British Raj
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"British Empire in India" redirects here. For other uses, see British India (disambiguation).
"Indian Empire" redirects here. For other Indian empires, see History of India.
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| Imperial political structure comprising (a) Presidencies and provinces directly governed by the British Crown through the Governor-General of India; (b) Princely States, governed by Indian rulers, under the suzerainty of the British Crown exercised through the Governor-General of India[1] | ||||||
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| Anthem God Save the King/Queen | ||||||
The British Indian Empire in 1936.
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| Capital |
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| Languages |
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| Government | Empire | |||||
| Empress/emperora | ||||||
| - | 1858–1901 | Victoriab | ||||
| - | 1901–1910 | Edward VII | ||||
| - | 1910–1936 | George V | ||||
| - | 1936 | Edward VIII | ||||
| - | 1936–1947 | George VI | ||||
| Viceroy and Governor-Generalc | ||||||
| - | 1858–1862 | (first) Charles Canning | ||||
| - | 1947 | (last) Louis Mountbatten | ||||
| Secretary of State | ||||||
| - | 1858–1859 | (first) Edward Stanley | ||||
| - | 1947 | (last) William Hare | ||||
| Legislature | ||||||
| History | ||||||
| - | Indian Rebellion | 10 May 1857 | ||||
| - | Government of India Act | 2 August 1858 | ||||
| - | Indian Independence Act | 15 August 1947 | ||||
| - | Partition of India | 15 August 1947 | ||||
| Area | ||||||
| - | 1937 | 4,903,312 km²(1,893,179 sq mi) | ||||
| - | 1947 | 4,226,734 km²(1,631,951 sq mi) | ||||
| Currency | British Indian rupee | |||||
| Today part of | ||||||
| a. | Title existed 1876–1947. | |||||
| b. |
Ruled as Queen of the United Kingdom between 1858 and 1 May 1876.
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| c. | Full title was "Viceroy and Governor-General of India". | |||||
The British Raj (rāj, meaning "rule" in Hindi)[2] was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947.[3] The term can also refer to the period of dominion.[3][4] The region under British control—commonly called "India" in contemporary usage—included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom (contemporaneously, "British India") as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown. The region was less commonly also called the Indian Empire.[5] As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, a participating nation in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936, and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.[6]
The system of governance was instituted in 1858, when the rule of the British East India Company was transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria[7](and who, in 1876, was proclaimed Empress of India), and lasted until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign dominion states, the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the eastern half of which, still later, became the People's Republic of Bangladesh). At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma was already a part of British India; Upper Burma was added in 1886, and the resulting union, Burma, was administered as a province until 1937, when it became a separate British colony, gaining its own independence in 1948.
Contents
[hide]- 1 Geographical extent
- 2 British India and the Native States
- 3 Viceroys
- 4 1858–1914
- 4.1 Aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857: Indian critiques, British response
- 4.2 Legal modernisation
- 4.3 Education
- 4.4 Economic history
- 4.5 1860s–1890s: New middle class, Indian National Congress
- 4.6 1870s–1907: Social reformers, moderates vs. extremists
- 4.7 Partition of Bengal (1905–1911)
- 4.8 1906–1909: Muslim League, Minto-Morley reforms
- 5 1914–1947
- 5.1 1914–1918: First World War, Lucknow Pact
- 5.2 1917–1919: Satyagraha, Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, Jallianwalla Bagh
- 5.3 1920s: Nonco-operation, Khilafat, Simon Commission, Jinnah's fourteen points
- 5.4 1929–1937: Round Table conferences, Government of India Act
- 5.5 1938–1941: World War II, Muslim League's Lahore Resolution
- 5.6 1942–1945: Cripps mission, Quit India Resolution, INA
- 5.7 1946: Elections, Cabinet mission, Direct Action Day
- 5.8 1947: Planning for partition
- 5.9 1947: Violence, partition, independence
- 6 Ideological impact
- 7 Economic impact
- 8 Famines, epidemics, public health
- 9 See also
- 10 Notes
- 11 Further reading
Geographical extent[edit]
The British Raj extended over almost all present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, with exceptions such as Goa and Pondicherry.[8] In addition, at various times, it included Aden (from 1858 to 1937),[9] Lower Burma (from 1858 to 1937), Upper Burma (from 1886 to 1937), British Somaliland (briefly from 1884 to 1898), and Singapore (briefly from 1858 to 1867). Burma was separated from India and directly administered by the British Crown from 1937 until its independence in 1948. The Trucial States of the Persian Gulf were theoretically princely states as well as Presidencies and provinces of British India until 1946 and used the rupee as their unit of currency.[10]
Among other countries in the region, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. Ceylon was part of Madras Presidencybetween 1793 and 1798.[11] The kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, having fought wars with the British, subsequently signed treaties with them and were recognised by the British as independent states.[12][13] The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a princely state after the Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861; however, the issue of sovereignty was left undefined.[14] The Maldive Islands were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965 but not part of British India.
British India and the Native States[edit]
Main articles: Presidencies and provinces of British India and Princely state
India during the British Raj was made up of two types of territory: British India and the Native States (or Princely States).[15] In its Interpretation Act 1889, theBritish Parliament adopted the following definitions:
(4.) The expression "British India" shall mean all territories and places within Her Majesty's dominions which are for the time being governed by Her Majesty through the Governor-General of India or through any governor or other officer subordinate to the Governor-General of India.
(5.) The expression "India" shall mean British India together with any territories of any native prince or chief under the suzerainty of Her Majesty exercised through the Governor-General of India, or through any governor or other officer subordinate to the Governor-General of India.[1]
In general, the term "British India" had been used (and is still used) to refer also to the regions under the rule of the British East India Company in India from 1600 to 1858.[16] The term has also been used to refer to the "British in India".[17]
The terms "Indian Empire" and "Empire of India" (like the term "British Empire") were not used in legislation. The monarch was known as Empress or Emperor of India and the term was often used in Queen Victoria'sQueen's Speeches and Prorogation Speeches. The passports issued by the British Indian government had the words "Indian Empire" on the cover and "Empire of India" on the inside.[18] In addition, an order of knighthood, the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, was set up in 1878.
Suzerainty over 175 princely states, some of the largest and most important, was exercised (in the name of the British Crown) by the central government of British India under the Viceroy; the remaining approximately 500 states were dependents of the provincial governments of British India under a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, or Chief Commissioner (as the case might have been).[19] A clear distinction between "dominion" and "suzerainty" was supplied by the jurisdiction of the courts of law: the law of British India rested upon the laws passed by the British Parliament and the legislative powers those laws vested in the various governments of British India, both central and local; in contrast, the courts of the Princely States existed under the authority of the respective rulers of those states.[19]
Major provinces[edit]
Imperial entities of India
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| Dutch India | 1605–1825 |
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| Danish India | 1620–1869 |
| French India | 1769–1954 |
| Casa da Índia | 1434–1833 |
| Portuguese East India Company | 1628–1633 |
| East India Company | 1612–1757 |
| Company rule in India | 1757–1858 |
| British Raj | 1858–1947 |
| British rule in Burma | 1824–1948 |
| Princely states | 1721–1949 |
| Partition of India |
1947
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Main article: Presidencies and provinces of British India
At the turn of the 20th century, British India consisted of eight provinces that were administered either by a Governor or a Lieutenant-Governor. The following table lists their areas and populations (but does not include those of the dependent Native States) circa 1907:[20]
| Province of British India (and present day territories) | Total Area in km² (sq mi) | Population in 1901 (in millions) | Chief Administrative Officer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assam (Assam) | 130,000 (50,000) | 6 | Chief Commissioner |
| Bengal (Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa) | 390,000 (150,000) | 75 | Lieutenant-Governor |
| Bombay (Sindh and parts of Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka) | 320,000 (120,000) | 19 | Governor-in-Council |
| Burma (Burma) | 440,000 (170,000) | 9 | Lieutenant-Governor |
| Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh) | 270,000 (100,000) | 13 | Chief Commissioner |
| Madras (Tamil Nadu and parts of Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka) | 370,000 (140,000) | 38 | Governor-in-Council |
| Punjab (Punjab Province, Islamabad Capital Territory, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh and theNational Capital Territory of Delhi) | 250,000 (97,000) | 20 | Lieutenant-Governor |
| United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand) | 280,000 (110,000) | 48 | Lieutenant-Governor |
During the partition of Bengal (1905–1911), the new provinces of Assam and East Bengal were created as a Lieutenant-Governorship. In 1911, East Bengal was reunited with Bengal, and the new provinces in the east became: Assam, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.[20]
Minor provinces[edit]
| Outline of South Asian history History of Indian subcontinent |
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In addition, there were a few minor provinces that were administered by a Chief Commissioner:[21]
| Minor Province of British India (and present day territories) | Total Area in km² (sq mi) | Population in 1901 (in thousands) | Chief Administrative Officer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ajmer-Merwara (parts of Rajasthan) | 7,000 (2,700) | 477 | ex officio Chief Commissioner |
| Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Andaman and Nicobar Islands) | 78,000 (30,000) | 25 | Chief Commissioner |
| British Baluchistan (Balochistan) | 120,000 (46,000) | 308 | ex officio Chief Commissioner |
| Coorg (Kodagu district) | 4,100 (1,600) | 181 | ex officio Chief Commissioner |
| North West Frontier Province (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) | 41,000 (16,000) | 2,125 | Chief Commissioner |
Princely states[edit]
Main article: Princely state
A Princely State, also called a Native State or an Indian State, was a nominally sovereign entity with an indigenous Indian ruler, subject to a subsidiary alliance.[22]There were 565 princely states when India and Pakistan became independent from Britain in August 1947. The princely states did not form a part of British India(i.e. the presidencies and provinces), as they were not directly under British rule. The larger ones had treaties with Britain that specified which rights the princes had; in the smaller ones the princes had few rights. Within the princely states external affairs, defence and most communications were under British control.[23] The British also exercised a general influence over the states' internal politics, in part through the granting or withholding of recognition of individual rulers. Although there were nearly 600 princely states, the great majority were very small and contracted out the business of government to the British. Some two hundred of the states had an area of less than 25 square kilometres (10 square miles).[22]
Organization[edit]
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Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (usually called the Indian Mutiny by the British), the Government of India Act 1858 made changes in the governance of India at three levels:
- in the imperial government in London,
- in the central government in Calcutta, and
- in the provincial governments in the presidencies (and later in the provinces).[24]
In London, it provided for a cabinet-level Secretary of State for India and a fifteen-member Council of India, whose members were required, as one prerequisite of membership, to have spent at least ten years in India and to have done so no more than ten years before.[25] Although the Secretary of State formulated the policy instructions to be communicated to India, he was required in most instances to consult the Council, but especially so in matters relating to spending of Indian revenues. The Act envisaged a system of "double government" in which the Council ideally served both as a check on excesses in imperial policy making and as a body of up-to-date expertise on India. However, the Secretary of State also had special emergency powers that allowed him to make unilateral decisions, and, in reality, the Council's expertise was sometimes outdated.[26] From 1858 until 1947, twenty seven individuals served as Secretary of State for India and directed the India Office; these included: Sir Charles Wood (1859–1866), Marquess of Salisbury (1874–1878; later Prime Minister of Britain), John Morley (1905–1910; initiator of the Minto-Morley Reforms), E. S. Montagu (1917–1922; an architect of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms), and Frederick Pethick-Lawrence (1945–1947; head of the 1946 Cabinet Mission to India). The size of the advisory Council was reduced over the next half-century, but its powers remained unchanged. In 1907, for the first time, two Indians were appointed to the Council.[27] They were K.G. Gupta and Syed Hussain Bilgrami.
In Calcutta, the Governor-General remained head of the Government of India and now was more commonly called the Viceroy on account of his secondary role as the Crown's representative to the nominally sovereign princely states; he was, however, now responsible to the Secretary of State in London and through him to Parliament. A system of "double government" had already been in place during the Company's rule in India from the time of Pitt's India Act of 1784. The Governor-General in the capital, Calcutta, and the Governor in a subordinate presidency (Madras or Bombay) was each required to consult his advisory council; executive orders in Calcutta, for example, were issued in the name of "Governor-General-in-Council" (i.e. the Governor-General with the advice of the Council). The Company's system of "double government" had its critics, since, from the time of the system's inception, there had been intermittent feuding between the Governor-General and his Council; still, the Act of 1858 made no major changes in governance.[28] However, in the years immediately thereafter, which were also the years of post-rebellion reconstruction, Viceroy Lord Canning found the collective decision making of the Council to be too time-consuming for the pressing tasks ahead, so he requested the "portfolio system" of an Executive Council in which the business of each government department (the "portfolio") was assigned to and became the responsibility of a single council member.[27] Routine departmental decisions were made exclusively by the member, but important decisions required the consent of the Governor-General and, in the absence of such consent, required discussion by the entire Executive Council. This innovation in Indian governance was promulgated in the Indian Councils Act 1861.
If the Government of India needed to enact new laws, the Councils Act allowed for a Legislative Council—an expansion of the Executive Council by up to twelve additional members, each appointed to a two-year term—with half the members consisting of British officials of the government (termed official) and allowed to vote, and the other half, comprising Indians and domiciled Britons in India (termed non-official) and serving only in an advisory capacity.[29] All laws enacted by Legislative Councils in India, whether by the Imperial Legislative Council in Calcutta or by the provincial ones in Madras and Bombay, required the final assent of the Secretary of State in London; this prompted Sir Charles Wood, the second Secretary of State, to describe the Government of India as "a despotism controlled from home".[27] Moreover, although the appointment of Indians to the Legislative Council was a response to calls after the 1857 rebellion, most notably by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, for more consultation with Indians, the Indians so appointed were from the landed aristocracy, often chosen for their loyalty, and far from representative.[30] Even so, the "... tiny advances in the practice of representative government were intended to provide safety valves for the expression of public opinion, which had been so badly misjudged before the rebellion".[31] Indian affairs now also came to be more closely examined in the British Parliament and more widely discussed in the British press.[32]
Viceroys[edit]
| Viceroy | Period of Tenure | Events/Accomplishments |
|---|---|---|
| The Viscount Canning[33] | 1 November 1858 – 21 March 1862 | 1858 reorganisation of British Indian Army (contemporaneously and hereafter Indian Army) Construction begins (1860): University of Bombay, University of Madras, and University of Calcutta Indian Penal Code passed into law in 1860. Upper Doab famine of 1860–1861 Indian Councils Act 1861 Establishment of Archaeological Survey of India in 1861 James Wilson, financial member of Council of India reorganises customs, imposes income tax, creates paper currency. Indian Police Act of 1861, creation of Imperial Police later known as Indian Police Service. |
| The Earl of Elgin | 21 March 1862–20 November 1863 | Dies prematurely in Dharamsala |
| Sir John Lawrence, Bt[34] | 12 January 1864 – 12 January 1869 | Anglo-Bhutan Duar War (1864–1865) Orissa famine of 1866 Rajputana famine of 1869 Creation of Department of Irrigation. Creation of Imperial Forestry Service in 1867 (now Indian Forest Service). "Nicobar Islands annexed and incorporated into India 1869" |
| The Earl of Mayo[35] | 12 January 1869 – 8 February 1872 | Creation of Department of Agriculture (now Ministry of Agriculture) Major extension of railways, roads, and canals Indian Councils Act of 1870 Creation of Andaman and Nicobar Islands as a Chief Commissionership (1872). Assassination of Lord Mayo in the Andamans. |
| The Lord Northbrook[35] | 3 May 1872 – 12 April 1876 | Mortalities in Bihar famine of 1873–74 prevented by importation of rice from Burma. Gaikwad of Baroda dethroned for misgovernment; dominions continued to a child ruler. Indian Councils Act of 1874 Visit of the Prince of Wales, future Edward VII in 1875–76. |
| The Lord Lytton | 12 April 1876 – 8 June 1880 | Baluchistan established as a Chief Commissionership Queen Victoria (in absentia) proclaimed Empress of India at Delhi Durbar of 1877. Great Famine of 1876–78: 5.25 million dead; reduced relief offered at expense of Rs. 80 million. Creation of Famine Commission of 1878–80 under Sir Richard Strachey. Indian Forest Act of 1878 Second Anglo-Afghan War. |
| The Marquess of Ripon[36] | 8 June 1880 – 13 December 1884 | End of Second Anglo-Afghan War. Repeal of Vernacular Press Act of 1878. Compromise on the Ilbert Bill. Local Government Acts extend self-government from towns to country. University of Punjab established in Lahore in 1882 Famine Code promulgated in 1883 by the Government of India. Creation of the Education Commission. Creation of indigenous schools, especially for Muslims. Repeal of import duties on cotton and of most tariffs. Railway extension. |
| The Earl of Dufferin[37][38] | 13 December 1884 – 10 December 1888 | Passage of Bengal Tenancy Bill Third Anglo-Burmese War. Joint Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission appointed for the Afghan frontier. Russian attack on Afghans at Panjdeh (1885). The Great Game in full play. Report of Public Services Commission of 1886–87, creation of Imperial Civil Service (later Indian Civil Service (ICS), and today Indian Administrative Service) University of Allahabad established in 1887 Queen Victoria's Jubilee, 1887. |
| The Marquess of Lansdowne[39] | 10 December 1888 – 11 October 1894 | Strengthening of NW Frontier defence. Creation of Imperial Service Troops consisting of regiments contributed by the princely states. Gilgit Agency leased in 1899 British Parliament passes Indian Councils Act 1892, opening the Imperial Legislative Council to Indians. Revolution in princely state of Manipur and subsequent reinstatement of ruler. High point of The Great Game. Establishment of the Durand Line between British India and Afghanistan, Railways, roads, and irrigation works begun in Burma. Border between Burma and Siam finalised in 1893. Fall of the Rupee, resulting from the steady depreciation of silver currency worldwide (1873–93). Indian Prisons Act of 1894 |
| The Earl of Elgin | 11 October 1894 – 6 January 1899 | Reorganisation of Indian Army (from Presidency System to the four Commands). Pamir agreement Russia, 1895 The Chitral Campaign (1895), the Tirah Campaign (1896–97) Indian famine of 1896–97 beginning in Bundelkhand. Bubonic plague in Bombay (1896), Bubonic plague in Calcutta (1898); riots in wake of plague prevention measures. Establishment of Provincial Legislative Councils in Burma and Punjab; the former a new Lieutenant Governorship. |
| The Lord Curzon of Kedleston[40][41] | 6 January 1899 – 18 November 1905 | Creation of the North West Frontier Province under a Chief Commissioner (1901). Indian famine of 1899–1900. Return of the bubonic plague, 1 million deaths Financial Reform Act of 1899; Gold Reserve Fund created for India. Punjab Land Alienation Act Inauguration of Department (now Ministry) of Commerce and Industry. Death of Queen Victoria (1901); dedication of the Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta as a national gallery of Indian antiquities, art, and history. Coronation Durbar in Delhi (1903); Edward VII (in absentia) proclaimed Emperor of India. Francis Younghusband's British expedition to Tibet (1903–04) North-Western Provinces (previously Ceded and Conquered Provinces) and Oudh renamed United Provinces in 1904 Reorganisation of Indian Universities Act (1904). Systemisation of preservation and restoration of ancient monuments by Archaeological Survey of India with Indian Ancient Monument Preservation Act. Inauguration of agricultural banking with Cooperative Credit Societies Act of 1904 Partition of Bengal; new province of East Bengal and Assam under a Lieutenant-Governor.
Census of 1901 gives the total population at 294 million, including 62 million in the princely states and 232 million in British India.[42] About 170,000 are Europeans. 15 million men and 1 million women are literate. Of those school-aged, 25% of the boys and 3% of the girls attend. There are 207 million Hindus, and 63x million Muslims, along with 9 million Buddhists (in Burma), 3 million Christians, 2 million Sikhs, 1 million Jains, and 8.4 million who practise animism.[43]
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| The Earl of Minto[44] | 18 November 1905 – 23 November 1910 | Creation of the Railway Board Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 Indian Councils Act 1909 (also Minto-Morley Reforms) Appointment of Indian Factories Commission in 1909. Establishment of Department of Education in 1910 (now Ministry of Education) |
| The Lord Hardinge of Penshurst | 23 November 1910 – 4 April 1916 | Visit of King George V and Queen Mary in 1911: commemoration as Emperor and Empress of India at last Delhi Durbar King George V announces creation of new city of New Delhi to replace Calcutta as capital of India. Indian High Courts Act of 1911 Indian Factories Act of 1911 Construction of New Delhi, 1912–1929 World War I, Indian Army in: Western Front, Belgium, 1914; German East Africa (Battle of Tanga, 1914); Mesopotamian Campaign (Battle of Ctesiphon, 1915; Siege of Kut, 1915–16); Battle of Galliopoli, 1915–16 Passage of Defence of India Act 1915 |
| The Lord Chelmsford | 4 April 1916 – 2 April 1921 | Indian Army in: Mesopotamian Campaign (Fall of Baghdad, 1917); Sinai and Palestine Campaign (Battle of Megiddo, 1918) Passage of Rowlatt Act, 1919 Government of India Act 1919 (also Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, 1919 Third Anglo-Afghan War, 1919 University of Rangoon established in 1920. |
| The Earl of Reading | 2 April 1921 – 3 April 1926 | University of Delhi established in 1922. Indian Workers Compensation Act of 1923 |
| The Lord Irwin | 3 April 1926 – 18 April 1931 | Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926, Indian Forest Act, 1927 Appointment of Royal Commission of Indian Labour, 1929 Indian Constitutional Round Table Conferences, London, 1930–32, Gandhi-Irwin Pact, 1931. |
| The Earl of Willingdon | 18 April 1931 – 18 April 1936 | New Delhi inaugurated as capital of India, 1931. Indian Workmen's Compensation Act of 1933 Indian Factories Act of 1934 Royal Indian Air Force created in 1932. Indian Military Academy established in 1932. Government of India Act 1935 Creation of Reserve Bank of India |
| The Marquess of Linlithgow | 18 April 1936 – 1 October 1943 | Indian Payment of Wages Act of 1936 Burma administered independently after 1937 with creation of new cabinet position Secretary of State for India and Burma, and with the Burma Office separated off from the India Office Indian Provincial Elections of 1937 Cripps' mission to India, 1942. Indian Army in Mediterranean, Middle East and African theatres of World War II (North African campaign): (Operation Compass, Operation Crusader, First Battle of El Alamein, Second Battle of El Alamein. East African campaign, 1940, Anglo-Iraqi War, 1941, Syria-Lebanon campaign, 1941, Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, 1941) Indian Army in Battle of Hong Kong, Battle of Malaya, Battle of Singapore Burma Campaign of World War II begins in 1942. |
| The Viscount Wavell | 1 October 1943 – 21 February 1947 | Indian Army becomes, at 2.5 million men, the largest all-volunteer force in history. World War II: Burma Campaign, 1943–45 (Battle of Kohima, Battle of Imphal) Bengal famine of 1943 Indian Army in Italian campaign (Battle of Monte Cassino) British Labour Party wins UK General Election of 1945 with Clement Attlee as prime minister. 1946 Cabinet Mission to India Indian Elections of 1946. |
| The Viscount Mountbatten of Burma | 21 February 1947 – 15 August 1947 | Indian Independence Act 1947 of the British Parliament enacted on 18 July 1947. Radcliffe Award, August 1947 Partition of India India Office and position of Secretary of State for India abolished; ministerial responsibility within the United Kingdom for British relations with India and Pakistan is transferred to the Commonwealth Relations Office. |
1858–1914[edit]
Main article: History of the British Raj
Aftermath of the Rebellion of 1857: Indian critiques, British response[edit]
Although the Great Uprising of 1857 had shaken the British enterprise in India, it had not derailed it. After the rebellion, the British became more circumspect. Much thought was devoted to the causes of the rebellion, and from it three main lessons were drawn. At a more practical level, it was felt that there needed to be more communication and camaraderie between the British and Indians—not just between British army officers and their Indian staff but in civilian life as well. The Indian army was completely reorganised: units composed of the Muslims and Brahmins of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, who had formed the core of the rebellion, were disbanded.[45] New regiments, like the Sikhs and Baluchis, composed of Indians who, in British estimation, had demonstrated steadfastness, were formed. From then on, the Indian army was to remain unchanged in its organisation until 1947.[46] The 1861 Census had revealed that the English population in India was 125,945. Of these only about 41,862 were civilians as compared with about 84,083 European officers and men of the Army.[47] In 1880, the standing Indian Army consisted of 66,000 British soldiers, 130,000 Natives, and 350,000 soldiers in the princely armies.[48]
It was also felt that both the princes and the large land-holders, by not joining the rebellion, had proved to be, in Lord Canning's words, "breakwaters in a storm".[45] They too were rewarded in the new British Raj by being officially recognised in the treaties each state now signed with the Crown.[46] At the same time, it was felt that the peasants, for whose benefit the large land-reforms of the United Provinces had been undertaken, had shown disloyalty, by, in many cases, fighting for their former landlords against the British. Consequently, no more land reforms were implemented for the next 90 years: Bengal and Bihar were to remain the realms of large land holdings (unlike the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh).[46]
Lastly, the British felt disenchanted with Indian reaction to social change. Until the rebellion, they had enthusiastically pushed through social reform, like the ban on suttee by Lord William Bentinck.[45] It was now felt that traditions and customs in India were too strong and too rigid to be changed easily; consequently, no more British social interventions were made, especially in matters dealing with religion, even when the British felt very strongly about the issue (as in the instance of the remarriage of Hindu child widows).[46]
Legal modernisation[edit]
Singha argues that after 1857 the colonial government strengthened and expanded its infrastructure via the court system, legal procedures, and statutes. New legislation merged the Crown and the old East India Company courts and introduced a new penal code as well as new codes of civil and criminal procedure, based largely on English law. In the 1860s–1880s the Raj set up compulsory registration of births, deaths, and marriages, as well as adoptions, property deeds, and wills. The goal was to create a stable, usable public record and verifiable identities. However there was opposition from both Muslim and Hindu elements who complained that the new procedures for census-taking and registration threatened to uncover female privacy. Purdah rules prohibited women from saying their husband's name or having their photograph taken. An all-India census was conducted between 1868 and 1871, often using total numbers of females in a household rather than individual names. Select groups which the Raj reformers wanted to monitor statistically included those reputed to practice female infanticide, prostitutes, lepers, and eunuchs.[49]
Increasingly officials discovered that traditions and customs in India were too strong and too rigid to be changed easily. There were few new social interventions, especially not in matters dealing with religion, even when the British felt very strongly about the issue (as in the instance of the remarriage of Hindu child widows).[46] Indeed, Murshid argues that women were in some ways more restricted by the modernisation of the laws. They remained tied to the strictures of their religion, caste, and customs, but now with an overlay of British Victorian attitudes. Their inheritance rights to own and manage property were curtailed; the new English laws were somewhat harsher. Court rulings restricted the rights of second wives and their children regarding inheritance. A woman had to belong to either a father or a husband to have any rights.[50]
Education[edit]
During the time of the East India Company, Thomas Babington Macaulay had made schooling a priority for the Raj in his famous minute of February 1835 and succeeded in implementing ideas previously put forward by Lord William Bentinck (the governor general between 1828 and 1835). Bentinck favoured the replacement of Persian by English as the official language, the use of English as the medium of instruction, and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers. He was inspired by utilitarian ideas and called for "useful learning." However, Bentinck's proposals were rejected by London officials.[51][52] Under Macaulay, thousands of elementary and secondary schools were opened though they usually had an all-male student body. Universities in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras were established in 1857, just before the Rebellion. By 1890 some 60,000 Indians had matriculated, chiefly in the liberal arts or law. About a third entered public administration, and another third became lawyers. The result was a very well educated professional state bureaucracy. By 1887 of 21,000 mid-level civil service appointments, 45% were held by Hindus, 7% by Muslims, 19% by Eurasians (European father and Indian mother), and 29% by Europeans. Of the 1000 top -level positions, almost all were held by Britons, typically with an Oxbridge degree.[53] The government, often working with local philanthropists, opened 186 universities and colleges of higher education by 1911; they enrolled 36,000 students (over 90% men). By 1939 the number of institutions had doubled and enrolment reached 145,000. The curriculum followed classical British standards of the sort set by Oxford and Cambridge and stressed English literature and European history. Nevertheless by the 1920s the student bodies had become hotbeds of Indian nationalism.[54]
Economic history[edit]
The Indian economy grew at about 1% per year from 1880 to 1920, and the population also grew at 1%.[55] The result was, on average, no long-term change in per capita income levels, though cost of living had grown higher. Agriculture was still dominant, with most peasants at the subsistence level. Extensive irrigation systems were built, providing an impetus for switching to cash crops for export and for raw materials for Indian industry, especially jute, cotton, sugarcane, coffee and tea.[56] India's global share of GDP fell drastically from above 20% to less than 5% in the colonial period.[57] Fact also remains that India has "third world" status after decolonising, compared to the way its riches and trade attracted European and Middle Eastern invaders and traders in the 18th century. Historians have been bitterly divided on issues of economic history, with the Nationalist school (following Nehru) arguing that India was poorer at the end of British rule than at the beginning and that impoverishment occurred because of the British.[58]
Industry[edit]
The entrepreneur Jamsetji Tata (1839–1904) began his industrial career in 1877 with the Central India Spinning, Weaving, and Manufacturing Company in Bombay. While other Indian mills produced cheap coarse yarn (and later cloth) using local short-staple cotton and cheap machinery imported from Britain, Tata did much better by importing expensive longer-stapled cotton from Egypt and buying more complex ring-spindle machinery from the United States to spin finer yarn that could compete with imports from Britain.[59]
In the 1890s, he launched plans to move into heavy industry using Indian funding. The Raj did not provide capital, but, aware of Britain's declining position against the US and Germany in the steel industry, it wanted steel mills in India. It promised to purchase any surplus steel Tata could not otherwise sell.[60] The Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO), now headed by his son Dorabji Tata (1859–1932), opened its plant at Jamshedpur in Bihar in 1908. It used American technology, not British[61] and became the leading iron and steel producer in India, with 120,000 employees in 1945. TISCO became India's proud symbol of technical skill, managerial competence, entrepreneurial flair, and high pay for industrial workers.[62] The Tata family, like most of India's big businessmen, were Indian nationalists but did not trust the Congress because it seemed too aggressively hostile to the Raj, too socialist, and too supportive of trade unions.[63]
Railways[edit]
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India built a modern railway system in the late 19th century which was the fourth largest in the world. The railways at first were privately owned and operated. It was run by British administrators, engineers and craftsmen. At first, only the unskilled workers were Indians.[64]
The East India Company (and later the colonial government) encouraged new railway companies backed by private investors under a scheme that would provide land and guarantee an annual return of up to five percent during the initial years of operation. The companies were to build and operate the lines under a 99-year lease, with the government having the option to buy them earlier.[65]
Two new railway companies, Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and East Indian Railway (EIR) began in 1853–54 to construct and operate lines near Bombay and Calcutta. The first passenger railway line in North India between Allahabad and Kanpur opened in 1859.
In 1854, Governor-General Lord Dalhousie formulated a plan to construct a network of trunk lines connecting the principal regions of India. Encouraged by the government guarantees, investment flowed in and a series of new rail companies were established, leading to rapid expansion of the rail system in India.[66] Soon several large princely states built their own rail systems and the network spread to the regions that became the modern-day states of Assam, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. The route mileage of this network increased from 1,349 kilometres (838 mi) in 1860 to 25,495 kilometres (15,842 mi) in 1880, mostly radiating inland from the three major port cities of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta.[67]
Most of the railway construction was done by Indian companies supervised by British engineers.[68] The system was heavily built, using a wide gauge, sturdy tracks and strong bridges. By 1900 India had a full range of rail services with diverse ownership and management, operating on broad, metre and narrow gauge networks. In 1900, the government took over the GIPR network, while the company continued to manage it.[68]During the First World War, the railways were used to transport troops and grains to the ports of Bombay and Karachi en route to Britain, Mesopotamia, and East Africa. With shipments of equipment and parts from Britain curtailed, maintenance became much more difficult; critical workers entered the army; workshops were converted to making artillery; some locomotives and cars were shipped to the Middle East. The railways could barely keep up with the increased demand.[69] By the end of the war, the railways had deteriorated for lack of maintenance and were not profitable. In 1923, both GIPR and EIR were nationalised.[70][71]
Headrick shows that until the 1930s, both the Raj lines and the private companies hired only European supervisors, civil engineers, and even operating personnel, such as locomotive engineers. The government's Stores Policy required that bids on railway contracts be made to the India Office in London, shutting out most Indian firms.[71] The railway companies purchased most of their hardware and parts in Britain. There were railway maintenance workshops in India, but they were rarely allowed to manufacture or repair locomotives. TISCO steel could not obtain orders for rails until the war emergency.[72]
The Second World War severely crippled the railways as rolling stock was diverted to the Middle East, and the railway workshops were converted into munitions workshops.[73] After independence in 1947, forty-two separate railway systems, including thirty-two lines owned by the former Indian princely states, were amalgamated to form a single nationalised unit named the Indian Railways.
India provides an example of the British Empire pouring its money and expertise into a very well built system designed for military reasons (after the Mutiny of 1857), with the hope that it would stimulate industry. The system was overbuilt and too expensive for the small amount of freight traffic it carried. However, it did capture the imagination of the Indians, who saw their railways as the symbol of an industrial modernity—but one that was not realised until after Independence. Christensen (1996), who looked at colonial purpose, local needs, capital, service, and private-versus-public interests, concluded that making the railways a creature of the state hindered success because railway expenses had to go through the same time-consuming and political budgeting process as did all other state expenses. Railway costs could therefore not be tailored to the timely needs of the railways or their passengers.[74]
Policies[edit]
In the second half of the 19th century, both the direct administration of India by the British Crown and the technological change ushered in by the industrial revolution had the effect of closely intertwining the economies of India and Great Britain.[75] In fact many of the major changes in transport and communications (that are typically associated with Crown Rule of India) had already begun before the Mutiny. Since Dalhousie had embraced the technological revolution underway in Britain, India too saw rapid development of all those technologies. Railways, roads, canals, and bridges were rapidly built in India and telegraph links equally rapidly established in order that raw materials, such as cotton, from India's hinterland could be transported more efficiently to ports, such as Bombay, for subsequent export to England.[76] Likewise, finished goods from England, were transported back, just as efficiently, for sale in the burgeoning Indian markets. Massive railway projects were begun in earnest and government railway jobs and pensions attracted a large number of upper caste Hindus into the civil service for the first time. The Indian Civil Service was prestigious and paid well, but it remained politically neutral.[77] Imports of British cotton covered 55% of the Indian market by 1875.[78] Industrial production as it developed in European factories was unknown until the 1850s when the first cotton mills were opened in Bombay, posing a challenge to the cottage-based home production system based on family labour.[79]
Taxes in India decreased during the colonial period for most of India's population; with the land tax revenue claiming 15% of India's national income during Mogul times compared with 1% at the end of the colonial period. The percentage of national income for the village economy increased from 44% during Mogul times to 54% by the end of colonial period. India's per capita GDP decreased from $550 in 1700 to $520 by 1857, although it later increased to $618, by 1947[80]
1860s–1890s: New middle class, Indian National Congress[edit]
By 1880, a new middle class had arisen in India and spread thinly across the country.[81] Moreover, there was a growing solidarity among its members, created by the "joint stimuli of encouragement and irritation."[81]The encouragement felt by this class came from its success in education and its ability to avail itself of the benefits of that education such as employment in the Indian Civil Service.[82] It came too from Queen Victoria's proclamation of 1858 in which she had declared, "We hold ourselves bound to the natives of our Indian territories by the same obligation of duty which bind us to all our other subjects."[83] Indians were especially encouraged when Canada was granted dominion status in 1867 and established an autonomous democratic constitution.[83] Lastly, the encouragement came from the work of contemporaneous Oriental scholars like Monier Monier-Williams and Max Müller, who in their works had been presenting ancient India as a great civilisation.[81] Irritation, on the other hand, came not just from incidents of racial discrimination at the hands of the British in India, but also from governmental actions like the use of Indian troops in imperial campaigns (e.g. in the Second Anglo-Afghan War) and the attempts to control the vernacular press (e.g. in the Vernacular Press Act of 1878).[81]
It was, however, Viceroy Lord Ripon's partial reversal of the Ilbert Bill (1883), a legislative measure that had proposed putting Indian judges in the Bengal Presidency on equal footing with British ones, that transformed the discontent into political action.[82] On 28 December 1885, professionals and intellectuals from this middle-class—many educated at the new British-founded universities in Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras, and familiar with the ideas of British political philosophers, especially the utilitarians assembled in Bombay. The seventy men founded the Indian National Congress; Womesh Chandra Bonerjee was elected the first president. The membership comprised a westernised elite, and no effort was made at this time to broaden the base.
During its first twenty years, the Congress primarily debated British policy toward India; however, its debates created a new Indian outlook that held Great Britain responsible for draining India of its wealth. Britain did this, the nationalists claimed, by unfair trade, by the restraint on indigenous Indian industry, and by the use of Indian taxes to pay the high salaries of the British civil servants in India.[84]
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