It is during the late 19th century that the British Empire in India reached its most imposing appearance. The period before the 1880s witnessed what is sometimes considered as the climax of Victorian power, prosperity and enterprise. The most popular political themes of improvement, self-help and adaptation had brought immense wealth and led to an assertion of British naval power and to a significant industrial and technological advance. 1877 became the year of the inauguration of the Indian Empire. Consequently, a different approach to imperialism gradually set in but it required considerable political and strategic commitments. In addition, it was accompanied by a rise of foreign competition and by higher global growth rates. By the second half of the century, what had begun as a spontaneous initiative of international commercial exchange was displaced by a more conscious and more deliberate imperialism. Ironically enough, the very period of British paramountcy...