india

Presidencies and provinces of British India

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Provinces of India , earlier Presidencies of British India , still earlier, Presidency towns , and collectively British India , were the administrative units of the territories of India under the tenancy or the sovereignty of either the English East India Company or the British Crown between 1612 and 1947.

British India is divided into three periods. From the early 17th century to the middle of the 18th century, the East India Company traded in India on the sufferance of the native powers. Its rivals were the merchant trading companies of Holland and France. In the next hundred years, referred to as Company rule in India, the Company acquired paramountcy, but increasingly shared its sovereignty with the Crown, gradually losing its mercantile privileges. Following the Mutiny of 1857, the Company's remaining powers were transferred to the Crown initiating the period of the British Raj (1858–1947). The term "British India" has also been used secondarily as a shortened form for "the British nation in India."

British India

The East India Company established its first permanent factory in India in 1612. For the next century and a half the Company functioned primarily as a trading company, establishing trading posts with the permission of the Mughal emperor of India and competing for business with other European trading companies. However, following the decline of the Mughal Empire in 1707 and after the East India Company's victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, the Company gradually began to formally administer its expanding dominions. By the mid-19th century, the East India Company had become the paramount political and military power on the subcontinent, its territory held in trust for the British Crown.

Company rule in India, however, ended with the Government of India Act 1858 following the events of the Indian rebellion of 1857. British India was thereafter directly ruled by the British Crown as a colonial possession of the United Kingdom, and India was offi