British Empire Impact

Introduction: This essay will cover the impact that the rule of the British Empire had on the development of India’s development as a nation. Ruling of the British lasted nearly 90 years from 1858 to 1947, when the English East India Company had established supremacy in Bengal in 1857. The transition from a relationship of trade to direct rule can be explained by the needs of trade. The British began to criticize the prices of textiles, which was the most important item in this trade, and accepted local political circumstances that enabled the British to command land revenues of Bengal as payment. These local circumstances included the support of elites who were disaffected by local rulers. After their monopoly in trade ended in the early 19th century, the British were committed to building an empire, and by 1857, the boundaries of colonial India which were the basis on which nations were carved out in 1947 had been defined with a uniform distribution system …show more content…
The indigenous agricultural industry was destroyed by the British insistence on using its Indian colony for maximum monetary gain, which in turned harmed the Indian economy (Chittoor and Aulakh, 2015). However, the development of the vast and intricate railroad network throughout India did bring prosperity and had positive ramifications for Indian society insofar as the Indian regions which were connected via rail were now becoming more cohesive and intertwined socially and culturally (Chakraborty, 2014). The social strata of India was revamped with a new professional social class emerging. This class, although westernised, was able to help modernise India through the development of a higher standard of schools and universities throughout the country, but at the same time being detrimental to the historical social foundation of India (Haswell,