goldenkicksbook t1_iu2igo2 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 1:51 AM

Reply to comment by toaster404 in Fall of the East India Company by Vailhem

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?

SoLetsReddit t1_iu2xhay wrote on October 28, 2022 at 3:53 AM

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

ArkyBeagle t1_iu4iqja wrote on October 28, 2022 at 2:24 PM

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."

SeleucusNikator1 t1_iu7nsdh wrote on October 29, 2022 at 4:35 AM

>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.

SeleucusNikator1 t1_iu7n7tu wrote on October 29, 2022 at 4:29 AM

> 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.