rebel leaders. [She was the] best and bravest of the rebels.” Tatia Tope continued fighting until early 1859 but was betrayed and handed over to the British, who hanged him.

Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh (northcentral portion of Uttar Pradesh) also resisted the British-led resistance after her kingdom was annexed and joined the rebels during the 1857 uprising, leading the defence of Lucknow when the British attempted to recapture the city. She rejected British offers of safe passage if she surrendered and ultimately had to take refuge in nearby Nepal. In November 1858, Queen Victoria issued a proclamation marking the end of the East India Company’s rule in India; she promised non-interference in religious matters and greater inclusion of Indians in the administration. Begum Hazrat Mahal issued a counter-proclamation, warning Indians not to trust such assurances, as “it is the unvarying custom of the English never to forgive a fault, be it great or small.”

At the same time, the colonial rule had some largely unintended consequences. It opened (or re-opened) India to the world and the world to India. The British (and the French to a much smaller extent) were systematic in documenting every aspect of their conquest, from its geography (they conducted meticulous surveys of the Subcontinent). They created impressive lists of all ethnic groups, although the lists were flawed because of the unscientific but prevalent notions of ‘race’ (as genetics has shown, ‘races’ do not exist). They also documented India’s monuments, studying their art and architecture, restoring some of the ruined ones, and initiating the discipline of archaeology. But in the process, they (and other colonial powers) stole thousands of statues, paintings, jewels, manuscripts, and other cultural artefacts from India and sent them to European museums or private collections. While this represented a profound cultural loss and violation of India’s heritage, it also promoted some appreciation of Indian art in the European public. Such massive theft took place over much of the colonised world; today, there are ongoing debates and efforts to repatriate some of these cultural treasures to their countries of origin.

Finally, although British scholars were not the first Europeans to master the Sanskrit language, they started publishing some of the first translations of Sanskrit texts into a European language; the French, the German,s and others soon followed. The motivations were mixed: some scholars were genuine students or admirers of India’s ancient culture, while others were convinced that by studying Indian languages and texts, it would be easier to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity.

The spread of Sanskrit studies and texts in Europe (followed later by other Indian languages) was like the ‘discovery of a new continent’, in the words of the German philosopher Georg Hegel. Indian texts had a great impact on European philosophers, writers, poets, artists, and sometimes statesmen; this influence extended to the United States of America in the 19th century. This is a reminder that although political domination may flow in one direction, cultural influence sometimes flows in the opposite direction.

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