Colonial History Of India-2

[acharya]

the role of europeans in India changed over time. There are atleast the following phases:

1. Mughals in power phase (europeans begging for trade and awed by the riches of a 'new realm')
2. Mughals in decline phase (european adventurers making it big - as per Airavat description)
3. East India company phase (exploitative, brutal, aggressive, genocidal, greedy...)
4. Victorian Imperial phase (seemingly to undo the company's evils, but... powerful, dominant, domineering, indirectly destructive, partially unintentionally genocidal)
5. between the world wars phase (struggling with bringing liberalism to the colonies and avoiding it if possible through repressive means)
6. WW2 and independence phase (in desperate trouble, need to get out without getting lynched and making concessions)

In each of these the overall mentality and roles of the europeans were quite different. interestingly, american pressure in the final stages closed down british dreams of hanging on to empire -even though many in britain itself no longer wanted to - in the same way that the british at home were critical of the East india company's excesses in the 1840's. Some authors suggest that americans behaved just as imperiously with china during the same period without any sense of hypocracy