They were ruled differently because these colonies were established under vastly different circumstances and for different reasons. The Thirteen Colonies, with its first permanent colony established in 1607 (Jamestown), was primarily intended as a second Britain; settled by British people, adhering to British laws, following British religion and belonging to British culture. They even named places after things in Britain (a similar practice would occur in future colonies that were intended as 'second homes', such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, or the 'Dominions'). Once the natives were displaced from these regions they were, for all intents and purposes, just an extension of Britain overseas (though with the later controversy of not being represented in Parliament). The peoples of these North Americans colonies did not see themselves as being foreign or different; they were British people, period. While the access to raw materials like timber and furs were an incentive for the British government to expand in North America, as well as new overseas markets to export to, it was not the primary purpose of the colonies, which was settlement rather than exploitation. The colonies were ruled by a governor that was elected by the local assembly, so even though these colonists weren't represented in the English parliament they still had their own form of democratic institutions.

The situation in India was completely different, and the opposite in every way. Similarly to the situation in North America, the first British presence was in the early 17th century, but instead of settlers they were traders and merchants who were representatives of the new East India Company (EIC). They respectfully asked the Mughal emperor to allow them to establish a small factory in one of his coastal cities, and he granted this request. The French and Dutch did similar things. The Portuguese already had a presence there since the 16th century at Goa. Until the mid-18th century the British presence was limited to just a few factories in coastal cities for the export of raw materials and gold back to Britain. They followed the laws of the Mughal government and did not cause any trouble. Beginning if the mid-18th century the EIC took a more active role in Indian politics; the collapse of Mughal authority in the provinces following the sack of Delhi by Nader Shah in the 1730s left a power vacuum. For decades various Indian princes and petty kings fought each other, carving out new states for themselves. At first the EIC acted essentially as mercenaries, leasing out their small but highly professional army (made up of a minority of British soldiers and majority of Indian soldiers called 'sepoys').

When the EIC came into possession of much of Bengal in the 1750s-60s they ruled it essentially as wealth extraction business; they didn't interfere with the day-to-day lives of their new Indian subjects, they just collected their taxes (that would before have gone to the distant Mughal emperor), pooled them into the coffers of the EIC administration, and sent most of it back to the shareholders in London. A lot of the time the EIC weren't even directly collecting the taxes, but kept the pre-existing political structure in place whereby local Indian rulers would collect taxes and maintain law and order, but all that changed was they passed on a percentage of the taxes to the EIC government. The British government, led by the king and his parliament, had absolutely no input in any of this until the late 1770s following the devastating Bengal famine, when reports of widespread mismanagement, corruption and unethical behaviour was discovered following a parliamentary inquiry and the government began exerting more influence and supervision over the company. Eventually in the 1790s the governors of the EIC in India were replaced by agents selected by the government, and called 'king's men' in India. This began the gradual process of running their Indian possessions less as a business and more as an extension of British sovereignty. The highly mercantile nature of the EIC was frowned upon by the more traditional and old-fashioned elites of British society, who favoured a more 'imperial' style of rule - modeled directly after the old Mughal emperors - and less profit-based.

British emigration to their Indian provinces was very minimal in the 18th century, and generally only occurred with the EIC administrators, their families and staffs, and the soldiers. This is in direct contrast to North America, where vast numbers of British people emigrated west. They saw it as a blank slate; a new beginning. With India it was hard to do this since the population of Indians was so large and their culture and society so ancient and firmly established.