Already we have seen something of the way in which the burden of India came to be borne—the British East India Company, which was purely a trading concern, being forced to take military measures, for the defence of its trading stations and for the maintenance of good order, at one time against the French who were aiming at the establishment of an empire and at another against the native rulers, or rather the mis-rulers, of the Indian States.

It was thus that the Company came to have an army in its pay and to hold the control over extensive lands and many peoples. It was a position never contemplated when the Company was formed, nor was it a position entirely welcome to its directors. Continual additions had been made to the territories over which its control spread. The most notable perhaps were the addition of Cashmere in 1846, of the Punjab in 1849, and of Oudh in 1856. Farther east even than India, to the Straits Settlements and even to China itself, the authority reached of this vastly overgrown trading concern. Obviously it involved a control which could far better be undertaken directly by the British Government than by a Company acting under its charter. But with that typically British tendency to let things go on as they are going until it is impossible so to let them go any longer, nothing was done to transfer the Company's power to the Crown until the crisis came in the shape of the most formidable rising of a coloured people which the white man ever has been called on to meet in the whole course of taking up his burden. It is that known as the Indian Mutiny—"mutiny," because it was mainly the affair of the native soldiers in the Company's pay. This was in the years 1857 and 1858. It threatened the very existence of the white man in the East, and only a splendid heroism in resistance to heavy odds, and heroic efforts and forced marches to relieve a situation nearly desperate, saved the principal, though scanty, British force from being annihilated. Once more the British wonderfully won through to a final victory, but the events of the war had brought into clear light the long known fact that the government of British India was an affair which demanded the most direct attention of British statesmen, with all the resources at their disposal. The East India Company were relieved of their far too heavy burdens. The Crown took over their responsibilities both in India and in the farther East.

The responsibilities of India were not only those which arose from the troubles incidental to a rule over peoples of different race and of religions—the Moslem and the Hindu—which brought them often into collision with each other. There was another trouble which began to menace like a dark cloud on the north-eastern boundary of the country, where lay the independent State of Afghanistan bordering with Persia on its east and with Russia on its north.

Russia had taken no part in that overseas colonisation by the other great powers of Europe. She had vast spaces enough, contiguous to her own bounds, over which she spread. Gradually she had annexed all Turkestan, which brought her into direct contact with Afghanistan, and she had been at frequent war with Persia over the question of the Russo-Persian boundary on Persia's north-west. Both Persia and Russia had ambitions to absorb that independent Afghanistan which lay in the corner where they joined, and where, but for Afghanistan, they would join British India also. It was Britain's policy to maintain Afghanistan independent, as a buffer between her and those others, especially against Russia.

But it was to Persia, in the first place, that she had to say "hands off," when Persia advanced to the important position of Herat, within Afghan territory, in 1852. The result of campaigning and fighting lasting over some five years was that a friendly agreement was reached with Persia, which settled boundaries and left Herat to the Afghans.

Russia's menace to India

But in 1887 Russia, from the north, pushed down, and was across the Afghan boundary and advancing to that same Herat, when she was checked only by very forcible representations made to her by Great Britain. Britain herself had pushed her own Indian frontier forward by the acquisition of Beluchistan in 1878. Russia withdrew her forces for the time being, but all through that century and for some years of the present, the dread that she would come down upon India was always in the minds of British statesmen. There was more than one moment when war seemed imminent. Possibly it was nothing but Russia's own doubt of her effective fighting power which averted it. No suspicion of her internal weakness was entertained in Europe generally until it was revealed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and yet more clearly by the Great War of 1914-1918. But there is little doubt that this small State of Afghanistan, which arose out of the Moslem spread towards the East many centuries before, saved Britain and Russia from disastrous collision. She had played the game that a small State thus situated was likely to play, intriguing with the great powers on either side of her and taking advantage of their rivalry. More than once there has been war between her and Great Britain. But she remains an independent State and Britain's friend to-day.

On India's north-eastern side Britain extended her Empire by the acquisition of Assam in 1826, and later by that of Burma in 1886. The French had taken to themselves Annam and Tongking in 1884, and thus the British Burmese territory marched with French Indo-China, as it was called, and both were bounded on their northern side by the great Chinese Empire which stretched right up to Siberia.

Affairs in China

For the last hundred years or so, the story of China has been largely the story of her efforts to prevent the foreigner from coming into China and playing any part in her story.