Impact of British Colonialism on Different Social Classes of Nineteenth-Centur Madras Presidency

The proponents of British rule, in their bid to demonstrate their loyalty to the colonial regime, popularised the view that south India from the earliest historical times was divided into a number of small kingdoms that were continually at war with one another, resulting in chaos and anarchy. According to them the invasion of Muslim armies from northern India, particularly from the fourteenth century, aggravated the conditions of endemic disorder and violence, which came to an end with the timely arrival and intervention of the British. S. Srinivasa Ragavaiyangar, to drive home this point further, highlighted the disputed succession to the Nabobship of the Carnatic and the protracted scramble for supremacy between the English and the French over that region since the middle of the eighteenth century, entailing enormous misery and hardship to the people of south India. Ragavaiyangar insisted that it was the British who provided political stability and restored peace in the country since the dawn of nineteenth century.