Dbq Essay On British Imperialism

The British wanted India for economic reasons. The industrial revolution made the British have too many products to sell to everyone in their own country, so they had to find a new place to sell. India was the golden land for British at the time of the industrial revolution. It had a huge population along with lots of resources to make more products. At first, colonizing India was an economical scheme by the British East India Trading Company to sell products, until the Sepoy Rebellion which is where the government got involved and took over all of India. But overall the British had a positive impact on India’s politics, economy, and society. British imperialism had a positive impact on the politics of India because it united all of the …show more content…
Document 2 says that the British had screwed up India's society with violence and oppression, however, the British made amazing changes to India's society by ending highway robbery, widow suicide, and female infanticide (Lalvani). In India, the body would be burned at the funeral and if the person being burnt had a wife, then she was expected to kill herself on the fire because in India women were viewed as useless. Not only is this an atrocious tradition but it labeled women as useless objects. Another thing the British police ended was highway robbery. Highway robbery was a major problem in India, with people just riding along then suddenly getting beat up by some criminals and getting everything they have taken away from them. But not only that but the British also ended female infanticide, which basically meant that you could kill your child if it was a girl and not get in trouble. The British also helped the people of India by increasing everyone’s life expectancy with medicines that fought off smallpox and malaria. Document 2 attempts to rebuttal this by bringing up famines which killed millions. However famines are almost unavoidable, they happen to everyone in sometime in history. Having a longer life expectancy