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Colonial India was the part of theIndian subcontinent that was occupied by European colonial powers during and after theAge of Discovery. European power was exerted both by conquest and trade, especially inspices.[1][2] The search for the wealth and prosperity of India led to the colonisation of the Americas afterChristopher Columbus went to the Americas in 1492. Only a few years later, near the end of the 15th century, Portuguese sailorVasco da Gama became the first European to re-establish direct trade links with India by being the first to arrive by circumnavigating Africa (c. 1497–1499). Having arrived inCalicut, which by then was one of the major trading ports of the eastern world,[3] he obtained permission to trade in the city from theSaamoothiris (Zamorins). The next to arrivewere the Dutch, with their main base inCeylon. Their expansion into India was halted after their defeat in theBattle of Colachel to theKingdom of Travancore, during theTravancore–Dutch War on the hands ofMarthanda Varma.
Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other coastal powers from the empires of Europe to India. TheDutch Republic,England, France, andDenmark–Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As theMughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as theMaratha Empire became weakened after thethird battle of Panipat, many relatively weak and unstable Indian states which emerged were increasingly open to manipulation by the Europeans, through dependent Indian rulers.
In the later 18th century, Great Britain and France struggled for dominance, partly through proxy Indian rulers but also by direct military intervention. The defeat of the formidable Indian rulerTipu Sultan in 1799 marginalised the French influence. This was followed by a rapid expansion of British power through the greater part of the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century. By the middle of the century, the British had already gained direct or indirect control over almost all parts of India.British India, consisting of thedirectly ruled British presidencies and provinces, contained the most populous and valuable parts of theBritish Empire and thus became known as "the jewel in the British crown".
India, during its colonial era, was a founding member of theLeague of Nations, a participating nation in theSummer Olympics in1900,1920,1928,1932, and1936, and afounding member of the United Nations inSan Francisco in 1945.[4] In 1947, Indiagained its independence and waspartitioned into theDominion of India and theDominion of Pakistan, the latter of which was created as a homeland forcolonial India's Muslims.[5][6][7]
The first successful voyage to India by sea was byVasco da Gama in 1498, when after sailing around theCape of Good Hope he arrived inCalicut, now inKerala. Having arrived there, he obtained permission fromSaamoothiri Rajah to trade in the city. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, but an interview with the Saamoothiri (Zamorin) failed to produce any definitive results. Vasco da Gama requested permission to leave a factor behind in charge of the merchandise he could not sell; his request was refused, and the king insisted that Gama should pay customs duty like any other trader, which strained their relations. The ruler of theKingdom of Tanur, who was a vassal to theZamorin of Calicut, sided with the Portuguese, against his overlord at Calicut.[8] As a result, the Kingdom of Tanur (Vettathunadu) became one of the earliest Portuguese allies in India. The ruler ofTanur also sided withCochin.[8] Many of the members of the royal family of Cochin in 16th and 17th members were selected fromVettom.[8] However, the Tanur forces under the king fought for the Zamorin of Calicut in theBattle of Cochin (1504).[9] However, the allegiance of theMappila merchants in Tanur region still stayed under the Zamorin of Calicut.[10]
Francisco de Almeida was appointed Viceroy of India in 1505. During his reign, the Portuguese dominated Kochi and established a few fortresses on the Malabar Coast.[11] The Portuguese suffered setbacks from attacks by Zamorin forces inSouth Malabar; especially from naval attacks under the leadership of Calicut admirals known asKunjali Marakkars, which compelled them to seek a treaty. The Kunjali Marakkars were credited with organizing the first naval defence of the Indian coast.[12]Tuhfat Ul Mujahideen written byZainuddin Makhdoom II (born around 1532) ofPonnani in 16th-century CE is the first-ever known book fully based on the history of Kerala, written by a Keralite.[13][14][15] It is written inArabic and contains pieces of information about the resistance put up by the navy of Kunjali Marakkar alongside the Zamorin of Calicut from 1498 to 1583 against Portuguese attempts to coloniseMalabar coast.[15][13] In 1571, the Portuguese were defeated by the Zamorin forces in thebattle at Chaliyam Fort.[16]
ThoughPortugal's presence in India initially started in 1498, their colonial rule lasted from 1505 until 1961.[17] ThePortuguese Empire established the first European trading centre atQuilon (Kollam) in 1502. It is believed that the colonial era in India started with the establishment of this Portuguese trading centre at Quilon.[18] In 1505, KingManuel I of Portugal appointed Dom Francisco de Almeida as the firstPortuguese viceroy in India, followed in 1509 by DomAfonso de Albuquerque. In 1510, Albuquerque conquered the city ofGoa, which had been controlled byMuslims. He inaugurated the policy of marrying Portuguese men with native women who had converted to Catholicism, the consequence of which was a greatmiscegenation in Goa and other Portuguese territories in Asia. The first revolt against the Portuguese was theConspiracy of the Pintos in 1787.
For decades after, the Conspiracy was used as a stick to defame and denigrate Goan missionaries and priests in British India by their opponents, the Vicars Apostolic of the Propaganda party, Goans being of thePadroado party. The incident was used to represent the Goans to the British government and to the Christians in British India as untrustworthy, rebellious and willing to compromise with their own enemies (Tipu Sultan). This became Goa'sblack legend.
Abbé Faria teamed up with the revolutionaries of theFrench Revolution and participated along with the "juring" clerics in the Revolutionaries' brutal persecution of the Catholic Church in France and elsewhere. Two Pinto brothers Lt. Col Francisco and Jose Antonio joined the army of theMaratha Empire underBaji Rao II and fought against the British in theSecond Anglo-Maratha War andThird Anglo-Maratha War.[19][20]
While the revolt failed, Goans did achieve stronger forms of Government and when thePortuguese Constitution of 1822 was adopted, two native GoansBernardo Peres da Silva andConstâncio Roque da Costa were elected to the first parliament in Portugal, a practice that continued till theAnnexation of Goa in 1961
An account of this was done by the Portuguese civil servantJoaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara which is one of the major accounts of the Pinto Revolt and subsequently translated into English by Dr. Charles Borges.[21]Goa wasannexed by India on 19 December 1961.[22] Another feature of the Portuguese presence in India was their promotion of Catholicism by sponsoring missionaries from various orders, such as theJesuit missionarySaint Francis Xavier, who is revered among the Catholics of India.[23]
TheDutch East India Company established trading posts along different parts of the Indian coast. For some time, they controlled theMalabar southwest coast (Pallipuram,Cochin, Cochin de Baixo/Santa Cruz,Quilon (Coylan),Cannanore,Kundapura,Kayamkulam,Ponnani) and theCoromandel southeastern coast (Golkonda,Bhimunipatnam,Pulicat,Parangippettai,Negapatnam) andSurat (1616–1795). They conqueredCeylon from the Portuguese. The Dutch also established trading stations inTravancore and coastalTamil Nadu as well as atRajshahi in present-dayBangladesh,Hugli-Chinsura, andMurshidabad in present-dayWest Bengal,Balasore (Baleshwar or Bellasoor) inOdisha, andAva,Arakan, andSyriam in present-dayMyanmar (Burma). However, their expansion into India was halted, after their defeat in theBattle of Colachel to the Kingdom of Travancore, during theTravancore-Dutch War. The Dutch never recovered from the defeat and no longer posed a large colonial threat to India.[24][25]
Ceylon was lost at theCongress of Vienna in the aftermath of theNapoleonic Wars, where the Dutch having fallen subject to France, saw their colonies captured by Britain. The Dutch later became less involved in India, as they had theDutch East Indies (nowIndonesia).
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At the end of the 16th century, England and theUnited Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming privatejoint-stock companies to finance the voyages: theEnglish (later British) East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company, were chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. These companies were intended to carry on the lucrative spice trade, and they focused their efforts on the areas of production, especially the Indonesian archipelago the "Spice Islands", and on India as an important market for the trade. The close proximity of London andAmsterdam across theNorth Sea, and the intense rivalry between England and the Netherlands, inevitably led to conflict between the two companies, with the Dutch gaining the upper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguese stronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, but with the English enjoying more success in India, atSurat, after the establishment of afactory in 1613.
The Netherlands' more advanced financial system[26] and the threeAnglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left the Dutch as the dominant naval and trading power in Asia. Hostilities ceased after theGlorious Revolution of 1688, when the Dutch princeWilliam of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal between the two nations left the more valuable spice trade of the Indonesian archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles overtook spices in terms of profitability, so that by 1720, in terms of sales, the English company had overtaken the Dutch.[26] The English East India Company shifted its focus from Surat—a hub of the spice trade network—toFort St. George.
In 1757,Mir Jafar, the commander-in-chief of the army of theNawab of Bengal, along withJagat Seth and some others secretly working with the British, asked for their support to overthrow the Nawab in return for trade grants. The British forces, whose sole duty until then was guarding Company property,[citation needed] were numerically inferior to theBengali armed forces. At theBattle of Plassey on 23 June 1757, fought between the British under the command ofRobert Clive and the Nawab, Mir Jafar's forces betrayed the Nawab and helped them to defeat him. Jafar was installed on the throne as a British subservient ruler.[27] The battle transformed British perspective as they realised their strength and potential to conquer smaller Indian kingdoms and marked the beginning of the imperial or colonial era in South Asia.
British policy in Asia during the 19th century was chiefly concerned with expanding and protecting its hold on India, viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.[30] The East India Company drove the expansion of theBritish Empire in Asia. The company's army had first joined forces with theRoyal Navy during theSeven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: against theFrench campaign in Egypt and Syria, the capture ofJava from the Netherlands in 1811, the acquisition of Singapore in 1819 andMalacca in 1824, and theFirst Anglo-Burmese War in 1826.[31]
From its base in India, the company was also engaged in an increasingly profitableopium trade toChina, which had begun in the 1730s. This trade helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. The Chinese authorities banned the importation of opium, and in 1839, 20,000 chests of opium were confiscated and destroyed inCanton byLin Zexu. This led to theFirst Opium War, which was concluded in theTreaty of Nanjing, re-legalizing the importation of opium into China.[32]
The British had direct or indirect control over all parts of present-day India before the middle of the 19th century. In 1857, a local rebellion by a group ofsepoys escalated into theIndian Rebellion of 1857, which took six months to suppress with heavy loss of life on both sides; with British casualties numbering in the thousands and Indian casualties numbering in the hundreds of thousands.[34] The trigger for the rebellion has been a subject of dispute among historians. The rebellion, although short-lived, was triggered by attempts from the East India Company to expand its control in India. According to Olson, several reasons may have triggered the rebellion. For example, Olson concludes that the East India Company's attempt to annex and expand its direct control of India, by arbitrary laws such asDoctrine of Lapse, combined with discrimination in employment against Indians, contributed to the 1857 Rebellion.[35] The East India Company officers lived lavish lives, the company finances were in shambles, and the company's effectiveness in India was examined by the British crown after 1858. As a result, the East India Company lost its powers of government andBritish India formally came underdirect Crown control, with an appointedGovernor-General of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year in 1858. A few years later,Queen Victoria took the title ofEmpress of India.[36]
India suffered a series of crop failures in the late 19th century, leading towidespread famines that caused tens of millions of deaths in India.[37] Responding to earlier famines as threats to the stability of their control, the East India Company had already begun to concern itself with famine prevention during the early colonial period.[38] This greatly expanded during theRaj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to take an effect.[39]
The slow but momentous reform movement developed gradually into theIndian independence movement. During theFirst World War, the hitherto bourgeois "home-rule" movement was transformed into a popular mass movement byMahatma Gandhi, apacifist lawyer. Revolutionaries such asBagha Jatin,Khudiram Bose,Bhagat Singh,Chandrashekar Azad,Surya Sen,Subhas Chandra Bose differed from Gandhi in their use of violence during their campaigns against British rule. The independence movement attained its objective with the independence of Pakistan and India on 14 and 15 August 1947 respectively.
Following the Portuguese, English, and Dutch, the French also established trading bases in India. Their first establishment was inPondicherry on the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India in 1674. Subsequent French settlements wereChandernagore in Bengal, northeastern India in 1688,Yanam in Andhra Pradesh in 1723,Mahe in 1725, andKaraikal in 1739. The French were constantly in conflict with the Dutch and later on mainly with the British in India. At the height of French power in the mid-18th century, the French established several outposts in southern India and the area lying in today's northernAndhra Pradesh andOdisha. Between 1744 and 1761, the British and the French repeatedly attacked and conquered each other's forts and towns in southeastern India and in Bengal in the northeast. After some initial French successes, the British decisively defeated the French in Bengal in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and in the southeast in 1761 in theBattle of Wandiwash, after which the British East India Company was the supreme military and political power in southern India as well as in Bengal. In the following decades, it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control. The enclaves ofPondichéry, Karaikal, Yanam, Mahé, and Chandernagore were returned to France in 1816 and were integrated with theRepublic of India in 1954.[citation needed]
Denmark held severalfactories in India for more than 200 years, but the Danish presence in India was of little significance to the major European powers as they presented neither a military nor a mercantile threat.[40] Denmark–Norway established trading outposts inTranquebar, Tamil Nadu (1620);Serampore, West Bengal (1755);Calicut, Kerala (1752) and theNicobar Islands (1750s). At one time, the main Danish and Swedish East Asia companies together imported more tea to Europe than the British did. Their outposts lost economic and strategic importance, and Tranquebar, the last Danish outpost, was sold to the British on 16 October 1868.[citation needed]
TheSwedish East India Company (1731–1813) very briefly possessed a factory inParangipettai for about one month of 1733 beforebeing evicted by a combined Anglo–French force.[41]
TheRepublic of Ragusa (1358–1808) had a settlement inGandaulim (Ilhas) (Sau Brás) in Goa,[citation needed] where they built a replica ofSt Blaise's Church in 1605 dedicated to St Blaise (Sao Brás). As of March 2025, roughly 250 Goan residents gainedCroatian citizenship by proving lineage to the Croatian settlers. However, this path toEuropean Union citizenship is rarely pursued as birth certificates are required dating all the way back to the 1600s. It is far less burdensome for Goan residents to gain Portuguese (EU) citizenship, as Goa was aPortuguese colony as recent as 1961.[42][43][44]
TheAustrian colonisation of the Nicobar Islands (German:Nikobaren, renamed to theTheresia Islands [Theresia-Inseln]) involved a series of three separate attempts to colonize and settle the Nicobar Islands by theHabsburg monarchy, and later theAustrian Empire, between 1778 and 1886. During the period of Austrian colonisation, the Nicobar Islands were previously colonized by theDanish in 1756, but were abandoned due to multiple outbreaks ofmalaria.[45]
TheAndaman and Nicobar Islands werebriefly occupied by theEmpire of Japan duringWorld War II.[46][47][48]
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The wars that took place involving the British East India Company or British India during the colonial era:
The ultimate goal of the Portuguese, as with the nations that followed them, was to reach the source of the fabled holy trinity of spices ... while seizing the vital centers of international trade routes, thus destroying the long-standing Muslim control of the spice trade. European colonisation of Asia was ancillary to this purpose.
What drove men to such extraordinary feats ... gold and silver in easy abundance ... and, perhaps more especially, merchandise that was altogether unavailable in Europe—strange jewels, orient pearls, rich textiles, and animal and vegetable products of equatorial provenance ... The ultimate goal was to obtain supplies of spices at source and then to meet demand from whatever quarter.
Partition of colonial India in 1947 – forming two nation-states, India and Pakistan, at the time of its independence from almost two centuries of British rule – was a deeply violent and gendered experience.
In this introductory section I want to touch briefly on four aspects of this social and historic context for a reading of Sunlight on a Broken Column: the struggle for independence; communalism and the partition of colonial India into independent India and East and West Pakistan; the social structure of India; and the specific situation of women.
Partition was intended to create a homeland for Indian Muslims, but this was far from the case; Indian Muslims are not only divided into three separate sections, but the number of Muslims in India--for whom the Muslim homeland was meant--still remains the highest of all three sections.
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