Many believe that Britain’s conquest of India was a forgone conclusion. Images may arise of a technologically superior wealthy British empire taking on an India totally unprepared for European imperialism - in the same vein as the Scramble for Africa or the colonisation of the New World. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Western Europe was, at the start of interest in India, a poor, impoverished, backwater continent still dealing with the back-end of serfdom, feudalism and religious disagreements. England wasn’t even enormously powerful or wealthy by the standards of Western Europe - the Spanish, French and Dutch all caused serious problems for the English crown, and over the next few centuries the British isles would become a breeding ground for civil war, religious persecution and financial impoverishment.

By contrast, India was part of a large, wealthy, innovative empire. The remnants of the great Mongol Empire which first appeared in the 13th century still had a hold in the Indian subcontinent in the form of the Mughals, who boasted armies of the finest modern infantrymen carrying brand new flintlock muskets.

The population of India was significantly larger than that of the various Western European kingdoms. The Mughals had access to all sorts of exotic goods and spices, whilst Europe had very little in the way of unique trading goods. What’s more, the Indian subcontinent was rife with diseases which the locals had developed immunities to, but which could easily plague Europeans.

The idea, to someone in the 16th or 17th century, that England of all places would end up conquering the Indian subcontinent - that land which not even Alexander himself could take - would have been laughable.

And yet, it happened.

How?

European interest in India began when, following the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire prevented the Silk Road from accessing Europeans. This prompted European explorers to find alternative trading routes to the East. The most famous of these was, of course, Columbus’ discovery of the Americas, however, there were many voyages and the primary aim remained to travel east. By 1471, the Portuguese had discovered a trading network around the Ivory Coast. By 1488, Bartholomew Dias had sailed around the cape of Africa and opened up the Indian Ocean to exploration. Part of the way that Portuguese and Spanish explorers would protect their trading interests were by establishing ‘feitorias’ or factories, which were coastal fortifications that provided a safe haven for ships and secured the surrounding area. 1498 saw Vasco da Dama become the first European explorer to sail round Africa and land in India.

Despite being the first of the Europeans in the area, the Spanish and Portuguese would find India to be a tough nut to crack. Due to the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Spanish primarily remained focused on the New World, but Portugal began rapidly spreading coastal factories across the Indian Ocean, including controlling the vital straight of Malacca and also establishing a trading outpost in Goa.

The difficulty they found was that the Mughal Empire was powerful and rich, and they knew it. The Mughals took pride in the Europeans coming to India, seeing it as a sign of strength that they were forced to sail so far just to trade with them. They were very strict with their trading rights, only allowing the establishment of factories if terms suited then, and even with that everything was extremely regulated. 

They remained the power in the area, and the European factories were fundamentally established to protect against other Europeans - they saw little hope in trying to take on the might of India. Spain and Portugal ran up enormous deficits trying to trade with India. There were very few resources in Europe that the Indians wanted, and so they traded gold and silver from the new world in enormous quantities in exchange for spices, silks and other lucrative goods. These trade deals were extremely risky and heavily favoured the Mughals.

It was perfectly plausible for expensive colonial ventures to bankrupt entire European kingdoms and leave them vulnerable to conquest themselves. It was because of this that the Dutch would come up with a new idea, one that would allow them to dominate trade in the Indian Ocean: the establishment of limited liability companies.

The establishment of some form of limited liability company - a joint stock or charter company - allowed for European governments to invest enormous amounts in colonial ventures without the risk of bankrupting themselves. The Dutch VOC would use this to become extraordinarily wealthy in the spice trade of Asia - so wealthy, in-fact, that it is estimated that adjusted for inflation today they were worth somewhere between £6 and £9 trillion. That is, for reference, more than the combined GDP’s of the United Kingdom, Germany and France. 

The Dutch themselves, however, found India difficult to trade with. The Mughals were a serious pain to negotiate with and so the VOC found itself content with the spice islands of Indonesia, where the locals were comparatively easy to trade with. The Dutch VOC laid down the marker for that success could bring, but they were not the only limited liability company to form for the purposes of East Indian trade. Among others, the English (would become British with the 1707 Act of Union) East India Company (EIC) was founded in 1600.

The various spice islands of the East Indies, already under Dutch influence (Portugal had declined because of a combination of rampant inflation in Iberia due to all of the gold and silver being brought back from the Americas, and also the Iberian Union of 1580), were not available to the English who were forced to settle with Mughal India. The Mughals allowed the EIC to establish factories and trade, but under constant vigilance and with poor trading terms. Still, it became extremely lucrative for the EIC to have a presence in India.

The fundamental issue faced by the EIC was that the Mughals, being an empire built through racketeering, were perfectly willing and capable of committing atrocities if any Europeans crossed the line. The Siege of Bombay, for instance, saw the EIC refuse to accept a trade agreement drafted by the Mughals; the result was a year and a half long siege where many EIC employees and civilians were either killed, starved or died of plague. Following this siege, the EIC were forced to pay roughly £4 million adjusted for inflation, as well as pay local Indian merchants for seized ships and goods, admit complete fault and also prostrate themselves in the floor in front of the Mughal emperor, begging for forgiveness.

This willingness to use excessive force and commit atrocities, whilst effective at keeping the Europeans in-line at first, would prove to be the Mughal’s downfall. There was only so long the Europeans - who were becoming increasingly wealthy and powerful from their trading ventures - would allow these things to happen to them.

In 1756, the British EIC were in the middle of constructing a fort to protect against the very real threat of French EIC attacks, when the local Indian ruler demanded the British remove the fort. The British faltered, and in response the Indians attacked, taking (according to one account) 146 prisoners and putting them into a small 4.3x5.5m room with no light and one small window overnight. By the next morning, it was said that of the 146 prisoners, 123 had died of suffocation and heat exhaustion. This incident, known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, sent shockwaves across British society. 

The Indians had hoped to make it an example, like the Siege of Bombay. However, it had the opposing effect: This time, the British would not simply sit down and allow such an atrocity to happen to them. The EIC raised an army of roughly 750 British and 2,100 sepoy soldiers, under the command of Sir Robert Clive, and aimed to retaliate. At the Battle of Plassey in 1757, this army met a combined Indian-French force of roughly 20,000 cavalry and 30,000 infantry. The British won a decisive victory, in large part thanks to encouraging the commander-in-chief of the opposing army to defect, and were now able to essentially annex all of Bengal for the East India Company by choosing new local rulers.

This did not last, however. The local rulers eventually turned to the Mughals to get rid of the British for once and for all. At the Battle of Buxar, 17,072 EIC soldiers met with 40,112 Mughal and local Indian forces in what would end in another decisive British victory. Because of this, the local Indian ruler offered the British the right to become the Diwani - the tax collectors in Bengal and the surrounding area.

This gave the British de facto control over all of Bengal.

The Mughal model for staying in control was built upon protection. In-exchange for payment, the Mughals would offer protection from any threat the local Indians might encounter. However, with the British EIC now possessing a sizeable military, being the Diwani and being much more readily available, many local Indian rulers instead began offering to pay the British for these services instead. This not only elevated British status in the area, but also toppled the Mughal Empire. Essentially, the British EIC had replaced the Mughal Empire.

One of the most interesting things to ponder about this story is what would have happened had the Mughals not resorted to atrocities to keep the Europeans in-line. EIC interest in the area was, initially, for trading purposes. Had the Mughals not resorted to such extreme measures, there is a strong argument to be made that the EIC would never have attempted to militarily oppose the local Indians or Mughals and thus never topple them.