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The Indian subcontinent had had indirect
relations with Europe by both overland caravans and maritime
routes, dating back to the fifth century B.C. The lucrative
spice trade with India had been mainly in the hands of Arab
merchants. By the fifteenth century, European traders had come
to believe that the commissions they had to pay the Arabs were
prohibitively high and therefore sent out fleets in search of
new trade routes to India. The arrival of the Europeans in the
last quarter of the fifteenth century marked a great turning
point in the history of the subcontinent. The dynamics of the
history of the subcontinent came to be shaped chiefly by the
Europeans' political and trade relations with India as India
was swept into the vortex of Western power politics. The
arrival of the Europeans generally coincided with the gradual
decline of Mughal power, and the subcontinent became an arena
of struggle not only between Europeans and the indigenous
rulers but also among the Europeans.
The British East India Company, a private
company formed in 1600 during the reign of Akbar and operating
under a charter granted by Queen Elizabeth I, established a
factory on the Hooghly River in Bengal in 1650 and founded the
city of Calcutta in 1690. Although the initial aim of the
British East India Company was to seek trade under concessions
obtained from local Mughal governors, the steady collapse of
the Mughal Empire (1526-1858) enticed the company to take a
more direct involvement in the politics and military
activities of the subcontinent. Capitalizing on the political
fragmentatian of South Asia, the British ultimately rose to
supremacy through military expeditions, annexation, bribery,
and playing one party off against another. Aside from the
superior military power of the British, their ascendancy was
fostered by the tottering economic foundations of the local
rulers, which had been undermined by ravaging dynastic wars
and the consequent displacement of the peasants from the land,
which was the principal source of state revenue.
Siraj ud Daulah, governor of Bengal,
unwisely provoked a military confrontation with the British at
Plassey in 1757. He was defeated by Robert Clive, an
adventurous young official of the British East India Company.
Clive's victory was consolidated in 1764 at the Battle of
Buxar on the Ganges, where he defeated the Mughal emperor. As
a result, the British East India Company was granted the title
of diwan (collector of the revenue) in the areas of
Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, making it the supreme, but not
titular, governing power. Henceforth the British would govern
Bengal and from there extend their rule to all of India. By
1815 the supremacy of the British East India Company was
unchallengeable, and by the 1850s British control and
influence had extended into territories essentially the same
as those that became the independent states of India and
Pakistan in 1947. |
