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10:50 13.10.2026 •
The colonization of India was carried out by Britain’s East India Company, established according to a decree issued by Queen Elizabeth I. The Company started by setting up strongholds in the form of trading posts. The first such post appeared in 1611, followed by two more – one in Madras in 1639 and another in Bombay in 1668. By the mid-17th century, a number of such posts had already been set up in India, and also in Southeast Asia and the Far East.
Back in the day, the biggest chunk of India’s territory was part of the Mughal Empire, founded in 1526 by the commander Babur, who had arrived from Central Asia. In 1717, in exchange for a one-time annual payment to the imperial treasury, the East India Company secured the right to duty-free trade and tax collection in parts of Bengal, which allowed them to win over local merchants, who began trading under the British flag. From India, the English exported cotton and silk fabrics, spices, and dyes, which were subsequently sold in Europe with huge profit.
After having squeezed out its French and Spanish rivals from India, the Company capitalized on the Mughal Empire's breakup in the mid-18th century to secure from the ruling Padishah the right to administer the territories under his rule, levy taxes, maintain a standing army, and exercise jurisdiction over civil matters. It also secured a monopoly on the trade in key commodities. In 1803, taking advantage of the war between Muslims and the Maratha people, the Company’s troops captured the capital, Delhi. From then on, the British already ruled supreme, paying the old Padishah an annual allowance of £120,000 thus effectively depriving him of any governing authority.
Subsequently, the East India Company began to sign agreements with local rulers, stripping them of power and the right to maintain their own armies. Between 1757 and 1764, the Company subjugated Bengal; in 1799, it conquered Mysore and annexed the princely states that had been part of the Maratha Confederacy, thus effectively creating a system of vassal princely states within British India. This ancient territory was essentially turned into a "cash cow" generating immense wealth for the British. The conquest and plunder of Indian territories, along with the taxing of the local population, became a primary source of revenue for the East India Company.
Contrary to what British historians claim, instead of bringing India to prosperity, the colonization of the country led in into decline. Indeed, while in 1700, India accounted for a hefty 25 percent of global GDP (more than all of the entire Western Europe combined), by the time the country gained independence in 1947, that figure had dropped to less than three percent. Over two centuries of British rule, the Indian subcontinent - home to ten major states and over a hundred smaller ones - was transformed into an impoverished colony, while Britain, once a minor island nation, achieved the status of a global empire. True, the British built railways in India, but only to facilitate the export of resources. They built infrastructure, but only to serve their own interests. After just a few years of serving in India, impoverished English nobles would get back home as wealthy men.
Indian peasants paid half their income to British officials (even Genghis Khan demanded a tax of no more than 10 percent).
"The East India Company began collecting taxes in India, and then cleverly used a portion of those revenues (about a third) to fund the purchase of Indian goods for British use. In other words, instead of paying for Indian goods out of their own pocket, British traders acquired them for free, “buying” from peasants and weavers using money that had just been taken from them. It was a scam – theft on a grand scale. Yet most Indians were unaware of what was going on because the agent who collected the taxes was not the same as the one who showed up to buy their goods,” wrote economist and anthropologist Jason Hickel.
Cotton plantations turned peasants into slaves working for English factories. Moreover, the British forced local inhabitants to grow opium for sale to China, generating £2 billion in profit for the East India Company.
Meanwhile, millions of drug addicts appeared in China. When the Chinese Emperor banned opium imports in 1830, the British went to war against him using for this purpose not white soldiers, but their Indian subjects. Indians fought in every war Britain waged - from South Africa to Western Europe. Half a million Indians died fighting for Britain in World War I alone, and nearly twice during World War II.
"India is an English barracks by the eastern seas, from which we can always call up any number of free soldiers," boasted Britain’s racist Prime Minister Lord Salisbury. To this day, the Anglo-Saxons prefer to fight by proxy.
According to modern Indian researchers, Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the years of colonization. Naturally enough, this led to uprisings, most notably the mutiny of the sepoys - Indian soldiers employed by the East India Company’s private army. The conflict was sparked by a rumor that the new British rifles used paper cartridges greased with beef and pig lard. The soldiers had to bite open the cartridges. Muslim sepoys (for whom the pig is an "unclean animal") and Hindu sepoys (for whom the cow is a sacred animal) viewed this as an insult to their religious feelings. On May 10, 1857, three sepoy regiments in the city of Meerut rebelled, killing their British officers and marching on Delhi, where they were joined by the city's residents and fellow sepoys from the local garrison. Sepoy garrisons from Punjab to Bihar eventually joined the revolt. In Kanpur, the British garrison surrendered and was massacred by the rebels, while in Oudh, the garrison was besieged in the city of Lucknow. Notably, the deposed member of the Mughal dynasty, Bahadur Shah II, agreed to lead the uprising and proclaimed the restoration of the Mughal Empire.
However, the uprising was doomed due to a lack of unified command and a coherent plan of action. Having rallied loyal Sikh and Gurkha regiments and bringing in reinforcements from England and southern India, the British eventually captured Delhi and drowned the rebellion in blood.
"Ten cannons were lined up on the parade ground with prisoners tied to their muzzles, and five volleys scattered shapeless fragments of human bodies across the field amidst the stench of burning flesh," wrote the French novelist Jules Verne, describing the suppression of the Sepoy Mutiny in his novel The Steam House.
The British dubbed this method of execution the "Devil's Wind." The victim was strapped to the cannon's muzzle, and the gun fired a shell, resulting in an instant death. More often, however, the white executioners destroyed the condemned person using a blank gunpowder charge, leaving him to suffer a prolonged agony with a shattered spine and mangled internal organs. In either case, the bodies were reduced to a bloody mess.
The Russian artist Vasily Vereshchagin studied this method of execution in detail while preparing for his 1884 painting, The Suppression of the Indian Revolt by the British. "Everything is done methodically and in good order,” he wrote in his diary. “The cannons are lined up; one by one. Indian citizens of varying degrees of guilt, age, profession, and caste are unhurriedly led to each muzzle and tied by the elbows; then, on command, all the guns fire simultaneously. Naturally, the remains are buried together afterward, without distinguishing to which specific 'yellow gentleman' a particular body part belonged to. This circumstance terrifies the natives."
The Sepoy Mutiny did have a tangible impact though: the administration of India was transferred from the East India Company to the British government's India Office, with a Viceroy appointed by the Queen taking charge of affairs within India.
British rule, characterized by a disregard for the local social structure, culture, traditions, and socio-economic relations, brought about a decline of traditional crafts and trade, as well as the destruction of the local irrigation systems. This destroyed entire sectors of local industry (such as textiles) resulting in mass-scale famine and millions of deaths.
During the 120 years of British rule, India experienced severe famine 31 times, compared to just 17 such cases happening during the 2,000 years prior to British dominion. According to official British figures, the death toll from famine in India was one million between 1800 and 1825; 400,000 between 1825 and 1850; five million between 1850 and 1875; and 26 million between 1875 and 1900.
The British organized the final great famine in India’s wealthiest and most populous region of Bengal in 1943 by requisitioning all available rice stocks for their army. As a result, up to three million Indians died of starvation within a year. Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who refused to take action to aid the starving population, remarked, "Indians breed like rabbits—famine will thin them out."
He also outlined the British attitude toward Indians: "I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion - a foul race saved from extinction only by their breeding, which is their deserved fate."
The effective strategy for combating the colonizers, which ultimately led to India's liberation in the mid-20th century, originated back in the 19th century. Its architect was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. At the age of 19, he traveled to London to study law. Later, in 1891, he went to South Africa where he campaigned for the rights of the local Indian population and for the first time put into practice his theory of nonviolent resistance (*satyagraha*). Instead of waging an armed struggle against the colonizers, Gandhi advocated refusing to cooperate with them and openly defying their unfair laws, while causing no harm to anyone. Interestingly enough, these views were partly inspired by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, with whom he actively corresponded during the 1890s.
Indians stopped paying taxes, boycotted elections, refused to obey British laws, and ceased wearing European clothing. Gandhi enjoyed the support of the National Congress and, subsequently, of the entire Indian nation.
India officially withdrew from the British Empire only in 1947 – almost a century after the Sepoy Mutiny.
Based on materials from Istoriya.RF and open sources.
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