1. The British Rule of India

2. Here is a map of the British Empire
Here is a map of the British Empire. At its height it covered the entire world, as you can see from the areas in red, including the thirteen colonies in North America, much of Africa, the Australian continent. How was England able to maintain such control over so much of the globe?
The British Empire

3. The Devilfish in Egyptian Waters
In this image, England is shown as a huge devilfish, or some sort of octapus. Why did the artist chose to portray England in this way. What is the top hat for?
Britain’s vistory over France at the Battle of Trafalgar gave it a lead over other nations with regard to naval power. How does this cartoon show that control of the oceans is important?
A lot of the colonies in this cartoon were taken by England in order to maintain their power in the seas: Malta, Gibralta, Cyprus, for example. See how it is reaching out for Egypt in this cartoon. The reason they wanted Egypt was in order to secure the naval route to India.

4. How did the British rule India?
It wasn’t a sudden process
The British -
Took over from the declining Mughal Empire
A trading relationship at first
How did the British come to rule India. First off, it wasn’t a sudden process; it took a hundred years from the beginning of British entry into India in the mid 18th century (around 1750) until they finally had complete control is often marked as the date of full British control over India.
In 1526, Babur, the first of the Mughal Emperors invaded North India. At this time, India had already been under the control of Muslim rulers from Turkey for over 300 years. Babur began a dynasty that by the eighteenth century covered the areas of present day Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Afghanisthan. This is a very large area and the wealth it amassed attracted traders from Europe in the sixteent and seventeenth centuries. Including England. The East India Company was given a charter by Queen Elizabeth in 1600 for exclusive trade rights with India. And it was this trading company which eventually began the Indian take-over.
In the first hald of the eighteenth century, the Mugal dynasty began began to decline, leaving the region with no strong central authority. Instead there were a number of smaller kingdoms. Both the French and the British struggled for control over India, both wanted to fill the power vaccum left by the declinging Mughal empire. At first the relation was just one of Trade. The East India Company had rights over trade with India. So they would bring goods from India into Europe, and then England would pay silver to India. This was one of the reasons people were not happy with this trade relationship; because silver was leaving England and going to India. So the East India Company wanted to have more direct control over India, and there was a shift from trade domination to actual political domination.

5. Kicking India around
Kicking India around

6. How did the British rule India?
Began to take over taxation of people
Used the same system as the Mughal empire
Promised “protection”
In 1850: 300,000 men in army.
100,000 British men ruling over 200 million Indians

7. Two views of Indian Life
At first, British rule in India was in the hands of the private East India Company, whose purpose was just to carry on trade. But because of rivalry between England and France, the company began to sxtend its control over more and more of India, and then the British government took direct control over India in There was a case in which 100, 000 British soldiers were ruling a country of more than 200 million. Some of the officers in India were cruel, and some were honest and fair. But whatever the case, there was a big difference between the lives of the British in India and the lives of the native Indians, as you can see from these pictures.
Look at the contrast between these two pictures. You can see how the British did not try and change their lifestyle while they were living in India.
A weaver like the one in this picture wouldn’t have even benifited much from the trade agreements with England, becuase, if you know anything about the Industrial revolution in England, which was happening at this time, England was making its own textiles cheaply. So there was ne need for the British to buy the textiles from weavers such as this. And they imported their own cheaply made goode into India, putting weavers like these out of business

8. Keep this image of the weaver in mind
Keep this image of the weaver in mind. Weaving was a very important symbol for Mahatma Gandhi. I said how the British did not need to buy the cloth of weavers such as the one in this picture. Later it got even worse: they began to make Indians buy cloth from England, even though Indians could produce it cheaper themselves. Gandhi direcected his followers to weave every day--to make their own cloth.
We will talk about the same thing with the British salt taxes. They made it illegal for Indians to make their own salt from the sea. Instead the British said that Indians had to buy salt from government stores and pay heavy salt taxes to the British government.
Gandhi Spinning Cloth

9. The 1857 Rebellion Called the “Sepoy Rebellion”
Problem over loading bullets
Lasted for over a year
Indians rallied behind the aging Mughal emperor
This rebellion is often called the “Seypoy rebellion.” The Indians who were a part of the army—remember that Indians made up most of the army in India—revolted. Indian members of the army were called “sepoys.”
In 1857, a rumor spread among Hindu soldiers that the British were greasing their bullets with the fat of cows and pigs, the former sacred animals to Hindus and the latter unclean animals to Muslims. In order to load the bullets into these guns, you actually have to bite off the cap. So you would have contact with whatever substance the bullet is greased with.
Whether it was true or not, many saw it as a plot of the British to make them convert to Christianity, or just to pollute them in general. So the British officers lined them up and ordered them to load their guns. They imprisoned the ones who refused to do so. So the British officers really didn’t handle this well at all. Word of this spread from village to village in North India, and there was a full scale rebellion against the British. They marched to Delhi and rallied around the aging Mughal emperor, who was the supposed ruler of India, even though he didn’t really have any power. Remember I said that the Mughal empire was in decline. The British actually had all the power. This revolt spread around India, and lasted for a year.

10. Picture of Sepoy rebellion
A year-long rebellion against the British ensued. Although the Indian Mutiny was unsuccessful, it prompted the British government to seize total control of all British interests in India in 1858, finally establishing a seamless imperialism. Claiming to be only interested in trade, the Raj steadily expanded its influence until the princes ruled in name only.

11. From “Punch” Magazine: Benjamin Disraeli gives Victoria her new crown
So the British government decided that The East India Company had done a bad job of ruling India. The government officially took over. Queen Victoria officially became the Empress of India. You can seem in this cartoon tht she is trading in her own crown for an even better one. The person giving it to her is the prime minister of India. But he is dressed like a magician. I don’t know what the expression on ner face means. But she doesn’t seem to happy.

12. The Queen With Two Heads
“No, Benjamin. It will never do! You can’t improve on the old Queen’s Head!”
Here is another cartoon. A common name for a pub in India is “The Queen’s head.” Here you have Prime Minister Disraeli repainting the image over the pub, giving her and extra head: now she has one for Queen of England and another for Empress of India. The point of the cartoon is, why are you trying to improve on the queen? You cant make her any better. So the cartoonist thought that somehow it lessened the position of the Queen to give her direct control over India. Important to keep this in mind—not everyone in England thought this was the best idea.

13. What does the Indian have to be grateful for?
Honoring the empress
But the Empress did take control. And, the painter of the last comic aside, most thought it was a good idea. You can see that this picture was from 1858, right after the rebellion when the Crown took over India. What can you tell about this pucture? What does the Indian woman think of the Queen? What does the Queen think of her. It looks like she will protect India—help it. And it looks like the Indian woman is grateful.
What does the Indian have to be grateful for?

14. Who do you think the female figure stands for?
Justice!
But the memories of the 1857 rebellion could not die fast. There were stories of atrocities against the British commited by the Indians, and the British, in return, commited atrocities back. This cartoon portrays the British response to the supposed massacre of British civilians during the 1857 uprising.
Who do you think the female figure stands for?
Do you think the cartoon is a fair depiction?
What does the cartoon say about England’s attitude towards India? Race?

15. “I hope they understand them better than we did back then”
This picture is from forty years after the 1857 mutiny. This is the ghost of a British general. and he is saying “Hope they understand him better now than they did in my time”
What does the tiger stand for in this image? What point is the general trying to make?
India was under direct control of the British government for ninety years. But it was very hard to erase the memory of these bloody events, the war of How could the British trust these people. How could they give them weapons. How could they forgive them for the supposed slaughter of English women and children (which probably didn’t happen). And of course, how could the Indians forget the violence the British had committed, much of it against innocent Indians?

16. Now we are going to look at a poem by Rudyard Kipling
Now we are going to look at a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Kipling lived in India in the 19th century and published many versions of Indian stories that had been unknown outside India untill he published them. He is well known for writing The jungle Boook and other stories which are popular among children.
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, just as England had taken on the “burden” of ruling Inida. This was in 1899 at the close of the Philippine-American War The United States Senate had just signed a treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. So in this poem he is making a direct call to the United states to take up what he calls “The White Man’s Burden.” The United States has just taken over the Phillapenes, so he wants them to develop the Phillapenes, just as the British have developed India.
Rudyard Kipling

17. The White Man’s Burden By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

18. Take up the White Man's burden And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
1. According to Kipling, and in your own words, what was the "White Man’s Burden"?
2. What reward did Kipling suggest the "White Man" gets for carrying his "burden"?
3. Who did Kipling think would read his poem? What do you think that this audience might have said in response to it?
4.How do you feel about the poem? If you were a citizen of a colonized territory, how would you respond to Kipling?

19. Kipling’s “White Man’s Burden”
According to Kipling, and in your own words, what was the "White Man’s Burden"?
What reward did Kipling suggest the "White Man" gets for carrying his "burden"?
Who did Kipling think would read his poem? What do you think that this audience might have said in response to it?
How do you feel about the poem? If you were a citizen of a colonized territory, how would you respond to Kipling?

20. United Stated Senator Albert J. Beveridge, 1899
“Mr. President God has not prepared the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns He has made us adepts in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America The Philippines are ours forever. We will not repudiate our duty in the archipelago. We will not abandon our opportunity in the Orient. We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world.”
Kipling wrote this poem for the United States. We had just taken the Phillipenes from the Spanish in the Spanish American War. There was a debate over what do to with them.
Eventually President William McKinley also decided to keep the Philippines, basically to keep them as a colony just as Britain kept Inida. The result was a three-year conflict called the "Philippine Insurrection." ( ) It was a dirty guerrilla war in a jungle setting, much like the war America would fight in Vietnam seventy years later.
The violence started when American troops fired on a man crossing into American territory in the Phillapenes. President McKinley told reporters that (quote) “insurgents had attacked Manila” in order to justify the violent American response. Even though this was not really the truth. Since he lied about the actions of the so-called insurgents in the Phillapenes, Americans felt that it was justifiable for America to take over the Philapenes.
One U.S. Senetor argued for the God-given right America had to rule the Phillapenes.
United Stated Senator Albert J. Beveridge, 1899

21. Areas under British control 1836

22. Areas under British control 1857

23. Areas under British control 1919-1947