Essay On Indian Colonialism

The accounts of colonial states present an interesting view of the colonial paradigm of various nations, and none paint a more vivid picture than the colonial era of India. The colonial era of India, which spanned for nearly a century, manifests in great detail the ten tenets on which the very idea of colonialism is based on. Colonialism, as an endeavour, cannot sustain on its own, and as such it is very important to systematically study the cornerstones on which the very idea of colonialism is built on.

The colonizers came in India with the purpose of making profits by engaging in trade and commercial practices. An English East India Company- to trade with the East-was established in 1600. Even Queen Elizabeth (1588-1603) was one of the shareholders on the company. Competing with

But the Indian economy was transferred into a colonial economy whose nature and structure were determined by the needs of the British economy. High revenue demands and the rigid manner of its collection led to the impoverishment of peasantry and they went into debt-trap. The growing commercialization of agriculture also profited the moneylender-cum-merchant. The deprived peasant cultivator was forced to sell his produce just after the harvest to the merchant, at whatever price he could get, as he had to meet the demands of the Government, the landlord and the moneylender. Indian agriculture began to deteriorate, resulting in extremely low yields per acre. The peasant was too poor and had no incentive to improve agriculture. Landlords would rather squeeze in more rent than invest in improvement of agriculture. No modern technology was introduced in this field and the government refused to take any responsibility. Rural population was continuously plagued by famines as majority of cultivators lived at starvation