Colonial India

Conflicts in Colonial India
Part of Age of Imperialism

A sketch depicting the meeting between the Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama and the Zamorin of Calicut, marking the advent of European colonialism in India
Datec.1498-1961
Location
Result

Independence of India

Territorial
changes
  • Eventual end of all of the sovereign Empires, Kingdoms and States after the Indian Rebellion of 1857
  • Partition of India (Post-1947)
  • Belligerents

    (Pre 1857) :

    British India
    Kingdom of France French India
    Dutch India
    Danish India
    Portuguese India
    (Post 1857) :
    British Raj British India
    French India
    Portuguese India
    (Post 1947):
    French India
    Portuguese India

    (Pre 1857) :

    Maratha Empire
    Oudh
    Mughal Empire
    Sikh Empire
    Mysore
    Bengal
    Travancore
    Jhansi State
    Rebel sepoy mutineers in 1857
    Various smaller kingdoms and tribes
    (Post 1857) :

    India Azad Hind
    Ghadar Party
    India Indian Nationalists
    Various Peasant and Tribal militias
    Supported by: Germany

    Empire of Japan Japan

    Italy

    Commanders and leaders

    Prominent leaders (Pre 1857) :

    British Raj Lord Linlithgow
    British Raj Lord Wavell
    Louis Alexis Étienne Bonvin
    François Baron
    José Ricardo Pereira Cabral
    Manuel António Vassalo e Silva
    (Post 1947):
    André Ménard
    Manuel António Vassalo e Silva  Surrendered
    Captain Virgílio Fidalgo  Surrendered

    Prominent leaders (Pre 1857) :

    India Subhas Chandra Bose
    Lala Har Dayal
    India Various Indian Nationalists and Peasant-Tribal leaders
    Supported by:

    Adolf Hitler
    Empire of Japan Hirohito
    Benito Mussolini
    (Post 1947):
    Jawaharlal Nehru
    Supported by:
    Francis Mascarenhas
    Com. L.B. Dhangar
    Raja Wakankar
    Nana Kajrekar
    Prabhakar Sinari

    Colonial India was the part of the Indian subcontinent that was occupied by European colonial powers during and after the Age of Discovery. European power was exerted both by conquest and trade, especially in spices.[2][3] The search for the wealth and prosperity of India led to the colonisation of the Americas after Christopher Columbus went to the Americas in 1492. Only a few years later, near the end of the 15th century, Portuguese sailor Vasco 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 in Calicut, which by then was one of the major trading ports of the eastern world,[4] he obtained permission to trade in the city from the Saamoothiris (Zamorins). The next to arrive were the Dutch, with their main base in Ceylon. Their expansion into India was halted after their defeat in the Battle of Colachel to the Kingdom of Travancore, during the Travancore–Dutch War on the hands of Marthanda Varma.

    Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other coastal powers from the empires of Europe to India. The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark–Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as the Maratha Empire became weakened after the third 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 ruler Tipu 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 the directly ruled British presidencies and provinces, contained the most populous and valuable parts of the British Empire and thus became known as "the jewel in the British crown".

    India, during its colonial era, was a founding member of the League of Nations, a participating nation in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936, and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945.[5] In 1947, India gained its independence and was partitioned into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, the latter of which was created as a homeland for colonial India's Muslims.[6][7][8]

    1. ^ Hindu Nationalism in India: Ideological corollaries. Deep & Deep Publications. p. 130. The RSS people also participated in 1954 in the liberation struggle of Nagar Haveli enclave from Portugal
    2. ^ Corn, Charles (1998). The Scents of Eden: A Narrative of the Spice Trade. Kodansha. pp. xxi–xxii. ISBN 978-1-56836-202-1. 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.
    3. ^ Donkin, Robin A. (2003). Between East and West: The Moluccas and the Traffic in Spices Up to the Arrival of Europeans. Diane Publishing Company. pp. xvii–xviii. ISBN 978-0-87169-248-1. 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.
    4. ^ "The Land That Lost Its History". Time. 20 August 2001. Archived from the original on 13 September 2001.
    5. ^ Mansergh, Nicholas (1974), Constitutional relations between Britain and India, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, p. xxx, ISBN 9780115800160, retrieved 19 September 2013 Quote: "India Executive Council: Sir Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Sir Firoz Khan Noon and Sir V. T. Krishnamachari served as India's delegates to the London Commonwealth Meeting, April 1945, and the U.N. San Francisco Conference on International Organisation, April–June 1945."
    6. ^ Fernandes, Leela (2014). Routledge Handbook of Gender in South Asia. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-90707-7. 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.
    7. ^ Trivedi, Harish; Allen, Richard (2000). Literature and Nation. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-21207-6. 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.
    8. ^ Gort, Jerald D.; Jansen, Henry; Vroom, Hendrik M. (2002). Religion, Conflict and Reconciliation: Multifaith Ideals and Realities. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-1166-3. 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.

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia

    Developed by Nelliwinne