How Does the British get India to stay within the Empire?
- Thread starter Jim Smitty
- Start date
If you need a nation that can rival the US as a superpower go for a reformed Russia. An Anglo-German alliance if they're holding down their empires for a while.
But Britain cannot assimilate India, and Britain never wanted to assimilate India. The Raj saw the economic potential of India fed to the Lancashire cotton mills. The Indian Civil Service was developed to keep the arteries of empire clear, never to make the Indians a partner.
There were British officials who were more benign than others, yes- but it was the benevolence of arrogant paternalism. Indians might rule their own Dominion. They might even have peers in the House of Lords. No one in any position of power in Whitehall ever envisaged giving Indian rulers anything like equality, and so long as that was the case the subcontinent's trajectory was always going to carry it away from the Empire.
If you really want a stronger Empire, you're going to have to pursue the mad dreams of Imperial Federation. That scheme was doomed to fail, with or without India, but it might have given the Empire another couple of decades.
Of course, if you want that to work than the British need to retain Canada- because otherwise the Federation is just with recalcitrant Afrikaners and Australasians whose geopolitical interests are already carrying them out of the British sphere by the forties.
But Britain cannot assimilate India, and Britain never wanted to assimilate India. The Raj saw the economic potential of India fed to the Lancashire cotton mills. The Indian Civil Service was developed to keep the arteries of empire clear, never to make the Indians a partner.
There were British officials who were more benign than others, yes- but it was the benevolence of arrogant paternalism. Indians might rule their own Dominion. They might even have peers in the House of Lords. No one in any position of power in Whitehall ever envisaged giving Indian rulers anything like equality, and so long as that was the case the subcontinent's trajectory was always going to carry it away from the Empire.
If you really want a stronger Empire, you're going to have to pursue the mad dreams of Imperial Federation. That scheme was doomed to fail, with or without India, but it might have given the Empire another couple of decades.
Of course, if you want that to work than the British need to retain Canada- because otherwise the Federation is just with recalcitrant Afrikaners and Australasians whose geopolitical interests are already carrying them out of the British sphere by the forties.
Deleted member 97083
If the British empire became extremely totalitarian and brutal, nuclear armed, willing to punish all dissent with disproportionate retaliation, something like Oceania from Nineteen Eighty-Four, then they could retain India and their other colonies. Otherwise, economics will lead to parts of the empire being released as independent nations.
Well, the ancient Egyptians and Greeks both had similar attitudes, and both ended up being assimilated by their conquerors, so it is possible given enough time. British rule only covered most of the Subcontinent for a hundred and fifty years or so, though, which isn't long enough.
Some sort of Anglo-German-French union perhaps? Would be pretty fun to see, although I'm not sure how plausible it would really be.
Yeah that is true.
Given what I have in mind for this TL it really wouldn't be plausible. An Anglo-Franco unit might be possible, but all three, hell no.
Jack Douglass
Banned
A workable Imperial Federation is your best bet, I unlike some people do believe that an Imperial Federation was possible, although it would always be British dominated, many Indians early on like Gandhi, did not want full independence but simply wanted to be treated as equals in the British Empire, now India will for all intents and purposes become autonomous, if not officially independent. It will be the same India of the British Raj with special privileges being given to the Princely states in the interior. Essentially India becomes it's own country, rules by an Indian even, but still under the suzerainty of the British Empire with British military bases and bureaucracy still littering the country.
Under such a system you would have equality in one house, and Indian majority in the other. Even if you got the Indians to accept such rank unfairness, the white people of the Empire would still feel outvoted overall and as a result would never accept it.
You can play up these differences all you want, the moment a bill for abolishing the mercantilist policies, or one for spending taxpayers money on infrastructure throughout India comes up, the Indians will unite and the developed white areas will oppose. You have the same conundrum that modern Israel faces: you can't do all three of keeping the territory, being democratic and maintaining the existing cultural pre-eminence.
You would have to do this for about a hundred years before the Indians felt truly "British". And the political equality you'd need for that hundred years would be unacceptable to the original British.
That was before literacy took off. It's like saying the Europeans were happy being ruled by divine right in the Middle Ages, so there's no reason why that can't be done in the 20th century.
Interestingly, during both the 1857 rebellion and the 20th century resistance, Indian nationalism was far weaker in the princely states than it was in the Company and then Raj-controlled places. So perhaps if indirect rule was re-established across the whole subcontinent you might be able to do it. But that causes problems when these local rulers realise they can unite together to kick out the Brits.
Mughals pre-Akbar were foreign. But Akbar was born in a Hindu Rajput household, spent his life in India, spoke Urdu, and saw himself as Hindustani. After him, the Mughals can no longer be described as foreign. And it was really post-Akbar that the Mughals achieved stability and were appreciated by most Indians
To get the British Raj to achieve that, you need many British people to settle in India. The only real plausible way to do that is some sort of Peshawar Lancers-type scenario, where they flee to India from a calamity. Realistically, though, they'd likely move to a white-majority colony rather than India, so I don't see how you could get British folk considered Indian.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
India was considered deadly due to the high rate of whites who would contract diseases and die. Few Brits would willingly go to India as a place of settlement.
I agree, which is why the Mughal path of having the Brits retain control of India is not the way to keep India British.
Well, the is comparison does not seem accurate to me, and for several reasons so.
First of all, the communications (meaning both communication and transports) tools were much weaker in ancient times than they have been since modern times. And this technological gap does not work most people would spontaneously guess.
In fact, the most advanced the communications tool are and the easiest it is for a conquered/occupied cultural entity to resist cultural assimilation and to reinvent and reassert its old cultural identity. Just consider what effect the rotary printing produced in 19th century Europe. It halted most assimilation process that had been going on for centuries.
The irish, the catalans, the czech, the poles, ... etc, used it as a tool to escape from the assimilation process. Most people don't want to be assimilated and they only finally do so when they have absolutely no possibility to avoid assimilation.
You can see this trend having reached a further step with the development of satellite TV and high-speed internet. Assimilation of immigrants had become far difficult because immigrants from other cultural areas now have the possibility to live in their new country as if they still lived in the country they or their parents left. Children or even grandchildren of immigrants (who have totally assimilated themselves to their new country) even quite often decide that they feel more a member of the country from which their assimilated parents or grandparents originated than of the country where their assimilated parents or grandparents originated because they have the possibility to do so.
And by the way, the ancient greeks never were assimilated by the romans because they felt and were almost universally considered as culturally superior. It is in fact the roman elite that were assimilated by the greeks. And when the eastern roman empire began being run by culturally hellenic emperors, the eastern roman empire quickly became the byzantine/hellenic empire because the roman/latin varnish quickly disappeared.
And except for the urban populations that were a small minority of the whole populations, the egyptians never assimilated. Only a few decade after the muslim arabs conquered Egypt, the hellenic varnish quickly disappeared (although it took 6 to 7 centuries for Egypt to become in majority muslim).
So this brings US back to my previous statement. Britain lacked both the demographic advantage, the cultural advantage and the technological frame to assimilate the gigantic mass of indians).
Lusitania
Donor
By end of WW2 the British had no chance. Heck they could not even keep Canada, SA or Australia in the empire. Why because they refused to grant the people in those countries representation in British parliament and those countries were ruled and controlled by Europeans most of which were either born or decendant of British citizens.
We need to remember that GB did not have universal voting right for all its people till after WW1 (I believe) so they were not going to share government with colonials.
The British would of needed to give the elites of India (upper casts and Muslim rulers) equal rights, same as British citizens and make them participants of the government elections. At least that way they had a chance but that would of required a change in thinking in the 19th century.
Admiral Beez
Banned
I imagine that's why this is posted in the pre-1900 forum, meaning we need to plant the seeds for this objective well before WW1 and beginning of the end for the Empire.
If we go far back enough, Britain can set up a less exploitative administration with the Indian monarchs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indian_monarchs Keep these guys in power and onside and India may become a colony where the British aren't seen as overlords, but instead as distant partners with the monarchs.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
What's to stop any Indian nationalist movement from putting two and two together and getting rid of the princely states? In OTL, the princely states disappeared as soon as India achieved independence.
Sed contra, mass communications and education made it much easier to impose a particular language on a country. Just look at all the regional languages of France disappearing since the Revolution, or the extenuation of different dialects in the UK.
I was referring to their assimilation by the Arabs. You'll notice that nowadays the Levant and Egypt are majority Arabic-speaking, majority Muslim, and firmly within the Middle Eastern/Islamic cultural sphere. The same, mutatis mutandis, is true of Anatolia.
France was able to impose a single language because It already was a country with a long common history and a strong common feeling of belonging to the same nation.
Prussia and Russia could not do It with Poland. German Austria could not do It with Bohemia.
Same for England. Now consider the fact that although Ireland became english-speaking, common language was not enough to have it want to become part of the same nation as Britain.
Well, Hyderabad, as well as Jammu and Kashmir, had to be mopped up by India and Pakistan.
But otherwise this was the case, and neither of the two princely states had popular support.
How to keep India British?
For starters, British could stop teaching Indians that British are evil.
No, for real, they were actually doing that.
Any Indian of influence and affluence, send his son to British university. In that university, in addition to hard sciences, he was taught social sciences which included topics such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, racial equality, and self-determination of peoples.
"You have two weeks to turn in your assignment on how all colonialism is evil, how British colonialism is exceptionally evil, and how British imperialists and Indian princes are exploiting Indian working classes"
Then British were surprised that growing Indian middle class was demanding for democratic and independent India.
For starters, British could stop teaching Indians that British are evil.
No, for real, they were actually doing that.
Any Indian of influence and affluence, send his son to British university. In that university, in addition to hard sciences, he was taught social sciences which included topics such as nationalism, liberalism, socialism, racial equality, and self-determination of peoples.
"You have two weeks to turn in your assignment on how all colonialism is evil, how British colonialism is exceptionally evil, and how British imperialists and Indian princes are exploiting Indian working classes"
Then British were surprised that growing Indian middle class was demanding for democratic and independent India.
There was a notable time in Indian history in which foreign culture spread to it. Over about five hundred years, Iranic culture was progressively spread by Turkic invaders, from the first of the Delhi Sultanates up to the Mughal Empire. Yet, Iranic culture did not displace Indian culture, but was merely added on to it. If all of those Turkic invaders could not wipe out Indian culture over such an extended period of time, how could the British possibly expect to do so?