India in the Nineteenth Century

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When the eighteenth century closed, all that could be positively affirmed was that the superiority of English courage, discipline, and military efficiency had been clearly established. But, apart from that incontestable fact, our rule was merely in an infantile stage as an imperial power. No one could tell whether it would develop or endure. The part of India left to be conquered or pacified was held by more formidable races than any that we had subdued. The possibility of outside intervention, and even of a rallying together of previously hostile elements, could not be eliminated, and with all our sense of self-confidence, no one could have foretold the issue of such a struggle. As the century progressed, one by one the doubts and dubious factors were removed, until, after the conquest of the Punjab, India might be said, without exaggeration and in real truth, to have become British.The nineteenth century had, therefore, run more than half its course when the country, such as we know it, began to make its appearance. The event, which might well have wrecked native progress for a long period, introduced, through the wise policy defined by Queen Victoria, an era of peace, prosperity, and great private as well as national development. In the New India the races of that country felt that they enjoyed practical equality with the English as citizens together of the British Empire.

Demetrius Charles De Kavanagh Boulger (1853-1928) was a British author. He was educated privately and at the Kensington School. Beginning in 1876, Boulger contributed to the important British journals on questions concerning India, China, Egypt and Turkey and Congo. With Sir Lepel Griffin he founded in 1885 the Asiatic Quarterly Review and edited it during the first four and one-half years of its publication.

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