The surreptitious taming of India

"Doctrinaire anti-colonialists make the corresponding mistake of viewing British India as the straightforward product of conquest. Unlike the colonial take-over of parts of Africa, or the 1950 Chinese annexation of Tibet, it was in fact obtained largely through guile rather than military force. The process began as a series of legitimate trading agreements…As the years went by and power shifted, princes and nawabs often found their personal interests were best secured by entering into treaties with the British. Political structures in states and villages across the subcontinent began to alter. The gaining of India was a gradual, insidious process, not a sudden invasion.It was only in the last fifty years of the British presence that the pomp and vulgarity of ‘the Raj’…became the face of India…Strict segregation only came into its own in the latter part of British rule…It was only around the turn of the [20th] century that British administrators in India first became seriously concerned with the theory of racial difference, and intellectual justifications for colonial rule."
- Patrick French in Younghusband