CHRONOLOGY

1600	British Royal Charter forms the East India Company, beginning the process that will lead to the subjugation of India under British rule.
1613–14	British East India Company sets up a factory in Masulipatnam and a trading post at Surat under William Hawkins. Sir Thomas Roe presents his credentials as ambassador of King James I to the Mughal Emperor Jehangir.
1615–18	Mughals grant Britain the right to trade and establish factories.
1700	India, under Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, accounts for 27  per  cent of the world economy.
1702	Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, acquires the Pitt Diamond, later sold to the Regent of France, the Duc d’Orléans, for £135,000.
1739	Sacking of Delhi by the Persian Nadir Shah and the loot of all its treasures.
1751	Robert Clive (1725–74), aged twenty-six, seizes Arcot in modern-day Tamil Nadu as French and British fight for control of South India.
1757	British under Clive defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daula to become rulers of Bengal, the richest province of India.
1765	Weakened Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II issues a diwani that replaces his own revenue officials in the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa with the East India Company’s.
1767	First Anglo-Mysore War begins, in which Hyder Ali of Mysore defeats the combined armies of the East India Company, the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad.
1771	Marathas recapture Delhi.
1772	Birth of Rammohan Roy (d. 1833). British establish their capital in Calcutta.
1773	British East India Company obtains monopoly on the production and sale of opium in Bengal. Lord North’s Regulating Act passed in Parliament. Warren Hastings appointed as first Governor-General of India.
1781	Hyder Ali’s son, Tipu Sultan, defeats British forces.
1784	Pitt the Younger passes the India Act to bring the East India Company under Parliament’s control. Judge and linguist Sir William Jones founds Calcutta’s Royal Asiatic Society.
1787–95	British Parliament impeaches Warren Hastings, Governor-General of Bengal (1774–85), for misconduct.
1793	British under Lord Cornwallis introduce the ‘permanent settlement’ of the land revenue system.
1799	Tipu Sultan is killed in battle against 5,000 British soldiers who storm and raze his capital, Srirangapatna (Seringapatam).
1803	Second Anglo-Maratha War results in British capture of Delhi and control of large parts of India.
1806	Vellore mutiny ruthlessly suppressed.
1825	First massive migration of Indian workers from Madras to Reunion and Mauritius.
1828	Rammohan Roy founds Adi Brahmo Samaj in Calcutta, first movement to initiate socio-religious reform. Influenced by Islam and Christianity, he denounces polytheism, idol worship and more.
1835	Macaulay’s Minute furthers Western education in India. English is made official government and court language.
1835	Mauritius receives 19,000 migrant indentured labourers from India. Workers continued to be shipped to Mauritius till 1922.
1837	Kali-worshipping thugs suppressed by the British.
1839	Preacher William Howitt attacks British rule in India.
1843	British conquer Sindh (present-day Pakistan). British promulgate ‘doctrine of lapse’, under which a state is taken over by the British whenever a ruler dies without an heir.
1853	First railway built between Bombay and Thane.
1857	First major Indian revolt, called the Sepoy Mutiny or Great Indian Mutiny by the British, ends in a few months with the fall of Delhi and Lucknow.
1858	Queen Victoria’s Proclamation taking over in the name of the Crown the governance of India from the East India Company. Civil service jobs in India are opened to Indians.
1858	India completes first 200 miles of railway track.
1860	SS Truro and SS Belvedere dock in Durban, South Africa, carrying first indentured servants (from Madras and Calcutta) to work in sugar plantations.
1861	Rabindranath Tagore is born (d. 1941).
1863	Swami Vivekananda is born (d. 1902).
1866	At least a million and a half Indians die in the Orissa Famine.
1869–1948	Lifetime of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian nationalist and political activist who develops the strategy of non-violent disobedience that forces Britain to grant independence to India (1947).
1872	First British census conducted in India.
1876	Queen Victoria (1819–1901) is proclaimed Empress of India (1876–1901). Major famine of 1876–77 mishandled by Viceroy Lord Lytton.
1879	The Leonidas, first emigrant ship to Fiji, adds 498 Indian indentured labourers to the nearly 340,000 already working in other British empire colonies.
1885	A group of middle-class intellectuals in India, some of them British, establish the Indian National Congress to be a voice of Indian opinion to the British government.
1889	Jawaharlal Nehru is born (d. 1964).
1891	B.  R.  Ambedkar is born (d. 1956).
1893	Swami Vivekananda represents Hinduism at Chicago’s Parliament of the World’s Religions, and achieves great success with his stirring addresses.
1896	Nationalist leader and Marathi scholar Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) initiates Ganesha Visarjan and Shivaji festivals to fan Indian nationalism. He is the first to demand ‘purna swaraj’ or complete independence from Britain.
1897	Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrated amid yet another famine in British India.
1900	India’s tea exports to Britain reach £137 million.
1901	Herbert Risley conducts first ethnographic census of India.
1903	Lord Curzon’s grand Delhi Durbar.
1905	Partition of Bengal rouses strong opposition. Swadeshi movement and boycott of British goods initiated. Lord Curzon, prominent British viceroy of India, resigns.
1906	The Muslim League political party is formed in India at British instigation.
1909	Minto–Morley Reforms announced.
1911	Final imperial durbar in Delhi; India’s capital changed from Calcutta to Delhi. Cancellation of Partition of Bengal.
1913	Rabindranath Tagore wins Nobel Prize in Literature.
1914	Indian troops rushed to France and Mesopotamia to fight in World War I.
1915	Mahatma Gandhi returns to India from South Africa.
1916	Komagata Maru incident: Canadian government excludes Indian citizens from immigration. Lucknow Pact between Congress and Muslim League.
1917	Last Indian indentured labourers are brought to British colonies of Fiji and Trinidad.
1918	Spanish Influenza epidemic kills 12.5 million in India, 21.6 million worldwide.
1918	World War I ends.
1919	Jallianwala Bagh massacre. General Dyer orders Gurkha troops to shoot unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar,
	killing at least 379. Massacre convinces Gandhi that India must demand full independence from oppressive British rule. Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms promulgated. Rowlatt Acts passed.
1920	Gandhi formulates the satyagraha strategy of non-cooperation and non-violence. Khilafat movement launched.
1922	Non-cooperation movement called off by Mahatma Gandhi after Chauri Chaura violence.
1927 & 1934	Indians permitted to sit as jurors and court magistrates.
1930	Jawaharlal Nehru becomes president of the Congress party. Purna Swaraj Resolution passed in Lahore. Will Durant arrives in India and is shocked by what he discovers of British rule. Mahatma Gandhi conducts the Salt March.
1935	Government of India Act.
1937	Provincial elections in eleven provinces; Congress wins eight.
1939	World War II breaks out. Resignation of Congress ministries in protest against not being consulted by viceroy before declaration of war by India.
1940	Lahore Resolution of Muslim League calls for the creation of Pakistan.
1942	Cripps Mission. Quit India movement. Congress leaders jailed. Establishment of Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj) by Subhas Chandra Bose to fight the British.
1945	Congress leaders released. Simla Conference under Lord Wavell.
1946	Royal Indian Navy Mutiny. Elections nationwide; Muslim League wins majority of Muslim seats. Cabinet Mission. Interim government formed under Jawaharlal Nehru. Jinnah calls Direct Action Day. Violence erupts in Calcutta.
1947	India gains independence on 15  August. Partition of the country amid mass killings and displacement. Britain exits India.