Draw a time highlighting the important events of the expansion of the British power from 1600 to 1856
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Answer:
Company expansion (1601-1773)
Two main lines of development worked to bring the British East Indies Company to India and make it a power there. For one thing, by 1600, Portugal was losing control of the East Asian Spice trade. Therefore, in 1601, the British East Indies Company started sending ships to the Spice Islands to gain a share of this trade. At this point, there was no intention of even going to India, let alone of conquering it, since the Mughal Dynasty had a firm grip on the subcontinent. However, the Dutch also had designs on the spice trade and rebuffed any British efforts to take part in it. As a result, the British East Indies Company gained the right to set up trading posts along the coast of India. Later, some of these trading posts would grow into major cities such as Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta.
The other factor pushing the British East Indies Company toward conquest had to do with the Mughal Empire. This dynasty had ruled most of India peacefully and tolerantly for a century since the 1500's. However, during the reign of Aurangzeb (1658-1707) all that changed as he started persecuting Hindus. Not only did this trigger centuries of religious strife that still continues, it also began the decline of the Mughal Empire, which suffered from weak and corrupt government from this time on. The resulting turmoil forced the British East Indies Company to defend its trading posts against local princes, brigands, and a new European intruder, France.
The French, to compensate for the lack of European manpower so far from home, initiated the strategy of training and arming native recruits ( sepoys) like European armies. Such forces were so effective that local princes would trade large tracts of land for French trained sepoys, thus giving the French control over much of Southern India. In response to this new threat, the British responded in kind by training their own sepoys. By the end of the Seven Years War (1756-63), British naval superiority and sepoys under the leadership of Robert Clive had virtually ended French involvement in India. Clive dramatically demonstrated the effectiveness of European trained sepoys at the battle of Plassey (1757) when his army of 2800 British soldiers and sepoys routed a Bengali army of 100,000 men. Clive's victories over the Bengalis and French made the British East Indies Company a major power in India, able to install its own candidate on the Mughal throne and claim the wealthy province of Bengal for itself. British dominance resulting from these victories had three main effects.
First, British power, plus the fact that their "honorable masters" in England were 7000 miles and nine months travel away, left India wide open to exploitation by the company and its employees. Many British took full advantage of the opportunity to "shake the pagoda tree", as they called the collection of "gifts" from grateful local princes ( nawabs). While a noble in Britain could live well on £800 a year, even minor company employees were making huge fortunes. One merchant was given a profitable saltworks with 13,000 employees while another was given his own mint. A certain Mr. Watts was awarded £117,000 for bravery at the battle of Plassey. And Clive himself received £211,500 for installing one nawab and another £27,000 a year from another grant. Such opportunities for making quick fortunes unleashed a flood of applicants back home for service in India, some applications being accompanied with bribes of up to £2000. Newcomers from England were often shocked when first encountering their colleagues already in India, since they typically mixed freely with the natives and had adopted their customs, food, and clothing. Service in India had its risks for the British, mainly tropical heat and diseases. As one local proverb put it, "Two monsoons is the age of a man," indicating that few Europeans survived conditions in India more than two years. Bombay was known as "the burying ground of the British".