EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
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C O U R S E
A History of the World since 1300
Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E Transition in India: Last of the Mughals Notes taken on September 10, 2015 by Edward Tanguay |
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mid-19th century India
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a story that braids together the stories of
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the railroad
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the Enfield rifle
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the political shifts that are being imposed on the subcontinent
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the protracted crisis in India is in contrast to what is happening in the United States
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two major cotton exporters faced with two very different political fortunes
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the pressures mounting for free market forces unleashed by the dismantling of old, mercantile states
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the Americas
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a series of European conquests
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the Spanish, the Portuguese and the English
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colonized, dismantled, and drove underground many of the incumbent systems
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India
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1833 East India Company still enjoyed exclusive monopoly privileges in India
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but increasing forced to compete with other merchants
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a stimulus for the arrival of new businessmen looking for opportunities in India
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both foreign (British)
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as well as domestic merchants taking advantages of opportunities presented by the dismantling of the monopoly power that the East India Company enjoyed
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one of the most important limitations of the penetration of the Indian market was the obstacles in transportation
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most mercantile activity was restricted to coastal areas
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thus the railroads had an important effect on India
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began to take place in 1840s
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a spur to the expansion of the cotton frontier
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cotton business focused on Bombay
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India had the coal which could fuel the locomotive which would transport the cotton
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most of the businesses in mining and in cotton production was, in fact, Indian owned
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but cotton was not the only export, due to penetration of the continent
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also jute and tea
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began to change the forces of power in India
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away from Dehli
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to the merchant magnates in the coastal port cities
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the interiors get integrated to the coasts, and the coasts get integrated into the global market forces
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this is part of the industrial revolution
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part of the advent of the consumer revolution
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these economic shifts coincide with a political process
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Mughal Empire was in secular decomposition
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had been composed of a constellation of forces that paid tribute
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one by one they defected
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by the middle of the 19th century, the Mughals were not just overwhelmed
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not just by the power of the East India Company was able to impose on the region
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but East India Company was facing arrival of new competition
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result
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Balkanization of India
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Bahadur Shah Zafar
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last Mughal Emperor emperor in name only
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authority was limited only to the city of Delhi
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following his involvement in the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British exiled him to Rangoon in British-controlled Burma
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Indian actors played an active role in decomposing an incumbent system such as the Mughal Empire
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also reduced the power that the East India Company once enjoyed
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it's not a case of the East India Company replacing the Mughal emperor
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not a corporate takeover, but much more complicated
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Zamindar
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a figure who would collect taxes to make tributary payments to authorities, either to
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emperor
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East India Company
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like tax farmers
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would return commercial privileges
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aligned themselves with local princes and merchants
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influential in dismantling the power of the Mughal Empire and East India Company
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The Earl of Dalhousie
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1848 onwards
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tried to
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reorganize India
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annex territories to their base in Bengal, in Calcutta
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an immediate affront to the Mughal Empire
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expand railroads into inner India
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a dualistic society
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some parts of India locked in an old, peasant world
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some parts were much more modernized
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higher productivity
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market production
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incorporated into the global, industrial arrangements
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areas like the Punjab were booming
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while the interiors of Bengal were beginning to languish
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all of this a setting for a perfect storm for frictions and discontent
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economic growth is not necessarily positive for everybody
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there are losers involved politically, economically, and socially
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as nations are forming in Europe and the Americas
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and new empires are being constituted in Asia,
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treaty ports were affecting China
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these contradictory pressures were impinging on India