British East India Company example essay topic

India had always been a major attraction to merchants and invaders before it acquired its independence in 1947. It was due to its fertile land and other resources that have always been relatively cheaper than other countries of the world. What Europeans and other invaders found the most attractive were the various spices and tea produced in India. British East India Company was chartered in 1600 AD and it soon started trading with India. It did not have much influence over Indian policies in the beginning. However, the company soon evolved to the British Empire.

This brought a lot of major changes in all aspects of Indian people's lives. The British rule was both harmful and beneficial to India and it's people in many different ways. It is evidential from works of various historians that the British brought some major economic reforms while also deprived Indian people of many of their natural rights India had been ruled by a number of different emperors before the British Empire was formed in India. The Moguls were the last people that ruled India before the Europeans came. Portuguese were the first European invaders, then Dutch, and finally the British. The British were the most active in gaining excessive territorial control.

The original motive of other European invaders was just to trade and they were not interested in acquiring any territories. During the first half of seventeenth century, the British only traded like preceding invaders had done. However, in the later half, they became aggressively interested in acquiring territorial control. The East India Company became increasingly involved in the political affairs of India because it had at least as much financial resources and strong armies as the emperors had.

As a consequence, by the end of eighteenth century, the company had acquired Madras, Bombay, and Bengal. India's major proportion of its total population had always been consisted of farmers. The rest either actively made creative handicrafts or weaved cotton. The East India Company made huge profits by exporting these goods to a number of European countries. Before settling permanently, it fought with French invaders because their trading mechanisms conflicted with its own. In the later half of seventeenth century, the company had acquired significant political powers in some major tea, and cotton producing states of India.

As the time passed on, their authority grew. The company then started to work rather corruptly. It worked to terminate India's inter-Asia trading activities. It accomplished this by destroying India's pre-existing trading ships and forcing the Indian traders and merchants to shut down their factories. In effect, it intended to transform itself into a monopoly over India's trade. Their motif behind this was to generate huge revenues by setting their own prices for these precious goods produced by Indian people.

Since most Indian people worked on small farms, they were very poor. The pieces of land that they used to cultivate were so small that they rarely had good years. There was very limited amount of water available to these farmers. The major source of water was rain.

They only consumed what they produced by themselves. However, there was also barter exchange among them. There was some coin money to prove that money really existed but only few people actually used this coin money in their everyday life. The fate of the poor villagers, living off solely on the crops they cultivated, depended on the weather and political situation. Even if there had been a good weather, the government officials would take a more than fair percentage of their harvest as a way of taxation. Under the British rule, this tax was even larger than what the preceding rulers charged.

In the beginning of the growth of it's empire, the British government did nothing towards improvement of agriculture while it was aware that the poor farmers did everything by their hands with very limited water provided by nature. It really exploited the hard work done by these villagers by exporting the spices, tea, and handicrafts and made huge profits on them. All the revenue earned by exporting these goods went towards building stronger armies, compensating the officials and acquisition of even more territories. In the beginning of eighteenth century, the Company had also started to bring about improvements in the agricultural and economic aspects of Indian life. The company worked to improve the agriculture by setting up an irrigation department in Madras, which would provide ample water to the farmers to help in their cultivation. Canals on the two major rivers were also restored.

Railways, and hard roads and highways were built. As a result of all these improvements, the economic well being of Indian people greatly increased. Ironically, the population also increased due to better transportation. In 1854, a uniform postal system was developed and letters could be sent everywhere in the country. This was the onset of the development of communication system in the country.

The established government under the Company was very decentralized. There was almost no way the people could communicate with the government officials. The government under the Company comprised only of British people. Indians were not allowed to hold any administrative positions. In fact the corrupt government officials publicly segregated themselves from the Indian people. This was not an acceptable situation to most Indians.

In 1857, there were numerous rebellions all over the country against the East India Company's growing political influence. As a result, the Crown, or the Kingdom of England stepped in to organize a much more stable government. This had a favorable effect over Indian people. The Covenanted Civil Service, the highest administrative positions in the government, became available to Indian citizens. In the beginning of nineteenth century, it was considered that the major purpose of the government was to raise revenue and preserve law and order in the country. The government started to collect taxes from individual landowners.

This tax revenue was then used to economic development of the country. The cloth used to be weaved by hands and was very time consuming. Therefore, a number of mills and other industries, producing goods such as paper and leather goods, were opened up all over the country. Suez Canal was opened, making the trip to Europe much shorter than before. Telegraph communications were also developed. Some concentration was also given to the education system.

English was being taught in the schools. With all these improvement works, lives of an average Indian person had gotten a lot easier. In 1885, a National Congress was created in India, which gave voice to Indians. It took very much interest in the politics of the country. Feelings of nationalism were rising among the Indian people. As an Indian civil servant Henry Cotton had pointed out in his book", significant changes were taking place in India and a new nation was rising before their eyes.

Mainly as a result of British rule and especially because of the growth of English education, a feeling of nationality was fast developing in the country which needed only an organization to crystallize". While the British government opened some opportunities and made a lot of improvements within India, it tended to keep the Indians one level down from their highest level of satisfaction. Therefore, Indians wanted to have their country freed of the British rule. So, these incidences eventually led to the war of 1947 and the partition of India and Pakistan. Finally, India managed to develop a democracy, governed by no one else but just Indians. As we can now see that the British Empire transformed a country in many different ways.

On one hand, it harmed the Indian people and on the other hand, it helped them. Many educated Indians working as officials under British rule were loyal to British because they believed that the British Empire would open up India's window to the rest of the world and would bring back industrialization and sciences from the West. Indeed, whatever India stands today is partly due to the British colonization. Most anthropologists agree that if Britain had not come to India, it would never have had the opportunity to interact with other parts of the world. It also did harm too; there was a revolutionary war of 1947, in which thousands of people lost their lives. India obtained its independence from England.

However, we can still find various influences of the English. The education system still works the same way as the British had designed it. The kind of English taught and spoken there is called British English. Today, India has good relations with England and they still trade with each other.

Bibliography

Chaudhuri, K.N. The Economic Development of India Under The East India Company 1814-58.
London: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Mehrotra, S.R. India and the Commonwealth 1885-1929.
New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965.
Mab bett, I.W. A Short History of India. Australia: Cassell, 1968.