a turnaround so that Indian goods were banned from England and English goods were sold on the Indian market, and as part of this the British policy changed from encouraging Indian manufacturers to crushing them. The classic modern colonial economy developed, with unemployment and poverty marking the Indian system as the British used India as a way of improving their own manufacturing base and increasing exports. British policy made India a more rural country, increased poverty, and made the people more dependent.
The coming of the British to India would produce profound changes in that country over the centuries. The British officially took over India in 1858 and established the raj, the name for British rule. Before that, India had been ruled by a private British trading company which had been sending Indian goods to Britain for sale. Commerce thereafter gave way to empire. In the eighteenth century, tensions between the private company and the Indian people were reaching a head as the company was showing less and less interest in local customs or prerogatives. The British had come to govern more and more of India during the centuries the company was in place and the spirit of paternalism was a destructive force that included a strong tinge of racism. What had started out as a trading venture had become a political, colonial rule over most of India, and the shift to open British politi
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