Why Did The British India Dbq

India, one of the many colonies England controlled in the past was the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire. Although in the beginning, it was controlled by the British East India Company as a source of cotton, tea, and indigo. The British had indirect control of India until the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857. Although Britain created India’s government and military, improved trade, protected land, claimed to improve education, and increased minority safety, however the government and military controlled and excluded Indians, trade only benefitted the British, statistics show education was better after Indian Independence, valuable land was degraded and minorities still felt fear and insecurity.

While Britain created the Indian army and framework

According to Dr. Lalvani, under British rule, endangered species were protected and national parks were opened. Yet in reality, forests were logged and turned into farms for cash crops like indigo, cotton and tobacco. Resulting in higher temperatures, increased salt content in the soil making it harder to grow crops and reducing the amount of available water (Document 6). National parks are meant to save and protect both the land and animals living there. Logging those forests for the purpose of cash crops didn’t follow these two very simple guidelines. The degraded soil caused the crops to have difficulty growing, resulting in a loss of money, hurting both the British and Indians. Under British rule, many railroads were opened, 100,000 miles of track laid within 25 years to be exact (Lalvani). Despite this these railroads were used to extract raw materials and flood Indian markets with British textiles (Document 2, Gandhi). Putting Indian weavers out of business and into poverty. Meaning the British were making a profit and taking from India, leaving India with

Dr.Lalvani claims that under British rule, India was modernized, giving the foundation for a government that therefore gave law and order. While this system and others were built, they were built almost entirely for British benefit and even profit. In this new government, Indians had no say in the laws being decided by the British, that were impacting them. The laws were meant to further control Indians, while the British extracted India’s wealth and flood India’s markets with textiles with the help of railroads. Wanting more and more wealth, the British logged forests to create land to grow cash crops which in the end degraded the soil making it more difficult for them to grow. Muslims still felt less important than the Hindus fearing Muslim interests wouldn’t be protected by the mainly Hindu congress. In conclusion for Dr. Lalvani to say that the British over all helped and positively impacted India completely disregards the fact that Indians had to go through so much loss and pain through struggles and challenges that India has to go through