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India's hatred may be unique, but one must surely admit the Anglo-American countries also share a very unique perspective - one of always having been the invader and never the invaded, at least within the last few hundreds of years. US has arguably never been in a situation where there was even a serious risk of the country being occupied as a whole, unless one counts the fleeting moment in time between the colonials developing an American identity and the US independence being acknoweldged by Britain, or really stretches the narratives around the War of 1812. The British have been cocooned quite safely in their little island as well.
I cannot, of course, have an inkling about how the Indians really feel about the British colonization, but I certainly know that when Russians go around invading other countries, an atavistic fury rises in me - and pretty much all other Finns - that is probably not felt in the same way in countries that don't have the same history. When Russians go around explaining that no, it's Russia's duty to teach the smaller, more inferior nations about their true Russian-ness or save them from fascism once again, and that the conquered nations should have been grateful to Russia or Soviet Union for peace or modernization or whatever, it doesn't exactly work to quench that fury.
The importance of national sovereignty - never being ruled by another nation if it can be avoided - is crystal clear to me, again due this history. As such, I can only grant the same to the Indians regarding their conqueror-nation, or one of them - crucially the one conqueror-nation that always remained a foreign one, not one of the ones that set up shop in India and ended up becoming Indians of a sort.
UK was bombed a bit during WW II (total death count lower than single big German massacre in occupied areas).
USA mainland was technically actually bombed during WW II with some civilian death - 6 in total ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendiary_balloon#Fu-Go ). But it is extreme nitpicking.
Compare with Belarus (occupied by USSR at that time) where 25% of population died/was murdered, or Poland where 16% of population was killed/murdered during war.
Yeah, that's the "quite" part. The main point was that despite the bombings and such, there has not been a real threat of the island of Great Britain actually being invaded and occupied for centuries. (years of reading soc.history.what-if convinced me that Operation Sealion was never a realistic possibility, and the same probably goes for any threat of Napoleon invading.)
To be clear, I was not disagreeing - just expanding.
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Care to substantiate or elaborate on this?
The Opium Wars themselves were sideshows at best during this period in China’s history; the impact of opium on Chinese society is likely overstated, both wars were really quite limited (the Chinese lost what, thousands of troops? in each war?), and the both was complicated by the fact that the Qing were fighting other conflicts at the same time - first with Tibet, then dealing with the Taiping (+ other rebellions) at the same time, the latter of which was an actual, existential threat to the empire. What the Brits got out of the wars in treaties were minor territorial gains, civil rights, trading rights, freedom of religion, indemnities, etc.
The Boxer Rebellion was considerably more bloody, but again, was essentially a limited affair; the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded mostly (totally?) above the Yellow River in northern China - at Beijing, near the Hai river, and in Manchuria - and while the pillaging and destruction of the conflict would continue for 2-3 years in the area, it was hardly most of China or even productive parts of China. Additionally, the southern provinces didn’t even care to attack foreigners despite war being officially declared, and many Chinese reformers took a dim view of the Boxers. The conclusion of the Boxer Rebellion also marks a decline in western intervention in China, though there was a massive indemnity to be paid.
None of this is to say that these were trivial setbacks dealt to the Qing by Britain; they were politically disastrous. The losses themselves were humiliating, and stoked Chinese unrest as well as European/Japanese ambition, and lead to the strangling of Chinese economic self-determination in the late 19th and early 20th century. The loss in the First Opium War, in particular, likely contributed to the aforementioned Taiping rebellion, which sees tens of millions of Chinese dead and the ravaging of China’s most industrious regions. The Boxer indemnity would haunt China into the post-Qing era and seriously hamper indigenous efforts at modernization and investment, and exacerbate the warlord issue. None of these are good things to have come out of foreign (British) intervention. Even then, though, China was at least intact as a de jure sovereign nation, even if bits and pieces like Shandong and Hong Kong and parts of Manchuria went missing, and much of this is quite indirect.
But in comparison, to my understanding (Indian history is not my strong suit), India was annexed and ruled by Britain piecemeal, which transitioned it into a somewhat extractive economy operating for the benefit for the Home Islands, with attendant deskilling and destruction of indigenous industrial (not in the industrial revolution sense) links and capacity. I am to understand that many Indians also resent that Britain essentially collapsed their political structure, which has aftereffects in the dysfunction of current Indian politics. All in all, these would be greater direct effects from British influence than what happened in China. There were also multiple famines under the British Raj before the famous WW2 one, at least some of which (e.g. 1769 Bengal famine, the 1876-1878 famines) were exacerbated by British decisions or priorities.
I could be convinced that the relatively minor direct effects of British meddling in China is in fact a greater indignity than what the Indians went through, either because the British weren’t actually so bad in India after all or were actually a positive force in India (I understand that some people earnestly argue the latter), but I don’t find it obviously true.
Edit:lost a thought
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