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India's Five Greatest Empires of All Time. While most of India’s empires have been primarily land-based powers, the Chola Empire is unique in that it was a naval empire. by Akhilesh...
As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations, and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. [17] India was a participating state in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.
- Overview
- Background
- The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857
- Aftermath of the mutiny
British raj, period of direct British rule over the Indian subcontinent from 1858 until the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. The raj succeeded management of the subcontinent by the British East India Company, after general distrust and dissatisfaction with company leadership resulted in a widespread mutiny of sepoy troops in 1857, causin...
Though trade with India had been highly valued by Europeans since ancient times, the long route between them was subject to many potential obstacles and obfuscations from middlemen, making trade unsafe, unreliable, and expensive. This was especially true after the collapse of the Mongol empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire all but blocked the ancient Silk Road. As Europeans, led by the Portuguese, began to explore maritime navigation routes to bypass middlemen, the distance of the venture required merchants to set up fortified posts.
The British entrusted this task to the East India Company, which initially established itself in India by obtaining permission from local authorities to own land, fortify its holdings, and conduct trade duty-free in mutually beneficial relationships. The company’s territorial paramountcy began after it became involved in hostilities, sidelining rival European companies and eventually overthrowing the nawab of Bengal and installing a puppet in 1757. The company’s control over Bengal was effectively consolidated in the 1770s when Warren Hastings brought the nawab’s administrative offices to Calcutta (now Kolkata) under his oversight. About the same time, the British Parliament began regulating the East India Company through successive India Acts, bringing Bengal under the indirect control of the British government. Over the next eight decades, a series of wars, treaties, and annexations extended the dominion of the company across the subcontinent, subjugating most of India to the determination of British governors and merchants.
In late March 1857 a sepoy (Indian soldier) in the employ of the East India Company named Mangal Pandey attacked British officers at the military garrison in Barrackpore. He was arrested and then executed by the British in early April. Later in April sepoy troopers at Meerut, having heard a rumour that they would have to bite cartridges that had be...
The immediate result of the mutiny was a general housecleaning of the Indian administration. The East India Company was abolished in favour of the direct rule of India by the British government. In concrete terms, this did not mean much, but it introduced a more personal note into the government and removed the unimaginative commercialism that had lingered in the Court of Directors. The financial crisis caused by the mutiny led to a reorganization of the Indian administration’s finances on a modern basis. The Indian army was also extensively reorganized.
Another significant result of the mutiny was the beginning of the policy of consultation with Indians. The Legislative Council of 1853 had contained only Europeans and had arrogantly behaved as if it were a full-fledged parliament. It was widely felt that a lack of communication with Indian opinion had helped to precipitate the crisis. Accordingly, the new council of 1861 was given an Indian-nominated element. The educational and public works programs (roads, railways, telegraphs, and irrigation) continued with little interruption; in fact, some were stimulated by the thought of their value for the transport of troops in a crisis. But insensitive British-imposed social measures that affected Hindu society came to an abrupt end.
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Finally, there was the effect of the mutiny on the people of India themselves. Traditional society had made its protest against the incoming alien influences, and it had failed. The princes and other natural leaders had either held aloof from the mutiny or had proved, for the most part, incompetent. From this time all serious hope of a revival of the past or an exclusion of the West diminished. The traditional structure of Indian society began to break down and was eventually superseded by a Westernized class system, from which emerged a strong middle class with a heightened sense of Indian nationalism.
(For more on the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, see also Indian Mutiny and the discussion of the mutiny in India.)
List of Hindu empires and dynasties. The following list enumerates Hindu monarchies in chronological order of establishment dates. These monarchies were widespread in South Asia since about 1500 BC, [1] went into slow decline in the medieval times, with most gone by the end of the 17th century, although the last one, the Kingdom of Nepal ...
Empire Or DynastyEstablishedDisestablishedCapital (s)1900 BCE [citation needed]380 BCEĀsandīvat, Hastinapura, Indraprastha1700 BCE [citation needed]682 BCE [citation needed]1400 BCE [citation needed]841 BCE [citation needed]Pashupatinath Temple, Gaushala, ...1280 BCE [citation needed]345 BCE4 days ago · New Delhi. Population: (2024 est.) 1,384,380,000. Currency Exchange Rate: 1 USD equals 83.492 Indian rupee. Head Of State: President: Droupadi Murmu. On the Web:
Jan 28, 2020 · Also, by 1850, India had a population of at least 200 million. Britain, on the other hand, had no indigenous written language until the 9th century CE (almost 3,000 years after India). Its population was about 21 million in 1850.
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Apr 6, 2023 · The first decades of the seventeenth century represent just such a moment, when the Mughal empire in northern India was one of the wealthiest global powers, and England found itself a belated entrant into a world of trade and exchange in which others had already staked a claim.
