In the year 1700, India’s share in the world economy was at 25 percent. The British occupation and hostaging of the South Asian subcontinent over the following two hundred years would bring India to its knees, and it has yet to fully recover. The British saw India as an endless goldmine, that with proper strategy, could be milked for all of its resources. Unlike other invading warlords, the British sought to stay indefinitely. They knew the demand for quality Indian goods, and they were not going to let it go to waste.
The occupation of India by the British initially started with the aggressive demand for goods as started by the British East India Company. The British East India Company, or EIC, was founded in 1600 and was responsible for the colonization of many profitable places in Southeast Asia such as Hong Kong. India was a major exporter to Britain, with around 15 percent of British imports coming from the region. Although referred to as a company because its main goal was profit, the EIC controlled and operated its own army with forces totalling over 260,000 soldiers at its peak, double the size of the British army back in the west. It should be noted that many of these soldiers were Indians themselves.
By 1857, with the help of their massive army, the EIC began an invasion of East India, launched at the EIC’s base in Bengal. A rebellion against the EIC put a temporary halt on imperial affairs, which resulted in the deaths of 6,000 Europeans and over 800,000 indians.
In response, the British Parliament passed the “government of India act,” in 1858, essentially ending the EIC and transferring all power to the British government. This period, which lasted until the mid twentieth century, would be known as the British Raj.
The British were horrible to the Indian citizens during this period. The British parliament instituted a law that India could no longer trade with anyone except the British. Severing world trade was a knockout blow for India. Not allowing foreign exchange meant the British parliament had a monopoly over a world economy superpower, essentially allowing them to institute whatever policy made them the most money. One of their first acts was to hike tax rates through the roof. This monetary policy meant that Indians had less money, meaning they could not produce as much. When this was the case, and they obviously could not pay their taxes, the British would seize their property on the grounds of tax evasion. Many who refused to only sell to the British, or decided to under the table, were found out and killed. Skilled craftsmen were tortured and killed when they could not pay the exorbitant tax rates. Only 0.7 percent of the Indian population worked in the industrial field. The mass export of goods, especially food, meant crops were not ending up on Indian’s plates. Horrific famines occurred, which resulted in the estimated deaths of around twenty million people in the two hundred year occupation.