ABSTRACT
Before we consider how the British conquered India and founded their own Indian Empire it is perhaps as well to consider in greater depth just what is meant by the ‘British.’ Table 4.1 provides a chronology of incidental events in three continents over a period of nearly three hundred years and is quite enough to suggest that any definition of ‘British’ must be a changing one. Not until 1707 was there even unity in Britain, and even then there was Bonny Prince Charlie’s rebellion yet to come. Elizabeth I’s England was a modernising state, and in common with other European ones, a state in which there was a growing and quite strong sense of national identity. It had a growing community of merchants and traders whose interests did not always coincide with those of the crown. In the seventeenth century conflict over religious matters and the relationship of the crown to parliament escalated to the Civil War, and for a time Cromwell’s Commonwealth supplanted the monarchy. After the Restoration the balance of power within the state had changed, and so had much of the financial administration. Throughout this period the trading companies of England, such as the East India Company, founded in 1600, and of other European states continued to grow and contest with each other across the globe. As late as 1695 the Scots founded their own East India trading company, but by 1707 the Act of Union created a unified Britain and a coalition of commercial interests. British and French interests in the new world clashed, and during what was effectively a war fought across the world (the Seven Years War 1756–63) fighting was seen in both Canada and India, in the former case between government armies, in the latter between the servants of rival companies. Victory in North America and the assertion of control over French-speaking Canada gave Britain an enlarged empire for a short time. The interests of the colonialists in what became the USA and those of the home government clashed, and after the War of Independence 2,500,000 settlers were no longer subjects of his Britannic Majesty. ‘New England’ defeated old England. By then British subjects in India had taken a firm hold on Bengal, but they were not colonists. They were traders, who had become in effect rulers under the pressured assent of and in the name of the Mughal emperor. Other princely courts in India also had their share of Europeans – free-booting adventurers retained as mercenary officers. A Chronology of Some Events in America, Britain, and India https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table">
America
Britain
India
1492
Columbus discovers the New World
1510
D'Albuquerque of Portugal takes Goa
1525
Babur wins at Panipat and founds Mughal dynasty
1558
Elizabeth I crowned
1586
Drake singes the King of Spain's beard
1600
East India Company founded
1605
Death of Akbar
1607
Jamestown settlement of Virginia colony
Virginia Company of London
1613
English settlers destroy French colonies
English receive firman from Mughals to trade - Surat founded
1620
Plymouth, MA founded
1632
Construction of the Taj Mahal starts; Portuguese driven out of Bengal
1639
Madras founded
1642
Start of Civil War
1659
Aurangzeb takes the throne
1660
Restoration, Charles II
1663
Carolinas settled
Charter for Royal Africa
1664
English annexe New Netherlands, rename New Amsterdam as New York
Si vaj i, the Maratha chief, sacks Surat
1668
Bombay acquired
1690
Calcutta founded
1694
Bank of England founded
1695
Scottish Africa and India Company
1700
250,000 settlers in Anglo-America
1707
Union of England and Scotland
Population of Mughal Empire 100,000,000 Death of Aurangzeb
1709
Abraham Darby smelts iron with coal in England
1711
South Sea Company
1713
Peace of Utrecht
1739
Delhi sacked by Persian Nadir Shah – who takes peacock throne
1756–63
Seven Years War
Seven Years War
Seven Years War
1757
Clive takes Bengal after Battle of Plassey
1759
Wolfe defeats Montcalm at Quebec
1761
Marathas and Afghans in mutual annihilation at Panipat
1773
Boston Tea Party
Regulating Act (of India); First Iron Bridge in Shropshire
1775
2,500,000 settlers
British population 8,500,000
1775
American Revolution
James Watts steam engine
1781
Cornwallis defeated by Washington at Yorktown
1784
India Act
1786
Cornwallis Governor-General; population of Calcutta 250,000
