ABSTRACT
In the mid-eighteenth century there began a steady dismantling of the Mughal successor state system and its replacement by British domination. Beginning with the British conquest of Bengal in the 1750s and 1760s, it was a long and arduous process which was not completed until the conquest of Punjab and the final annexation of Awadh in the 1840s and 1850s. The strongest organized resistance to British expansion came from the great warrior states of Mysore, the Marathas and the Sikhs. But there was also a strong strand of collaboration by Indian social groups, especially merchant capitalists, who helped undermine the regional states which they had bankrolled in the past. Any interpretation of the transition to colonialism in India must address a set of related issues: the impetus behind European expansion; the reasons for colonial conquest in an era of decolonization and informal empire in other parts of the world; the basis of collaboration between the English East India company and Indian intermediate social groups; and, finally, the critical factors which brought the British success.
