British East India Company = sellers of tea. bye-bye now

Please promote your own informed argumentation, if you'd like.

I am hesitant to say anything lest I provoke ava, but I am very interested in India from the Mughal Empire to the turn of the nineteenth century or so. The colonization of India fascinates me, for it bewilders me how a population so large can be subjugated.

I agree, Putin, that the divide-and-rule strategy worked extremely well over, playing on the Hindu-Muslim tensions, etc. Related to this would be the fact that Britain, out of all the nations left in the vacuum of the crumbling Mughal empire, was the strongest. Their money and military strength allowed them to take over smaller kingdoms, principalities, etc, who then supplied them with soldiers, increasing their manpower. On sea, most, if not all, Indian nations were heavily out-classed by the Royal Navy (indeed by all European navies). On land, they heavily outnumbered the British. Even their artillery was supposed to be better than what Wellesley had (I can't remember the quote, but he did praise their artillery). However their tactics completely failed them. Many soldiers still used bows and arrows, cannons were given very little importance, while strong emphasis was placed on their light cavalry. Most infantry hardly used guns, preferring to charge with sabers and pikes. Look at Assaye and Plassey. There was around 40 years in between them, but tactics hadn't changed much by the time Wellesley appeared.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

So the problems really start with the Mughal Empire - which was a violent and expansionist Timurid empire that funded its campaigns through heavy agricultural taxes. Huge sections of India were forced to pay these taxes but received little investment from the Mughal state. There were low taxes on trade because the Mughals depended on merchants for political support. This heavy taxation led to resistance by many local Indian rulers. Furthermore, while the Mughals should have been economically prosperous through the booming export trade, traders were keeping that money outside of India while the Mughals were spending huge amounts of money on building projects and expensive imports. The last Mughal Empire before the crisis really began - Aurangzeb - tried to prevent the Empire from becoming bankrupt by ending the expensive spending while simultaneously increasing the role of the Islamists in the Empire. A combination of heavy taxes, unwillingness to bribe key supporters, and resentment against the religious extremism of Aurangzeb led to full scale rebellion everywhere. The Mughals were limited to little more than Delhi and the surrounding regions. As for the gap in military technology, I agree this was important. The Mughals had completely neglected investment in education and technology.

As for the British, they wanted to compete with the Portuguese, French and Dutch in the Asian spice trade. The French and British each had their client local rulers that they supported to gain economic rights in India. During the Seven Years War decisively defeated the French in India. The conquest of India, therefore, was an organic development from the European competition over trade in Asia. I'm not sure it differed very much from the previous Mughal rule - in both cases foreign rulers expanded through military campaigns. In both cases agriculture was heavily taxed. One of the main differences was the British invested in civil administration, paving the way for Indian unity, while the Mughals did not. The British put an end to slavery and a number of other unsavory practices. However the Mughals indigenized themselves to their Indian empire, intermarrying with locals so that the rule seemed less 'foreign' than the British. The Mughals also invested heavily in the arts while the British unfortunately took a lot of the cultural treasures from India.

While Aurangzeb really pushed the Hindu-Muslim conflict, it had been going on for centuries, ever since Muslim invasions since the 12th century. While you are right that the Mughals had mostly incorporated themselves into Indian society (this is probably why they invested heavily in arts and culture, for the British India was just another colony to be exploited), they still emphasised the the religious gap, giving preference to Muslims, etc. As for saying the Mughals were limited only to Delhi and the surrounding areas, this is quite false, until after Aurengzeb they controlled most of India, everything but the deep south, even as far as Afghanistan. It seems that the Mughals built quite a few ships, even selling some to Europeans (though I doubt this), that were mostly used by merchants, for exploration or taking pilgrims to Mecca. Even if all of the true is above, the fact that they didn't rely on naval trade and that they had no naval competitors/enemies would probably explain why their navy sucked balls.

Another factor would be that this stressed religious divide reduced the manpower they had as Hindus were more likely to work with the rebellions, leading to a large empire with too little soldiers to guard it, thus causing people to invade, Delhi was sacked multiple times by 1750. It is weird though: they had quite advanced military technology, they developed volley guns, invented rockets and created some impressive (and extremely impractical), all of which they failed to use adequately.

". As for saying the Mughals were limited only to Delhi and the surrounding areas, this is quite false, until after Aurengzeb they controlled most of India, everything but the deep south, even as far as Afghanistan"

You misunderstand me on this point - (or I failed to be articulate) - what I meant to say was after the rebellions took place under Aurangzeb, Mughal rule was reduced to little more than Delhi and the surrounding areas. You are of course correct that the Mughal state was quite expansive - at least it was right before the fall. Ironically it collapsed almost immediately after the height of its expansion.

I'm not sure about the Islamic character of the Mughals before Aurangzeb. At certain periods the tax on Non-Muslims had been abolished, for example. Akbar himself invented a new cult based on a supposed pluralistic interpretation of various religions. Mughal rules made alliances (often by marriage) with Hindu Rajput rulers and promoted Hindus in their courts in the process. Of course I don't deny that they favored Muslims and in general did things to antagonize their Hindu subjects, but the overall Islamic character of the state wasn't so pronounced until the very end, when Aurangzeb implemented sharia law.