, , UPSC STUDY MATERIAL, 0
  • The British Empire was the largest in the world prior to World War II and included a number of places in Asia.
  • Those territories include what is now Oman, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Myanmar (Burma), Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the Maldives, Singapore, Malaysia (Malaya), Brunei, Sarawak and North Borneo (now part of Indonesia), Papua New Guinea, and Hong Kong.
  • The crown jewel of all of Britain’s overseas possessions around the world, of course, was India.
  • British colonial officers and British colonists, in general, saw themselves as exemplars of “fair play,” and in theory, at least, all of the crown’s subjects were supposed to be equal before the law, regardless of their race, religion, or ethnicity.
  • British colonials held themselves apart from local people more than other Europeans did, hiring locals as domestic help, but rarely intermarrying with them.
  • In part, this may have been due to a transfer of British ideas about the separation of classes to their overseas colonies.
  • In Asia, the story goes, Britain built roads, railways, and governments, and acquired a national obsession with tea.
  • This veneer of gentility and humanitarianism quickly crumbled, if a subjugated people rose up.
  • Britain ruthlessly put down the Indian Revolt of 1857 and brutally tortured accused participants in Kenya’s Mau Rebellion (1952 – 1960).
  • When famine struck Bengal in 1943, Winston Churchill’s government not only did nothing to feed Bengalis, it actually turned down food aid from the US and Canada meant for India.
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