India and the Great Mutiny

If the route to India had been really threatened by the Czar, the war might well have been worth what it cost; for India was rapidly becoming one of Great Britain's greatest possessions. Since the days of Wellesley, the conquest of India had gone steadily on. The marquis of Hastings had completed Wellesley's work by extending the powers of the East India Company and bringing to an end the wars with the native tribes. In 1813 the company's monopoly of the Indian trade had been taken away, and in 1833, when its charter was renewed, the monopoly of trade with China was abolished. This new arrangement limited the business of the company to matters of administration and greatly improved its rule. In 1841 and 1842 the British invaded Afghanistan, only to retreat ignominiously after losing a large part of their force. After this experience, British governor-generals let Afghanistan alone and contented themselves with smaller gains. Scinde was annexed in 1842 ; after two fiercely contested wars, in 1848 and 1849, the Punjab was won from the Sikhs, who, under the tactful administration of Henry and John Lawrence, became in the end faithful subjects of Great Britain.

The appointment of Lord Dalhousie as governor-general in 1849 marked the introduction of an unfortunate policy. Dalhousie annexed vassal states and forced upon them British methods of administration and law without regard for native customs and prejudices. In consequence there was a widespread discontent, and a vast deal of intriguing and conspiracy among the native princes and native troops, upon whom the power of the East India Company largely depended. Only a direct and special grievance was wanting to change this discontent into open revolt.

The introduction of a cartridge greased, as was believed, with cow's or pig's fat, was interpreted as an attempt of the British to deprive the native soldiers of their caste. In biting the cartridge, Mohammedans, to whom swine were unholy, deemed themselves defiled; and Hindoos, to whom the cow was sacred, deemed themselves guilty of sacrilege. In 1857 the Sepoy regiments of Calcutta and Delhi revolted, and soon most of northern India was aflame. British officers were shot, women and children massacred, and barracks and quarters destroyed. The slaughter at Cawnpore (July, 1857) was only the worst of many tragedies. The siege of Delhi (June–September, 1857), the defence and relief of Lucknow (September–November, 1857), the second capture of Lucknow (March, 1858), and the final defeat of the rebels (June, 1858), are the chief events in a great struggle which created such heroes as John Lawrence, John Nicholson, Havelock, Outran, and Colin Campbell. After the mutiny was suppressed, parliament abolished the East India Company, and India was taken under the control of the British government .

Great Britain in the Far East: Relations with China

Growing trade had brought the East India Company into contact with independent peoples on the borders of India. There had been petty quarrels with Persia and Burma; but most serious of all were the troubles with China, an empire which had always refused, as far as possible, to have any dealings with the outside world. A limited trade, controlled entirely by the East India Company, had sprung up with China; and after the withdrawal of the monopoly, in 1833, this trade had been thrown open to all. The result was a rapid increase of smuggling, particularly in opium, the importation of which into China was rigidly forbidden. Attempts of Chinese officials to enforce this regulation had led to high-handed measures on both sides, which gradually brought on the Opium War of 1839-1842. This war was dishonorable to Great Britain on whatever pretence defended, but it brought about the overthrow of China's policy of isolation. The treaty of Nanking (1842) threw open five Chinese ports to British trade and ceded Hongkong to Great Britain; and it gave the British a foothold in China long before other nations had thought of concerning themselves with affairs in the Pacific. British influence, notably in the Yang-tse region, was increased during the years 1857-1860, by another war in which Great Britain and France joined for the purpose of demanding reparation from China for so-called deeds of aggression and violations of treaty rights. The treaty of Tientsin (1860) opened additional ports to the British. About the same time Japan began to admit the commerce of a few nations to her ports, and in so doing created a new market for British goods.

Great Britain and her Colonies

While British companies and merchants were thus extending British trade in the East, British colonists were building up important settlements in other parts of the world. Colonization in British America, Canada, and the West Indies had been going on for two centuries; but colonization in West Africa and at The Cape, and in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and other islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans, was new. As yet, however, colonies and colonists had not begun to play their great part in British history.

Canada and the West Indies, oldest of the colonies remaining to Great Britain in America, had both suffered from bad management. A rebellion in Canada in 1837 and 1838 had disclosed deep discontent among the French inhabitants there. In consequence, in 1840, upper and lower Canada were united, and the government was somewhat reorganized. Gradually, during the years that followed, responsible government and colonial control of expenditures were granted to the Canadians; a new policy which culminated in the creation of modern Canada by the Act of 1867. This act joined all the Canadian provinces except Newfoundland into the single "Dominion of Canada," with a single constitution for all. In the West Indies the emancipation of the slaves, the inadequate compensation to slave owners, and the introduction of free trade had aroused resentment, which in Jamaica took the form of protest in 1836 and of revolt in 1865. Free trade was opposed by West India planters because it opened the British market to the commerce of other colonies, and so destroyed their monopoly.

During the first half of the nineteenth century the colonies in Africa and the Pacific were deemed by British statesmen useless and expensive possessions, from which little profit could be obtained. Australia had been employed at first as a convenient place for transporting criminals; but when systematic colonization began, about 1830, in Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, and The Cape, questions of convicts, squatters, land sales, emigrants, and the relations with native Maoris and the Dutch Boers engaged the attention of parliament. Government in these distant lands was at first largely military, and when a regular civil administration was introduced, everything was managed by orders sent from the government offices in Downing Street, London. Such a method was bound to result in many mistakes and failures, for little real knowledge of the needs of the colonists could be possessed by government officials many thousand miles away.

The policy of government by orders from England gave way, soon after 1830, to another, based on the Whig doctrine of letting the colonies alone (laissez faire). Statesmen began to advocate the plan of granting to the colonies responsible government, with the right to manage their own waste lands and finance and to conduct their own military defence. The reorganization of Canada in 1840 was in the main an application of the "let alone" policy. The introduction of representative institutions in Australia began with New South Wales and South Australia in 1842, and was carried well forward by a great constitutional act in 1850. New Zealand received attention in 1846 and again in 1851. To many British statesmen these measures seemed to foreshadow eventual separation of the colonies from the mother country. Some writers of the time thought that such a result would be a blessing; but others, with more foresight, believed that colonial self-government was not inconsistent with loyal attachment to Great Britain. The faith of the latter was to find ample justification later, when, after 1880, the idea of a union of mother country and colonies in a great federal empire began to take hold of men's thoughts and to shape the policy of the government.