Modern India

The Europeans

Portuguese (Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498), Dutch, English (East India Company chartered in 1600), Danish and French (1664). The Carnatic wars settled the Anglo-French contest in favour of the English.

Two battles made the Company a territorial power:

• Plassey, 1757 — Robert Clive defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah of Bengal.
• Buxar, 1764 — victory over the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daulah and Shah Alam II, after which the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa (1765) gave the Company revenue rights.

From Company to Crown

Land revenue settlements

• Permanent Settlement (1793, Cornwallis) — Bengal, Bihar, Orissa; zamindars made proprietors with a fixed demand.
• Ryotwari (Munro, Read) — Madras and Bombay; settlement directly with the cultivator, revisable.
• Mahalwari (Holt Mackenzie) — North-Western Provinces and Punjab; settlement with the village community.

All three raised the demand in cash, which pushed cultivators towards moneylenders and commercial crops.

Wars of expansion

• Anglo-Mysore wars (1767–1799): ended with Tipu Sultan's death at Seringapatam.
• Anglo-Maratha wars (1775–1818): ended Maratha power; Peshwa pensioned off.
• Anglo-Sikh wars (1845–49): annexation of Punjab.
• Subsidiary Alliance (Wellesley) and the Doctrine of Lapse (Dalhousie) absorbed states without war — Satara, Jhansi, Nagpur, and Awadh on grounds of misgovernment in 1856.

The Congress and its early phases

The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 by A. O. Hume; its first session in Bombay was presided over by W. C. Bonnerjee.

• Moderates (1885–1905): Dadabhai Naoroji (the "drain of wealth"), Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta, S. N. Banerjee — petitions, prayers and constitutional argument.
• Extremists (1905–1919): Bal Gangadhar Tilak ("Swaraj is my birthright"), Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghosh — swadeshi, boycott and self-reliance.

The two wings split at Surat in 1907 and reunited at Lucknow in 1916, where the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League was also signed.

Partition of Bengal and Swadeshi

Curzon's partition of Bengal (1905) provoked the Swadeshi and Boycott movement; the partition was annulled in 1911, when the capital was also shifted from Calcutta to Delhi. The Muslim League was founded at Dhaka in 1906.

Home Rule

Tilak (April 1916, Pune) and Annie Besant (September 1916, Madras) launched Home Rule Leagues demanding self-government within the empire.

Gandhi's satyagrahas

Then came the Rowlatt Act (1919), the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (13 April 1919) and the merging of the Khilafat cause with national politics.

The three mass movements

Between them: the Simon Commission (1927) with no Indian member, met by "Simon go back"; the Nehru Report (1928); the Lahore session (December 1929) which adopted Purna Swaraj, celebrated as independence day on 26 January 1930; the three Round Table Conferences (1930–32); the Communal Award and the Poona Pact (1932) between Gandhi and Ambedkar.