E X T E N S I O N THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN INDIA The British presence in India began in Elizabeth I s time when the East India Company (EIC) acquired its first territories in Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. The British were not the first European power to arrive in India, nor were they the last to leave, both those honours go to the Portuguese. In 1612 the British made their first permanent inroad into India when they established a trading post at Surat in Gujarat. In fact, in 1600 Queen Elizabeth I had granted a charter to a London trading company giving it a monopoly on British trade with India. So for 250 years the British power was exercised in India not by the Government but by the East India Company. By the early 19th century, India was effectively under British control. During the 18th century and the first half of the 19th, India was the place where many of the second sons of titled families (who would not inherit the family estate, and consequently had to choose between the Church and the Army) went as Army officers to make their fortunes. The Indian army, in fact, consisted of Indian troops (the Hindu Sepoys and the Moslems) under British officers. By the middle of the 19th century, the British Empire was the largest and richest empire in the world and, by the end of the century, it covered a quarter of the globe, four times as much as the Roman Empire at its largest; it included the whole of India, Canada, Australia, New Zeland, much of Africa and nearly all the isolated rocks and islands of the ocean according to the official Colonial List. This naturally gave rise to the belief that the British themselves were the race chosen to bring the benefits of western civilization to the backward areas of the world.This white supremacy was enforced in Britain s colonies, especially India, and naturally, native opposition was frequent. One of the most serious rebellions, the Indian Mutiny, broke out in 1857 and with it the British colonial administration fought its greatest imperial war. Its immediate (but not most relevant) cause was the cartridge for the new Enfield rifle, which had to be bitten before it was loaded: rumours spread that the cartridge was greased with cow-fat and piglard; and since the cow is sacred to the Hindus and the pig is considered unclean by the Moslems, both religious groups were offended. But the deeper causes of the Mutiny were resentment over the Westernization of India and fear that native customs, religions, and social structures would be lost. Meerut witnessed the first serious outbreak of the Indian Mutiny when angry sepoys broke open the town jail and released their comrades who had refused to bite the new cartridges. Accompanied by 126