A Comm for Historymemes

Actually it started with spices, like black pepper.

Then they came with guns and did the "divide and rule" thing, by letting the kings fight each other.

Were there a billion people in India at the time of British colonization?

This is a very timely post as I've been listening to The Steam House by Jules Vern on LibriVox and it takes place in mid-19th century India having been written in the late-19th century and has entire chapters and passages devoted to the history of Indian colonization to give context. It's also neat because the book imagines RVs long before RVs were invented and characters correctly predict future technological advances that were still 30-50 years off at the time the book was published

Because the Irish definitely didn't go out to be colonists....

You could say the same for Wales and Scotland too

There's three reasons the British conquered half the world:

• British food
• British women
• British weather

Bruh

I mean obviously not india as it is now, but there were and had been kingdoms there for well over 1500 years.

And also you went there because of the massive trade that we had. At one point almost all the gold in Europe came from India. You also wanted cinnamon and other spices. There was more wealth leaving the west coast of India than most of Europe had experienced

The other reason is that the Brits REALLY wanted that newfangled tea - first by routing trade from China through the British East India Company, and then by growing tea directly in India itself in the 19th century.