Empire1860 – 1947 · 87 years
British India
The largest empire in history — at one point the British crown ruled a quarter of the world's land and people.
What it was
Built piecemeal from the 17th century onward through trading companies, naval power, settler colonization, and outright conquest, the British Empire reached its greatest extent in 1922 covering 35 million km² and 458 million people. Decolonization between 1947 and 1980 dismantled most of it; Hong Kong's 1997 return to China is sometimes cited as the closing date.
Why it mattered
English as a world language, common-law legal systems across five continents, the borders of dozens of modern states, and the shape of global trade are all direct legacies — for better and for very much worse.
From Wikipedia
The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent, lasting from 1858 to 1947. It is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially. As India, it was a founding member of the League of Nations and a founding member of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. India was a participating state in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.
Wikipedia: British Raj·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.
- SOURCEaourednik / historical-basemaps
- DETAILhistorical-basemaps
- SNAPSHOT1938
- POLITY TYPEstate
Wars of this empire24
Conflicts whose belligerents name this polity (any of its time-slices), best-documented first.
- Battle of Imphal1944World-changing
- Battle of Kohima1944World-changing
- Indian Rebellion of 18571857–58Major conflict · 1.0M dead
- Bengal Wars of Succession1756–65Major conflict · 500K dead
- Second Anglo-Mysore War1780–84Major conflict · 100K dead
- Major conflict · 20K dead
- Battle of Tanga1914Major conflict
- Battle of Keren1941Major conflict
- Mysore Wars1766–99Significant · 600K dead
- Battle of Buxar1764Significant · 50K dead
- Burmese Wars1824–85Significant · 50K dead
- Sikh Wars1845–49Significant · 50K dead
- First Anglo-Sikh War1845–46Significant · 20K dead
- Second Anglo-Sikh War1848–49Significant · 20K dead
- Fourth Anglo-Mysore War1798–99Significant · 8.0K dead
- Third Carnatic War1756–63Significant
- First Anglo-Mysore War1767–69Significant
- Significant
- Third Anglo-Mysore War1790–92Significant
- Significant
- British Expedition to Tibet1903–04Significant
- Duar War1864–65Regional
- Regional
- Tirah Campaign1897–98Regional
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1860 and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: British India (1860 – 1947). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/british-india · Sources & methodology