1 May 1876 was both an exciting and special day for the British Empire and Queen Victoria, when Queen Victoria was awarded the title of Queen of India.
India's original master, the Mughal Empire, was declared dead 18 years ago, and the Queen's rule covered the entire South Asian subcontinent and more than 4 million square kilometers of Afghanistan, and Britain became a real British Empire from this moment.
So how did the Mughal Empire, once the ruler of the South Asian subcontinent, get out of the game and be replaced by the British?
The rise of a dualistic empire
In 1525, Babur, a descendant of the Turkic Mongol Timur, led an army to invade India, and the following year captured Delhi and occupied most of northern India to establish the Mughal Empire.
Babur then moved to the entire Indian subcontinent, occupying most of the Indian Peninsula in a very short time.
Established as a foreign regime in India.
Babur and his Mongol ruling class could not adopt direct and in-depth management, but could only use the method of "indian rule" to divide the territory to every Indian feudal lord, no matter what method they used, as long as they managed it well, it would still be their territory.
So the Mughal Empire failed to establish a high degree of unified centralization at the beginning, and the Mughal Empire was a theocratic empire with Muslims on its superstructure and Hinduism on a large folk base.
This divisive dualistic empire of religious and secular regimes was born with a divided gene.
However, this problem was temporarily covered up during the period of the empire's strength, in stark contrast to the neighboring Qing Empire, which under the rule of the Manchus, had the highest concentration of power in all its histories. Babur died in 1530 at the age of 48 after defeating the Afghans.
During his lifetime of conquest, he occupied large areas of territory stretching from the Gochola River in the east to the Amu Darya River in the west, Gwalior in the south, and the Himalayas in the north.
After several changes of masters, fate is uncertain
In 1539, the eastern Afghan prince Shersha rebelled, defeating Babur's son Humayun at the Battle of Chosha, who occupied Delhi and established the Sur dynasty, expanding its territory to Bengal, Bihar and Malaga during his reign.
However, the good times did not last long, and in 1545 Schersha was killed in battle. In 1555, Humayun reconquered the Plains of India, captured Delhi and Agra, and restored Mughal rule in India.
During this time the Mughals adopted a relatively tolerant religious policy, the monarchy was strengthened, and in 1556 Humayun died six months after his return to the throne.
Akbar and his glorious era
Akbar, the greatest emperor in Mughal history, succeeded to the throne, and religious conflicts in India were already frequent at this time.
In order to maintain his rule, Akbar carried out progressive internal reforms, adopted a tolerant religious policy, and actively reconciled Hinduism and Islam.
As a Muslim, Akbar took a series of measures, declaring equality among all denominations, selecting Hindus as senior officials, and adopting Hindu practices in the court himself.
Akbar expanded its territory, first in 15 years to unify North India, then 16 years to expand its territory to the far northwest, and finally, in 3 years to pacify several southern kingdoms, thus establishing a powerful Mughal Empire.
In the Guishun area, he still let the original leader manage the land,
In October 1605, the brilliant Akbar died, laying a solid foundation for the prosperity of the Mughal Empire.
From prosperity to decline
After Akbar's death, the Mughal Empire was ruled by Jahangir and Shah Jahan, and during the reign of the two monarchs for more than fifty years (1605-1657), the Mughal Empire entered its most prosperous historical period.
However, religious and local problems that were not fundamentally resolved during Akbar's reign gradually became apparent at this time.
First the fourth king, Jahangir, abandoned the policy of religious tolerance, and then the fifth king, Shah Jahan, over civil disputes over civil construction and heavy taxes, led to the overthrow of his son Aurangzeb in 1657.
The Mughal Empire had a growing set of religious and social problems, and the empire began to decline.
The new successor, Aurangzeb, completely abandoned the policy of religious tolerance at home, strengthened the religious status of Islam, attempted to completely Islamize India, expelled Hindus from the government, and demolished Hindu temples and idols on a large scale.
The expansion of foreign force reached its limit, and the Deccan region was incorporated into the imperial territory, becoming the supreme ruler of southern India.
With the exception of the southern tip of the South Asian subcontinent and the Kingdom of Marata, Aurangzeb unified the entire Indian subcontinent.
But the contradictions between non-Muslims and the government in the Empire suddenly sharpened, and soon evolved into armed struggle, and local resistance forces began to rise and developed into military organizations against the Empire.
Towards decline
At the beginning of the 18th century, after aurangzeb's death, the emperor was mostly incompetent, the country was torn apart, and the Afghans and Marathas continued to engage in armed struggle.
The Mughal Empire was weakening in the midst of foreign internal friction, which gave the British colonists in the west an opportunity to take advantage of it.
Prior to this, the British had established a large number of colonial strongholds and trading hubs through the East India Company, and established their own armed forces in 1680.
In 1757, the British sent the colonial robber Clevw to lead an army to land in Bengal Province, and after the Anglo-French "Seven Years' War" from 1756 to 1763, the British expelled the French forces and became the largest Western colonial power in India.
In 1774, after the occupation of Bengal, British colonists gradually implemented plans to conquer the entire subcontinent, and in the 1840s, the spearhead of British aggression turned to the rich Punjab region in the north.
At that time, there was no authoritative state organization on the subcontinent, and the Mughal Empire had a false name, and various confrontations such as religion, ethnicity, caste, and region enabled the British invaders to use them to break through and divide and rule.
After the annexation of the Punjab in 1849, the Mughal Empire was completely reduced to a British colony.
The Mughal Emperor was just a puppet. After the failure of the Great Anti-British Uprising in India in 1858, the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur was exiled by the British colonial authorities, and the British began to rule India directly until India-Pakistan independence in 1947.
brief summary
In the final analysis, the Mughal Empire fell to such a fate in the final analysis, or the ethnic and religious contradictions were not resolved.
As a religious country, the intensification of religious contradictions directly led to social rift, coupled with the infighting in the Indian state, which gave the British colonists the opportunity, and eventually the great empire was "swallowed" by the British one by one.
The Qing Empire, a unified secular regime dominated by Confucian culture, avoided the fate of becoming a Western colony.