Question

Answer the following question:

How was India brought under the reign of England?

Answer 1

The British came to India as traders. In the initial period, their main focus was to acquire trade concessions and privileges from the Indian rulers. However, they
subsequently fortified their trading posts in Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) and began to nurture imperial ambitions. The first region  that the British brought under their direct political control was Bengal. Later on, they expanded their power in South India, Punjab and other parts of the Indian Peninsula. To this end, the British used the devices of the Subsidiary Alliance system and the Doctrine of Lapse. In this way, between 1757 and 1857, the British brought almost the entire Indian subcontinent under their reign.

Answer 2

1. With the purpose of initiating business with India, the East India Company was set up by British in the year 1600.
2. In 1615, the East India Company was permitted to erect a business centre in Surat by Badshaha Jahangir.
3. The East India Company started to dabble in Indian Politics as the Mughal rule began to show the signs of decline with intra dynasty conflict cropped up after the death of Badshaha Aurangzeb.
4. In the Karnataka region, there sprung up a conflict between the bickering business affairs between England and France on one hand, and the politics at the court of the Nawab.
5.  There were three battles fought between England and France.
6. In the third battle, in the year 1760, England defeated the French army at Wandiwash in Tamil Nadu.
7. As a result, there came into being commercial domination of Britain and its imperial roots got deeper into the Indian soil.
8. The British victory in the battle of Plessey in 1757 and the battle of Buxar in 1764 paved a way for the inception of the English rule in India.
9. After the defeat of the Marathas, barring the Sikh region, there had not seen left even a single local ruler throughout the length and the width of India.
10. After the death of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839, the quarrels among the successors of the Sikh empire became an advantage for the British.
11. England won the vast region under the Sikh Empire between 1845 and 1849.
12. Lord Dalhousie undertook the mission of merging the local princely states into the British Raj by rejecting the adopted successors in Zansi, Nagpur, Satara, Sambalpur, and Udaipur.
13. Thus, in the hundred years between 1757 and 1857, England had almost the entire regions of India under its total governance.