This book traces the events that led to the conquest and subjugation of India by the British East India Company during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It focuses on how this trading company was able to use the art of cunning diplomacy, the language of friendship and eventually threat and betrayal to grab Indian territories. The company was able to use its despotic powers to raise revenues to maintain its territorial acquisitions, its large army and all its servants and, in turn, help to sustain the British Empire. British Rule in India During the 18th and 19th Centuries does not seek to provide an exhaustive history of India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but to describe the economic and social consequences of British rule during this period. It examines how the British were able to play off one Indian ruler against another in order to entice each into the British spider's web. Once a state fell into this trap, the British were able to use its resources to entrap another. The book concludes by not only describing the long lasting damage and pain that the British had inflicted on the people of India during this time, but also the beneficial things the British had bestowed on India, which came to have a lasting effect on the Indian people.
