Britain was the largest empire in history and covered 25% of the Earth's surface area. What was it which allowed them to become the largest empire in history?
A navy is, effectively, mulitpurpose when it comes to trading and colonies and such in a way that an army is not. Therefor countries that can invest only in a navy are at an advantage.
Also, while it is true that the british empire was very large and impressive by almost any measure, and I don't want to downplay it too much, it's worth remembering that a very, very large portion of that empire was made up of the indian subcontinent, and while they certainly had political control over the place, the actual reality was a (very) tiny elite who replaced the previous group of rulers.
Also this empire as described lasted barely 100 years.
While they maintained control over those, they engaged in war and looting against the established Spanish empire. They managed to entice the Indian elite by being extremely effective at paying back loans using the loot they got during the Spanish era. Internal division among elite in India meant that the bankers in bengal thought they could use the British for deposing a king they did not like and at the same time handle the raids that the Marathas were performing. The British essentially used the money to bribe the king's army and took control of Bengal (which was the ricebasket for one of the largest empires of the time and the largest cloth producer). Unfortunately for said bankers, once the British took control of bengal they betrayed the bankers who lent them money. They raised an army of local sepoys and went on to take the rest of the subcontinent (although this was a slow painful process).
Even as the US revolted and gained independence, the British found themselves with a growing colony in India where civil wars and divisions between kings made it easy for the British to move in. One thing to remember is that when we talk of a British army at this point it really is an army where the lower ranks are made of Indians who were trying to make a living (as it turns out British were just better paymasters than their local counterparts).
Once they conquered India, they moved east and use Indian soldiers to take on Chinese while waging the opium war (and making a tonne of money from the trade of drugs).
Ive glossed over a bunch of things but honestly the success of the British in the 1800s is built over many many years of multiple investments some of which started in the 1500s (for instance their acquisition of Mumbai was entirely by sheer dumb luck as it was part of a dowry given by the Portuguese, who in turn received it as part of a peace treaty with a local ruler)... Many of the things that brought them success was a result of fairly immoral behaviour. And while their governing class in Europe is fairly small they had massive local administrations run by locals reporting to them.
If you compare Thailand (never colonized) with India pre-independence, they look about neck-and-neck in terms of development. At a glance, it seems Britain "looted" India to about the same degree that the Thai monarchy "looted" Thailand.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/augmented-human-developme...
I don't think comparing an already declined India to Thai is a fair comparison.
See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-maddison-project-data...
Based on the Maddison Project data, it looks like India's economy never had a huge shrinking event. It was just outgrown by other economies.
In 1700 India was by far the world's most populous country (using modern borders): https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population?tab=map&time=1...
High population probably explains India's high GDP share in 1700.
India was always populous, so that was a constant.
You may also like to read about increasing famines in British controlled regions, how food crops were forcibly replaced with cash crops and so on. E.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394628864_An_analys...
Unfortunately not many people understand or appreciate how colonialism destroys a country and they just see the end result and claim that the citizens of the country were incapable of developing by their own.
Not only economical, but also psychological (as in lose of self confidence) and cultural (assuming own culture is somehow inferior to the rulers) destruction happens. It is not much different from abused people losing self confidence and blaming themselves and additionallyhaving to suffer victim blaming from others - just at a nation scale.
Before getting absorbed by East India company, some native kingdoms/empites did start with modernizing their military which indicates there would be a strong effort towards industrialization if it weren't for the British regulations.
Sure, the British aristocratic class did exploit the working class. But then we're no longer talking about geographies.
So why was India's development status comparable to Thailand in that case?
"A good counterpoint to Thailand is Britain becoming insanely wealthy by contemporary standard during Victorian era."
Britain was the first country to industrialize. Switzerland and the US also industrialized early, and did not have a massive colonial population to exploit. But you can see their per-capita GDP was still in the same neighborhood as the UK in the late 1800s:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-maddison-p...
A lot of stories that Indians tell about their history fall apart when you look at the data. You can argue that Britain delayed India's industrialization, but since most of Asia was not industrializing at the time, it's a bit of a dubious argument. I have little doubt that Britain exploited India, but I don't think it was a historically exceptional type of exploitation.
A debate does exist around the how much of India's decline can be attributed to the British as fragmentation of central political authority started long before British arrival.
US and Switzerland had their respective advantages like large domestic market and high value industries. The population of these nations had the time to learn and adapt. The familiarity to western education obviously helped as transferring IP was relatively easy. These opportunities were absent in company ruled India(things did improve marginally once the crown took over). I would largely agree British colonial rule was not exceptional when compared to other mercantile colonies. But I do not see the similarities to Mughal rule of India where the wealth stayed in-house and was even invested locally, the key difference being assimilation vs extraction.