Explanation: Britain, at one point, managed to leverage itself into a position of control over all of India. In part, this was because the India-based Mughal Empire, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries on the face of the earth, chose to fall apart at a very inopportune time, splitting India into a hundred different opposing states just as the Brits started sniffing around for colonial concessions.

The other reason is that the Brits REALLY wanted that newfangled tea - first by routing trade from China through the British East India Company, and then by growing tea directly in India itself in the 19th century.