British India

During the first century and a half of British presence in India, the colonial ambition was by necessity limited to commercial exploitation, and dependent for most of this period on special privileges extended to the East India Company (EIC) by its host, the Mughal emperor. From the end of Akbar's reign (in 1605), down to Aurangzeb's rule (1658–1707) and beyond, the EIC was perforce the ally of the Mughals. Thus, until the early 1750s, the EIC could not interfere in, and in fact depended upon, native law and customs in resolving any disputes that involved native persons or native institutions.

The primary, if not the sole, goal of the EIC was commercial profit, which explains why its interests demanded as much “law and order” as was necessary to conduct trade in a regular and “orderly” fashion. These relatively modest ambitions permitted the EIC to act the role of guest in the lands of the Mughals, a role exhibiting an amicability that was to diminish not only with the decline of the latter's power during the wars of the successor states, but also with the concomitant militarization and increasing aggressiveness of the Company. For the EIC had over time acquired many of the features of a modern state, and acted with an increasing sense of sovereignty that entailed warring, raising taxes and administering justice to its employees and – in time – to Indians as well.