Lol. As if the Raj came due to direct crown intervention and sole focus of Britain on India. Dupleix remaining or someone competent as his replacement would be capable of doing what Clive and company did. Investing time and money into India makes sense in the latter part of the 18th century if the French could hope to have a profit and a lasting presence.
This was not true because due to some completely avoidable decisions/mistakes that were fairly minor, BEIC was allowed to strengthen its position.
You argument falls flat when you realise how 19th cent. India came to be dominated by an external power.
Same can be said for india longsword. If the marathas in late 18th century had not fallen apart the europeans would not have been able to conquer the subcontinent. Prove to me that against a united maratha confederacy the beic could win. I never said state intervention, I said that the british in India, to clarify the BEIC got lucky. History is just that a bunch of lucky events and as an economic historian, one learns that nothing should be taken at face value. Most stats are made up to be honest by scanty figures and innacurate data and even more questionable assumptions. Take Maddison people cite his stuff but he uses an arbitrary baseline of 400 and in many peer reviewed journals his methodolgy is severly critized, yet his stuff is some of the best we have. Most historical narratives are laughably flawed, and should only be taken indicitvly. So to conclude, the best one can say is that yes the french or british could conquer the subcontinent if conditions were such that their was internal civil war within the maratha or mughal states. As for Spain, come now, Spain won because of lots of native allies, plague and disease. Had the native populations not been wiped out in such large numbers I doubt the Spaniards could have held much if any territory. Demographics are annoying, just look at the situation of the english colonies pre mass dieoff of the native american tribes due to disease. There was a reaso people were going native. Britian did so well in otl because of access to the New World trade networks, eg fueling of the lancashire cotton mills, slave labor output from the Carribean, shrewd commercial practices eg tariffs on chinese and indin manufacturers, having solid financing systems, and access to plentiful natural resources key to industrial manufacturing, waterways, deforestation, literacy rates, and centralization. So yes Britain was very well positioned but as the Seond Angloo Maratha war and first anglo maratha war showed, the BEIC could not on its own take over India. Nor could the FEIC, given France was too busy in EUrope. France does better in europe well great more coalitions and more warfare. Look what happened when Napoleon came to power and tried conquering Europe, not to mention rivalry with Britain and Netherlands means the French fleet is useless. Spain could help, but they had their own issues what with three bankruptcies and piracy. Charles III was a brilliant man to be fair, but.... had enough headaches to deal with.
Three theories are possible explanations for British success
World Systems Theory
California School Theory
WeberianView
Post 1800 I agree Europeans could have either conquered or protectorized India like they did to China, by then gap was too large. Pre 1800 next to impossible, and very situational in nature. Pre 1700... not a chance. Portugal by the way in this period eg 1600s was embroiled in war with the Netherlands and lost almost all its holdings, and also fought with Spain for independance from the Union. Tech disparty was not so wide then and against a well trained Mughal army, Portuguese troops or Portuguese casa de indies troops would be annighlated.
