Abstract
It was during the late 19th century that the British Empire in India reached its most imposing period. The period before the 1880s witnessed what is sometimes considered 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 paramount power, saw the rise of a growing envy of British influence. Europe, France and Germany were aware that influence in the East meant leadership on a global scale; Russia and especially America emerged as expansionist rivals in strategic areas of the globe. Later on, this phenomenon developed to such an extent that it came to be qualified as "the scramble for the partitioning of the world".
