Refreshing to read someone on this topic with a taste for cool and objective enquiry and with the imagination to enable him to take multiple perspectives across time and space, instead of writers like Dalrymple or Tharoor who can’t resist polemicising their anachronistic moral judgments.
William Cameron
2 years ago
Having grown up in a West African Protectorate which went independent in the sixties . The older chaps there rued the day the British left and the inevitable despot eventually came to power.
Peter LR
2 years ago
I wonder how important the British presence in India was in helping prevent the Japanese takeover of India from 1942 onwards? They were eventually thrown out of SE Asia, but that seemed to leave the area wide open to Communist takeover. A Communist ruled India would make for a very different world order now and presumably no Pakistan or Bangladesh!
Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist leader, supported Germany. Many Indians in German PoW camps went over to Germany. Another alternative history in the making.
Chris Wheatley
2 years ago
The problem with history is that someone can read a thick book and pick out one page or one quotation which happens to suit their argument. I have done it myself and been reading something and had a ‘wow’ moment when the author said something which was what I also thought at the time.
Deconstruction came along at the end of the last century and suddenly we were looking at people on the other side of the battle: what about the indigenous people, what did they think? So, history has become fiction or conjecture and that was probably always the case.
If you see the British in the 17th and 18th century as improvers, then we improved India. If you see the British as destroyers, then we destroyed India. It is an individual choice.
See what you’re saying – but that’s a very postmodern take on history.
To paraphrase you – that’s “the problem with bad history”
History is not a science – it cannot be – but it should be an honest attempt to get as close to the truth as possible. It’s done through weighing up sources, evidence and trying to analyse them in the most honest fashion*. Historians (like scientists in this regard) who think a) or b) and then set out to prove it are poor historians and are not well-regarded. *in many cases modern history can rely on actual science, especially in archaeology. Through carbon dating, pollen records and other methods to find out precisely if something happened or didn’t.
Yes, thanks for trying to straighten me out. I guess that I change my mind on this one depending on my latest thoughts or discussions. Not a bad thing.
I agree with your comment. The article above adds more historical context that I think is absent from such ideological interpretive frameworks as post colonial ‘theory'(read worldview). Such frameworks work through a predetermined interpretive lens that was shaped by a pre existing neo marxist critical theory of oppressor/oppressed and a postmodern sense of ‘power’. These frameworks are the historical analysis tool.
Gathering evidence – documentary sources of the time – but also taking into account as much as possible in an analysis the attitudes and beliefs etc of those engaged in events. The Clive and Hastings events are apropos in this regard for we know the ethical and moral norms operating at the time and hence the intent and motivations involved.
Christopher Chantrill
2 years ago
Well, my source is Sir Penderel Moon’s British Conquest and Domination of India, 1200 pages, that I discovered in a bookstore in Delhi.
First of all, up until the 19th century conquest and domination were what rulers did. But then in 1825 some Brit said “you know, I don’t think these people like us.” Imagine that!
The point is that, up until that time, no lord or king or emperor ever worried about such a thing.
My other take is that, all along, the Brits in India just did the conventional-wisdom thing. By the mid-19th century they were all in for railways and irrigation.
But soon after the Mutiny — after they had taught the Indians about nationalism — they started to think that they would have to leave. But not yet, old chap.
Meanwhile, don’t delay getting up to Simla for the summer, unlike Mary Lennox’s silly mother in The Secret Garden.
Chauncey Gardiner
2 years ago
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
Prashant Kotak
2 years ago
The officers of the East India Company essentially turned out to be the ones most capable of taking advantage of the messy collapse of the Mugal empire. And they were the luckiest, in the sense of many events conspiring to create a series of pivotal moments in their favour. What is remarkable about the British is that this lucky streak was both deep and wide; it persisted over three centuries across many theatres around the world while they more often than not got the better of rivals, in Europe as well as far flung places. But then, that is the nature of lucky streaks.
There is a pretty direct parallel with the privateers of the EIC using the collapse of the Mugal empire for personal enrichment, and the Russian oligarchs doing the same on the back of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Simric Yarrow
2 years ago
In Empire of Cotton Sven Eckert makes a pretty watertight case for the way British capitalism was aided by British government policy in India. It’s disingenuous to suggest that India’s own industrial manufacturing was simply absent when the British arrived. The overwhelming reason for Europeans to go to India was the riches on offer there compared to Europe, particularly in terms of artisanal expertise! The emerging middle class would have dearly loved to develop further their own manufacturing capacity but this was prevented by British economic policy. Famines were caused by taxing Indians heavily on their own goods and pushing them into buying British ones; then taxing the peasants into growing cash crops rather than their own food (especially once the free labour cheap cotton of the American South was disrupted by the end of slavery).
And the high death rate, very tempting. Btw, to join the Indian Civil Service you had to speak at least five Indian languages. Luckily the ICS was very small, otherwise the brain drain would have been frightful.
Earl King
2 years ago
The only country in the world that comes close to the US for diversity of cultures and religions is India…..The fact that it did turn out a Democracy with an accompanying system of laws and courts should be celebrated. The facts that millions died during the transition from fiefdoms to Democracy is but a history of world as it threw off monarchies.
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Its all relative. Of course, the British were far better then what came before, and I am not talking about the Marathas who in their core territories were relatively well run and peaceful rulers, and ruled for just about a 100 years. The real issue for an India that was relatively advanced in terms of science and culture till the 11th-12th centuries, was several centuries of invasion and colonisation by a religion that (unlike the more relaxed and tolerant Brits), actively hated and loathed the “idol worshippers” and literally burned a civilisation down to the ground.
The problem with being ruled by an Empire such as Britain, is not that they “destroyed” India or anything. Its just that there was no representation or connection to the land, so for about a 100 odd years while an initially backward Japan modernised, British India remained stagnant in terms of per capita incomes, general development or education levels (10% or something in 1947?)
Of course, the other part of the problem was Anglicised, Socialism loving leaders post independence who wasted the decades following independence, and India fell further behind.
And in any case, the best part of Britain was not its empire. Its the spectacular progress in Science, culture, sports, everything that we take for granted as a modern society, driven to such a great extent by one tiny island.
Britain set up western places of learning from 1817 .
Britain set a system where entry and promotion was based upon exams- Indian Civil Service, Army, The Law , Medicine, The Police, Railways, Engineering, Universities, and Business which enabled a large professional middle class to develop. Nehru’s Father was a lawyer who sent him to Harrow who then read NaturalSciences at Cambridge and became a barrister. By 1947, there were Indians who were Brigadiers.
The Engineer Ardaseer_Cursetjee was elected elected Fellow of the Royal SocietyOn 27 May 1841, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardaseer_Cursetjee
Below is some of the education establishments set up in India
a. 1817 Presidency College founded in India.
b. 1821 Hindoo College , now known as Deccan College
c. 1830 Scottish church College
d. 1836 Government Science College. First degree in science offered in 1896.
e. 1847 Thomason College of Civil Engineering
1854 Public works office created and in 1870 the Royal Indian Engineering College
Knowledge is power and Britain was happy to transfer it’s technological knowledge to India by setting up colleges.
Howard Gleave
2 years ago
A very interesting read. I learned a lot. Thanks.
Anna Bramwell
2 years ago
According to a very interesting essay by Kipling, the British Radical MPs were working with the Congress movement in the late 19 th century. He commented that the Radicals should have worked with the Indian engineering class, not the clerks or civil service class, as with the latter independence would be coloured with their failings.
Refreshing to read someone on this topic with a taste for cool and objective enquiry and with the imagination to enable him to take multiple perspectives across time and space, instead of writers like Dalrymple or Tharoor who can’t resist polemicising their anachronistic moral judgments.
Having grown up in a West African Protectorate which went independent in the sixties . The older chaps there rued the day the British left and the inevitable despot eventually came to power.
I wonder how important the British presence in India was in helping prevent the Japanese takeover of India from 1942 onwards? They were eventually thrown out of SE Asia, but that seemed to leave the area wide open to Communist takeover. A Communist ruled India would make for a very different world order now and presumably no Pakistan or Bangladesh!
Chandra Bose, the Indian nationalist leader, supported Germany. Many Indians in German PoW camps went over to Germany. Another alternative history in the making.
The problem with history is that someone can read a thick book and pick out one page or one quotation which happens to suit their argument. I have done it myself and been reading something and had a ‘wow’ moment when the author said something which was what I also thought at the time.
Deconstruction came along at the end of the last century and suddenly we were looking at people on the other side of the battle: what about the indigenous people, what did they think? So, history has become fiction or conjecture and that was probably always the case.
If you see the British in the 17th and 18th century as improvers, then we improved India. If you see the British as destroyers, then we destroyed India. It is an individual choice.
See what you’re saying – but that’s a very postmodern take on history.
To paraphrase you – that’s “the problem with bad history”
History is not a science – it cannot be – but it should be an honest attempt to get as close to the truth as possible. It’s done through weighing up sources, evidence and trying to analyse them in the most honest fashion*. Historians (like scientists in this regard) who think a) or b) and then set out to prove it are poor historians and are not well-regarded.
*in many cases modern history can rely on actual science, especially in archaeology. Through carbon dating, pollen records and other methods to find out precisely if something happened or didn’t.
Yes, thanks for trying to straighten me out. I guess that I change my mind on this one depending on my latest thoughts or discussions. Not a bad thing.
I agree with your comment. The article above adds more historical context that I think is absent from such ideological interpretive frameworks as post colonial ‘theory'(read worldview). Such frameworks work through a predetermined interpretive lens that was shaped by a pre existing neo marxist critical theory of oppressor/oppressed and a postmodern sense of ‘power’. These frameworks are the historical analysis tool.
Gathering evidence – documentary sources of the time – but also taking into account as much as possible in an analysis the attitudes and beliefs etc of those engaged in events. The Clive and Hastings events are apropos in this regard for we know the ethical and moral norms operating at the time and hence the intent and motivations involved.
Well, my source is Sir Penderel Moon’s British Conquest and Domination of India, 1200 pages, that I discovered in a bookstore in Delhi.
First of all, up until the 19th century conquest and domination were what rulers did. But then in 1825 some Brit said “you know, I don’t think these people like us.” Imagine that!
The point is that, up until that time, no lord or king or emperor ever worried about such a thing.
My other take is that, all along, the Brits in India just did the conventional-wisdom thing. By the mid-19th century they were all in for railways and irrigation.
But soon after the Mutiny — after they had taught the Indians about nationalism — they started to think that they would have to leave. But not yet, old chap.
Meanwhile, don’t delay getting up to Simla for the summer, unlike Mary Lennox’s silly mother in The Secret Garden.
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
The officers of the East India Company essentially turned out to be the ones most capable of taking advantage of the messy collapse of the Mugal empire. And they were the luckiest, in the sense of many events conspiring to create a series of pivotal moments in their favour. What is remarkable about the British is that this lucky streak was both deep and wide; it persisted over three centuries across many theatres around the world while they more often than not got the better of rivals, in Europe as well as far flung places. But then, that is the nature of lucky streaks.
There is a pretty direct parallel with the privateers of the EIC using the collapse of the Mugal empire for personal enrichment, and the Russian oligarchs doing the same on the back of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In Empire of Cotton Sven Eckert makes a pretty watertight case for the way British capitalism was aided by British government policy in India. It’s disingenuous to suggest that India’s own industrial manufacturing was simply absent when the British arrived. The overwhelming reason for Europeans to go to India was the riches on offer there compared to Europe, particularly in terms of artisanal expertise! The emerging middle class would have dearly loved to develop further their own manufacturing capacity but this was prevented by British economic policy. Famines were caused by taxing Indians heavily on their own goods and pushing them into buying British ones; then taxing the peasants into growing cash crops rather than their own food (especially once the free labour cheap cotton of the American South was disrupted by the end of slavery).
And the high death rate, very tempting. Btw, to join the Indian Civil Service you had to speak at least five Indian languages. Luckily the ICS was very small, otherwise the brain drain would have been frightful.
The only country in the world that comes close to the US for diversity of cultures and religions is India…..The fact that it did turn out a Democracy with an accompanying system of laws and courts should be celebrated. The facts that millions died during the transition from fiefdoms to Democracy is but a history of world as it threw off monarchies.
Its all relative. Of course, the British were far better then what came before, and I am not talking about the Marathas who in their core territories were relatively well run and peaceful rulers, and ruled for just about a 100 years. The real issue for an India that was relatively advanced in terms of science and culture till the 11th-12th centuries, was several centuries of invasion and colonisation by a religion that (unlike the more relaxed and tolerant Brits), actively hated and loathed the “idol worshippers” and literally burned a civilisation down to the ground.
The problem with being ruled by an Empire such as Britain, is not that they “destroyed” India or anything. Its just that there was no representation or connection to the land, so for about a 100 odd years while an initially backward Japan modernised, British India remained stagnant in terms of per capita incomes, general development or education levels (10% or something in 1947?)
Of course, the other part of the problem was Anglicised, Socialism loving leaders post independence who wasted the decades following independence, and India fell further behind.
And in any case, the best part of Britain was not its empire. Its the spectacular progress in Science, culture, sports, everything that we take for granted as a modern society, driven to such a great extent by one tiny island.
Britain set up western places of learning from 1817 .
Britain set a system where entry and promotion was based upon exams- Indian Civil Service, Army, The Law , Medicine, The Police, Railways, Engineering, Universities, and Business which enabled a large professional middle class to develop. Nehru’s Father was a lawyer who sent him to Harrow who then read NaturalSciences at Cambridge and became a barrister. By 1947, there were Indians who were Brigadiers.
The Engineer Ardaseer_Cursetjee was elected elected Fellow of the Royal SocietyOn 27 May 1841,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardaseer_Cursetjee
Below is some of the education establishments set up in India
a. 1817 Presidency College founded in India.
b. 1821 Hindoo College , now known as Deccan College
c. 1830 Scottish church College
d. 1836 Government Science College. First degree in science offered in 1896.
e. 1847 Thomason College of Civil Engineering
1854 Public works office created and in 1870 the Royal Indian Engineering College
Knowledge is power and Britain was happy to transfer it’s technological knowledge to India by setting up colleges.
A very interesting read. I learned a lot. Thanks.
According to a very interesting essay by Kipling, the British Radical MPs were working with the Congress movement in the late 19 th century. He commented that the Radicals should have worked with the Indian engineering class, not the clerks or civil service class, as with the latter independence would be coloured with their failings.
Very nice informative essay, thank you.