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toaster404 t1_iu157ks wrote

I first became acquainted with the EIC through the book "Indian Ocean Rovers" [see, e.g., https://www.ebay.com/itm/265792871787], belonging first to my grandfather and then my mother. As a rather precocious and curious autistic child, I spent hours reading through the exploits of the EIC ships and the pirates who pursued, and sometimes took, the EIC merchant ships. Days of cat and mouse, the long rakish hulls with sleek lateen sails getting daily closer. Trying to dodge them at night. The fearsome battles when the combatants finally closed.

It was only later that I started to understand that the Company was evil in design, evil in ends, evil in execution. That British India was effectively a slave state. The adventures and misadventures of the merchant ships were driven by astute and cunning manipulation of the people of an entire subcontinent with the goals of power and riches.

I plunged into other books. Stories of Cawnpore Well and the Black Hole of Calcutta - always written from the British perspective. Seemed to me, even as a child, that the violence and treachery began with the invaders.

Years later, the Smithsonian had an exhibit of early photography of India, with the British figuring extensively in the images, especially those in the military. The complete, absolute, insufferable arrogance and entitlement was clear, lording over all the heathens around them.

Yet somehow people from this subcontinent still get along with the British, possibly better than the other way around.

The EIC / British story of India deeply influenced me as a child, a child of almost pure Celtic origins, Welsh, English, and Irish, but not of the landed privileged class, rather of the oppressed working class. The vision presented in books and by my experience of the primary class divide showed me inequality, exploitation, and evil very early in my life, an older version of the world gone crazy in pursuit of power, while the soft green world of my summers was punctuated by the scars of Hilter's pursuit of land, power, and domination.

So much additional context and detail in the simple article referenced. Brought back so many memories of early reading, and put them in a broader context. Enjoyed very much.

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Fun_Story2003 t1_iu1dq9h wrote

>Yet somehow people from this subcontinent still get along with the British

anecdote but as a 20 something Indian,

nation view has been of increasing wealth. This wasn't the case pre 90s before borders were opened up for privatisation. So plunder of British times although witnessed directly through school trips to jallian wala bagh etc did feel horrifying, it's day to day effects "felt" mitigated & reversed already (far from the truth, no one knows where we'd be but hypotheticals). Besides, there's neighbours like Pak/China to actively hate in the present whom we have witnessed perform terror in our lifetime.

Parent's case is more pronounced, the deep rooted hatred is visible in conversation also with sadness & anger towards some of India's 1900s leaders who didn't optimize for country's well being over their short term pockets, agendas etc. They've gone through tougher times still reeling from aftereffects

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toaster404 t1_iu1oeym wrote

Thank you for your insights. Always the what might have been!

I gradually awakened as an elementary level student to wonderment that Britain assumed an absolute right to take over the world as almost vassals, to settle foreign lands with their own people, to plunder.

It started so long ago that I can't envision a path without that British imprint. Here I am, in the United States, a country settled through the pushing aside and extermination of peoples already here. What might they have become?

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goldenkicksbook t1_iu2igo2 wrote

Fascinating. Having both Indian and British parentage I’ve often felt conflicted about Britain’s history in India. On trips to India I’ve been struck by the fact that despite hundreds of years of British rule, India is still India. By that I mean Indian cultures, languages and religion seem on the face of it to have survived largely intact from British rule. Based on your reading do you think was this because the British were unable to change them or simply uninterested?

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SoLetsReddit t1_iu2xhay wrote

Isn’t the common thought that India changed the British more than the British changed India?

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ArkyBeagle t1_iu4iqja wrote

India looked more like a continental empire than a nation. The "nation" description was glued on in an "if all you have is a hammer" fashion. Given that, no wonder it had such momentum. How the Mughals came to such a power vacuum has to be a fascinating story.

I'd also modify the Maslow to "if all you have is logistics...." for India.

There's a quote from John Robert Seely - "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind". I always took that as "we really didn't know what we were doing."

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SeleucusNikator1 t1_iu7nsdh wrote

>There's a quote from John Robert Seely - "We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind". I always took that as "we really didn't know what we were doing."

That is a good way of looking at it. It's pretty much Capital Market expansion seeping into whatever cracks it found across the world. British merchants would find a neat port, and the navy and army would soon follow behind them (either to deny that area to European competitors, or to enforce the economic interests of the merchants through violence).

There was never any grand central plan or vision to it. No council of rulers sitting together in a room saying "we are going to forge a big empire!" Just the ruthless pursuit of financial interests leading them there over the years.

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SeleucusNikator1 t1_iu7n7tu wrote

> the British were unable to change them or simply uninterested?

Can be both. At the height of the empire, Britain's population was only 47 million, while India stood at 400 million. It's hard to really change people when they outnumber you 10 times over.

Besides the logistical barrier, the British Empire didn't need to change India, ruling India without changing up its cultures too radically was working out just fine. Why tear down already functioning structures of power when you don't need to? Many parts of India were ruled through local Indian rulers, who aligned themselves with the British Empire (be it for personal enrichment or simply accepting that they had no other alternative). Playing off pre-exisiting animosity also worked out great, it was much easier to rule over diverse people's who had a past history of fighting each other, than it is to rule over a newly unified homogenised culture.

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SeleucusNikator1 t1_iu7mlpr wrote

> Yet somehow people from this subcontinent still get along with the British, possibly better than the other way around.

What do you mean by "get along" in this context? Because obviously on an individual person to person basis, getting along is very easy and (sane) individuals won't let nationality get in the same way of cordial socialization.

There's also the fact that the British Empire is slowly fading into the past with every year that goes by, and the problems of the future are coming up. People won't dedicate too much energy towards hating a past foe when they literally have nuclear warheads pointed at the present one. It didn't take long for Poland's hate for Germany to be replaced with a hostility to Russia, because the Russians were/are much more recent.

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