Modern Sources and British Expansion Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Hugli was not a Dutch commercial establishment in India. It was a Portuguese settlement on the Hugli river that the Mughals took in 1632 under Shah Jahan, and the Dutch in Bengal were at Chinsura, a little downstream. The Dutch did have trading establishments at Masulipatam on the east coast, at Karikal on the Coromandel coast and at Balasore in Odisha, so those three options are Dutch centres. The question asks which one was not Dutch, and that is Hugli, which is option C.

Answer: B

Francis Day, with Andrew Cogan, obtained the site of Madras on lease in 1639 from the local chief acting for the Chandragiri ruler, and Fort St. George was built there. Sir Thomas Roe was the English ambassador at Jahangir's court, Sir George Oxenden is linked to Surat and Bombay, and Sir John Child was a governor of Bombay later in the century. None of them obtained Madras, so the answer is Francis Day, option B.

Answer: D

The official key is (ii) (iii) (iv) (i), code D: Second Carnatic War with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, Third Anglo-Mysore War with the Treaty of Srirangapatnam, Second Anglo-Maratha War with the Treaty of Bassein, and Third Carnatic War with the Treaty of Paris. Strictly, Aix-la-Chapelle ended the First Carnatic War, but only code D is consistent with the other three matches, which are standard. Code A, for example, puts the Third Anglo-Mysore War with Aix-la-Chapelle, which is wrong.

Answer: D

The Subsidiary Alliance required the state to keep a British force under a British officer, to accept a Resident, to have no relation with other European powers and to seek the Company's permission for war or peace. Permission to adopt an heir when there was no natural heir was not part of it. That is a separate matter, which Dalhousie later turned into the Doctrine of Lapse by refusing such adoption in certain cases. The provision that was not part of the Alliance is therefore option D.

Answer: A

The chronological order is Ring Fence, Subordinate Isolation, Subordinate Union, Equal Federation.

British policy towards the Indian states began with the Ring Fence policy of Warren Hastings, then Subordinate Isolation, then Subordinate Union after 1857, and Equal Federation, which was proposed in the twentieth century.

The other options put the later policies before the earlier ones.

Answer: B

The Charter Act of 1833 ended the Company's monopoly of the China trade.

The Act of 1813 had ended the Company's monopoly of trade with India except for tea and trade with China. The Act of 1833 ended the remaining monopoly, so the Company ceased to be a trading body.

The Acts of 1853 and 1893 did not deal with the China trade. The sequence of Charter Acts shows the step-wise loss of the Company's trading privileges: the Act of 1793 renewed its monopoly, the Act of 1813 ended it for India, the Act of 1833 ended it for China and the Company's trading functions.

Answer: C

The match is a-1765, b-1769, c-1776, d-1784 (code 2 1 3 4).

The Treaty of Allahabad was concluded in 1765, the Treaty of Madras with Haidar Ali in 1769, the Treaty of Purandar with the Marathas in 1776 and the Treaty of Mangalore with Tipu Sultan in 1784.

Code (C) gives these dates in order, and the other codes mix the treaties and years.

Answer: A

(A) is correct but (R) is false.

The transition to colonial rule took nearly a century, from Plassey in 1757 to the annexations of the 1850s. The Reason says the Company annexed all the Indian territories directly, which is untrue, because the princely states remained under indirect control.

So the Assertion is right and the Reason is wrong. Between 1757 and 1856 the Company moved from trading power to ruler, through Plassey, Buxar, the Subsidiary Alliance and the doctrine of lapse, but a large part of India was still under princes in subordinate alliance in 1856.

Answer: C

The rulers of Nabha and Jind offered costly gifts to Ranjit Singh.

In 1806 the Cis-Sutlej chiefs of Nabha and Jind accepted Ranjit Singh's superiority by presenting costly gifts as a token of submission.

Forts, territory and horses were not what the key names as the token. The Cis-Sutlej Sikh chiefs were threatened by Ranjit Singh's advance in 1806, and the rulers of Nabha and Jind gave him gifts and accepted his claims, until the British intervened in 1809 under the Treaty of Amritsar.

Answer: D

The match is a-2, b-4, c-3, d-1.

Sangli was entitled to a gun salute of 9, Gwalior to 21, Dholpur to 15 and Kutch to 17.

Code (D) gives these in order, and the other codes interchange the salutes. The number of guns in a salute measured a ruler's rank in the British scheme. The five-state group Hyderabad, Mysore, Baroda, Jammu and Kashmir and Gwalior had 21 guns, and smaller states such as Sangli had fewer, which is why Sangli goes with the lowest figure and Gwalior with 21.