DBWI: British India not divided into seperate colonies

By 1870 it was clear that the 1858 Government Act of India wasn't working and trying to administer all of British India from Calcutta was creating an increasingly unwieldy government unable to maintain order. That, combined with a lack of any legislative input by Indian aristocracy led to the 1879 rebellion and in 1882 India was divided into several smaller, more easily managed colonies. So what happens if that never occurs and India remains one gigantic British territory?
 
Maybe India would have been free sooner. Not that it matter. The British could never keep a hold on the subcontinent, that why even after they divided into seperate colonies, London still had a real hard time dealing with them till the English at last left.
 
Maybe India would have been free sooner. Not that it matter. The British could never keep a hold on the subcontinent, that why even after they divided into seperate colonies, London still had a real hard time dealing with them till the English at last left.

Oh definitely, there's no way Britain could have held it forever just based on population alone. I was looking more towards when does independence happen and what comes after?
 
Maybe India would have been free sooner. Not that it matter. The British could never keep a hold on the subcontinent, that why even after they divided into seperate colonies, London still had a real hard time dealing with them till the English at last left.

That's not entirely fair to the British. They actually had a pretty firm hold on the subcontinent at first, and splitting it up made things easier to manage. It was only after the Great War that British control really disintegrated, and even that took time.

Of course, the British aren't going to be able to hold onto India for forever, but they could well maintain control of it for another few decades, into the middle of the 20th century.

As to the actual OP, I find it hard to see how it could remain one big territory. There are simply too many groups of people in India, and there is so much land and population to sort out. For a foreign power controlling them from afar, the only way to maintain control was to split it up. This also allowed the British to play off of local rivalries and keep the area relatively passive. Parliament would have to be given a heavy dose of stupid not to change things.

In a similar vein, there's no way this monster would stay together after it went independent. That would be like asking all of Europe to be ruled by Berlin, Paris, or Brussels- and Europe for the most part doesn't even have the religious problems India does. They could very well unite to drive the British out, but at best we're looking at a few slightly larger states.
 
I wonder if remaining centralized would have had the exact opposite effect and initiated an early Revolution after which the local states would go their own way.

Arguably, it was 200 years of British rule that unified the country into an actual entity, rare throughout Indian history. I dont' count the Marathas or even the Mughals as a truly "all-India" unified nation in the modern sense.

If there was a successful second revolt in, say, 1875, then the national consciousness might never have formed in that last 75 years of British rule and the subcontinent might still consist of dozens of independant nations.

"India" is such a vast concept, so diverse in religion, ethnicity and language, I don't see it unifying in any other manner than how it did.

Even if there was one state stronger than the others, I don't believe it could conquer the rest.
 
That's not entirely fair to the British. They actually had a pretty firm hold on the subcontinent at first, and splitting it up made things easier to manage. It was only after the Great War that British control really disintegrated, and even that took time.

Of course, the British aren't going to be able to hold onto India for forever, but they could well maintain control of it for another few decades, into the middle of the 20th century.

As to the actual OP, I find it hard to see how it could remain one big territory. There are simply too many groups of people in India, and there is so much land and population to sort out. For a foreign power controlling them from afar, the only way to maintain control was to split it up. This also allowed the British to play off of local rivalries and keep the area relatively passive. Parliament would have to be given a heavy dose of stupid not to change things.

In a similar vein, there's no way this monster would stay together after it went independent. That would be like asking all of Europe to be ruled by Berlin, Paris, or Brussels- and Europe for the most part doesn't even have the religious problems India does. They could very well unite to drive the British out, but at best we're looking at a few slightly larger states.

Well, they is a small, but growing group of Indian nations coming together, call for the subcontinent to be one.

And the subcontinent have the loose union left over from the British before the Empire fell, and they left India.
 
Bah, if they weren't divided into separate colonies they wouldn't have been pawns for other nations and wouldn't have been constantly squabbling with each other and might have actually amounted to something.

Only last week the Nizam of Hyderabad has sent troops to the border between him and the Marathas (at the behest of his French sponsor of course). God forbid there be another conflict started.

IMHO, the only way you can get the Raj to stay as one colony is to have the 1879 revolution succeed or fail less bloodily.

Remember, the revolutionaries were loved by most of the populace and they were growing in strength. And if they do succeed, chances are that the British will be back soon, but at least this time around we may not be administered by the BEIC! I mean India was under Company rule till the 20s!

And of course the only way for the 1889 revolution to succeed is for Jassa Singh Rathore to not betray the Revolutionaries during the Siege of Jaisalmer. The odds were so greatly in the Revolutionaries favour, I mean come on, even the Sikh emperor had sent a renewed Dal Khalsa to aid the revolutionaries.

Get Rathore to not be a traitor and the firsts steps towards a united British colony in India are taken. It can go anyway from there.
 
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