Rise of British power

British power in India grew not by a single conquest but through a century of war, diplomacy, trade control and administrative takeover, roughly from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. The East India Company combined a trading monopoly, a disciplined sepoy army and subsidiary alliances to displace rival Indian powers one by one. The Battle of Plassey in 1757 is a useful landmark, but it explains little on its own: the deeper story is fiscal crisis in Indian states, European rivalry, and the Company's ability to turn Indian revenue into military power.