British empire without 'British India'

What historical effects would we have seen if India had had help in throwing out the British circa 1870's - 1890's? I am working towards a set of ideas for some after 1900 timeline outlines, but need to have the British out of India before WWI, and preferably for at least 20 years. The reason I am posting this in this forum rather than the 'before 1900' forum is, I don't want to focus on how this comes about, but rather what the effects of such a change would have had by 1900 and beyond.

What I am specifically looking for here is, what if the UK were disallowed any direct trade with the former 'British India', and their ships were banned from Indian waters and ports. Effectively, India would become an independent nation. What would we see different by the time of 1900's in terms of reduced power and wealth for the empire as a whole compared to OTL?
 
What historical effects would we have seen if India had had help in throwing out the British circa 1870's - 1890's?

Well, in the first place, "India" did not exist as an organized entity at this time, except as an area under British domination.

Second, there was no "Indian" movement to "throw out the British" till much later. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 by a British civil servant, with the goal of recruiting leading Indians to support eventual Indian self-rule within the Empire.

Though an anti-British full independence faction arose by 1900, it was still a minority and was expelled from the Congress.

Third, who would "help India throw out the British?" Russia? France? The United States? Russia was the only outside power that could reach India in the heyday of the Royal Navy, and even Russia was on the far side of Afghanistan and its high mountains. Plus Russia had only subdued Bokhara in 1873, and it was a protectorate, not annexed.

So the premise is extremely implausible.
 
Well, in the first place, "India" did not exist as an organized entity at this time, except as an area under British domination.
And your point is? I am sure that everyone reading this will know the geographical region under discussion, so why throw this into the pot?

Second, there was no "Indian" movement to "throw out the British" till much later. The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 by a British civil servant, with the goal of recruiting leading Indians to support eventual Indian self-rule within the Empire. Third, who would "help India throw out the British?" Russia? France? The United States? Russia was the only outside power that could reach India in the heyday of the Royal Navy, and even Russia was on the far side of Afghanistan and its high mountains. Plus Russia had only subdued Bokhara in 1873, and it was a protectorate, not annexed.
Lets see, the 1857 fighting (which seems to have more names than I would care to shake a stick at), which after all was just 1 year after the Crimean war, effectively ended the rule of 'the British east India company' in the region, and was replaced by the 'India office', thus referring to the area as 'British India' should not cause any confusion nor be untimely. Keeping in mind that the Crimean war ends, India rebels, Prussia whoops up on France (1870-1871), and then Russia has a second go with the Ottoman empire in 1877, it seems to me that if the Czar had felt the desire for 'punishing' the British, this would indeed be a time that would be ripe for it.

So the premise is extremely implausible.
Hardly.

The premise is not only not ' extremely implausible', but actually quite plausible, given the potential Russian desire for revenge, and that of the Indians for gaining their freedom from their brutal oppressors, and, as you yourself pointed out, the RN can do exactly nothing to stop Russian arms shipments overland.:)

So again, I ask what would be the effect of the British getting the boot from India by say 1895, along about WWI?
 
I have read that Russian intelligence was apparently investigating ways to subvert British rule in India in the decades before WWI. However, like a lot of Russian schemes involving the subcontinent, it was a lot of pie-in-the-sky intrigue. Even though they could correctly identify the strengths and weakness of British rule, they had no real practical means of exploiting it.

The Raj was simply too fractured an entity in the late Victorian Period to be able to mount a unified front for independence. One could argue that that the process of building an Indian nation state only started after Partition, when the Independence leaders had to confront the reality of ruling over the vast territories that the British had given over to them. A more reasonable alternative is to see a small slice of India break off and through the diplomatic connivance of various Great Powers gain the diplomatic recognition and material aid needed to fight off the wrath of the British, but that still is a tall order.
 
If by some unlikely miracle another power managed to force severe terms on the British, they'd probably want to take over administration of India themselves, or at least parts of it, rather than giving it independence. British divide-and-rule in India was extremely effective; even in the Sepoy Rebellion following the Crimean War, there were Indian princes rallying alongside the British East India Company to put down the rebels.

The kind of POD you'd need would be so far back it might butterfly total British rule altogether anyway, but that might work better. If you can somehow prevent the Brits from taking over the whole lot, leaving a couple of independent Indian states there, there's more of a chance of other powers intruding into the sphere (for example, a surviving rump Mughal Empire with, I dunno, French-backing might have a good shot at throwing the British out during a global or European war. Then again, you've got the Royal Navy to contend with, which was absurdly massive.
 
It seems like you're calling for some sort of mass movement from within India for independence. Such a thing could destabilize British rule there, but I don't think the social conditions were in place in the time frame you are looking at. Foreign invention is unlikely to be more than a minor catalyst, it needs to come from within India.
 
I think that unless you show how the UK exited India your timeline will not fly.
So try this highly improbable scenario
Delay the mutiny untill the time of the Trent incident which turn hot (maybe Albert dirs a little earlier?while embroiled in this war India rebels as per OTL
The UK 'wins' both wars (Royal Navybut eventualy decides to invest more in America than India and the INdian empire withers away ending not with a bang but a whimper
There is no way any nation wpuld deny entry to ships from anywhere its not in their interest......besides most ships ate British at this time!
 
And your point is? I am sure that everyone reading this will know the geographical region under discussion, so why throw this into the pot?

"if India had had help in throwing out the British circa 1870's - 1890's?"

This implies that "India" is a political entity or a group of people with a common national identity capable of acting. Which was not true in 1875-1885, any more than it was true of Italy in 1450 or Germany in 1700.

One might as weill ask "What if Greece attacked Rome in 450 BC?" Or "What if Spain invaded England in 1400?"

Keeping in mind that the Crimean war ends, India rebels, Prussia whoops up on France (1870-1871), and then Russia has a second go with the Ottoman empire in 1877, it seems to me that if the Czar had felt the desire for 'punishing' the British, this would indeed be a time that would be ripe for it.

The Crimean War was barely more than a skirmish, compared to the Napoleonic Wars, or the other major wars of the 1800s. Then the Indian Mutiny. Then, 13 years later, two European powers have a war in Europe. (What on earth has this to do with Indian nationalism?) Then six years later, Russia gets into a messy and expensive war with Turkey, and is militarily and financially exhausted. (Also nothing to do with India.) And then, somehow, Russia gets the mad idea of another messy and expensive war because (due to all these irrelevant or long-ago events), the time "would be ripe for it".

Uh-huh.

The premise is not only not ' extremely implausible', but actually quite plausible, given the potential Russian desire for revenge, and that of the Indians for gaining their freedom from their brutal oppressors...

That desire didn't exist. Britain ruled India with a few thousand white civil servants and a modest detachment of the British Army, and a much larger Indian Civil Service and Indian Army.

Far more Indians were interested in civil service jobs or army commissions than in joining any rebellions.
 
I suppose if you take the POD back further you could limit the influence of Britian in the subcontinent. Many regard the Seven Years War as the turning point for British domination in India as well as the end of French ambitions there. If France and her allies had more success, at least in the subcontinent, then we might see Britain's holdings limited to the Bengal, if not effectively pushed out all together. Under such circumstances British control of India could be considerably weaker and more vulnerable to being expelled, either by native powers or colonial rivals. On the other hand this could lead to a French dominated India.
 
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Getting back to this:
I would like to discuss the OP question in this thread, so if anyone would like to continue the discussion started here, lets take it to this thread instead, ok?
 
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