Chapter
4
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1820s England by Comparison
1820-30s Britain was still a rural nation with 80% of the
population living in the countryside. Most people were farmers or spun wool and
cotton to weave into cloth. Soon, new machines were invented that could do
these jobs in a fraction of the time. This left many people out of work, so
they flocked to the towns in search of jobs in the new industries. By the
middle of the nineteenth century, over 50% of the population lived in towns and
cities under dreadful conditions.
Life in
London 1820-76
The unending wars, which the Britain was fighting with
French, were never total victories for Britain. The much-heralded battle of
Trafalgar in 1805 was a minor sea battle compared to huge victories, which
Napoleon had won at Ulm and Austerlitz all by
himself without aligning with any other power. Later the British cleverly put
together a coalition of Russia, Germans, Britain and Austrian to defeat him at
Waterloo in 1815. This long conflict had bankrupted Britain.
William Pitt, the British Prime Minister wanted to fight wars as well as pay
off the huge debt the Britain had created. Hence he taxed Britons to the hilt
and the British grew economically worst than India was anytime in early 1800s.
Although economically worst
at home, they were prospering abroad while ruling colonies. They had managed to
grab 3/4 of India by hook or by crook by 1820. With that they had immense
resources at their disposal to fight wars within India and in Europe. Each war
the British fought with the Indian rulers was carefully planned. They subverted
and divided the state to be conquered first and then conquered that divided
state. The Battle of Plassey (1757), Maratha Wars (1775 to 1817), The battle of
Buxor (1764), Final Battle with Tipu Sultan (1799), the Sikh Wars (1846-49)
were key example of their duplicity. They prevailed each time because they had
inside help. Fifth columnists always aided them, who later were eliminated by
them. This technique of war fighting of theirs had been perfected in Europe. It
was ably used by successive British administration in India.
Every time they won a battle
or laid a siege to a city-state, their target was the "Treasury" of
the vanquished king. Which was taken as
war indemnity and remitted to England. Lord Clive took - £40 million[1]
(in excess of one billion dollars in today's money) from The Bengal King's
Treasury in 1757 after Battle of Plassey, and remitted it to England. Similar
seizure took place at all places. So much so that the local princes undertook
great effort to hide their Treasury and other wealth. But there was always a
fifth columnist that betrayed them. All the money they seized ended up in
England. There is no known other political power since the ancient times that
had managed a take over 200 million people so brilliantly as the British had
done.
With land taxes collected in
India early in the nineteenth century they financed their rest of India's
takeover. With any extra cash leftover they began building new cities like
Shimla, Dalhousie, Lansdown etc. and improved local communications, introduced
new technologies like steam engine, telegraph and small-scale manufacturing.
External regional trade like opium exports to China and South East Asia and
other local and regional trade were used to finance the
much-heralded Industrial Revolution in Britain, which began in 1760s.
Despite the growing wealth in Britain in mid eighteen
hundred, many of the working people, who actually created the wealth, lived,
worked and died in very poor conditions. Most cities and towns were not
prepared for the great increase of people looking for accommodation to live
near their work place, hence slums developed. Britain's, although they would
deny it, looked like a big village. There was a shortage of houses,
with so many people had to share a room in other peoples houses. Rooms were
rented to whole families or perhaps several families. Often ten or twelve
people shared one room. If there were no rooms to rent, people stayed in
lodging houses.
Many factory owners built houses for their workers
near their factories. The houses were built close together really quickly and
cheaply. These houses often had two rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs.
These rooms were not big enough to accommodate large families people tended to
have during the Victorian time. The houses also did not have running water and
toilets. Up to 100 houses had to share an outdoor pump to get their water and
share an outside toilet. To make things worse, the water from the pump was
often polluted.
Many factory owners put profit above the health and safety
of their workers. Children and young women were employed in terrible conditions
in textile mills and mines. Furnaces were operated without proper safety
checks. Steam hammers and machinery deafened workers in factories and mills.
Hours were long and there were no holidays[2].
The above is the saga of Britain when they were conquering
India and leading an aristocratic life style there. Most Brits had opted to go
to the colonies like India to escape that huge load of poverty. These Brits
instantly transformed themselves into "Great Sahibs" upon arrival,
save a few highest political and military leaders, who were independently
wealthy. Rest were products of average to below average households.
By about 1870, enough money had been pumped in by India
into Britain[3] to transform
the society from abject poverty into well-fed and well-clothed Victorian
society. The British historian of that
era never got tired of telling tales of poverty and uneducated India[4],
(all lies). The truth of the matter was that Indian economic well being of that
era was much superior to the British. What they lacked was, in diplomacy and
power of their guns. Also they lacked in duplicitous dealings, which took the
Indians by surprise.
The much celebrated Victorian Age would never had happened
if huge amount of money had not arrived from India.
The point here is that the British citizens when they were
arriving in India in 1820-60s were neither lords nor aristocrats, other than a
few; in fact they came from ordinary homes. These ordinary people of England,
as soon as they alighted from the ships were calling the people of India as "Natives
or Coollies". The truth of the matter is that they came from ordinary
homes and under abject poverty should have been a bit more mature and looked at
themselves before they called Indians as Coollies. The forgoing happened in
Shimla also where it was common to segregate people and call them Coollies.
The blame is all India's and its ruling dynasties. They
allowed it to happen and tolerated it for another one hundred years.
[1] Clive - The
Heaven Born General by Michael Edwardes
[2]
http://www.chiddingstone.kent.sch.uk/homework/victorians/industrialrevolution.html
[3] Hari Sud
paper: "How Did Historically Prosperous India Get so Poor in the First
Place", published by iVarta.
[4] Macaulay's
minute on Indian Education - Speech delivered in 1835 by T. B. Macaulay.
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