The European empires of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries elicited a variety of responses from their colonial subjects—acceptance and even gratitude, disappointment with unfulfilled promises, active resistance, and sharp criticism. The documents that follow present a range of Indian commentary on British rule during this time.

India was Britain’s “jewel in the crown,” the centerpiece of its expanding empire in Asia and Africa (see Map 18.1). Until the late 1850s, Britain’s growing involvement with South Asia was organized and led by the British East India Company, a private trading firm that had acquired a charter from the Crown allowing it to exercise military, political, and administrative functions in India as well as its own commercial operations. But after the explosive upheaval of the Indian Rebellion of 1857–1858, the British government itself assumed control of the region. Throughout the colonial era, the British relied heavily on an alliance with traditional elite groups in Indian society—landowners; the “princes” who governed large parts of the region; and the Brahmins, the highest-ranking segment of India’s caste-based society.