Can someone tell me how the hell India fucked around and got themselves colonized by Anglos when they themselves were...

Can someone tell me how the hell India fucked around and got themselves colonized by Anglos when they themselves were seemingly superior?

also General Indian History Thread I guess/ Inidan Warfare/battles/empires/architecture.

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"India" didn't get colonized

That asshole Rajanate across the river got colonized

The British are our bros who would never-HAI RAM, PLEASE STOP IT!!!

what did he mean by this

The Brits caught them at the right time, just as the Mughal Empire was in its death-throes while no other polity was poised to fill the vacuum.

Britain first set up a colony in the Bengal region, by conquering a just recently defeated Bengal sultanate, thrashed by the Mughal Empire. They used this as a base to kiss some serious Raja ass until they could defeat the Mughals in true combat, and begin their slow decline, and eventual dissolving of "India" as a single state until the late 40's

India got sold out by it's elites who for the most part gladly conspired with the British in exchange for more money and power.

Imagine all the poo in that pool...

Mughals actually gave Brits the right to taxation in Bengal which caused the BEIC to sky rocket in profits.

Advanced gunpowder weapons vs mostly iron-age armies

Same thing happened pretty much elsewhere the technologically superior Europeans went

India did have gunpowder weapons, the Mughals themselves are often viewed as a "gunpowder empire". That might be overstating it somewhat, as cavalry was still more important to the Mughals, but Indian armies still had plenty of artillery (look at say, Assaye when they had over 100 cannons versus the British 17, Plassey 53 Indian guns + some French guns. There were plenty of muskets, and while they were initially matchlocks they were upgraded over time to flintlocks, and they could always buy guns from the Europeans. India was also the a major source of saltpeter for Europe.

Much more important was European political maneuverings, for example despite India being a source of saltpeter the eventual British control over it meant that they were able to cut off Southern India from it and that meant their enemies were critically short on ammunition.

Technological determinism doesn't determine the conquest of India, as the Europeans weren't, on land, that much more advanced, and on sea the Indians did make some efforts to improve their forces; Travancore beat the Dutch at sea once, Maratha privateers were dangerous foes, and Mysore had built a reasonably functional navy in technical terms. Much more important for European military advantages was better European organization, training, and tactics, but these are not technological aspects per se. By far the most important was European financial and political superiority which made exploiting India's divisions easy.

India was already dissolved as a single state, the Mughal Empire had effectively collapsed as a central entity by the 1700s.

Not Japan though? In cases that I have read, India showed the same resistance that Japan showed yet still Japan still speaks Japanese and India has English as a national language.

what it simply because of Japan's distance and lack of desirable land?

>superior
According to what metric?

architecture, man power, size, resources. so on.

They didn't put points into the tech tree that lets them poo in the loo.

>architecture
You're probably referring to aesthetics, which is subjective. Britain was light years ahead in engineering.
>man power
Irrelevant when you're backwards.
>size
See above.
>resources
See above.

Finally, history proves they clearly weren't superior, except maybe morally and spiritually.

The British came in and started building toilets, sending the native population into shocked convulsions and political paralysis.

Because India wasn't a single united Empire with a cohesive central government to fight back against the English conquest. The English played a careful game of divide and conquer, and continued to do so throughout the whole of their time as colonial overlords. Even at its height, when the "whole" of India was under their control, there were massive sections of India which weren't under direct English control, but rather where the English acted as suzerains and the local Indian Prince handled most of the day to day business of governing and ruling.

>what it simply because of Japan's distance and lack of desirable land?
And a strong singular society. India was nothing more than a bunch of savage, tribal states for most of it's history.

That pic is wrong on so many counts it isn't even funny. Do people believe unironically believe this?

Only correct answer ITT

>That pic is wrong on so many counts it isn't even funny. Do people believe unironically believe this?
Can you please explain why it isn't? Misinformation spreads because the other side is usually to lazy to respond.

Are you retarded? Indian armies were using gunpowder weapons as early as 15th century.

>Can you please explain why it isn't?
For one, the the Europeans were far from hundreds of years more advanced than the Indians. As stated, they were actually not far off technologically. That picture also completely understates the brilliant diplomatic manuevering employed by the Brits in taking over India, instead reducing it to "lol they just felt like annexing i guess"
there's more but i'm too busy to respond to it

India got comfy and didn't industrialize.

It still won't be as much shit as your post

Whoever wrote that wall of text is brilliant with fiction but never read a history book related to either British Empire or India in their life.

>there's more but i'm too busy to respond to it
If you can then please do. A detailed response would be really helpful.

Not that poster but let me elaborate, I am not going to give a detailed response but if you are interested in Mughals and British policies in India, which are interesting, you can find many books on the topic.

Now, the whole premise of the post is just built upon the wrong assumption India was somehow technologically and economically inept. This is just wrong, while India at the time of British colonisation was indeed behind in military technology by a slight margin it didn't have any grand effect on the outcome, the reason they ultimately got colonised was because of shrewd British politics in the Indian subcontinent, playing several factions in India against each other, slowly gaining economic exclusivity to Indian production -which at the time was a large portion of Earth as a whole- and then using this advantage to their best while making opportunistic leaps whenever they could, they also used this access to Indian market as a leverage in China and vice versa to build their own power and one step at a time they bought themselves to a level that allowed total subjugation, which leads to opium wars but that's another topic.

That post is just "historical" fiction with analogies based on faulty assumptions, it would be easier to say what's right about it than what's wrong.

Do you think the previous user was attributing the Spanish relations to the South America's and the myth that Spain conquered SA with only 50 men by guns (and not you know by disease and the strength of thousands of native allies)?

I think they were just using scramble for Africa as a basis instead and assuming it went same everywhere else. Be it in Americas, East Indies or Indian Subcontinent. I mean, Spanish hardly used guns while conquering Incas and Mexico, just great political manoeuvres combined with good swordsmanship and horses.

>I mean, Spanish hardly used guns while conquering Incas and Mexico
this is a point a lot of people dont really seem to understand
guns in the 1500s were overall worse than bows except for penetrating armor - and the incas and aztecs didnt wear armor they needed guns for
steel armor, on the other hand, was immensely helpful as it protected the spanish from the native weapons

The collapse of the Mughal Empire allowed the British to slowly establish their control thanks to their base in Bengal. It helps that the Mughal Emperor gave the East India Company the right to collect revenue from Bengal, the wealthiest part of India which helped bankroll British expansion.

The only chance for India is if the Maratha Confederacy hadn't been defeated by the Afghans at Panipat, establish a military alliance with the Sikh Confederacy against the Afghans, and don't allow the British to pick off each Maratha prince one by one.

>The only chance for India is if the Maratha Confederacy hadn't been defeated by the Afghans at Panipat, establish a military alliance with the Sikh Confederacy against the Afghans, and don't allow the British to pick off each Maratha prince one by one.
i.e create a unified India?

Isn't that what it always boils down to.

Because the statelets made use of British mercenaries in exchanges for trading rights basically

Even the
>if the Maratha Confederacy hadn't been defeated by the Afghans at Panipat
wouldn't have happened if the Mughal Empire was still running things.
It seems everytime India tried going independent into tiny states, their neighbors would take advantage and invade.

Is this proof that Pakistan/Bangladesh should not exist?

If not a unified India, at least a subcontinent with the last 2 remaining powers that could've resisted British encroachment. The Marathas and Sikhs were the major players to emerge after Aurangzeb's death (which lead to the decline of the Mughal Empire). The British would still have possession of Bengal as well as Madras and Bombay, but they would be forced to deal with the status quo of a Maratha-Sikh alliance.

India was a rich prize for an invader, the Afghans are right next door, command the strategic Khyber Pass, and are fierce fighters. The Sikhs managed to hold them off and even take some of their territory under the brilliant leadership of Ranjit Singh.

A Sikh-Maratha alliance to hold off Afghan AND British aggression would've preserved the rest of India to 2 powers. Of course, this would only work if the Marathas and Sikhs don't turn on each other.

>mughals didn't use artillery.
>marathas didn't use artillery.

>light years in engineering
proofs?
And no, ocean going vessels is not engineering.

>A Sikh-Maratha alliance to hold off Afghan AND British aggression would've preserved the rest of India to 2 powers.
I doubt that. They would have kept the Afghan's at bay for sure though.

And you're misunderstanding me Pajeet. My point was
>it wouldn't have happened if the Mughal Empire was still running things.
The reason the Afghan's
>command the strategic Khyber Pass,
Was because they took the opportunity and took over the pass when the Mughal Empire dissolved and there was no army stationed there.

The afghans were defeated by the sikhs alone under ranjeet singh. Hell, the third battle of panipat would have gone differently if Bhau wasn't an autistic memer.

Not even a drop of Indian blood in me. I'm just a guy who read a lot about the Mughal Empire and Indian history afterwards. The British East India Company is something out of a video game; a joint-stock company with its own army and navy while conquering vast tracts of Asia? That shit is straight out of an RPG.

I'm just saying that the British were incredibly fortunate that India fractured after Aurangzeb. Those conditions allowed them to attain the Diwan for Bengal and Bihar. No way would they pull that shit if Aurangzeb's successors weren't limp-wristed bitches who couldn't even defend against Nadir Shah's invasion.

Yeah, the Maratha infantry was well-trained and drilled in European fashion, but those Afghan camels with swivel guns really fucked them up. Panipat critically weakened the Marathas, which would allow the British to swallow them piecemeal.

A reminder that if it weren't for pic related India would be an Islamic State right now.

>The afghans were defeated by the sikhs alone under ranjeet singh.
Sikhs? Under Sikhism?
You mean a central pillar which united an otherwise divided people? Something exactly I was taking about???

>Hell, the third battle of panipat would have gone differently if Bhau wasn't an autistic memer.
Would have should have could have desu.

Any recommended books to read up on?

>No way would they pull that shit if Aurangzeb's successors weren't limp-wristed bitches who couldn't even defend against Nadir Shah's invasion.
I always got the impression that the Afghans were much better at continuing to fight/defense than offense amiright?

Yeah Shivaji was pretty based. Probably one of the greatest resistance fighters in history.

I was talking about the historical ranjeet singh under which the Sikhs defeated the Afghans and started to take parts of Afghanistan.
The problem was the marathas were still over reliant on their cavalry. They ended up making the same mistakes that the rajputs did.

to be fair, aurangzeb destroyed the mughal empire in a fit of autistic jihad and trying to expand the empire. His heirs were faced with the problem of their Rajput vassals being pissed off due to aurangzeb, The sikhs getting stronger and organized and the marathas reaching their pinnacle. The only reason Panipat happened was because the marathas were making a treaty that allowed them to levy taxes in the mughal emperor's name.

The Cambridge history of India books. They're excellent.

Ranjit Singh sought to correct that mistake by making sure that his infantry and artillery were up to par with European armies. It's why he hired all those French, Italian, and other foreign officers to drill and organize the Misls.

Panipat was a battle that shouldn't have happened. The Marathas did not prepare themselves properly nor did they enlist allies as they should have.

Still, they did put up quite a fight and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties so it wasn't exactly a one-sided curbstomp. There were so many incidents leading up to the battle and during it that could've given them victory or at least a stalemate against the Afghans.

Yes Aurangzeb was a real piece of work. His ancestors Babur and Akbar knew that in order to hold India, they had to tone down the Islamic rhetoric or else they're gonna war against every non-Muslim.

Bhau ended up doing a banzai charge with his destroyed cavalry instead of commanding his men. The marathas had the artillery advantage and had a large force of trained musketeers instead of the ghazis and tribal levies that made large parts of the afghan forces.

Also, seconding his recommendation. Sadly much of indian writings are untranslated or politicized.

he started off alright. His midlife crisis ended up fucking everyone in the ass.

>the marathas actually came close to killing him at one time when he was out hunting and they slaughtered his royal guard.

Iguana rock climbing troopers are pretty Overpowered.

>There were so many incidents leading up to the battle and during it that could've given them victory or at least a stalemate against the Afghans.
Like what?

not splitting his cavalry for once
Maratha battles since shivaji went like this
>the marathas would maneuver and try to cut off enemy supply lines with the help of the large amounts of light cavalry they had.

The problem was that the marathas were fighting against the afghans who had a similar amount of light cavalry and they ended up cutting the marathas off from their supply lines thus making the marathas commit to a battle.

Yeah he overextended himself and has bad luck to have the blazing sun shining in the exhausted horses' eyes.

And why the fuck would you allow hundreds of thousands of civilians attached to you? No shit the locals were hostile when you picked them clean of supplies.

Shah Jahan fucked up royally by preventing his sons to war against one another. Had Dara Shikoh ascended the throne without a hitch, the Mughals might have not rotted away thanks to Aurangzeb's autism.

What's funny is that Shah Jahan's eldest son, the heir apparent, Dara Shikoh, was a great friend of the Hindus and even translated the Upanishads into Persian. Unfortunately Aurangzeb snatched the kingdom from him, and then beheaded him for apostasy.

Shivaji actually had his riders executed if they bought their mistresses with them to battle.

>Islam ruins things once again
surprise.

All Behu had to do was keep his formations in close support and coordination with each other. His artillery were the latest made French cannon that outranged the Afghans' artillery. His original plan to batter Afghan formations and only use his cavalry as a last ditch when the enemy was sufficiently weakened would've worked. That or not keep his artillery static and actually position them sufficiently to pick off the Durrani soldiers in bunches.

Exactly. Dara Shikoh was Akbar reborn; he was the closest to his great ancestor's toleration and genius. If the other brothers had remained loyal to Dara and hadn't squabbled for the throne, I'm willing to bet the Mughals would've been better prepared for Nadir Shah's army.

Yeah I heard about this. On some level, having your women can possibly inspire you to fight even harder. The Muslim armies at Yarmouk had their womenfolk berate and insult the retreating soldiers into facing the Byzantines again.

But in this case, all those extra mouths were useless baggage.

Instead of staying with Muslims who identified with Indians they got culturally humiliated and subjected by Anglos. Such a better fate.

Nadir shah wouldn't have bothered if the mughals weren't the mess they were.
Under Akbar the mughals did a fine job of taking over parts of afghanistan. Their only major headache was the portuguese that had far more advanced ships than the marathas

>inb4 Rana Pratap
Nope, Shivaji had a shit ton of muslims in his army. Forts like Murud Zanjira were devised and buillt by an Abyssinian Muslim

>Can someone tell me how the hell India fucked around and got themselves colonized by Anglos when they themselves were seemingly superior?

Indian "men" have tiny, tiny penises.news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6161691.stm

As a result, they are weak and womanish in battle, and got bent over and fucked by, well, really just about anyone.

>british sepoys until 1857 were largely brahmins from UP.

>Muslims who identified with Indians
When will this meme end

Islam was out to destroy Hindu civilization. It was a vicious and bloodthirsty movement. Islam contributed nothing to India apart from a bunch of ugly buildings. It's presence in India has always been characterised by violence. At least the British gave industrialization and the railways.

>Akbar
He hated Kafirs as well, he was just smart enough to realize that he needed their support.

Anglo perfidy. Robert Clive made all sorts of promises to Mir Jafar and other Indian officials and nobles if they helped them coup the Nawab of Bengal, none of which were actually followed through once they had the forts.

>creates a religion that isn't islam and converts to it that is full on fedora tier in it's name.

That's why even Hindu nationalists see Akbar as a great ruler. Okay.

>muh railways

British only installed railways to extract resources

dude indians are literally subhumans

the indic race is a feeble and subservient race, iranics, turkics and euros have all conquered them several times

anybody who has crossed the indus river saw these poo in loos for what they are, subhumans to be conquered and enslaved

>good history thread.
>Woke /pol/yp walks in.

Kek

he's not wrong

he is plenty of wrong. Anything more than 19th century british "history" will prove him wrong.

do you deny that throughout the majority of history, iranics, turkics and euros have ruled india longer than indians have?

no.
>mauryan empire and gupta empire
>Mahajanapadas
>all those steppe nomads like the hunas and sakas that became indianized to such a degree that they ended by being absorbed by the local population of the punjab.

Nah, the Hindus have fought off invading armies multiple times. It took over 500 years for Islam to break through, whereas Spain fell in seventy years. This whole "Hindus are meek and cowardly" shtick is British propaganda.

Pakistani generals tried to improve their armies morale using the same phrase, that Muslims were a martial race while HIndus were weak. India thrashed Pakistan four times in a row.

So you agree that indians have been ruled by foreigners for the majority (i.e. more than 50%) of it's history, it's a historical fact that indics are subhuman betas.

pakis are literally more subhuman than indians, at least indians at some points ruled themselves, indic pakis never ruled themselves at any point in history

the only people that see indians as anything more than betas are indians themselves lol

nobody takes indians seriously irl, you guys are a slave race

Indians have ruled indian states for most of the time you mongoloid.
The Mauryan Empire lasted longer than the Mughal One. The gupta empire lasted longer than the british one.
The Delhi Sultanates were either expanding south or being curbstomped by the rajputs for the entirety of their history. The Baktrians entered india when the Mauryan dynasty got replaced by the sunga dynasty during a time of turmoil and got assimilated so thoroughly that their biggest remains are a few coins with athena with an Indian longbow on them.

>Indians have ruled indian states for most of the time you mongoloid.
wrong

You should be glad you're in front of a computer. irl indians literally shit themselves at anyone 3 shades lighter than them in skin tone

I always find it funny how Indian leftists shill for Muslim imperialism and criticize Hindu nationalists for their factionalism.

Meanwhile in the West, leftists criticize Western imperialism and shill for black and brown nationalisms.

It just shows how leftism is not meant to be a coherent ideology but a parasite that will just use whatever is useful for the political interests of the intelligentsia as a caste.

Leftists should be lined up and shot.

I am sure you have academic proof of that.

There is a difference between shilling for "islamic imperialism" and calling RSS tier flanderization of hinduism as ahistorical. Maybe if you stepped out of your us vs them bubble you would actually see that..

indians have been ruled by iranics, turkics, euros for over thousands of years, just look it up

HIndu nationalists aren't historians. It's a historical fact that Akbar rejoiced when Kafirs were getting killed. He was just aware of the ground reality and what needed to be done.

the same akbar also ended up giving up islam and converted to his own religion.

In the pretty brutal rule of islamic rulers in india akbar is generally well regarded because he was a pretty humanist emperor, going so far as to invite portuguese missionaries to his court so that they could debate religion.

That's just wrong. Why would he personally summon Non-Muslims to his court to discuss various topics? Like what sort of ideologically charged revisionism is this you want to paint Akbar as literally ISIS?

Honestly why are some people so butthurt about politics today they have to project concurrent modern climate of middle-east to rest of history? Go read a fucking book on Akbar. He fucking converted to a hippie version of Hindu-Islam combination he himself invented.

the world needs more akbars and less al sauds tbph.

You're falling for secularist propaganda. Stop reading wikipedia and read the original sources. AKbar was not benevolent.

I have read books on both Akbar and about Mughals in general. Mughals were invading Muslims of non-Indian origin and were imperialistic, no doubt about that. There is however no doubt in any primary or recent history books that doubts his character in terms of his approach to Hindus and Indians in general.

You are the one making absurd claims like that he hated non-Muslims and was a Jihadi or something. Also who the fuck insults Mughal architecture? Taj Mahal and Red Fort are both recognised as great feats of architecture.

In your effort to push against the "liberal agenda" of today in relation to Muslims and Middle-east, you are being delusional and a revisionist.

>RSS tier flanderization of hinduism as ahistorical
Thats not really the entire point of it but you know whatever, that only specifies your criticism as a blanket understanding of the movement.

>indians have been ruled by iranics, turkics, euros for over thousands of years, just look it up
That's not even factually true but with India's diversity it was easy to deal divide and conquer the continent. You're saying "look it up" like it means anything, when most historians will tell you you're full of it.

Where is that meme about indian superiority came from, you're just allowed to use western technology.
What is obvious, is deep internal inferiority complex as a result of being dominated for ages.

>you're just allowed to use western technology.
Nobody let them lol. It's only a few western countries that developed it. Everybody just steals off each other.

You're not allowing anything if you cant stop them from using it.

>caste, racism, rape, slavery, a nation of gypsies, thuggees, abos
>morally and spiritually

this

the indians are the problem.

Lefties don't care Hindus in India and the West

>Can someone tell me how the hell Egyptians and Babylonians fucked around and got themselves colonized by Persians when they themselves were seemingly superior?
>Can someone tell me how the hell Persia fucked around and got themselves colonized by Greeks when they themselves were seemingly superior?
>Can someone tell me how the hell Greece fucked around and got themselves colonized by Romans when they themselves were seemingly superior?
>Can someone tell me how the hell Romans fucked around and got themselves colonized by Germans when they themselves were seemingly superior?
>Can someone tell me how the hell the Germans fucked around and got themselves colonized by Stalin when they themselves were seemingly superior?

>Germans
>Superior