File:HILL TRIBESMEN SNIPING A BRITISH FORCE ON THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER..gif

English: This history of India begins well before era of British colonization, during the age of the invasion of Alexander the Great, which was the west's first contact with the east. For much of the next millennium various Moslem lords rules parts of northern India. Finally, in the eighteenth century, France and Britain contested for control of the Asian trade centered in India, and for the following two centuries, India was Britain's most important colony.