India and England

In past blogs of 2011, I have talked about the thirty years war, the emperors of China, the Kings of Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. But I have hardly mentioned India, except for a blog in January. In the times that I have been reading about in Bauer, three emperors have ruled India.

The first was a strict man named Jahangir, who called himself “world seizer.” He knew that India would prosper if there was more trade going on. So, he and King James the First of England made a trade treaty saying that the English traders could come to India to trade in peace. When Jahangir died, his son, who was renamed Shah Jahan, meaning “King of the World," became the emperor.



The Taj Mahal



Shah Jahan had a wife who he loved very much. He was filled with grief when she died, and he built a huge tomb for her. It took over 20 years for twenty-thousand laborers to build this exquisite tomb, complete with a mosque and garden, often called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Shah Jahan had four sons. His favorite was a boy named Dara, who was lazy, and didn’t do much fighting. When the emperor announced that Dara was going to be his heir to the throne, one of the other sons, Aurangzeb, rebelled.

Aurangzeb was a fierce warrior, and one of Shah Jahan’s best generals. However; the king was not appreciative of Aurangzeb’s strength, and instead of praising him, he demoted him! So when Aurangzeb heard that Dara was going to be the next king, he raised an army and easily defeated Dara’s small army. He imprisoned his father in his own fortress, and though the former king was well cared for, with servants and doctors, as well as food and water, he was never let out again.

Aurangzeb had taken drastic measures to be made king, and now he was taking drastic measures to make India a good country. But when he died, India was very close to either falling apart or being conquered by foreign invaders. He made three decisions that would change the life of India greatly.

 First, he ordered that India was a Muslim country. This was a great change, because, in the last couple generations, Hindus had had jobs at court, and had been able to worship freely. One had even been made Prime Minister by Akbar, Aurangzeb’s great-grandpa. From now on, Hindus had to pay high taxes, and they couldn’t work in the court. Since the Koran was the Muslim book of law, Aurangzeb decided that the laws of the Koran and the “Shari’ah”, (the Muslim law,) would be the laws for all India. Since the Koran forbid wine, wine was made illegal throughout India. Aurangzeb banished art and parties, since he thought that the Koran was against them.  His Muslim subjects welcomed these new decrees, but the Hindus did not.

Aurangzeb’s next decision made the gap between the Muslims and Hindus even greater. He decided to try to conquer all of the southern parts of India. So he tried to conquer the Deccan, the tribes who lived up in the mountains of India. The Deccans called on some Hindus to help them fight Aurangzeb. While the king and the Deccans fought against each other, Aurangzeb ignored the rest of his empire, and he made his third rash decision. He let the English come into India and build their own cities. his was bad. The English established cities, fortified the settlements, and brought more and more people over to India. This was the beginning of an English takeover.

While they were beginning to build the foundations for the takeover of Japan, the English were having troubles of their own. James the First had died, and his son, Charles, had become king. Charles married a Catholic wife, which none of the English Protestants liked. Charles got mad at Parliment and told them to go away. But the Parliment stayed. And when the rash king brought an army of five-hundred soldiers to force five Protestant members out, the people of England started to be against Charles. Even though the Protestant members had been warned and had escaped, a civil war began. Finally, the Parliment and the Protestants won, and Charles was beheaded. England was now a "commonwealth", which meant that Parliment listened the to the people, and then made the decisions.

But a man named Oliver Cromwell got tired of the Parliment, and sent them all away. Then, he selected his own men to be in the Parliment. However; England wasn't a commonwealth for long. Soon, the men loyal to Cromwell passed a bill giving all the Parliment's powers to him, and then naming him "Lord Protector." Even though no one dared call him a king, Cromwell was basically that. One man even wrote a little booklet, encouraging someone to assasinate him.  When Cromwell died, a lot of people were very happy. Cromwell's reign had not been the brightest of times for England, but more sorrow was yet to come.

After Cromwell died, there were at least half a million people living in London, England. They lived in small houses, not well made, and squished together. All in all, London, in 1665, was the perfect place for plague to spread. So when a few men died in the outskirts of London, no one hoped it would spread. But spread it did. By that year's Christmas, whole families were dying of the black death. Very few people went out of their houses. So many people died, that there wasn't enough room in the graveyards to bury them! The plague raged for a year, until finally, over 200,000 people had died in London.

The next tragedy happened when a baker was putting out his fire, a coal rolled out, unnoticed, and started the Great Fire of London. The fire started small, but because the wooden houses were crammed so close together, the fire spread quickly. It burned the bakery, the shipyard, stores, houses, and even a great stone castle. When the fire stopped, after almost a four days, more than 3\4 of London had been burned. Most of the buildings were gone. Susan Wise Bauer writes that John Evelen, who lived in London at that time, wrote in his diary, "London was, but is no more."