Class 8 - The Colonial Era in India

The ‘Age of Colonialism’

usually refers to Europe’s expansion from the 15th century onward

Indian goods

spices, cotton, ivory, gems, sandalwood, teakwood, wootz steel, among other commodities - were highly sought after in the Mediterranean world

Economist Angus Maddison

suggest that India contributed at least one-fourth of the world GDP during this whole period (same as china)

The Portuguese Vasco da Gama

arrived at Kappad (near Kozhikode in Kerala) in May 1498
1st attempt failed to set relationships

The port town of Ullal (in present-day southern Karnataka)

Rani Abbakka I fought Portugese but lost

Rani Abbakka II

Created fireball of coconut and set fire on Portugese ships
Their stories remembered through
The Yakṣhagāna (a traditional form of dance-drama)

Vasco da Gama second voyage

four years later, he seized, tortured and killed Indian merchants, and bombarded Calicut from the sea

The Portugese captured

Goa in 1510 and became their capital
Malabar and Coromandel coasts also captured

The Portuguese implemented

a system known as cartaz(pass)
allowed them to monopolise the spice trade between India and Europe for nearly a century

Inquisition

Portugese established the Inquisition in Goa 1560 (Abolished in 1812)

The Dutch

arrived in India in the early 17th century
Focused only in commercial (maily spices)

The Dutch East India Company

post on west coast, Surat, Bharuch, Cochin (Kochi), and on the east coast Nagapattinam and Masulipatnam
Most significant was Malabar region of Kerala, where they displaced the Portuguese from several trading centres

Dutch Defeat

at the Battle of Colachel in 1741 against King Marthanda Varma of Travancore

Travancore kingdom

led by King Marthanda Varma defeated Dutch in both land and sea in 1741
Present day kerala

The French entered

First trading post at Surat in 1668
Pondicherry in 1674

Dupleix

Governor-General of French India from 1742 to 1754
Captured madaras in 1746
colonial strategies later be adopted by the British

Dupleix Strategies

trained Indian soldiers in European military known as sepoy
indirect rule through puppet Indian rulers

Carnatic Wars

1746–1763
between Britain and France
French ultimately lost and limited to pondicherry and few other enclave

Vedapurishwaran temple

destroyed by french in 1748 because Dupleix wife and jesuit priest told him to do it

The English East India Company

Established in 1600
By a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth I

The British

first came 1608
Captain William Hawkins in Surat

The English East India Company

Set footholds in Surat, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta in 17th century for first time

The Battle of Plassey

In 1757 Between Siraj-ud-daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, and the East India Company officials led by Robert Clive

The Battle of Plassey Result

Mir Jafar, the Nawab’s military commander betrayed Nawab and become new Nawab of Bengal
East india company secured the right to collect revenue in Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha

Doctrine of Lapse

19th century
Princely state would be annexed if its ruler died without a natural male heir
disregarded the Hindu tradition of adoption
contributed to the 1857 Rebellion (Sepoy Mutiny)

Princely state

under indian king but had accepted British protection and guidance
There were over 500

Subsidiary alliance

installed a British Resident in the courts of Indian rulers to protect them against internal or external threats
Hyderabad was first 1798
This was called an empire on the cheap

Paradise on Earth

Robert Clive called Bengal Paradise on earth

Bengal Famine of 1770

Caused by East india company (Robert Clive) continuance on High tax during drought
Estimate 10 million (1/3 of people) Died

Famine of 1876–1878

affected the Deccan Plateau, Madras, Bombay, Mysore, and Hyderabad
Upto 8 million death

British free market policy

Government to not interfere with prices of grains even during famines

Lord Lytton 1876

During famine hosted a week long feast for 68000 officials

Famine Commissions

There were 12-20 famine happened during british rule
50-100 million deaths (nearly same as WWII)

Brooks Adams

US historian and political scientist
In 1885 he noted - East India Company didn't just trade, it exploited-taking taxes, resources, and wealth on a massive scale

Will Durant

US historian
Stated - the Industrial Revolution in Britain, was made possible by the stolen wealth from India

Books on British Loots

Dadabhai Naoroji - 1901 Poverty and Un-British Rule in India
Romesh Chunder Dutt - Economic History of India

Utsa Patnaik

Estimated British looted 45 trillion dollar in todays value from 1765 to 1938
13 times of britains GDP in 2023

Dadabhai Naoroji

The first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons
An elected lower house of the bicameral parliament of the United Kingdom

Decline of India’s indigenous industries

Because Exports of Raw materials and import of machine made goods at cheap prices by British

William Bentinck 1834

stated, The bones of the cotton weavers are bleaching the plains of India

Educational traditions in india

pāṭhaśhālās, madrasās, vihāras
British reports reported hundreds of thousands of village schools across India 1830

Macaulay's Minute of 1835

By Thomas Babington Macaulay
Also called Minute on Indian Education
advocated for the establishment of English as the medium of instruction for Indian education

Orientalist

A largely obsolete term to designate a scholar of the ‘Orient’, that is, regions from West Asia to the Far East. In India, Orientalists (now called ‘Indologists’) were often scholars of Sanskrit, Pali, Persian and other languages.

Macaulay's Minute of 1835

create a class of Indians who would be "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect
And to promote english literature and science

India’s vast railway network

Often cited as a colonial blessing - Lord Dalhousie
Designed primarily to move raw materials from the interior to ports for export and to distribute British manufactured goods throughout India

The first passenger train

1853
Between Bori Bunder (Mumbai) and Thane, covering 34 km

The first electric telegraph

Lord Dalhousie
1850 - first experiment Calcutta & diamond harbour (1851 first time used)
1854 - across india
1865 - first oversea
1902 - replaced by wireless system

British nicknamed india

The jewel in the crown of the British Empire

The Sannyasi-Fakir rebellion

One of the earliest organised resistance movements
in Bengal after the terrible famine of 1770
British called them bandits and defeated them

Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel Anandamath (1882)

Inspired by Sannyasi-Fakir rebellion
Contained vande mataram song

Tribal communities

British called them primitive
hundreds of tribal communities as ‘criminal tribes’, caused british to be unjustly harassed for decades

Kol Uprising

1831–1832, Chota Nagpur (Jharkhand)
The Kol tribes (Mundas, Oraons, among others) got defeated by British

Santhal Rebellion

1855 –1856
Santhal people Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal
Led by two brothers, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu
vowed to fight to the last drop of blood
Their villages got burned and thousands lost lives but inspired other tribes

The Indigo Revolt

1859–1862
European planters forced peasants to grow Indigo plants in northern bengal

The Great Rebellion of 1857

British Called it Sepoy Mutiny meaning British Army's Indian Soldiers rebellion against british

Vellore Mutiny

1806
Uniform regulations that violated the religious practices of sepoys
Sepoys seized the Vellore fort (Tamil Nadu)

How 1857 Revolt Spread

Mangal Pandey attacked British Soldiers at Barrackpore (WB)
Merut Sepoys killed British Soldiers and made Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader in Delhi

How 1857 Revolt Spread

sepoys capturing key cities like Kanpur, Lucknow and Jhansi
Kanpur - Nana Saheb massacred over 200 british civilian

British Response to 1857 Revolt

By capturing Delhi First
Great revolt Failed because sepoys lacked a unified command and strategy

1858

British Crown took direct control of india with statrt of Britsh Raj
British policies shifted from aggressive territorial expansion to consolidation of control

Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi

Assisted by the Maratha Tatia Tope, Nana Saheb’s military adviser

Begum Hazrat Mahal of Awadh -
Led the defence of Lucknow
Begum told indians to not belive in Victoria's
Proclamation in 1858

Sanskrit Translation to European Language

Charles Wilkins Translated Bhagwat Geeta to English in 1785 for first time

German philosopher Georg Hegel

The spread of Sanskrit studies and texts in Europe was like the ‘discovery of a new continen