India Under the Raj By 1942 when Gandhi launched his Quit India campaign the British Empire’s influence in India had existed for hundreds of years European interest in the region began back in the 1500s In the 1500s Muslim emperors called the Mughals ruled India By the 1600s Britain France and Portugal had set up trading posts and built forts around India’s coasts A trading company called the British East India Company represented the interests of the British Empire It gradually grew more powerful as the influence of the Mughals declined in the 1700s and as the many small states that made up India became more independent 1 In the early days Britain’s chief interest in India was trade not conquest taking over the country However the East India Company gradually came to collect taxes from Indian landowners and later it collected taxes more widely using force when taxes were withheld In 1757 Robert Clive of the East India Company defeated the ruler of Bengal in eastern India Many historians see this as the start of the British Empire in India 2 Rebellion and the Raj By the early 1800s the United Kingdom was the dominant European power in the region The East India Company continued to increase the size of its lands and influence But in 1857 UK interests received a setback A rebellion started among Indian soldiers called sepoys They refused to obey an order to use gun cartridges that they believed were greased with beef and pork fat This was contrary to the beliefs of India’s two main religions Hinduism the religion of Hindus and Islam the religion of Muslims The soldiers rebellion began near the city of Delhi and quickly spread across north-central India It took the United Kingdom a year to stop it The UK government now decided to take direct control of India The lands of the East India Company became British India The UK administration was called the Raj a Hindi word meaning rule
The subcontinent The British referred to India as the subcontinent The region included what is now Pakistan in the northwest Bangladesh in the east and also neighboring Burma In 1900 this vast region held about 292 million people who belonged to different cultures and had different religious beliefs Roughly 70 percent of the population were Hindus and 25 percent were Muslims There were also Christians Sikhs Buddhists and Jains 3 Many different languages were spoken throughout India The United Kingdom controlled about two-thirds of India directly British India was divided into 11 provinces each of which was ruled by a governor These governors reported to the UK monarch’s queen’s representative in India called the viceroy The remaining third of India was made up of over 550 independent princely states of varying sizes each with its own prince However most princes cooperated with the United Kingdom In 1876 the UK Parliament gave the UK queen Victoria a new title she became Empress of India to reflect the United Kingdom’s control over the country During the late 1800s the United Kingdom’s army in India mainly made up of Indian soldiers commanded by senior officers from the United Kingdom campaigned in neighboring Afghanistan and Burma bringing more land under UK control The British saw India as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire which was by then the largest empire in the world
This map shows India under the Raj British rule around 1850 Britain controlled about two-thirds of the Indian subcontinent at this time Life under the Raj A large network of people working in civil service jobs ran British India Officials from the United Kingdom brought their families to India and enjoyed a privileged lifestyle there These white men called sahibs enjoyed dining in clubs and joining in the occasional tiger hunt 4Their wives called memsahibs ran their households with the aid of numerous servants There was very little social contact between Indians and most whites Indians were barred from European clubs from top civil service jobs and from becoming army officers
The British King George V participated in this tiger hunt in India The white hunters mounted on elephants have killed three tigers The United Kingdom’s interest in India remained mainly commercial related to money The country grew wealthy by exploiting India’s natural resources The British set up tea coffee and cotton plantations and iron and coal mines in India They constructed railroads as well as telegraph and later telephone lines These improvements made it easier to export Indian resources such as minerals and food products India also became a major market for imported British manufactured goods such as glass and textiles This damaged India’s own glass and textile industries The British did not spend money on primary education or help India to industrialize 5 As a result the vast majority of Indians were uneducated and lived in poverty But the princely elite although a minority were well educated and some princes were very wealthy Birth of the independence movement Many Indians had resisted UK rule since the days of the East India Company In 1885 a group of Western-educated Indian lawyers and other professionals founded India’s first political party the Indian National Congress often referred
