The British take over of India in many ways was more accidental than deliberate. It is best summed in the celebrated phrases "in a fit of absence of mind." Calcutta, Bombay and Madras began as trading posts. When there assets became worth protecting, garrisons manned by small private armies were established. Merchants with gifts for local rulers were replaced by soldiers, who later for all intents and purposes became the local leaders. Some scholars argue that Britain was mainly interested in "quiet trade" without getting involved in messy Indian politics, but the weakness of the Mughal empire in its era of decline and competition from other European powers forced them to get involved. So trade and politics became two sides of a coin. Justify.
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Answer:
In 1608, British ships landed in Surat on the west coast of India. Sir William Hawkins traveled overland to meet with the imperial Mughal court in Agra to ask for permission to set up a trading post. The Mughal emperor was reluctant to grant the request out of fear of inflaming the tempers of the Portuguese who had been on the subcontinent since the arrival of de Gama in 1498. Between 1612 and 1615, a Briton maned Thomas Coryate walked from England to India. [Source: Pico Iyer, Smithsonian magazine, January 1988]
(1713-19), gave the British--who by then had already established themselves in the south and the west--a grant of thirty-eight villages near Calcutta, acknowledging their importance to the continuity of international trade in the Bengal economy. As did the Dutch and the French, the British brought silver bullion and copper to pay for transactions, helping the smooth functioning of the Mughal revenue system and increasing the benefits to local artisans and traders. The fortified warehouses of the British brought extraterritorial status, which enabled them to administer their own civil and criminal laws and offered numerous employment opportunities as well as asylum to foreigners and Indians. [Source: Library of Congress *]
The British factories successfully competed with their rivals as their size and population grew. The original clusters of fishing villages (Madras and Calcutta) or series of islands (Bombay) became headquarters of the British administrative zones, or presidencies as they generally came to be known. The factories and their immediate environs, known as the White-town, represented the actual and symbolic preeminence of the British--in terms of their political power--as well as their cultural values and social practices; meanwhile, their Indian collaborators lived in the Black-town, separated from the factories by several kilometers. *
Establishment of the East India Company
India was governed but the East India Company from the beginning of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century . Their first charter was granted by Queen Elizabeth I in 1600. The company was conceived in September 1599 by a group of London merchant who raised 30,000 pounds to send a group of ships to the east to purchase silks, spices and jewels and bring them back to England. The first ships sent by traders who would later form the East India Company were not bound for India, they were destined for the Spice Islands in what is now Indonesia. [Source: Pico Iyer, Smithsonian magazine, January 1988]
After receiving the blessing of Queen Elizabeth I, five ships set sail for the Spice Island in the Dutch Indies. The Dutch refused to sell any spices to the British ships, which headed to the west coast of India so they wouldn't return empty handed.
Nick Robins of Bloomberg wrote: “Established by royal charter in 1600 with a monopoly on all trade with Asia, the East India Company had many incarnations in its almost 275-year run. For the first half of its existence, it remained a commercial supplicant, exporting bullion to pay for Asia’s luxury goods: first spices, then textiles and tea. Along the way, it became an early model for today’s joint-stock corporation and pioneered new management techniques for long-distance supply chains. [Source: By Nick Robins, Bloomberg, March 12, 2013 *-*]
For the most part local leaders welcomed the East India Company and allowed it to set up shop. By the beginning of the 17th century, the British East Company was operating out of “factories in Bombay as well as Madras and Calcutta. The company maintained its own army so as not to place to much of burden on the British crown. It employed sepoys--European-trained and European-led Indian soldiers--to protect its trade, but local rulers sought their services to settle scores in regional power struggles.
By brutally squashing the uncoordinated rebellion, they sent a strong message. Unless, a big chunk of India made a coordinated attack, the company could just keep sending a few thousand strong warriors to squash rebelling everywhere.
This is where Mahatma's genius foiled British plan. Instead of the Marathis, Bengalis and Tamils attacking the British rule in a sporadic way, he made them act coordinated at the same time. When whole of India launched a coordinated attack, there was little the British army could do. He also removed the fear that was keeping the commoners chained.