Colonial India

Only a few years later, near the end of the 15th century, Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama became the first European to re-establish direct trade links with India by being the first to arrive by circumnavigating Africa (c. 1497–1499).

In the later 18th century, Great Britain and France struggled for dominance, partly through proxy Indian rulers but also by direct military intervention.

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

The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, but an interview with the Saamoothiri (Zamorin) failed to produce any definitive results.

[13][14][15] It is written in Arabic and contains pieces of information about the resistance put up by the navy of Kunjali Marakkar alongside the Zamorin of Calicut from 1498 to 1583 against Portuguese attempts to colonise Malabar coast.

[19][20] While the revolt failed, Goans did achieve stronger forms of Government and when the Portuguese Constitution of 1822 was adopted, two native Goans Bernardo Peres da Silva and Constâncio Roque da Costa were elected to the first parliament in Portugal, a practice that continued till the Annexation of Goa in 1961 An account of this was done by the Portuguese civil servant Joaquim Heliodoro da Cunha Rivara which is one of the major accounts of the Pinto Revolt and subsequently translated into English by Dr. Charles Borges.

[23] The Dutch East India Company established trading posts along different parts of the Indian coast.

[24][25] Ceylon was lost at the Congress of Vienna in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, where the Dutch having fallen subject to France, saw their colonies captured by Britain.

The close proximity of London and Amsterdam across the North Sea, and the intense rivalry between England and the Netherlands, inevitably led to conflict between the two companies, with the Dutch gaining the upper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguese stronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, but with the English enjoying more success in India, at Surat, after the establishment of a factory in 1613.

The Netherlands' more advanced financial system[26] and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left the Dutch as the dominant naval and trading power in Asia.

Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, when the Dutch prince William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England.

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

[27] The battle transformed British perspective as they realised their strength and potential to conquer smaller Indian kingdoms and marked the beginning of the imperial or colonial era in South Asia.

[38] This greatly expanded during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to take an effect.

Subsequent French settlements were Chandernagore in Bengal, northeastern India in 1688, Yanam in Andhra Pradesh in 1723, Mahe in 1725, and Karaikal in 1739.

Between 1744 and 1761, the British and the French repeatedly attacked and conquered each other's forts and towns in southeastern India and in Bengal in the northeast.

After some initial French successes, the British decisively defeated the French in Bengal in the Battle of Plassey in 1757 and in the southeast in 1761 in the Battle of Wandiwash, after which the British East India Company was the supreme military and political power in southern India as well as in Bengal.

The enclaves of Pondichéry, Karaikal, Yanam, Mahé, and Chandernagore were returned to France in 1816 and were integrated with the Republic of India in 1954.

[40] Denmark–Norway established trading outposts in Tranquebar, Tamil Nadu (1620); Serampore, West Bengal (1755); Calicut, Kerala (1752) and the Nicobar Islands (1750s).

At one time, the main Danish and Swedish East Asia companies together imported more tea to Europe than the British did.

[citation needed] The Swedish East India Company (1731-1813) very briefly possessed a factory in Parangipettai for about one month of 1733.

During the period of Austrian colonisation, the Nicobar Islands were previously colonized by the Danish in 1756, but were abandoned due to multiple outbreaks of malaria.

The path Vasco da Gama took to reach Calicut (black line) in 1498, which was also the discovery of a sea route from Europe to India, and eventually paved way for the European colonisation of Indian subcontinent .
Bernardo Peres da Silva , the only ethnic Indian governor general in Colonial India
Ruins of the Portuguese built St Thomas Fort at Tangasseri in Kollam city , est. in 1518
Coat of Arms of the Pintos , the ethnic Goan family that had the first anti-colonial revolt in India.
Eustachius De Lannoy of the Dutch East India Company surrenders to Maharaja Marthanda Varma of the Kingdom of Travancore after the Battle of Colachel (Depiction at Padmanabhapuram Palace ).
Fort St. George was founded at Madras in 1639
Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey by Francis Hayman , depicting Robert Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the battle of Plassey. The victory at Plassey marked the start of a period form Company expansion which saw them seizing control over the Indian subcontinent and Burma over the next century. [ 28 ] [ 29 ]
Defence of the Arrah House, 1857 by William Tayler, depicting the siege of Arrah during the Indian Rebellion of 1857 [ 33 ]
British Raj era photograph of Mahatma Gandhi during the Salt March , which gave a critical impetus to the Indian independence movement .
View of Pondicherry in 1843
Fort Dansborg at Tranquebar, built by Ove Gjedde , c. 1658
Major General Wellesley commanding his troops at the Battle of Assaye , 1803
The Battle of Ferozeshah during the First Anglo-Sikh War , 1845