Effects of Migration on Colonial Cities and Countryside

Effects of Migration on Colonial Cities and Countryside

Introduction

The reign of the British rule was marked by migration of populations both from and to Britain and the colonies conquered. This in turn left an impact on the people of the colonies. They began to believe that the British came to rule them. This mindset, we can say, was true to a great extent. There was a massive divided in public opinion as to what the British wanted. It can easily be argued that the effect on the general population was negative and made them stand up against their rulers.

These changes had an enormous impact on Indians themselves. For both urban and rural Indians Pax Britannica meant more than just foreign rule and India's political unity. For the high-caste sons of regional Indian elites it meant attendance at new English-language colleges, an introduction to the ideas and concepts of Western modernity, and futures shaped by the need to succeed within the new occupations and professions introduced into India along with British rule. As early as the 1820s the members of the growing "English-educated elite" formed literary clubs, debating societies and religious and social reform groups in which they debated the merits of India's past and their own and their country's future. By the 1870s many members of this urban, middle-class elite were joining regional political associations.

For rural Indians, however, current conditions posed more urgent problems than debates about the future. As farmers produced more crops for commercial export, substantial food shortages appeared in rural regions, particularly among poorer communities. Both famine and disease spread more quickly than ever before through India's now closely interlinked provinces. Over the last 30 years of the century major famines ravaged villages, towns, and cities, often followed closely by contagious diseases that further devastated already weakened populations. Sporadic protests during these years revealed undercurrents of local opposition to the changes brought by the new colonial regime.

Colonial Modernity

Over the course of the 19th century the British presence and power in India altered the physical, economic, social, and even domestic landscapes of urban towns and cities across the subcontinent, introducing into them the structures, ideologies, and practices of a British-mediated colonial modernity. Along with governmental and administrative offices, British rule brought to Indian cities law offices, hospitals, hotels, emporiums, schools and colleges, town halls, churches, learned societies, printers and publishers—the full panoply of 19th-century life as it existed in mid-century English or European cities. These changes were most dramatic in India's capital, Calcutta, but they also reshaped public and work spaces in most towns, cantonments, and cities throughout the Raj. On the other hand, this widened the gap between the cities and villages.

The use of English rather than Persian as the language of courts and government and the railroads, telegraphs, and unified post all contributed to the new urban British India. This caused uproar among the masses. Along with these changes came European-style buildings and the institutional structures of Western-style office work ...