Impact of British Rule in India | ICSE Class 8 History & Civics Notes

This note covers British economic policies in India, land revenue settlements, the condition of peasants and artisans, the drain of wealth, famines, changes in administration and education, Wood’s Despatch, transport and communication, and resistance to colonial rule.

What was the colonial background to British policies in India?

Colonialism usually means the practice by which one country controls another region, establishes settlements there, and imposes its political, economic and cultural systems. British rule affected the production of goods, the collection of taxes, the organisation of government and the education of Indians.

From commerce to political control

The East India Company began as an English trading company. Its royal charter, an official grant of authority from the monarch, gave it special powers, including the ability to raise a private army. Trading posts became footholds for wider political influence.

The Company exploited rivalries between Indian rulers through divide and rule, the policy of using existing divisions to strengthen its own position. In the Battle of Plassey in 1757, Robert Clive conspired with Mir Jafar, the military commander of Bengal’s ruler, Siraj-ud-daulah.

Mir Jafar’s forces stood aside, helping the smaller British force to win. Political control then opened opportunities for extracting wealth. On 12 August 1765, the Mughal emperor appointed the Company as Bengal’s Diwan, or chief financial administrator.

Why did revenue matter?

Revenue is government income; land revenue was collected from agricultural land. The Company wanted this income to meet its growing expenses and finance trade. Before 1765, it had brought gold and silver from Britain to purchase Indian goods.

After obtaining the Diwani, or authority to administer revenue, it could use Bengal’s collections to buy goods for export. The same institution now exercised political power, collected revenue and purchased goods. These connected powers shaped the economic impact of Company rule.

Note: The Battle of Plassey in 1757 and the grant of Diwani in 1765 were different events. Victory in a battle and acquiring responsibility for revenue administration should not be treated as the same step.

Why was the Permanent Settlement introduced, and what were its consequences?

The Permanent Settlement was introduced in 1793, when Charles Cornwallis was Governor-General of Bengal. The Company recognised rajas and taluqdars, existing rulers and local landholders, as zamindars. These zamindars collected rent from peasants and paid revenue to the Company.

Intended benefits

The amount payable to the Company was fixed permanently. Officials expected this to provide a regular income and encourage zamindars to improve agricultural land. Increased production could raise a zamindar’s income without raising the fixed revenue demand of the state.

1. The Company fixed the revenue it expected from the zamindar.
2. The zamindar collected rent, the payment made by peasants for cultivating the land.
3. The zamindar had to pay the fixed revenue to the Company.
4. Officials hoped the opportunity to retain additional income would encourage investment in agriculture.

What happened in practice?

The revenue demand was so high that many zamindars found it difficult to pay. Those who failed lost their zamindaris, or estates held as zamindars, which the Company sold at auction. The expected investment in land did not follow.

By the first decade of the nineteenth century, prices rose and cultivation slowly expanded. Zamindars’ incomes increased, but the Company could not raise its permanently fixed demand. Even then, zamindars could obtain rent without undertaking the trouble and risk of improving the land.

For cultivators, rent was high and rights over land were insecure. They often borrowed from moneylenders to pay rent. Failure to pay could lead to eviction, meaning removal from the land they cultivated. A fixed government demand therefore did not guarantee protection for peasants.

Definition: “Permanent” described the Company’s revenue demand on the zamindar. It did not mean that a peasant’s rent was fixed or that the peasant could never lose the right to cultivate land.

How did the Mahalwari and Ryotwari systems compare with the Permanent Settlement?

The Company needed increasing amounts of money for administration and trade. Many officials questioned a settlement that prevented the revision of revenue. Other arrangements changed the person responsible for payment and the method used to assess the demand.

The village-based settlement

Holt Mackenzie devised the Mahalwari system, which came into effect in 1822 in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, most of which is now in Uttar Pradesh. A mahal was a revenue estate that could be a village or a group of villages.

Collectors inspected land, measured fields, and recorded customs and rights. They added the estimated revenue of individual plots to calculate the village demand. The village headman collected and paid it. Unlike the Permanent Settlement, the demand was revised periodically.

Direct settlement with cultivators

The Ryotwari system made the settlement directly with ryots, meaning cultivators. Alexander Read tried it on a small scale; Thomas Munro subsequently developed it. It gradually spread across British territories in southern India. Fields were separately surveyed before assessment.

The new systems did not automatically improve peasant life. Officials seeking more income fixed revenue demands too high. Peasants could not pay, ryots fled, and villages became deserted in many regions. Changing the method of collection did not remove the pressure created by excessive demands.

How did revenue demands and commercial crops affect peasants?

The British treated the countryside as both a source of revenue and a source of crops wanted in Europe. Commercial crops are crops grown for sale. The Company tried to expand opium and indigo cultivation from the late eighteenth century.

Indigo is a natural deep blue pigment used to dye cloth. European demand for this dye encouraged planters to force peasants in northern Bengal to grow indigo instead of food crops. A planter organised commercial cultivation and production.

Debt and coercion

Planters and traders made large profits, but peasants were paid so poorly that they became trapped in debt. Refusal to grow indigo could bring imprisonment, torture and destruction of property. The choice of crop was therefore closely linked to unequal power.

The Indigo Revolt of 1859 to 1862 was directed mostly against the planters. Planters hired armed men to attack peasants. Educated Bengalis and the Bengali press supported the peasants, and British authorities were eventually forced to restrict some of the worst abuses.

From poor harvests to severe distress

Revenue demands also continued when crops failed. In Bengal, two years of crop failure were followed by the catastrophic famine of 1770 to 1772. Harsh cash-tax demands, maintained regardless of harvest conditions, helped turn agricultural failure into a devastating human crisis.

The famine killed nearly one-third of Bengal’s population, or an estimated 10 million people. The Company even increased the land tax during the famine. This example shows why agricultural distress cannot be explained through weather alone: the demands imposed on cultivators also mattered.

Peasants’ problems included high payments, insecure land rights, borrowing and pressure over crop choices. These were connected forms of exploitation, though the particular arrangements differed between regions and revenue systems.

What was the impact on artisans, weavers and Indian trade?

Artisans are skilled craft workers who make goods; weavers produce cloth by interlacing threads. India had a flourishing manufacturing sector before colonial domination, particularly in textiles. Indian cotton fabrics were valued for their designs, colours and varied textures.

Unequal trading conditions

British policy imposed heavy duties, or taxes on traded goods, on Indian textiles entering Britain. At the same time, India was forced to accept British manufactured goods with minimal tariffs, another term for taxes on imports or exports.

Britain also controlled most sea trade and exchange rates, the rates at which currencies were exchanged. Indian traders therefore found it difficult to export as before. In the nineteenth century, Indian textile exports fell sharply while British imports into India grew even more sharply.

1. High duties made the British market difficult for Indian textile producers to enter.
2. Minimal tariffs helped British manufactured goods enter the Indian market.
3. Restrictions on trading conditions weakened the position of Indian merchants and manufacturers.
4. Communities of artisans lost livelihoods and were forced towards agriculture on increasingly overtaxed land.

A wider industrial decline

Deindustrialisation means a decline in industrial or manufacturing activity. The damage was not confined to cloth. Iron, steel, paper and other manufactures suffered similar decline. Skilled families who had practised crafts for generations were reduced to poverty.

William Bentinck, Governor-General of India, drew attention to the weavers’ misery in 1834. Their experience illustrates the link between trade policy and livelihood: changing access to markets could destroy employment without a direct prohibition on practising a craft.

India was increasingly turned into a supplier of raw materials for British industry and a market for British finished goods. Raw materials are basic inputs used to manufacture products. This arrangement placed Indian production and consumption increasingly at the service of British economic interests.

What was the drain of wealth, and why did famines become so destructive?

The drain of wealth describes the extraction of Indian resources and income for the benefit of colonial Britain. It operated through taxation and through charging Indians for colonial expenditure, including railways, telegraphs and wars. The resources were not retained for investment in India.

Explaining the drain

In 1901, Dadabhai Naoroji published Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, using British reports to estimate the wealth removed from India. Romesh Chunder Dutt made a similar investigation in his Economic History of India.

In 1895, Brooks Adams linked Bengal’s plunder after Plassey to Britain’s industrial development. His argument was that Indian wealth helped finance the Industrial Revolution, the growth of machine-based industrial production. This was a contribution to industrial expansion, not a claim that India supplied every cause of it.

Famine and government policy

A famine is a severe shortage of food that causes widespread hunger and deaths. During the Great Famine of 1876 to 1878, up to 8 million Indians died, mostly in the Deccan plateau. Food exports continued despite the crisis.

About one million tonnes of rice were exported to Britain each year during those three years. Some Indian traders held stocks back in the hope of higher prices, creating artificial scarcity. “Some” matters: the claim does not describe every Indian trader.

The colonial policy of leaving prices to fluctuate freely also worsened the situation. Lord Lytton opposed government intervention to reduce food prices. Relief camps were opened in some cities, but there were far too few and supplies were inadequate.

Famines had occurred before British rule because of droughts, floods, wars and other causes. Colonial policies intensified their scale and effects. The combination of high demands, continued exports, speculative withholding of grain and inadequate relief made rural poverty particularly destructive.

How did administration, railways and communication serve colonial interests?

Before British rule, village councils managed community affairs, settled disputes and organised public works, including irrigation and roads. Colonial administration weakened these arrangements and replaced them with a centralised bureaucracy, a system in which officials worked under concentrated government authority.

Administrative and legal changes

The new administration was designed primarily to collect taxes and maintain order. British legal codes disregarded customary laws, the practices and rules that communities had followed over generations. Courts were expensive, time-consuming and conducted in a foreign language.

The effect was not simply a change of officials. Community decision-making was undermined, while ordinary people became alienated from the judicial system. Administrative expenses, military establishments and British officials’ lavish lifestyles were financed through Indian taxation.

Transport: purposes and benefits

The railways brought people closer together and integrated India’s internal market by connecting places where goods were bought and sold. Yet the network was designed primarily to carry raw materials to ports and distribute British manufactured goods through India.

Railways also enabled rapid troop movements from cantonments, or military stations, to distant rebellions and wars. Routes largely ignored existing patterns of trade in order to serve colonial economic interests. Most railway construction was paid for through Indian tax revenue.

Photograph: Madras Railway locomotive. This photograph shows a steam locomotive on rails in front of buildings. The large boiler, chimney and wheels are visible. The caption dates the locomotive to 1860.

The telegraph, a system for transmitting messages rapidly over wires, also served colonial strategic and commercial interests and was financed by Indians. Useful infrastructure could therefore connect India while also strengthening foreign control. Its practical benefits and its financing must be considered together.

How did British educational policy change before Wood’s Despatch?

Education existed in India before British institutions. A pathshala was a local school, while madrasa is an Arabic word for a place of learning. Apprenticeship, learning a skill through practical training, was another established educational tradition.

Orientalist support for Indian learning

Orientalists were scholars of Asian languages and cultures. William Jones, who arrived in Calcutta in 1783, studied Indian texts and languages. Jones and Henry Thomas Colebrooke believed that understanding ancient texts could help recover knowledge of India’s past.

A madrasa was established in Calcutta in 1781 to encourage Arabic, Persian and Islamic law. The Hindu College at Benaras was established in 1791 to promote ancient Sanskrit texts useful for administration. Support for Indian learning also aimed to secure respect for British rule.

Macaulay and English education

Other British officials opposed this approach. James Mill favoured useful and practical knowledge, including Western scientific and technical advances. Thomas Babington Macaulay argued that European knowledge was superior and that English education should change Indian tastes, opinions and values.

Macaulay’s Minute on Indian Education of 2 February 1835 was a written statement of policy. The English Education Act of 1835 followed. English became the medium of instruction for higher education, and the promotion of Oriental institutions was stopped.

English textbooks began to be produced for schools. Education helped create Indian clerks and minor officials who could serve the colonial administration at a fraction of the cost of British staff. English also became associated with prestige, deepening divisions between English-educated elites and the masses.

Note: Macaulay’s assertion that European learning was superior was a colonial judgement. It should not be repeated as an established fact about the value of Indian languages or knowledge.

What was Wood’s Despatch, and how did it affect education?

Wood’s Despatch was an educational policy communication sent in 1854 by the East India Company’s Court of Directors in London to the Governor-General in India. It was issued by Charles Wood, President of the Company’s Board of Control.

Its objectives

A despatch is an official written communication. Wood’s Despatch emphasised the practical benefits of European learning. It argued that such education would encourage Indians to recognise the advantages of expanding trade and developing the country’s resources.

It also expected European education to change Indian tastes and create demand for British goods. Its claim that European learning would make Indians more truthful and reliable supported the colonial desire for dependable civil servants. These were policy-makers’ assumptions, not neutral descriptions of Indian character.

Its institutional effects

Consequences for local schools

After 1854, the Company introduced inspections, timetables, textbooks and annual examinations into local schooling. Vernacular means a local language, distinguished in this colonial setting from English. Schools accepting the new rules received government grants; independent schools received no such support.

Earlier, flexible school schedules allowed peasant children to work during the harvest and return afterwards. Regular attendance requirements made this harder. Some Indians nevertheless welcomed Western education and pressed for more schools, colleges and universities, hoping that wider education would help modernise India.

How did different social groups experience and resist British rule?

British policies did not affect everyone through the same institutions. Land revenue bore directly on cultivators, trading policies disrupted craft livelihoods, and educational changes reshaped opportunities for students. These experiences also created different reasons for resisting colonial authority.

Peasants and artisans

Peasants faced excessive demands, insecurity and indebtedness. The Indigo Revolt showed opposition to forced cultivation and low payments. Artisans faced declining markets and poverty. When craft workers returned to agriculture, they entered a countryside already burdened by high revenue demands.

Tribal communities

Tribal communities had their own customary systems and connections to land and forests. British expansion restricted forest access, imposed cash taxes and disrupted traditional councils. Land policies favouring outsiders helped provoke the Kol Uprising of 1831 to 1832 in Chota Nagpur.

The Santhal Rebellion of 1855 to 1856, led by Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, opposed landlords and moneylenders taking ancestral lands with British support. British forces brutally suppressed the rebellion. The Santhals’ resistance nevertheless inspired other tribal communities.

Sepoys and dispossessed rulers

Sepoys were Indian soldiers employed in the Company’s army. Most came from agricultural families affected by revenue policies. In 1857, rumours that rifle cartridges contained cow and pig fat offended Hindu and Muslim religious sensibilities and intensified discontent.

The Great Rebellion of 1857 also drew in rulers resisting annexation, meaning the seizure and incorporation of their territories. In 1858, after the rebellion, the British Crown took direct control from the Company. Rule by the British monarch’s government replaced Company rule.

Resistance therefore grew from connected economic, political and cultural grievances. Neither a single religious issue nor a single tax explains every movement. The groups involved, the immediate triggers and the forms of protest differed across regions.

What timeline connects British policies with their effects?

A timeline arranges events in chronological order, from earlier to later. This sequence connects the expansion of Company power with revenue arrangements, educational changes and criticism of exploitation. A policy’s announcement and the development of its effects did not necessarily occur together.

The 1835 and 1854 educational measures were distinct. Likewise, the transfer of power in 1858 changed the governing authority, while the continuing pattern of economic extraction remained central to colonial rule. Dates become useful when attached to these specific developments.

How do historical sources reveal colonial aims and experiences?

Historical sources are records and objects used to investigate the past. Policy documents show what officials intended; reports and observations reveal conditions; paintings can express how colonial power wished to represent itself. Each kind of evidence answers a different question.

Documents and observations

In 1806, H. T. Colebrook described Bengal’s under-tenants, cultivators renting land from other tenants, as burdened by excessive rent and debt. His account helps explain why a fixed revenue arrangement could coexist with severe hardship among those actually working the land.

Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 and Wood’s Despatch of 1854 show educational policy-makers’ objectives. Their statements about the supposed superiority of European learning reveal colonial attitudes. They do not establish that those judgements were true.

Naoroji’s 1901 book used British reports to investigate the drain. It therefore offers an interpretation built from official information, rather than simply repeating the colonial government’s view of its own policies. Authorship and purpose matter when comparing accounts.

Reading a colonial painting

The painting places Britannia high on the left, with a lion nearby. A lower figure offers a tray of jewels. Labels identify India offering pearls and jewels, China offering a jar, and two dark figures as “Indians?” carrying cotton.

Spiridione Roma painted this work in 1778 for the Company’s London headquarters. Britannia is a symbolic female figure representing Britain. The unequal positions of the figures suggest unequal power; the title presents wealth as something being offered.

That presentation must be compared with the evidence of taxation and coercion. A painting is not a photograph of an actual voluntary transfer. Its imagery is evidence of a particular representation of empire, while economic records help investigate how wealth was actually extracted.

Glossary

• Colonialism — Control of another region through settlement and the imposition of political, economic and cultural systems.
• Diwan — Chief financial administrator responsible for managing the revenue of a territory.
• Land revenue — Income collected by the government from agricultural land under its authority.
• Zamindar — Landholder who collected peasant rent and paid Company revenue under the Permanent Settlement.
• Permanent Settlement — Revenue arrangement introduced in 1793 that permanently fixed the Company’s demand on zamindars.
• Mahal — Revenue estate consisting of a village or a group of villages in British records.
• Ryot — Cultivator with whom the government made a direct revenue settlement under Ryotwari.
• Indigo — A plant-derived deep blue pigment used to dye cloth for commercial markets.
• Tariff — A tax imposed on goods entering or leaving a country through trade.
• Drain of wealth — Extraction of Indian income and resources for colonial Britain instead of investment within India.
• Deindustrialisation — Decline of manufacturing activity, associated here with the destruction of many Indian craft livelihoods.
• Orientalist — Scholar of Asian languages and cultures, including those who studied Indian texts.
• Vernacular — A local language, distinguished under British rule from English, the language of colonial authority.
• Wood’s Despatch — The official educational communication of 1854 promoting European learning and shaping colonial educational policy.
• Sepoy — An Indian soldier enrolled in the army of the East India Company.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: The Permanent Settlement fixed every peasant’s rent. Correct: It fixed the revenue payable by zamindars to the Company; peasants could still face high rents.
• Misconception: All three revenue systems used zamindars. Correct: Mahalwari used village headmen, while Ryotwari settled directly with cultivators.
• Misconception: Famines were caused only by failed rains. Correct: Harsh taxation, continued exports, artificial scarcity and inadequate relief could intensify food crises.
• Misconception: Indian industries declined because Indians had no manufacturing skills. Correct: Skilled industries already existed; unequal duties and colonial trading conditions damaged their markets.
• Misconception: British rule introduced education into a country without schools. Correct: Local schools and other educational traditions existed before the colonial system.
• Misconception: Wood’s Despatch and Macaulay’s Minute were the same document. Correct: Macaulay’s Minute belonged to 1835; Wood’s Despatch was issued in 1854.
• Misconception: Railway construction was a gift paid for by Britain. Correct: Most construction was financed through Indian taxes and primarily served colonial interests.
• Misconception: Every source presents the past neutrally. Correct: Documents and images have authors and purposes; colonial claims require critical interpretation.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Under the Permanent Settlement, zamindars collected peasant rent and paid a permanently fixed revenue to the Company. Identify the intermediary and state exactly which payment was fixed. [2 marks]

1. The zamindar was the intermediary between the cultivating peasants and the East India Company.
2. The permanently fixed payment was the zamindar’s revenue to the Company, rather than every peasant’s rent.

Q2. Compare these arrangements: Permanent Settlement fixed Company revenue through zamindars; Mahalwari assessed village demands, revised them periodically and used headmen; Ryotwari surveyed individual fields and settled directly with cultivators. Give three distinct comparisons. [3 marks]

1. Responsibility differed: the zamindar paid under Permanent Settlement, the village headman under Mahalwari, and the cultivator directly under Ryotwari.
2. Permanent Settlement prevented increases in the Company’s fixed demand, whereas Mahalwari expressly allowed that demand to be revised periodically.
3. Mahalwari combined assessments into a village demand, while Ryotwari used separate field surveys to make settlements with individual cultivators.

Q3. Indian textiles faced heavy duties in Britain; British goods entered India with minimal tariffs; Britain controlled most sea trade and exchange rates; displaced artisans turned to overtaxed agriculture. Explain four effects of these conditions. [4 marks]

1. Heavy duties made entry into the British market more difficult for Indian textile producers, weakening their export opportunities.
2. Minimal tariffs helped British manufactured goods enter India, increasing pressure on Indian producers within their own market.
3. British control over most sea trade and exchange rates made exporting on earlier terms more difficult for Indian traders.
4. Artisans who lost craft livelihoods moved into agriculture, where excessive taxation meant that the alternative livelihood also involved hardship.

Q4. During a famine, crop failure reduced food supplies, taxes remained harsh, grain exports continued, some traders withheld stocks hoping for higher prices, and relief was inadequate. Explain five ways these conditions worsened distress. [5 marks]

1. Crop failure reduced the food available from agriculture, weakening the immediate supply on which rural families depended for their survival.
2. Harsh taxes added payment demands when cultivators were already suffering from failed harvests, increasing the pressure on their remaining resources.
3. Continued exports sent grain abroad during the shortage, so food left the country while people were already experiencing severe hunger.
4. Some traders’ withholding of stocks created artificial scarcity, further limiting access to food as they waited for prices to rise.
5. Inadequate relief meant that people facing hunger could not obtain sufficient assistance, leaving the combined effects of scarcity and poverty insufficiently addressed.

Q5. Wood’s Despatch promoted European learning, expected increased demand for British goods, sought dependable civil servants, and was followed by education departments, a university system and changes in schooling. Explain these six features. [6 marks]

1. The Despatch favoured European learning as the basis of educational policy, presenting its practical benefits as preferable to Oriental knowledge.
2. It expected education to change Indian tastes and desires, encouraging people to purchase more goods produced by British manufacturers.
3. The Despatch claimed that European learning would improve Indians’ moral character, making them truthful and honest and thereby providing dependable civil servants for the Company.
4. Government education departments extended official supervision over education, making learning more directly subject to the machinery of colonial administration.
5. Steps towards university education created institutions for higher learning, expanding the formal educational system under the government’s changing educational policy.
6. Schooling became more regulated through inspections, regular timetables, textbook-based teaching, annual examinations and compulsory regular attendance, including during harvest time.

Q6. Railways connected people and markets, but primarily moved export materials and British goods, transported troops and were mostly financed by Indian taxes. Evaluate their role in four points. [4 marks]

1. Railways provided practical benefits by linking people and connecting markets within India, making movement across the country easier.
2. Their primary commercial purposes served Britain by carrying raw materials towards export ports and distributing British manufactured goods in India.
3. Troop transport strengthened colonial control because the government could move soldiers rapidly towards distant rebellions or military campaigns.
4. Most construction costs came from Indian taxes, so Indians largely financed infrastructure whose design principally served colonial strategic and commercial interests.

Q7. A colonial painting places Britannia above figures offering wealth. Revenue records describe coercive extraction. What distinction should a historian make between these two kinds of evidence? Give two points. [2 marks]

1. The painting represents empire symbolically and presents wealth as an offering, revealing a particular image of colonial power.
2. Revenue records provide evidence about extraction; the painting alone cannot establish that the transfer of wealth was voluntary.

Key takeaways

• Company political power and revenue collection supported its trade, connecting control over Bengal with purchases of Indian goods for export.
• The Permanent Settlement fixed the Company’s demand on zamindars but did not secure low rents or stable land rights for peasants.
• Mahalwari and Ryotwari changed revenue arrangements, yet excessive assessments continued to create severe hardship for cultivators.
• Unequal trade policies damaged Indian manufacturing, impoverished skilled artisans and strengthened India’s role as a market for British goods.
• The drain of wealth and destructive famine policies diverted resources and intensified poverty, particularly in the countryside.
• Macaulay’s Minute and Wood’s Despatch connected educational change with British cultural, administrative and commercial objectives in India.
• Railways and telegraphs brought useful connections while primarily serving colonial interests and being financed through Indian resources.
• Peasant, tribal and military resistance reflected different but connected grievances against British economic, political and cultural control.

Test yourself

What did the Company gain through the Diwani?

It became the chief financial administrator and could use revenue collected in Bengal to finance purchases of goods for export.

Why did fixed revenue not necessarily help peasants?

The fixed amount concerned the Company and zamindars. Peasants could still face high rents, insecure rights, borrowing and eviction.

Who paid revenue in the Mahalwari system?

The village headman collected the assessed village revenue and paid it to the Company.

Why did indigo cultivation provoke resistance?

Planters forced peasants to grow indigo, paid them poorly and used coercion, trapping cultivators in debt.

What did Dadabhai Naoroji investigate?

He used British reports to investigate the wealth drained from India under colonial rule.

How did Wood’s Despatch link learning and commerce?

It expected European education to change Indian tastes and increase demand for goods made in Britain.

Why could school attendance rules disadvantage peasant children?

Regular attendance was required even at harvest time, when children from poor families had to work in the fields.

What replaced Company rule in 1858?

The British Crown took direct control, beginning rule by the British monarch’s government.