Explain how Britain took direct control of India after 1857 and how the Opium Wars forced China into unequal treaties, and describe the economic costs to both.
The British East India Company had ruled large parts of India as a profit-seeking corporation for a century when, in 1857, Indian soldiers serving in the Company's army (sepoys) rebelled, sparked partly by rumors that new rifle cartridges were greased with animal fat offensive to both Hindu and Muslim soldiers, but fueled by much deeper resentment over economic exploitation and cultural interference. The Indian Rebellion of 1857 spread widely before Britain crushed it, and in its aftermath the British government dissolved the East India Company and took direct control of India as "the Raj," with Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. British rule brought real economic costs: cheap machine-made British cloth flooded Indian markets and devastated India's once-dominant hand-weaving textile industry, and during the Great Famine of 1876-1878, British colonial administrators kept exporting Indian grain even as drought and famine killed an estimated 5.5 million people or more -- a stark example of policy, not just weather, driving a humanitarian catastrophe.
China faced a different form of imperial pressure. When the Qing government tried to stop British merchants from selling addictive opium to Chinese consumers, Britain fought and won the First Opium War (1839-1842), forcing China to sign the Treaty of Nanjing: China ceded Hong Kong to Britain, opened several "treaty ports" to foreign trade, and granted British subjects extraterritoriality -- the right to be tried under British, not Chinese, law even on Chinese soil. A Second Opium War (1856-1860) extracted further concessions. Rather than colonizing China outright, competing powers instead carved out "spheres of influence" -- exclusive zones of economic privilege -- while leaving the Qing Dynasty nominally in charge but badly weakened, a humiliation that would fuel Chinese nationalist and revolutionary movements for decades to come.
Mastery looks like: They can explain the causes and aftermath of the 1857 Indian Rebellion, define "unequal treaty" using the Treaty of Nanjing, and describe at least one specific economic cost of imperialism to India or China.
Common stumbles: Treating the 1857 rebellion's spark (greased cartridges) as its only cause, or describing imperialism's economic effects only in vague terms instead of citing specific, documented costs like the Great Famine or the collapse of Indian textiles.