[rayiner]

It could be colonization but it would predate the British. The British East India company colonized India in the first place by exploiting the lack of cooperation. At the time, there wasn’t the overwhelming disparity between the countries there is today. Mughal India was one of the gunpowder empires, with the largest military in the world in the late 17th and early 18th century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Mughal_Empire. The per-capita GDP gap between India and Britain was only a factor of 2. But India’s vastly large population meant it had about four times the state revenues.

Britain couldn’t have, and didn’t, colonize India the way the Mughals had: through a direct land war. Instead, the British East India company entered into deals with various port cities one by one to establish toe holds. Then in the Battle of Plassey, they overthrew the Nawab with just 750 British soldiers and 2,000 Indian mercenaries against a Mughal army of 50,000. The British persuaded the Mughal generals to defect, and the Nawab, fearing further defections, capitulated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey

[squeefers]

> The British East India company colonized India in the first place by exploiting the lack of cooperation.

nah, they used guns and cannons.... force. same as any conqueror ever.

[handedness]

The history of colonization is far more complicated than that.

For example, the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines was a relative cakewalk where there was little to no cooperation (most of the island chain), but to this day the Muslims in the south still retain an autonomous region despite centuries of foreign occupation and interference by a host of nations, due in large part to their higher degree of cooperation.

[rayiner]

Nope. India had guns and cannons, and more of them than the British East India company!

Robert Clive overthrew the Nawab of Bengal with 800 europeans and a dozen artillery pieces: https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-plassey. He also had 2,000 Indian soldiers (Britain conquered India with Indians doing the work). The Nawab had an army of 50,000 along with 50 artillery pieces.

[squeefers]

> India had guns and cannons India didnt really exist yet. 26 different states had guns and cannons. plenty of people who had guns and cannons were defeated by the British.

> Robert Clive overthrew the Nawab of Bengal with... I believe the indian rulers at the time could match the british technologically. even at Plassey the british had superior tech

[rayiner]

In the 1600s, the Indians probably had superior land-war weaponry. https://easy-history.com/the-military-revolution-in-india-pa.... By the 1700s, the British had leap-frogged the Indians by getting to iron-based canons earlier. But we’re talking incremental improvements. The point is that the Indians had a modern, gunpowder-powered military.

On the other side of the equation, the British were vastly outnumbered. Before 1800, the east india company had less than 20,000 Europeans in its army. On the other side, the Indians had hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Iron canons versus bronze canons weren’t the reason the British were able to overcome the Indian armies. It was that the EIC was able to get thousands of Indians to fight on their side, and exploited the divisions between the various Indian states.

[squeefers]

> the Indians had hundreds of thousands of soldiers

the "Indians" were all fighting each other, so Im not sure you can count their numbers together like that. India proper might have been on paper a force to be reckoned with, but the reality of it was actually dozens of smaller, poorer countries all vying for power AGAINST each other, not in cooperation. that isnt a formidable enemy, Im sorry

[squeefers]

the Sikhs still push the narrative that internal skullduggery defeated them in 1857, not being beaten by a superior force... the British say similar things about the battles they lost too. In fact Ive never heard a group of men say "fair enough, they were the better side that day" after losing

[zozbot234]

The British took India from the Marathi empire, not from the Mughals.

[rayiner]

Historians generally mark the beginning of British rule in India from the Battle of Plassey in 1757: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Plassey

But the subsequent consolidation of power in campaigns against the Maratha has similar features. The east india company won by exploiting division and conflict among the Maratha: https://www.worldhistory.org/Anglo-Maratha_Wars. What’s crazy is that during these wars, the East India Company armies were mostly Indians, with 15% or so being European soldiers.