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Who colonized Pakistan?

South Asia — the powers that ruled Pakistan, the dates, and what independence did and did not change.

In short

Who colonized Pakistan?

Britain, as part of British India. The regions that became Pakistan were annexed between 1843 and 1849 and gained independence at partition on 14 August 1947.

Pakistan's founding is inseparable from the manner of British departure. The boundary between India and Pakistan was drawn by a lawyer who had never been to the subcontinent and published two days after independence.

Reference

Who ruled Pakistan, and when

before 1843
Mughal successor states, Sikh Empire, Baloch khanates
1843/1849–1947
British India

At a glance

Key facts

Colonising powers
Britain
Independence
14 August 1947
Partition displacement
Around 15 million people moved; up to two million died
Border drawn
By Cyril Radcliffe, in five weeks, with no prior knowledge of India
Durand Line
Still an unresolved border dispute with Afghanistan

Chronology

Key dates

  1. 1843

    Britain annexes Sindh.

  2. 1849

    Annexation of Punjab after the Anglo-Sikh wars.

  3. 1893

    The Durand Line drawn through Pashtun territory.

  4. 1919

    Amritsar massacre in Punjab.

  5. 1947

    Partition; mass displacement and communal killing.

Context

What the record shows

The consequences — displacement of some 15 million people and up to two million deaths — were foreseeable and largely unpoliced.

Questions

Frequently asked

Who colonised Pakistan?
Britain, as part of British India, from the annexations of Sindh in 1843 and Punjab in 1849 until 1947.
Why was India partitioned?
Partition followed a British decision to withdraw quickly in 1947 and to divide the territory on communal lines, with borders drawn by the Radcliffe commission in five weeks.
When did Pakistan become independent?
14 August 1947.

Read on

Related in the archive

References

Sources — colonial Pakistan

  1. [1]Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (Seville, 1552).
  2. [2]Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650 (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
  3. [3]Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press, 1971; English 1973).
  4. [4]Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost (Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
  5. [5]Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa (Random House, 1991).
  6. [6]Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India (Hurst, 2017).
  7. [7]Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (Henry Holt, 2005).
  8. [8]Alfred W. McCoy, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (Wisconsin, 2009).
  9. [9]Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
  10. [10]Jürgen Zimmerer, "The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism", Patterns of Prejudice 39:2 (2005), on the German South-West Africa → Holocaust lineage.
  11. [11]Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972).
  12. [12]Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867), Chapter 31 ("Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist").

All works cited in good faith for documentary, educational and critical use. Errors and omissions: contact the archive.