British Invasion in India. British in India -The Coming of the Europeans. The quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese voyager, arrived in Calicut (modern Kozhikode, Kerala) on the west coast.

The British landed in India in Surat on August 24, 1608. While India has a rich and recorded history going back 4000 years to the Indus Valley Civilisation in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, Britain had no indigenous written language until the 9th century almost 3000 years after India.

1909 map of India, showing British India in two shades of pink and the princely states in yellow. The British Raj ( / rɑːdʒ /; from Hindi rāj: kingdom, realm, state, or empire.) was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947.

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In 1942, Britain sent an envoy to India, led by the British Labour politician Stafford Cripps (1889–1952), offering future dominion status in return for help recruiting more soldiers. Cripps may have made a secret agreement with the Muslim League, allowing Muslims to opt out of a future Indian state.

The Marathas were defeated by the Afghans while the Rajputs begam coalition with the British and traded to lead a luxurious life. The army fell. In about 1750 onwards did the BRITISH planned to conquer India. The first attack fell on the richest province of India, Bengal.

“The British conquest of India,” Durant writes, “was the invasion and destruction of a high civilization by a trading company utterly without scruple or principle […] bribing and murdering ...

The East India Company officers lived lavish lives, the company finances were in shambles, and the company's effectiveness in India was examined by the British crown after 1858. As a result, the East India Company lost its powers of government and British India formally came under direct Crown control , with an appointed Governor-General of India .

[Will Durrant]. However, the total contribution from India, in cash and kinds, to British wars alone, amounts to approx. 9.25 billion pounds (in today’s value) according to Mr Tharoor. Adding to this loot was the immense pain inflicted upon India, by the British, directly or indirectly, by caring little for the lives of millions of Indians.

The East India Act of 1784 was passed to dissolve the monopoly of the East India Company and put the British government in charge. After the Indian Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, the British government assumed full control, dissolving the trading company. Imperial rule destroyed India's local hand loom industry to fund its own industrialization.