13 Facts About Colonial India

Colonial India was the part of the Indian subcontinent that was under the jurisdiction of European colonial powers during the Age of Discovery.

The search for the wealth and prosperity of Colonial India led to the colonisation of the Americas after Christopher Columbus went to the Americas in 1492.

British Colonial India, consisting of the directly ruled British presidencies and provinces, contained the most populous and valuable parts of the British Empire and thus became known as "the jewel in the British crown".

In 1947, India gained its independence and was partitioned into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, the latter of which was created as a homeland for colonial India's Muslims.

The first successful voyage to Colonial India was by Vasco da Gama in 1498, when after sailing around the Cape of Good Hope he arrived in Calicut, now in Kerala.

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Colonial India inaugurated the policy of marrying Portuguese men with native women who had converted to Catholicism, the consequence of which was a great miscegenation in Goa and other Portuguese territories in Asia.

However, their expansion into Colonial India was halted, after their defeat in the Battle of Colachel by the Kingdom of Travancore, during the Travancore-Dutch War.

The English East Colonial India Company shifted its focus from Surat—a hub of the spice trade network—to Fort St George.

British policy in Asia during the 19th century was chiefly concerned with expanding and protecting its hold on Colonial India, viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.

The East Colonial India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia.

Colonial India's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: against the French campaign in Egypt and Syria, the capture of Java from the Netherlands in 1811, the acquisition of Singapore in 1819 and Malacca in 1824, and the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1826.

Colonial India suffered a series of crop failures in the late 19th century, leading to widespread famines that caused tens of millions of deaths in Colonial India.

Conservative elements in England considered the independence of Colonial India to be the moment that the British Empire ceased to be a world power, following Curzon's dictum that, "[w]hile we hold on to Colonial India, we are a first-rate power.