Colonialism in India through English eyes

Samuel Pepys, the great diarist, writes on 16th November 1665: "Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India ship, & there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; & in cloves & nutmegs, I walked above the knees: whole rooms full. & Silk in bales, & boxes of copper-plate, one of which I saw opened. This was as noble a sight as ever I saw in my life."

Adam Smith, the Scottish author of the seminal "The Wealth of Nations" (1776) writes that a man willing to purchase a thousand pounds of India stock, gets a share, though not in the plunder, but in the appointment of the plunderers of India. No other sovereigns were so perfectly indifferent about the happiness or misery of their subjects, the glory or disgrace of their administration.

In 1857 after the (so-called) Mutiny in India, Charles Dickens wrote: "I wish I were the Commander in Chief of India. The first thing  I would do is to proclaim that I considered my holding that appointment by leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested."