The Colony of India

Once a great and powerful empire, by the 1900s India was a giant colony of Great Britain. Despite its huge population, the British had the advantage of technology, money, and organization. This strength allowed them to rule South Asia with efficient brutality.

British India, technically called the British Raj, was considered the "jewel" of the British Empire. India bought British goods and gave them raw materials in return.

The Indians, of course, didn't want to be a British colony. Many independence movements were created and they held protests to demand freedom.

The British met these protests with quick violence. A famous example occurred in 1919, the "Amritsar Massacre". British soldiers fired on a crowd of peaceful demonstrators, wounding over 1,000 and killing 400.

Despite this treatment, Indians continued to work for freedom. The most famous example is Mahatma Gandhi, who insisted that Indians peacefully demonstrate even in the face of violence. Martin Luther King Jr. would later copy Gandhi's methods.