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The British emulate their Mughal predecessors in this 1887 "durbar," or royal procession; Victoria, Empress of India.
Credit: Hulton Archive |
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From the 15th through the 18th centuries, European activities in India centered mostly around trade and evangelism on the Indian coasts. In 1751, however, the British victory over the French at Arcot established Britain's dominance among the European powers in India. Six years later, Britain initiated the conquest of the sub-continent by defeating the Mughal governor of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey. Through the mid-19th century, British conquest proceeded via military victory and annexation, subjecting Muslim and Hindu interest alike. The Mughal emperor accepted British protection (becoming a puppet regime) in 1803. And between 1775 and 1818, Britain also crushed the Hindu Maratha Confederacy, which had been contesting Mughal power in southern India since the early 1700s.
Although submerged, religious conflict remained a powerful force in British India. In 1905, British viceroy Lord Curzon inadvertently set the stage for India's modern Hindu-Muslim conflict when he partitioned the province of Bengal. The resulting protest amid Bengal's elite Hindu minority -- which stood to lose rents from Muslim majority renters across the new boundary -- became violent as Hindu nationalists took up the landowners' cause. India's Muslim elite reacted by forming the All-India Muslim League in 1906. This organization, motivated by a concern for Muslim rights, ultimately became the chief proponent for the creation of Muslim Pakistan as a separate homeland for India's Muslims.
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