No Britain in WWI: Consequence on India

I have a question. Assuming some POD that ends up resulting in Britain choosing to not entangle itself in the Great War, or even if the Great War as traditionally viewed never happens.

The common response is that this prolongs the British Empire for several decades. I wonder what the consequences specifically on India would be. How was the British Policy developing on the Subcontinent, what was its trajectory and was the Great War responsible for shifting the developments there.

Specifically, I was wondering about economic developments, British emigration, the status of the Native states (were there plans to draw them in further with more British involvement).

I feel often India just ends up as an independent unified country after British colonialism and maybe with a Muslim insurrection and later independence regardless of whatever Britain does. But surely the lack of British involvement in the Great War must have dramatic consequence for the empire, and therefore certainly India.

My lack of knowledge of detail on the continent precludes me from coming to rational conclusions on this question, so I humbly throw it open to the forum hive mind. Help! Thanks!

Answers Part 1

Well while the Indian independence movement did officially kinda-start in the late 19th century, it wasn't incredibly popular with the general public.
Few people had even heard of it and with low literacy rates no one but a sliver of Indian population, that constituted of the middle and upper class, could read a newspaper in 1900.

Pre-World War 1 most Indians rarely dealt with the British directly, and most commonly they were missionaries functioning as evangelists, teachers or doctors, etc. Most of the time they had to deal with the Indians who formed the low-level clerks and bureaucrats. As such they never really had much to complain about the British. That is except for a general awareness of being exploited by the Indian 'servants' of the British and folklore about the heroes of the 1857 rebellion. The Indians were many and divided and British ensured that they remained so. Kind of like the fable of the Tower of Babel.

Speaking of the 1857 rebellion, one of the main reasons the rebellion took place was because a lot of the rulers dissatisfied by the East India Company administration remembered a time when there were no British around to tell them what to do. You see its hard to fight for something if you can't visualize it (i.e., in this case, no more meddling British around) and memory helps you visualize a lot better (i.e., in this case memories of a time when there were no British around and you were free to raid the neighboring 'kingdom' and oppress the peasants as you please)

Fast forward to the early 1900s and nearly no one really remembered much of the rebellion and people had become sorta OK with the idea of having the British around. Except for one tiny, or rather not so tiny, detail. The detail, or bugbear actually, being that the only people who did deal with the British directly were the middle-class and upper-class, who resented not so much as being subjects of an Empire but being treated as second-class citizens in their own land. The lords and the petty kings who remained yearned to be the equals of their English counterparts in social status. Many of them were in fact equal in wealth to the British upper-class. And after all they were 'kings' (of sorts) in their own right.
The middle-class on the other hand resented the lack of equal opportunity in their careers. Their options for promotions were pretty limited after a certain point in their careers.
In short this lack of upward mobility was the key unifying factor for the early activists.

The activists composed of people who the British needed to actually run the Raj and to keep the Indian peasants from rioting in the streets again. Fortunately for the British the activists were the minority among their lot (i.e., the upper and middle class) and the rest were just content with eking out an existence.

Most people find hard to believe that an entire people would be fine with being oppressed by a foreign people. However back it wasn't really so. Most of the peasants just traded Indian oppressors for other Indian oppressors who worked for some people called the British. It had always been like that. It had been so since times of 'invaders' like the Sakas and Hunas to the rule of the Arabs, Afghans and Mughals. It shouldn't have been all that much of a shock really. The people who did lose out, i.e., the artisans and craftsmen had wither migrated to the cities or reverted to farming for subsistence.

I am not saying that there wasn't a general decline in standard of living. People did become poorer but most of them just didn't complain. They were too busy with trying to stay alive. As for awareness, well most of the poor were uneducated. They couldn't read the newspaper, let alone write a letter. So they were more concerned with what was going on in the neighbors house or i the village across the river than in the towns and the cities several miles away. Let alone matters of national importance.

If you still don't believe me then just look at the modern day Indians. Most of them have dealt with decades of abominable governance and mis-rule post-independence. And yet instead of rebelling en masse they still merrily trot to the polling booth every 5 years. Even if the middle class complain about the bribes they pay and the upper-class looks down their noses and pities the writhing mass of the poor and the downtrodden they still do little other than carry on with their lives. [1]

So back to the 1900s again. I promise not to digress again.. much! So the people were generally not happy with the British rule but they weren't really outraged either. They just got with the program and moved along.

But things changed dramatically post-World War 1, and how! By the time the war was over the Indian National Congress had transformed from a little known and small group of moderate Indian and Western activists of next to no import to an increasingly important part of the Indian scene. The moderates and the westerners, were all but phased out of the INC and the beings of a popular movement was beginning to show.

At the beginning of the war, most Indian activists, including the then aspiring leader M.K.Gandhi, were actually quite willing to participate in the war. They had assumed that Indians fighting for the British in the fields of Europe will show the British that the Indians are worthy of being treated as equal. The activists hoped for several opportunities like being treated as equals of sorts, given limited self-rule, perhaps eventually Dominion-status, and provision of opportunities for the Indians in the middle class to progress in Bureaucratic careers. [2]

So obviously when the British gave grunts and non-committal shrugs to ensure Indian co-operation in the Mother of all Wars (pun intended), the Indians enthusiastically, and a bit too optimistically, took it as a 'Yes we will give you your wish list and then some.' And a million Indians took up their rifles and marched off to the worst war humanity had ever seen till then.

70,000 of them never returned.

And the British never kept their unintentional promises. They only made a half-hearted pretense of keeping the, arguably unmade, promises. And you really couldn't blame them for it. The promises were made under a somewhat Indian-activist sympathetic Liberal Party government, the new post-war government was a staid Tory one not given to adventures in decolonization. The government was too busy carving up the carcass of the Ottomans and negotiating a 'peace that would last for centuries' in Europe[3] to worry about some brown rag-heads in a far off corner of the Glorious Empire.

Well who knew then that the seeds of the Death of the Empire had been sown. With the increasing crises in post-War Europe [4], in the middle East [5], the Far East [6], and the economic crisis emerging from the imposed reparations on Germany occupying the minds of the British government, the long smoldering problems in India took the back seat. Economic turmoil and eventually grossly-mismanaged famines finally brought the unlettered masses of India into the field of political activism. Eventually the old moderate INC was replaced by the new more radicalized INC and the Indians burst out into the greatest instance of non-violent popular movement arose [7]

So could the absence of the 1st world war, or rather the absence of Britain and its empire from it change the outcome of the Indian independence movements?......

Its really late here in India and i just got back from a 8 hour bus ride with a nasty head-cold. So kindly indulge me by letting me answer the question in the next post tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed my assessment of the pre-war situation in the sub-continent and can seem to agree with it. If you do find some errors, feel free to point out.


NOTES:
[1]I know they situation is starting to change for the better. Political apathy is down and the new government seems better than the old one. Maybe the trend will continue, hopefully.
[2]Government jobs with their stable salaries and job securities were as much sought after back then as they are now.
[3]It barely lasted for 20 years.
[4]Communists, Fascists, and many other -Ists emerging and staking claim to half of Europe.
[5]Non-Jewish Palestinian revolts in 1920, 1929 and 1936
[6]Rise of the Japanese and the turmoil in China. Britain obviously was in no state, i.e., post-World War 1, to carve out a second, much larger Jewel of the British crown, let alone intervene on the side or against the Japanese in China. Interventions tend to be costly both economically and politically, especially when you are recovering from a war, let alone a World War!
P.S. Pressed cntrl-R and refreshing the page each time i tried to type the capital 'R' in the 'Rise of Japan'.. Lol!.. i guess the 4th time is the charm!
[7] excluding of course the bit about the largest migration of humans in history till date, the Partition.

Thanks Kalki! I look forward to more!

Kalki said:

So back to the 1900s again. I promise not to digress again.. much!

Click to expand...

Oh no, please do, it flows great

Its really late here in India and i just got back from a 8 hour bus ride with a nasty head-cold. So kindly indulge me by letting me answer the question in the next post tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed my assessment of the pre-war situation in the sub-continent and can seem to agree with it. If you do find some errors, feel free to point out.

Click to expand...

I very much enjoyed it and tallies with my limited understanding of the situation. And I hope the head cold doesn't last. The only error I spot is you missed off footnote [6].

Wow. What a fantastically useful post. And I know that sounds a bit sarcastic and please, don't think it is - I have genuinely seen very few posts as comprehensive, sensible and level-headed here or on any other forum. I might steal bits of this for teaching a course on decolonisation next year, if you don't mind - it's a really good introduction to what was going on.

Not a criticism, but do you happen to have a source for the decline in standard of living? I've seen that claim a few places, that the average Indian got poorer, even *much* poorer, over the C19th, but never a study that went into any detail (this is SO not my field, so if I'm being hugely ignorant, I'm sorry).

Kalki said:

Well while the Indian independence movement did officially kinda-start in the late 19th century, it wasn't incredibly popular with the general public.
Few people had even heard of it and with low literacy rates no one but a sliver of Indian population, that constituted of the middle and upper class, could read a newspaper in 1900.

Pre-World War 1 most Indians rarely dealt with the British directly, and most commonly they were missionaries functioning as evangelists, teachers or doctors, etc. Most of the time they had to deal with the Indians who formed the low-level clerks and bureaucrats. As such they never really had much to complain about the British. That is except for a general awareness of being exploited by the Indian 'servants' of the British and folklore about the heroes of the 1857 rebellion. The Indians were many and divided and British ensured that they remained so. Kind of like the fable of the Tower of Babel.

Speaking of the 1857 rebellion, one of the main reasons the rebellion took place was because a lot of the rulers dissatisfied by the East India Company administration remembered a time when there were no British around to tell them what to do. You see its hard to fight for something if you can't visualize it (i.e., in this case, no more meddling British around) and memory helps you visualize a lot better (i.e., in this case memories of a time when there were no British around and you were free to raid the neighboring 'kingdom' and oppress the peasants as you please)

Fast forward to the early 1900s and nearly no one really remembered much of the rebellion and people had become sorta OK with the idea of having the British around. Except for one tiny, or rather not so tiny, detail. The detail, or bugbear actually, being that the only people who did deal with the British directly were the middle-class and upper-class, who resented not so much as being subjects of an Empire but being treated as second-class citizens in their own land. The lords and the petty kings who remained yearned to be the equals of their English counterparts in social status. Many of them were in fact equal in wealth to the British upper-class. And after all they were 'kings' (of sorts) in their own right.
The middle-class on the other hand resented the lack of equal opportunity in their careers. Their options for promotions were pretty limited after a certain point in their careers.
In short this lack of upward mobility was the key unifying factor for the early activists.

The activists composed of people who the British needed to actually run the Raj and to keep the Indian peasants from rioting in the streets again. Fortunately for the British the activists were the minority among their lot (i.e., the upper and middle class) and the rest were just content with eking out an existence.

Most people find hard to believe that an entire people would be fine with being oppressed by a foreign people. However back it wasn't really so. Most of the peasants just traded Indian oppressors for other Indian oppressors who worked for some people called the British. It had always been like that. It had been so since times of 'invaders' like the Sakas and Hunas to the rule of the Arabs, Afghans and Mughals. It shouldn't have been all that much of a shock really. The people who did lose out, i.e., the artisans and craftsmen had wither migrated to the cities or reverted to farming for subsistence.

I am not saying that there wasn't a general decline in standard of living. People did become poorer but most of them just didn't complain. They were too busy with trying to stay alive. As for awareness, well most of the poor were uneducated. They couldn't read the newspaper, let alone write a letter. So they were more concerned with what was going on in the neighbors house or i the village across the river than in the towns and the cities several miles away. Let alone matters of national importance.

If you still don't believe me then just look at the modern day Indians. Most of them have dealt with decades of abominable governance and mis-rule post-independence. And yet instead of rebelling en masse they still merrily trot to the polling booth every 5 years. Even if the middle class complain about the bribes they pay and the upper-class looks down their noses and pities the writhing mass of the poor and the downtrodden they still do little other than carry on with their lives. [1]

So back to the 1900s again. I promise not to digress again.. much! So the people were generally not happy with the British rule but they weren't really outraged either. They just got with the program and moved along.

But things changed dramatically post-World War 1, and how! By the time the war was over the Indian National Congress had transformed from a little known and small group of moderate Indian and Western activists of next to no import to an increasingly important part of the Indian scene. The moderates and the westerners, were all but phased out of the INC and the beings of a popular movement was beginning to show.

At the beginning of the war, most Indian activists, including the then aspiring leader M.K.Gandhi, were actually quite willing to participate in the war. They had assumed that Indians fighting for the British in the fields of Europe will show the British that the Indians are worthy of being treated as equal. The activists hoped for several opportunities like being treated as equals of sorts, given limited self-rule, perhaps eventually Dominion-status, and provision of opportunities for the Indians in the middle class to progress in Bureaucratic careers. [2]

So obviously when the British gave grunts and non-committal shrugs to ensure Indian co-operation in the Mother of all Wars (pun intended), the Indians enthusiastically, and a bit too optimistically, took it as a 'Yes we will give you your wish list and then some.' And a million Indians took up their rifles and marched off to the worst war humanity had ever seen till then.

70,000 of them never returned.

And the British never kept their unintentional promises. They only made a half-hearted pretense of keeping the, arguably unmade, promises. And you really couldn't blame them for it. The promises were made under a somewhat Indian-activist sympathetic Liberal Party government, the new post-war government was a staid Tory one not given to adventures in decolonization. The government was too busy carving up the carcass of the Ottomans and negotiating a 'peace that would last for centuries' in Europe[3] to worry about some brown rag-heads in a far off corner of the Glorious Empire.

Well who knew then that the seeds of the Death of the Empire had been sown. With the increasing crises in post-War Europe [4], in the middle East [5], the Far East [6], and the economic crisis emerging from the imposed reparations on Germany occupying the minds of the British government, the long smoldering problems in India took the back seat. Economic turmoil and eventually grossly-mismanaged famines finally brought the unlettered masses of India into the field of political activism. Eventually the old moderate INC was replaced by the new more radicalized INC and the Indians burst out into the greatest instance of non-violent popular movement arose [7]

So could the absence of the 1st world war, or rather the absence of Britain and its empire from it change the outcome of the Indian independence movements?......

Its really late here in India and i just got back from a 8 hour bus ride with a nasty head-cold. So kindly indulge me by letting me answer the question in the next post tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed my assessment of the pre-war situation in the sub-continent and can seem to agree with it. If you do find some errors, feel free to point out.


NOTES:
[1] I know they situation is starting to change for the better. Political apathy is down and the new government seems better than the old one. Maybe the trend will continue, hopefully.
[2] Government jobs with their stable salaries and job securities were as much sought after back then as they are now.
[3] It barely lasted for 20 years.
[4] Communists, Fascists, and many other -Ists emerging and staking claim to half of Europe.
[5]Non-Jewish Palestinian revolts in 1920, 1929 and 1936
[7] excluding of course the bit about the largest migration of humans in history till date, the Partition.

Click to expand...

Kvasir said:

I have a question. Assuming some POD that ends up resulting in Britain choosing to not entangle itself in the Great War, or even if the Great War as traditionally viewed never happens.

The common response is that this prolongs the British Empire for several decades. I wonder what the consequences specifically on India would be. How was the British Policy developing on the Subcontinent, what was its trajectory and was the Great War responsible for shifting the developments there.

Specifically, I was wondering about economic developments, British emigration, the status of the Native states (were there plans to draw them in further with more British involvement).

I feel often India just ends up as an independent unified country after British colonialism and maybe with a Muslim insurrection and later independence regardless of whatever Britain does. But surely the lack of British involvement in the Great War must have dramatic consequence for the empire, and therefore certainly India.

My lack of knowledge of detail on the continent precludes me from coming to rational conclusions on this question, so I humbly throw it open to the forum hive mind. Help! Thanks!

Click to expand...

I think the argument is mainly that imperialism, not just in India, is ultimately going to have to change. Most people were relatively content with not having a say in government, but eventually norms shift. If self-governance was alright for Americans and Europeans, it's going to be hard to deny that to non-Europeans.

That said, without the world wars, the transition may well have been slower. At least in India, it would have taken longer for the Indian National Congress to become a mass organization. Without Indian troops fighting for the empire (many of them stationed in Europe itself), you're going to have less exposure to European culture and norms. So it'll altogether take more time, though beyond that it gets very difficult to forecast. After all, no WWI, or even just no Britain in WWI changes everything.

SlideAway said:

I think the argument is mainly that imperialism, not just in India, is ultimately going to have to change. Most people were relatively content with not having a say in government, but eventually norms shift. If self-governance was alright for Americans and Europeans, it's going to be hard to deny that to non-Europeans.

That said, without the world wars, the transition may well have been slower. At least in India, it would have taken longer for the Indian National Congress to become a mass organization. Without Indian troops fighting for the empire (many of them stationed in Europe itself), you're going to have less exposure to European culture and norms. So it'll altogether take more time, though beyond that it gets very difficult to forecast. After all, no WWI, or even just no Britain in WWI changes everything.

Click to expand...

Well you see, this post kind of highlights exactly my point. Look: "it would have taken longer for the Indian National Congress to become a mass organisation." Implicit in this statement is that the INC will eventually become a mass organisation and will be the vehicle through which India eventually decolonises. As though it is written in the heavens.

I view this as lazy alternative history and a complete lack of imagination.

Kvasir said:

Well you see, this post kind of highlights exactly my point. Look: "it would have taken longer for the Indian National Congress to become a mass organisation." Implicit in this statement is that the INC will eventually become a mass organisation and will be the vehicle through which India eventually decolonises. As though it is written in the heavens.

I view this as lazy alternative history and a complete lack of imagination.

Click to expand...

Well, I was just pointing to the obvious immediate consequences. You're right that the INC may not have become the primary Indian nationalist organization either.

My point is just that I don't think it's realistic to expect that Indians will not eventually start pushing for an end to British rule, even if it takes longer. It's not written in the stars, but the strains of colonialism will likely eventually show and colonized people are unlikely to accept their fate forever as mass communication increases and norms regarding democratic governance and self-governance spread.

My other point was really just that because OTL was heavily affected by WWI, it's relatively unknowable how things may have developed in its absence. Many other outcomes are possible from that point, but when you change as much as you do with a "no WWI" scenario or no "Britain in WWI" scenario so much changes that there's no obvious direction things would have gone.

Maybe without a strong INC, regionalist movements have greater success (such as the autonomist Justice Party in the south), which leads to Britain eventually having provinces opt into a union — a policy they debated OTL before independence and which would have led to India being given independence along the provincial lines and with at least the major princely states remaining separate. But that's merely one possible outcome.

A little thank you note!

So where do i begin. Well since i have joined this forum i have become used to my posts on threads being mostly ignored. I am not indicating any malevolent intent on the part of my fellow forum members. I believe its mostly so because that most of my posts are long and rambling, a bit lecture-like. As a medical student a year away from getting my medical license i am very familiar with the effects lectures have on a human attention span.

So yes @Kvasir Thank you for your kind words and even more so for your interest in what i had to say. I am no authority in Indian history but I like to believe i am observant enough to make my share of insightful observations.

As for foot-note [6] in the previous post it was about the crises in East Asia like the rise of the Japanese and the turmoil in China. Britain obviously was in no state, i.e., post-World War 1, to carve out a second, much larger Jewel of the British crown, let alone intervene on the side or against the Japanese in China. Interventions tend to be costly both economically and politically, especially when you are recovering from a war, let alone a World War! Edited! And thanks!

@Machiavelli Jr. I must admit that I truly feel honored that you would consider using material from this post in your classes- no sarcasm here either, scout's honor!
Whoever said history is written by the victors was probably one of the smartest men alive, because that more often than not is what history is fashioned into-a tool of propaganda. More often than not biased, unverified, out-of-context and down-right ludicrous interpretations of human history have been used, or abused rather, as the crack-cocaine of the masses, to stir them into fruitless fits of nationalistic fervor and to perpetrate unimaginable horrors.
Whether it was the Nazis using the Indo-European migration theory for the cold-blooded murder of millions or the White slave-owners using the biblical history of the people of Ham as justification for chattel slavery. History is as much as a victim of our greed and avarice, as are science and religion.

Coming back to your query there actually isn't any study i can think of which can specify the exact extent of decline in living standard of the locals, post-European colonization, of Asia and Africa. However, i guess this is where i can help you out. Let's give making such a study in brief a try, shall we?

In Western Europe the European kings and nobles began encouraging trade starting from the later part of the 16th century, in the form of financing trade expeditions to the New World and Old World, promoting colonization and using income from colonies to bump up the treasury, building transportation infrastructure like canals and roads from those extra funds, financing and/or chartering trade companies (i.e., the East India Company and its ilk) . The Indian kings, however, as far as I am aware of, never really pursued such avenues for profit.

Now the following paragraphs, under the {*} are mostly how i derived my conclusions using statistics for population and GDP. If you are like most people and are allergic to numbers then please skip straight to the next {*} to my conclusions. Historians seem to have it worse than most. I know how bad a case of the number-fever can be, it is after all one of the reasons why I chose medicine.

{*}

India, or should we say the sub-continent as a whole is said to be at its peak during the reign of Shah Jahan, Mughal emperor c.1600s. The GDP back then has been estimated to be around $74,250 million (1990 US Dollars) [8] While the world GDP was $331,562 million (1990 US$) And the population was around a 100 million (give or take a few million) [9] So the share of world GDP for the subcontinent was around 22.4%. GDP per-capita was around $742.5 per-capita (US$1990). By 1870 the GDP of the subcontinent had actually grown to over $134,882 million (US$1990) while population was around 190 million. The GDP per-capita in this case was almost $710. And the share of the GDP of the sub-continent vis-a-vis the world was 12.05%! By 1913, the population was 257.06 million and the GDP was $204,242 million (US$1990). The GDP per-capita was $794.5 per-capita. The share in world GDP was 13.38%!

The numbers are tabulated below for better comprehension :-

1600s Indian subcontinent
GDP: $74,250 million
Pop.: 100million (approx)
GDP per-capita: $742.5
World GDP share- 22.4%

1870s Indian subcontinent
GDP: $134,882 million
Pop.:190 million
GDP per-capita: $710
World GDP share- 12.05%

1913 Indian subcontinent
GDP: $204,242 million
Pop.: 257.06 million
GDP per-capita: $794.5
World GDP share- 13.38%

To put it into perspective, our current stats are:

India+Pakistan+Sri Lanka+Burma:-

GDP (combined) : $2,518,435 million (2014 US Dollars)
Population (combined): 1,638.2 million
GDP per-Capita [10]: $1537.32 (2014 US Dollars)
%of World GDP: 3.4%

{*}

End of statistics...

In short, the Indian sub-continent, as a whole, got marginally poorer between the laying of the foundation of Taj and the establishment of the British Raj, but the economy recovered and actually improved measurably by the time Kaiser Willy threw his tantrum!

The decline in prosperity between 1600s and 1870s is attributed by my sub-continental compatriots to the Goras robbing us poor, help-less sub-continentals blind. But if the economic parameters are anything to go by most of the GDP growth of the UK between 1600 and 1870 is quite moderate by standards of pre-industrial Western European economies [11] and past 1830s the rapid growth of the UK economy can be more like due to the availability of cheap raw materials from the colonies than to direct taxation and down-right economic banditry of the British in the sub-continent. The decline could very well be attributed to the change in administrative and economic structure of the sub-continent with the arrival of the British, their industrial goods and their new rules. But does it necessarily have their greasy finger prints of thieves all over them? That is a question to ponder.

While world GDP did increase significantly between 1870 and 1913, i.e., during the 'moderate' phase of the INC, the share of India in world GDP actually grew! I cannot believe that is possible without improvement in the living standards of some of the people in the sub-continent. It is possible that economic inequality might have flourished in that phase of growth but there would still be some tangible benefits to the poor in the sub-continent. I mean just look at modern economic data. Today we form a much smaller share at 3.4%, for the subcontinent as a whole, of world GDP and our GDP per capita is only about $90 better than it was back in 1913 and only about $180 better than what it was in the 1600s. For India proper the stats are marginally better with an actual GDP per-capita being only a $100 more than what it was in 1913. Wow! A hundred years to raise the GDP per-capita by a 100 dollars!

So wait India hasn't really gotten richer but rather has gotten kinda poorer since independence?[12]

Holy f***! How did that happen? *Double checks numbers!... *Triple checks numbers!.. *sit around *scratch head *blank stare at ceiling *etc.

WARNING!: If you care for my safety just a tiny wee bit please don't reveal the contents of this post to the ultra-nationalists of my country. They will murder me and then my family and my friends and their families and my pets and even the friends of my pets!

Jokes apart...

Considering the economic inequality that exists today in India (among other forms of inequality) and in our modern world in general, I highly doubt the inequality a hundred years back in 1913 would be any worse. Agreed there may be British industrialists owning almost all the factories, but there would also be the filthy rich and somewhat redundant native sub-continental aristocracy. There were literally hundreds of petty kingdoms. Enough to make the Holy Roman Empire look sane. There must have been thousands of sub-continental aristocrats. Many of whom also were fledgling businessmen in their own right.
Maybe if we just had a statistic of Rolls-Royce cars sold to Indian Nawabs Vs Mercedes S-class cars sold to businessmen in India today to compare...

But i digress, yet again! (Oops! )

Where was i? Ah yes! Avenues of profit. So the western monarchs and nobles spent a good deal of sum on making their lands better (improving infrastructure, facilitating trade, etc.) I can't hazard a guess at their motives but it might be because the wanted money to fight wars. Then there also the improved agricultural practices, and the rise of a literate middle-class to support trade and administration, thanks in no small measure to the Universities and the Enlightenment.
There was no widespread literacy in the sub-continent and the literate few engaged in administration and trade had no means of communicating with their counterparts in Europe. So there was a lack of significant exchange of ideas. That could be in turn due to the differences in language of communication.
Meanwhile the Mughal Empire on the other hand had a habit of not letting Subedars and and other provincial administrators linger around their assigned administrative divisions for too long, lest they get comfy and rebel. So they had little incentive to develop the local infrastructure (indicated by the lack of major infrastructural works undertaken by them in their respective administrated zones in the same vein as the ornate forts, mosques and mausoleums) and were more concerned with draining the provinces for revenue to maintain the Mughal war machine. The Empire was pretty centralized under the reign of Akbar, who inherited most of its administration from the uber-centralizing control-freaks of the Sur dynasty and Hem Chandra. But by the time Aurangzeb murdered his way to the Peacock Throne he system had started to fall apart.
In other words a strong centralized state never really emerged. And as history proves strong centralized states are pretty much the ones who became the Great Powers when the Industrial Revolution came knocking. It could be possible that the regency of Bairam Khan combined with unruly Afghan nobles early in Akbar's reign prevented him from pursuing the centralization policies followed by Sher Shah Suri and his descendants. Who knows?

But that is not the point.

The question that the OP posited is that what would have been the consequences of Britain staying out of the World War 1 on the Indian Independence movement.

I will answer that in my next post if you kindly allow me too. My head cold isn't better and i might just give myself a Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from all the hammering on keyboard for the past 3 hours. Sorry!

So i hope this post answers your query about the study @Machiavelli Jr and as for @Kvasir please allow me a break before i resume answering.

Hope you guys enjoy this post.

[8] source: Angus Maddison. World Economics. Vol 9. No.4. October-December, 2008. -Thank you, Google!
[9] I know its bit of a guesstimate on my side but bear with me please. source: http://www.populstat.info/Asia/indiac.htm - Thank you again, Google!
[10] Whole sub-continent combined: India+Pakistan+Burma+Sri Lanka+Maldives.
[11] UK GDP growth in 1600s is 0.76%.p.a., 1700s is 0.58%.p.a., 1820s is 1.021%, 1870s is 2.055%. Values for Western Europe for 1600s, 1700s, 1820s,1870s, are, +0.396%.p.a, +0.214 %.p.a., +0.566 %.p.a., +1.679.p.a., +2.111.p.a, respectively. For Western offshoots (USA, Canada, Australia, etc.,) for 1820s and 1870s are +2.348 %.p.a., +4.313 %.p.a., respectively.
[12] Is it just me or isn't decolonization supposed to have benefited the former colony more?

Kalki, you're ignoring the fact on the ground that while GDP might well have grown, British rule of India meant the wholesale destruction of the cottage industry sector and the economy's almost total reversion to primary production. In 1750, India was exporting finished cloth to Britain, in 1850 it was merely a producer of raw fibre and Birmingham was selling finished cloth back to a captive colonial market.

An entire manufacturing and artisanal sector was destroyed in the intervening century- that is the tragedy of British rule in India.

If you'd like to compare the Rolls-Royces sold to Nawabs vs the Mercedes sold to Indian tycoons, consider that the Rolls-Royce would have been manufactured at Goodwood in Sussex while the Merc may well have been assembled in India, giving jobs to Indians.

Flocculencio said:

Kalki, you're ignoring the fact on the ground that while GDP might well have grown, British rule of India meant the wholesale destruction of the cottage industry sector and the economy's almost total reversion to primary production. In 1750, India was exporting finished cloth to Britain, in 1850 it was merely a producer of raw fibre and Birmingham was selling finished cloth back to a captive colonial market.

An entire manufacturing and artisanal sector was destroyed in the intervening century- that is the tragedy of British rule in India.

If you'd like to compare the Rolls-Royces sold to Nawabs vs the Mercedes sold to Indian tycoons, consider that the Rolls-Royce would have been manufactured at Goodwood in Sussex while the Merc may well have been assembled in India, giving jobs to Indians.

Click to expand...

Flocculencio said:

Kalki, you're ignoring the fact on the ground that while GDP might well have grown, British rule of India meant the wholesale destruction of the cottage industry sector and the economy's almost total reversion to primary production. In 1750, India was exporting finished cloth to Britain, in 1850 it was merely a producer of raw fiber and Birmingham was selling finished cloth back to a captive colonial market.

An entire manufacturing and artisanal sector was destroyed in the intervening century- that is the tragedy of British rule in India.

If you'd like to compare the Rolls-Royces sold to Nawabs vs the Mercedes sold to Indian tycoons, consider that the Rolls-Royce would have been manufactured at Goodwood in Sussex while the Merc may well have been assembled in India, giving jobs to Indians.

Click to expand...

Very true Flocculencio. The destruction of not just the domestic cloth production but also most of the other artisanal sector was a tragedy in itself. Millions of craftsmen were forced to revert to subsistence agriculture or become unlanded agricultural laborers (i.e., agricultural laborers who work on others land for a fixed share of the produce, still exist today) for feeding themselves and their families in the absence of the demand for their goods.

Subsistence farming, and more importantly working as unlanded agricultural laborers (aka, landless peasants), would have translated into lower incomes for the artisans. Nutrition levels might decline, due to the very nature of produce generated by subsistence agriculture. Improved farming practices would not have transitioned into India from Europe soon after they started in Europe. I would guess their standard of living would be comparable to OTL subsistence farmers in Africa around the mid-century. [13]

Overall a very bleak picture, but in my opinion these developments would have the worst effects only on a very specific class of artisans, notably the cottage industries producing finished cloth. People still used baked earthen-wear for utensils and other daily use. There would have been a decline in demand but the increase in population over time and the generally limited nature of production constricting the supply of pottery, potters would not have had much of trouble in the long run.
Same runs for metal-workers. Hand-crafted metal work, whether it be utensils or items of daily use would still be bought by a smaller but not insignificant Indian middle-class and upper-class. Gun-smiths, weapon-smiths and armor-smiths on the other hand would have declined but could have survived by transitioning to producing other items like farming implements (for black-smiths, sword-smiths) and iron utensils (for armor-smiths).
What about tailors? Well you would still have to sew up the cloth imported from Birmingham in Bombay.
And shoe-makers? Leather-workers? They were already almost at the bottom rung of the caste system in the sub-continent. How much worse do you think they really can get? Besides you won't go from Delhi to Dublin to get your shoes stitched up when they wear out.
Yes there was a corresponding decrease in income associated with the shift from selling high-value niche items to selling daily-use rugged and cheap items, due to the lower profit margins. But how many artisans do you think would be producing such high-quality niche items? Obviously not all of them, after all in a pre-industrial society almost all the cheap goods for daily use had to have been produced by artisans too.
Again in the end, there still were a lot of rich Indian aristocrats around, like the zamindars, etc., who had the money to buy the niche luxury products. So maybe the artisans producing luxury goods did not face a complete evaporation of their previous market. Certain Indian traditional dresses were after all made by Indian cloth weavers who specialized in that style of clothing, i.e., the saris, with its myriad types from the geometric 'Sambalpuri' to the ornate 'kanchipuram' sarees. I am pretty sure both designs pre-date the British in India and still survive today. And you surely can't make Benarasi silk saree in Bristol.

In the end the artisans worst affected were the cloth weavers and the artisans-smith who produced guns, swords, weapons and armor. Also affected would be the maritime traders, however considering that the descendants of certain 'maritime trader castes' (the Sadhabas, etc.,) are doing just fine running small businesses on dry land, they must have found alternatives business strategies. All of them, the artisans, the laborers, the tradesmen, etc., must have adapted or died out. And humans tend to prefer adapting to dying out.

In short what i really was arguing that GDP grew. This is very unlike the black and white tale spun by some of our historians of how the British merely robbed us blind and left a bustling economic powerhouse a deadbeat has been nation, the reality has many shades of grey.

Admittedly there was an increase in economic inequality but then we are taking about 18th and 19th century India were inequality was not just a fact of life but started from birth itself [14]

[13]Did you know that 51.63% of the land in India is used for agriculture and other associated economic activities? That amounts to 1,535,063 sq km. Second only to the USA by just under a hundred thousand sq km; a country about 3 times as large. Of course India is one of the many cradles of agriculture and has supported a complex civilization for millennia so such a large amount of cultivated land is not very surprising. However, if we compare the subcontinent with Europe, with similar population density we see that India does have a surprisingly higher proportion of land as cultivated land (33% on avg for Europe vis-a-vis 51% for India). Perhaps the larger population is to blame, but then maybe the prevalence of subsistence agriculture in the sub-continent is to blame. After all it is possible that the out of work craftsmen could have led to an expansion of land area cultivated?


[13] The caste system... I guess one of the Indian bureaucrats resented the British was because most of the bureaucrats were in the early days of the British Raj (and even today, to a lesser extent) were upper-caste Hindus or Muslims. While some of then were genuine liberals and humanists at heart most of them were people who firmly believed what they had been told since the moment of their birth - they were the best of the best, the top of the food chain, the Aryan Ubermensch!
However, many of the British on the other hand considered them uncouth savages who were to be treated like the fools they were for believing in Holy Cows and 330 million Gods, not to mention practicing the horrors of Sati tradition and caste system to name a few.
Such treatment by filthy, uncultured 'Foreigners' who did not know how to respect their Indian betters (Betters by virtue of their 'birth' gained from the righteous Karma of their one million past lives) must have infuriated many of the Indian bureaucrats. Could it be that such conditions partially led to the resent that created the fertile land for political groups like the INC to sprout?

Best Regards

Kalki

Without further ado i will get to the next part of my answer to Kvasir's question that led to my prodigious, and hopefully not so odious, posts in my next post.

Time to get cracking on the keyboard!

Best Regards

Kalki

Hm. I thought the INC split along the radical/moderate lines before the WW I, and that Tilak was for the independence very early on.

Inthe last two decades prior to WW1 there was a tendency to outsource some industry (or more correctly return) the industry to India from the UK. The Jute industry is perhaps the best example of this.

Without the UK in WW1 the pace of this industrialisation may well increase (UK displaces USA as arsenal of Russia and France) and the educated classes discontent may be slowed somewhat.

The key years will be 1920-1930 and the impact of the post war slowdown and possible world recession / depression - if the UK doesn't establish an economic zone (imperial preference plus!) that benefits the Empire (and India), discontent and Indian nationalism is likely to grow faster again.

Potentially if UK does manage the post war slowdown much better (and it should, not having had the crippling expenditure of fighting the war itself) Indian nationalism may progress at a much slower pace and a federation, raher than a centralised state may end up as the post independence model.

The WW2 analog if it happens would upset the apple cart though and come as much more of a shock. But who knows how the butterflies would flap.

Kalki: I think you're still underestimating the impact of the destruction of the artisans classes. First of all, their reversion to farming would create a labour glut, allowing the zarmindars even more power in dealing with serfs.

Secondly, even cheap, common-use goods often didn't tend to be produced locally but but by factories in the UK eg the Birmingham cutlery industry exported huge amounts of cheap, low quality tools to India, for mass purchase.

Thirdly, British rule disrupted regional trade within India. Government monopolies, such as salt drove the prices of these commodities up unrealistically, again, throwing the burden onto the already strained masses. In Bengal, after the British takeover, the tax burden actually went *up*. Tariffs and other restrictions on internal trade severely distorted the market, affecting the people severely.

So now that i have tried my best at trying to explain the situation in India before the outbreak of World War 1. Let me try to figure what exactly will be the effect of Britain staying out of World War 1 on India, specifically, and the rest of the world in general.

But before we understand the effects of Britain staying out of the Great War, we need to see what exactly were the effects of Britain participating in the Great War, in brief.

Well as many would like to point out there were more than a million men serving in the British Indian Army. Obviously this was a very different experience for most of these young boys from the villages and town. Most of them had never been more than a hundred miles from their hometown; and now hundreds of thousands of them were in a foreign land, a quarter of the way around the world.
People often ask the question; why soldiers fight? The answers we get are mostly from people who have little experience of jumping into a bloody ditch while death rains over their heads; when the only one you can rely on is the fellow in the other bloody ditch behind them, are in the vein of 'for king and country' or for 'patriotism' or for the 'warrior spirit of a martial race'. But the real answer is very simple. They fight for their brothers in arms, for the solider marching by their side, into the valley of the shadow of death.

These young men enlisted for many reasons. Some wanted the money [15], some just wanted to escape their past [16], some wanted to uphold the honor of their martial ancestors by earning glory in the field of battle [17]. They didn't think of themselves as Indians, they saw themselves as Rajputs, SIkhs, Gorkhas and Jats. [18] They were Marathas, Bengalis, Muslims, Kodavas and Khandayats. [19] They saw themselves as Khastriyas, Khalsa and Lashkars [20] who fought as was the tradition of their warrior ancestors in the name of the King-Emperor. And some did seek to perform their duties as good subjects of the Empire to serve their King-Emperor, in the Empire's darkest hour. [21]

But once they were in the muddy trenches in Flanders and in the hell hole of Kut, all this reduced to the fight for the man beside them in the same ditch. This was unprecedented. The ancestors of these young men had fought each other for generations, and here they were fighting for each other. They did not see each other anymore as a Punjabi or a Bengali, they saw each other as their brother in arms.
While the Indian anglophone elite did occasionally flirt with the idea of being 'Indian', the idea of being 'Indian' never really caught on within this nation. These bureaucrats and the other native elites had only to face the white men looking down their noses at all the 'Indians' with equal disdain. The soldiers in France and elsewhere had to face the barrels of guns which rained death on the 'Indians' with impassive and unprejudiced disregard.
The concept of India in minds of the common folk was not the bastard offspring of our educated elite, but was born of fire and blood which rained on the fields of France.

Even the Indian activists supported the government authorities by promoting the idea of Indians signing up in the British Indian Army. M.K.Gandhi, arguably the second greatest proponent of the philosophy of non-violence since Buddha, is famous for having openly endorsed the participation of Indians in the World War. [22] This was mostly because most Indians from the activists to the bureaucrats to the anglophone elite, and even the soldier dying in a ditch in the Flanders, believed that if they proved their ability in serving the Empire they would be rewarded with some form of self rule as was hinted in the August 1917 declaration by the British government.

But the political remnants that emerged from the war dashed all hopes of any self-rule for the Indians. The Rowlatt Act in 1919, [23] the Khalifat movement, [24] the Jallianwala Bagh massacre [25] and the radicalization of the INC, [26] ended all avenues of reconciliation between the Indians and their colonial masters.

{The soldier also experienced the lives of the Europeans when they stepped away from the front-lines. Many of them were quite disturbed when they realized for the first time how much more of a comfortable and prosperous lives the Europeans lived. The plight of their people back home became ever more clear to these young men. As was their sense of disillusionment with government propaganda. After all they lied to them about he hell that were the trenches.}

These men coming back from the war must have had a profound influence on their friends and family back home with their experiences and also with their subsequent disillusionment. Surely more so than the rich anglophone elite, who would previously loathe to even share the same room as the peasants, trying to stir the masses into action. Needless to say soon after they arrived back the demand for independence was heard form all parts of the sub-continent.

The second great influence of the Great War on the sub-continent, was the effects of the war on the economy.

While the war in the short run helped the expansion of industrial capacity, the following downturn made matters much worse for the lives of the common folk. The British had their hands full with crises in Ireland, West Asia and elsewhere. The Great depression did not even spare the mother nation. The administration was over worked and had very limited resources. So it was this, combined with some good ol' racism, that led to them overlooking the serious lack of administrative intervention needed to save the Empire from the cataclysm set to unfold in the Sub-continent.

The British ignored their promises to the turban touting savages of the sub-continent and carried on as if it was business as usual. They imposed new taxes and rules to pay for their colonial possessions and to keep the local subjects in check. As history bore witness a century and a half ago in 1776, such approaches to governing overseas possessions tends to backfire spectacularly.

So in the end, British entry into the First World War kind of created the grounds for a pro-independence movement to emerge. But it was their utterly incompetent handling of the situation that emerged post-war in the sub-continent and elsewhere that led to the death of the greatest Empire in the history of Mankind.

This obviously creates the Idea that the consequences of the British empire joining the war was its death. But as we see here it could have been easily avoided if a string of bad decisions were avoided. Perhaps the Empire could have survived even with the Great War happening, surely not as we know it in OTL, but as a stable and functional Empire none-the-less.

Perhaps if the British were more dedicated to nurturing the nascent middle-class which felt somewhat loyal to the King-emperor, and assuaged their fears about the lack of opportunity and upward mobility, they could have counted upon their loyalty. Perhaps if the British spent a more resources on actually improving the industrial capacity of the subcontinent, they could have not had to spend so many resources towards the end on maintaining their hold on India. They possibly could have bounced back from the Great War sooner and avoided some of the ill-effects of the Great Depression. They could have focused on propagating the idea among the people of the subcontinent that they were subjects of the Empire and the members of a nebulous national-cultural group called 'Indians'; maybe making the cultural differences between the the various groups in India more clear to the locals, while at the same time creating a sense of being part of an empire instead of being under it. Breaking down the previous long standing social norms and traditions slowly under the weight of modernity could have given the British the space for squeezing in their ideas. I know it sounds a lot like what Lord Macaulay had to say but what i propose is a more subtle approach than going after the traditions, cultures and religious beliefs of the people of the subcontinent with a sledgehammer. Just let increased industrialization and urbanization do the trick for you.

But then i digress, and that was for the last time!

Back to the consequences. Well the Britain staying out of world war one would be possible only if Germany stays out of Belgium. Considering the Schlieffen plan was made, which involved the German army marching all over Belgium, to ensure a quick victory Germany would be denied said quick victory.
German war plan depended upon knocking the French out before the French could mobilize and then turn to face the Russian bear. Passing through the Verdun-Reims-Paris route would be tough for the Germans as that is the most obvious line of approach and would be well defended by the French. Even with the absence of the BEF the French might just manage to slow the Germans down enough. Would the Western Front then become the static trench warfare? Possibly. I will leave it up to the experts.
More importantly the British won't be blockading the Germans, so that might not hurt them to the brink of starvation as in OTL. The Ottoman troops, who fought the British and Indians, OTL, might arrive in Europe and on the Eastern front after a while and could help the Germans win.
As for the Eastern Front the Germans being delayed by the French might mean things wont go as smoothly. But then again the Germans did pull off a few impressive moves in the opening days of the war. The Russians would be in a bad shape. The Russian revolution will play out differently obviously
Speaking of revolutions, if the war goes bad for Germany, the Kaiser might be ousted and a military government might take his place, quite possibly temporarily.
There are lot more possibilities but then we really can't guess them all.
I often find it amazing that Germany held out against all odds as long as it did in the Great War.

@kvasir all of this thinking and researching on this topic has given me an idea about a TL where the British Empire lasts till the present day (with India still a part of it), which wouldn't necessarily be a Brit-wank or an India-wank, and wouldn't necessarily devolve into an Indian Empire. Will get cracking on it soon. Thank you for the inspiration Kvasir!

I hope you guys enjoyed this little series giving you guys a look into the situation in the sub-continent around the time the Great War rolled in. Comments and criticism are always welcome.

Cheers

Kalki

[15-21] http://www.outlookindia.com/content11249.asp#WW I: India
read these articles.
[22] Don't take my word for it; take Google's word for it.
[23] The Rowlatt Act, passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in London on March 10, 1919, indefinitely extending "emergency measures" (of the Defense of India Regulations Act) enacted during the First World War in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy in India. Passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt Committee and named after its president, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj for up to two years without a trial, and gave the imperial authorities power to deal with all revolutionary activities.
[24] Between 1918 and 1922 the Khalifat movement arose in response to the British imperialist circles’ plan to dismember the Ottoman Empire and thus infringe upon the interests of the Turkish sultan, who was considered the spiritual head, or caliph, of all the Sunni Muslims.
[25] Jalianwala bagh massacre was the senseless killing of innocent civilians. Google it if you want to read about mindless killing of civilians; we have more than enough of it happening in our world these days.
[26] A younger generation of INC leaders took over, notably Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who argued for the inclusion of masses in the struggle for self-rule. This was in contrast with the previous moderates who wanted to bring about the changes from the top down, using legislation - a bit of a Gladstone liberalism approach. A cautious move retrospect, it seemed quite sensible, albeit in the end futile, the bureaucrats who made up the most of the INC (i.e., people used to doing things by the book and who kind of thought of themselves as the betters to the common folk.)

No replies?... no one has anything to add?... :/

Its a very interesting read, Kalki.

I don't have much to add apart from an extra consequence of Britain staying out of ww1 would probably have been civil war in Ireland, followed by I don't know what.

Also, if Germany had won ww1, would we have ever even heard of Hitler or the Nazis?

I found that utterly fascinating to read, Kalki. And I would read any timeline to grow from this, particularly since it seems like an idea that hasn't been done in British Empire timelines.

I don't know enough to consider the plausibility, unfortunately, but it reads very well and appears to be convincing enough.

Kalki said:

So where do i begin. (snip)

Click to expand...

I just want to echo what the others have said about this being a fantastic, informative and well-balanced post. You make the very important point that attitudes to colonialism (or any form of government) cannot be understood in isolation, but only in contrast to an alternative. A colonised people who can remember being treated just as badly, or worse, by their native rulers are not going to be enthusiastic about revolt or even a peaceful independence movement. The same holds true if it is clear that they would just be replacing one coloniser with another. I would say that one reason World War I made a difference because it appeared that any hypothetical independent Indian government, though it might conceivably treat the people no better than the Raj did in general, would at least not get them involved in a war that they regarded as having nothing to do with them and turned out not to win them any greater respect from most of the British. From that perspective, one can make a comparison to many other parts of the Empire at the time, maybe even Ireland and Australia to some extent. The point you make about it breaking down class boundaries, though arguably universal to many or all of the participants in the war, is very important because of how much the Raj's stability had depended on a divide and conquer class warfare strategy as you say. Take that away and...

Wow, just popping in to say that this whole thread is like some kind of museum dedicated to the Perfect Thread. Lots of really useful information and well implemented etiquette guys!