In what ways did India change as a consequence of British rule?

Arriving in India on the heels of the Portuguese in the seventeenth century, the British East India Company outmaneuvered French and Dutch rivals and was there to pick up the pieces as the Mughal Empire decayed during the eighteenth century (see “Political Decline” in Chapter 17). By 1757 the company had gained control over much of India. During the nineteenth century the British government replaced the company, progressively unified the subcontinent, and harnessed its economy to British interests.

Travel and communication between Britain and India became much faster, safer, and more predictable in this period. Clipper ships with their huge sails cut the voyage from Europe to India from six to three months. By the 1850s steamships were competing with clipper ships, and they made ocean travel more predictable. After the 1869 opening of the Suez Canal, which connected the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the voyage by steamship from England to India took only three weeks. After cables were laid on the ocean floor in the 1860s, telegrams could be sent from England to India. Whereas at the beginning of the nineteenth century someone in England had to wait a year or more to get an answer to a letter sent to India, by 1870 it took only a couple of months — or, if the matter was urgent, only a few hours by telegraph. Faster travel and communication aided the colonial government and foreign merchants, but they did not keep Indians from resenting British rule.