Expansion in India

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Hastings ended the 'dual system' by making the Company itself collect the land revenue, and he moved the treasury from Murshidabad to Calcutta. He also set up civil and criminal courts in every district, which used Hindu and Muslim law, and had those laws translated so that British officials could use them.

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Source A is useful because it shows how hostile some Indian rulers were to the East India Company in the late 18th century. The tiger was Tipu Sultan's emblem, and he was known as the 'Tiger of Mysore', so a tiger killing a man in European clothes shows Tipu's wish to be seen destroying the British. This fits what I know about the Anglo-Mysore wars. Tipu and his father Hyder Ali fought the Company in four wars between 1767 and 1799, defeated a Company army at Pollilur in 1780 and held British prisoners. Tipu also looked for help from the French, Britain's great rivals, and this gave the Governor-General, Richard Wellesley, his reason to attack Mysore in 1799.

The provenance makes it useful in two ways. It was made for Tipu's own court, so it is genuine evidence of how an Indian ruler wanted to present his struggle against the British. Its later history is also revealing. After Seringapatam was stormed and Tipu killed in 1799, the Company took the model as loot and displayed it in London, where it became a popular attraction. This shows how the British celebrated their victories and presented Indian rulers as cruel and savage, which helped to justify expansion.

However, Source A is an object, not an account of the conflict. It does not tell an historian about the causes of the wars, the battles or the results, such as the Company taking much of Mysore's territory and making the restored Wodeyar rulers its dependent allies. Overall, it is very useful for the attitudes on both sides, Tipu's hostility and British triumph, but less useful for the events of the conflict itself.

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The introduction of English-language education was significant because it was meant to strengthen British rule but ended up helping to undermine it. In 1835 Thomas Macaulay argued in his Minute on Education that a 'single shelf of a good European library' was worth all the literature of India and Arabia, and that Britain should create a class of Indians who were 'English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect'. Lord William Bentinck accepted this, and the English Education Act of 1835 used government money to fund teaching in English. English replaced Persian as the language of government in 1837, and universities were founded at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857.

In the short term this did what the British intended. It produced English-speaking Indian clerks, teachers and lawyers who helped to run British India far more cheaply than British officials could. It also reflected the belief that British rule was 'civilising' India.

However, the long-term consequences were not what Macaulay intended. Educated Indians read British and European writing about liberty, democracy and national rights, and they noticed that these ideas were not applied to India. They also resented being kept out of senior posts, since the Indian Civil Service exams were held in London. In 1885 English-educated Indians founded the Indian National Congress, which later led the campaign for independence. Leaders such as Gandhi, Jinnah and Nehru all trained in Britain and used British political ideas and the English language to argue against British rule.

English education reached only a small elite, but its significance has lasted: English remained a shared language of government, law and business in independent India. Its greatest significance was therefore an unintended consequence: it created the leaders who would end the empire.

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Individuals played a very important part in the development of the British Empire, deciding when and how territory was won and how it was ruled. However, they were rarely the main factor, because they succeeded only when wider forces, especially the search for wealth, war and new technology, gave them the opportunity.

There are many examples of individuals shaping the empire. In the medieval period, Henry II invaded Ireland in 1171, beginning centuries of English involvement there. Elizabeth I granted the East India Company its charter in 1600, and Elizabethan adventurers such as Drake and Raleigh began England's overseas ambitions. In India, Robert Clive's victory at Plassey in 1757 and his gaining of the diwani in 1765 turned the Company into a ruling power, and Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General, then built a system of government in Bengal. Later governors-general pushed expansion further: Wellesley defeated Tipu Sultan in 1799, and Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse and the annexation of Awadh in 1856 helped to cause the rebellion of 1857. In Africa, Cecil Rhodes used his British South Africa Company to seize the lands that became Rhodesia. Individuals were also important in ending the empire: Gandhi's campaigns, such as the Salt March of 1930, and leaders such as Nkrumah in Ghana and Kenyatta in Kenya, made British rule impossible to continue.

However, the desire for economic resources was a deeper cause. Clive and Hastings worked for a trading company whose purpose was profit, and Rhodes made his fortune from diamonds and gold before using it to expand British territory. Without the profits of trade in textiles, sugar and minerals, these individuals would not have been overseas at all. War was also vital. Clive could only take advantage of the Seven Years' War and the rivalry with France, and the two world wars weakened Britain so much that independence movements could succeed after 1945.

Government and technology also limited and enabled individuals. Parliament controlled the Company through the Regulating Act of 1773 and Pitt's India Act of 1784, impeached Hastings and took over India in 1858, while Disraeli's government bought Suez Canal shares in 1875. In Africa, the Maxim gun and quinine allowed small British forces to conquer large areas, as at Omdurman in 1898. Ideas such as social Darwinism and the 'civilising mission' gave individuals like Rhodes the confidence to believe that British rule was right.

Overall, individuals were not the main factor in the development of the British Empire. Their decisions mattered greatly - Clive at Plassey and Gandhi in the struggle for independence changed the speed and direction of events - but they succeeded because they exploited wider forces. Economic ambition explains why the British were in India and Africa in the first place, war and technology explain how they won territory, and the weakening of Britain after 1945 explains why nationalist leaders could finally win independence.