November

Britain's colonisation, conquest and rule over India, initially through the English East India Company (from 1757) and later the British crown (from 1858), was about controlling and exploiting land, people and resources for commercial gain. Punjab province, was one of the last regions of India to be annexed to the British Empire in 1849. The deposing and forced exile, of the then child ruler of the Sikh Empire of Punjab, Maharaja Duleep Singh (depicted above) gave Britain control of Punjab's rich agricultural and craft manufacture and trade. Bales of raw cotton from Punjab were shipped to the textile mills of Lancashire especially between 1861 to 1865, when global supplies of slave grown cotton from plantations in North America were interrupted by the American Civil War.

The building of canals and railways in Punjab and Lancashire made possible through the Industrial revolution, aided the transportation of this valuable cash crop.