The British Raj
India is ruled directly by the British Crown, bringing railways, English education and a modern state, but also economic drain, famines and the massacre at Amritsar.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press (2020)
After 1858 India was governed by a Viceroy and the elite Indian Civil Service, a few thousand British officials ruling hundreds of millions. About two-fifths of the territory remained under more than 500 princely states, whose rulers accepted British overlordship. Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
The British built one of the world’s largest railway networks, universities, courts and an English-educated class. They also ran India for Britain’s benefit: Indian taxes paid for an army that fought Britain’s wars, and nationalists such as Dadabhai Naoroji described a “drain” of wealth. Famines in the late nineteenth century, such as that of 1876–78, killed millions while officials held to free-market principles and kept collecting revenue.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press (2020)
On 13 April 1919 General Reginald Dyer ordered troops to fire on an unarmed crowd in the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. The official count was 379 dead; Indian estimates were much higher. The massacre turned many moderate Indians against British rule. In 1943, during the Second World War, the Bengal famine killed around three million people. Amartya Sen showed that it was caused not by an absolute lack of food but by wartime inflation and policy failures; how much blame lies with Winston Churchill’s government is still argued over.
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books (2010)
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
More than a million Indians served in the First World War and about 2.5 million in the Second, the largest volunteer army in history.
- A Concise History of Modern India — Barbara D. Metcalf and Thomas R. Metcalf, Cambridge University Press (2012)
A system of exploitation that drained wealth to Britain, ruined Indian handicrafts, let tens of millions die in famines and divided Indians by religion and caste. Railways and institutions were built to serve imperial interests.
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
- Churchill's Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India during World War II — Madhusree Mukerjee, Basic Books (2010)
Some British writers, such as Niall Ferguson, argue that the Raj brought India the rule of law, railways, the English language, a unified administration and the parliamentary ideas on which Indian democracy was built.
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane (2003)
The record is mixed and contested: the economy grew very slowly and famines were worsened by policy, but some historians, such as Tirthankar Roy, argue that India's poverty also had deep pre-colonial and geographic roots and that some sectors modernised under British rule.
- An Economic History of India, 1857–2010 (4th edition) — Tirthankar Roy, Oxford University Press (2020)
- Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation — Amartya Sen, Oxford University Press (1981)
Why it matters today
The Raj is the reference point for Indian anger at colonialism and for suspicion of Western lectures. Shashi Tharoor's argument that Britain owes India a moral debt was widely cheered in India, and the Bengal famine of 1943 and the Amritsar massacre of 1919 remain open wounds.