On The Inherent Reasons Of India's Being Conquered By The British

India is a country with an ancient civilization and a long history, contributing to the development of world civilization outstandingly. However, in modern times, with the opening of new sea-lane and colonial activities of the Europeans, the western colonial forces began to enter India. Nearly the first two and a half century, the western colonial forces were only entrenched in a few settlements near the coastal zone, and it was rather difficult to have their full swing for themselves. But in the late 18th century and early 19th century, just a few decades, the entire Indian subcontinent, all fell under the rule of Britain. The reasons are worth pondering over. In this paper, the writer will discuss the reasons why India was conquered by the British by the factors of India.The rapid feudal disintegration of the Mughal Empire and the external colonial expansionist policies of the capitalism are generally considered as the internal and external reasons. But it will be more convincing to analyse the reasons by comparising the changes of the two countries'national power. First of all, during the 17 th century to the mid-18 th century, the gap is not great. This can be seen in the following. With the economic development and commodity capitalism sprouting, in many of the industrial sector, the level of arts and crafts was beyond that of Britain. And India was in a surplus position in bilateral trade. The gap of the development of the productive forces and per capita income, was not significant. Therefore, during this period, the British mainly seeked the right for free trade, trade privileges and other commercial interests as well as the small residence on the Indian subcontinent. However, the potential of social development of the two countries had great inherent differences, including difference in social structure, difference in the power of central government, dissimilarity between the market demands as well as the dissimilar land ownership. Since the above differences, the British society had great potential for development, and took the lead in the bourgeoisie revolution and industrial revolution. Britain jumped to become a world power with the strength uprushing rapidly. On the other hand, India's budding capitalism met too much trouble in developing, and the economic development also subjected to various constraints. Moreover, while the Mughal Empire was enduring the long-term war and was going to pieces, its strength was more weakened and was ebbing away. Therefore, in the first half of the 18th century, the English Company was more and more consolidating its positiong and coming out as the srongest military power. With essential changes taking place, in India, the British adopted the strategy of "disintegrating and drubbing respectively" to achieve the purpose of conquering India.This determined the fate of India in the future.The decline of the Mughal Empire was just the door opening widely for the British to enter. The decline was caused primarily by the following factors. Firstly, the Mughal court grew the lack of cohesion. This was mainly manifested in the development of commodity economy, the inflow of large gold and silver,which greatly stimulated the aristocrats'corruption, extravagance and greed that led to the collapse of the military Fief Economy and fundamentally shaken the Mughal Empire's economic base. The internal struggles for the throne among the royalty severely weakened the royal forces. The contradictions between Mughal Central Government and the local forces had deepened, and the feudal separatist trend became more and more grievous. Secondly,the blunders of the domestic and foreign policies accelerated the Mughal Empire's downfall. Internally, Mughal court discriminated against non-Muslims, persecuted non-Sunni Muslims, which aroused strong opposition from all sides and undermined the stability and unity of India. To solve the crisis of military fief system, civil wars took place frequently. Aurangzeb implemented religious persecution and war policy ,which failed to achieve the desired results, but led to further economic decline and military organization's collapse, and further intensified the contradictions between Hindus and Muslims. Otherwise, Mughal's external compromise or concession, including free trade, duty- free goods , the establishment of a permanent business centre, river trip, as well as tax collection, minting, garrison and other privileges, indicated that the British colonial forces had penetrated into the financial, military and other fields of the Mughal Empire. Furthermore, the alien invasions from northwest, particularly the third Panipat campaign, hastened the steps of the shaky Mughal empire to collapse, overturned the hope of the replacement of broken Mughal and reestablishment of the Indian Empire, and offered the opporunity to the British colonialists to establish colonial rule in Bengal. In the process of British military conquest, the struggles of the Indian princes for rights and interests constrainted the confederate anti-British activities. At that time, the Indian princes didn't form the unified national consciousness, and even worse, seldom recognized the British colonialists as their common enemy, but only regarded them as one of the Indian states. On the one hand, India princes had mutual hostility and frequent warefares in order to expand the territory. On the other hand, they often allied with the British, attacking their neighbor states. Their political egoism made them cannot see beyond the nose, which made it rather difficult to achieve genuine joint resistance. The East India Company also successfully used the contradictions among Indian princes, disintegrating them, preventing their allying and instigating mutual aggression. In southern India, the most typical example was the one among the Maratha Confederacy, Mysore and Hyderabad, as well as the internal quarrels of the Maratha Confederacy. Meanwhile, in order to keep their vested interests or obtain more benefits, the upper blocs nearly in each Indian state dishonorably became betrayers while facing the British military conquest, completely regardless of the interests of the state. Thereby, the British used to head off the danger in times of crisis. Seizing the opportunity, they conquerer wider and wider regions, and eventually the whole Indian subcontinent.In the above, the author mainly discuss the inherent efficient amses why India was conquered by the British on the viewpoint of Indian political superstratum. However, Indian society had unique social characteristics including the village community system, caste system and various religions that intertwined and formed a close laggard society with the conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, one caste and another, leading to a deep involvement in political abruption, economic stagnation and spiritual numbness. Such was the underlying reason why India became British India.In short, the economic stagnation and feudal abruption that made India extremely frail and vulnerable to attack and lack of self-defense capability, furthermore, the inherent antagonism, exclusion and segregation of Indian society were the deep-seated inherent factors which incurred Mughal Empire's perdition and India's eventual conquest.