Conquest of India - A Historical Paradox - Extra History - #1

delhi india coronation park new year's day 1903 it's the largest and most expensive coronation ceremony in modern history the delhi two bar the mughal empire's assembly is reconvening to proclaim the ascension of a new emperor planning this took a full year the ceremonies attended by nearly two hundred thousand people and kicks off two weeks of additional rituals and celebrations and to accommodate the festivities a humongous temporary tent city has been set up outside delhi it features electricity telephone lines sanitation a hospital a rail line a courthouse a police force an art museum a military parade ground stores dance halls bandstands polo grounds and a post office that only uses commemorative dubar stamps oh geez i hope they didn't forget anything as for the new emperor of india he will be delivered to the ceremony on a golden hauta atop an elephant with candelabras attached to its tusks so safe to say everyone who was anyone in the empire would be at this event except the emperor himself [Music] thanks so much to curiositystream for helping us share today's historical tale who did this new emperor think he was i mean what kind of person would duck out of a huge coronation not to mention leave their extravagant mmo mount hanging what if i told you the new emperor wasn't from the subcontinent at all heck not even from asia but instead from a rainy island over 4 000 miles away and what if i told you he was also not a great warrior but instead a lazy playboy who chain smoked his way to an early grave doesn't make sense does it well consider this your first lesson in the complicated tragic and paradoxical history of the british conquest of india now this is an incredibly popular topic but what really makes it interesting is the fact that it's popular not only with average people but also professional historians see usually the professionals in this field thumb their noses at popular historical topics because they've been written about to death so there's not much room for original research or writing but with the conquest of india things are different here's a topic that's so complicated and nuanced that it's impossible to develop an authoritative text about not to mention this event has something that all historians love a historical paradox an absurd or contradictory event that defies expectations now an armchair historian might say well how can we have a historical paradox when we already know how history unfolded huh case closed sir oh contraire armchair because historians spend a good deal of their time thinking about contingency in the past or to put it another way how things might have gone differently because thinking about contingency helps historians understand causality what were the truly important people events and things that led us to where we are now but with a historical paradox you have an outcome that doesn't match the events leading up to that point kinda like with an upset in sports okay for a completely random and in no way pointed example let's say your soccer team is up three nil going into the second half of the champion league final in istanbul you'd expect to win right you'd be so confident in fact that you would be left in utter disbelief if in the end your team lost that's the kind of feel a historical paradox leaves you with sorry milan and historical paradoxes draw people in including professors precisely because of their unfathomable nature and with the conquest of india we have brilliant historians who have dedicated their lives to understanding this one event and who often end up with incomplete answers nothing ever seems settled with the history of the conquest and that helps to drive more interest and more interpretations given all this we're not even going to pretend to offer you a definitive version of the conquest of india what we will do though is give you an introduction to the complex decades-long process that affected billions of lives across multiple continents and three centuries in hopes it inspires you to do more paradoxical digging of your own so let's start by talking about the historical paradox at the heart of the conquest the idea that drives public interest and leads historians to dedicate their lives to this topic how did the entire subcontinent of india become beholden to the rule of britain a comparatively tiny island off the coast of europe for nearly two centuries how did a land of hundreds of millions of people come to be controlled by a preposterously small number of british administrators at a ratio of one colonial officer for every 250 000 indians and how did a technologically advanced culturally influential and militarily successful society end up throwing the party of the century for an idol foreign emperor who didn't even bother to show up how is this a paradox britain's conquest of india was inevitable they had more money better technology more know-how and nastier diseases oh i totally hear you army that certainly is a common explanation for the conquest of india and it's one you often see applied rightly or wrongly to histories of other european empires but here that explanation simply runs against the evidence because when regular contact between britain and india began at the start of the 17th century their roles were very much reversed india was the technologically advanced wealthy cosmopolitan empire with diseases known for killing europeans while britain was the provincial insignificant comparatively impoverished backwater plus in 1600 the english empire only included whales and parts of ireland in fact the english state barely survived the 16th century and quite possibly would have been destroyed by the spanish armada if not for a fortuitous storm not only were the english dwarfed at this time by imperial powers like spain and france but they'd often had trouble competing against even small european states like portugal and the dutch republic by the time the fabled east india company established its first trading post in india in 1618 the portuguese had been there for over a century while the dutch had established an impressive trade network based out of indonesia so when it came to empire building in the early modern era the english were very much and also ran of imperial powers in contrast india was ruled at the time by the mughal empire led by the descendants of the great mongol empires of the middle ages beginning with emperor bobber in 1525 they established a near-complete rule over the subcontinent by 1600 while the english were trying to keep the colonists from starving in jamestown and going through a civil war at home the mughal empire determined the lives of 180 million people or roughly 20 of the world's population at the time they maintained huge armies made up of hundreds of thousands of soldiers with anything equivalent not being seen in europe until the 19th century their soldiers were armed with the latest flintlock muskets muzzleloading cannons and possessed some of the best cavalry in the world plus and i cannot stress this enough they had totally awesome armored elephants the mughals also made use of a sophisticated administrative structure that drew power and wealth from land revenues and through this structure even petty nobles enjoyed a lifestyle many more times luxurious than the english monarch and this is especially impressive when you realize that the mughal emperors managed this system despite the fact that their kingdom was made up of an incredibly diverse collection of ethnicities languages and competing religious beliefs by contrast if you want to know how the european monarchs of the time dealt with religious differences well our 30 years war series can fill you in on that so not only were the mughals more successful than the europeans but their demographics meant they were playing on hard mode as well true the mughals never tried to expand their empire overseas but why leave home when you've already got all the good stuff i mean what drew europeans to india in the first place wasn't a desire for conquest or to project strength but rather a desperation for indian commodities like pearls gems spices silks and manufactured cloth the early european trading posts in india weren't signs of mughal weakness but signals of strength we don't come to you the mughals basically declared you come to us european traders humbly petitioned mughal emperors for permission to open fledgling trading ports along the coastline but even successful european merchants had trouble finding any goods that indians were willing to trade for apart from gold and silver from the new world and of all of these pitiful european traders begging the mughals for access to their markets the english at the time were unquestionably the most pathetic of the bunch far from being inevitable from the perspective of the 17th century the british conquest of india was more like outlandish speculative fiction like planet of the apes outlandish and yet it happened but as you'll find out next week the how and the why of that process is just as perplexing as the premise but you know what is a no-brainer spending less time watching ads like this one hi good thing i know a place where you can watch this series and all of our content ad free of course i'm talking about nebula our buy creators for crater streaming service that's home to a ton of our favorite educational entertainers on the internet such as mariana's corner 12 tone and real engineering plus you get to see exclusive nebula originals including some of ours and extended cuts from fellow creators like low-spec gamer who absolutely knocked it out of the park with his video on the game boy pockets development man what a wild ride it was getting that thing made just so i could play castlevania on the go more easily and because curiositystream loves supporting independent creators when you sign up for their service you'll get access to nebula absolutely free and that's on top of curiosity streams thousands of big-budget non-fiction videos and award-winning original series curated across their gigantic learning platform and if our conquest of india series has you interested in learning more you might enjoy the show planet of treasures india which takes a super interesting look at its diverse and historic unesco world heritage sites and posits the question what unites the subcontinent's diverse and gigantic 1.4 billion person population so how can you get access to all these sweet shows and still have enough money to stock up for trick-or-treaters well just head on over to curiositystream.com extra credits to get a subscription to both curiosity stream and nebula for 26 off the regular price that's under 15 for both services for an entire year not only will you be elevating your content watching game to the next level but you'll also be helping out us here at extra credits in the process thanks a million for being so awesome that's right zoe ahmed zion turk alecia bramble casey muestia dominic valenciana joseph blaine kyle murgatroyd and o reals 1 our fantastic legendary patrons [Music] hmm [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Extra History

Views: 670,520

Keywords: extra credits, extra history, history lesson, learn history, study history, extra credits history, world history, matt krol, conquest of india, a historical paradox, extra credits conquest of india, history of the world, history channel, history matters, history buffs, part 1, british conquest of india part 1, conquest of india part 1

Id: E4vonIphF4E

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021