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For the band, see British India (band).
For usage, see British rule in India.
British India refers to those parts of the Indian subcontinent that were directly administered by the British government's India Office between the Government of India Act 1858 and the Partition of India in 1947.[1] It did not include the Indian Princely States.[2][3] The term also refers to the regions of India under the control of the Honourable East India Company, especially from 1765 to 1858[4][5][6] For that period, see Company rule in India. Until 1937, British India included Aden and Burma; its provinces and territories now constitute parts of the independent countries of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Yemen, and Sri Lanka.
[edit] Origins under the Honourable East India CompanyThe Honourable East India Company was established in 1600 as 'The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies'. In 1612, the emperor Jahangir granted it the right to maintain a trading post, or 'factory', in Surat, and in 1640, with permission from the Vijayanagara Empire, a second outpost was established in Madras. In 1668, the Company leased the island of Bombay, gained by England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, and in 1687 the Company moved its headquarters from Surat to Bombay. In 1690, a Company settlement was established in Calcutta. After the Battle of Plassey (1757), the Nawab of Bengal surrendered his dominions to the Company, which gained the right to collect revenues in Bengal and Bihar, and in 1772 the Company established its capital in Calcutta and appointed its first Governor-General of India, Warren Hastings. In 1858, as a result of the Government of India Act 1858, which followed the Indian Rebellion of 1857 (contemporaneosly called the Indian Mutiny), the task of administering the British possessions in India was transferred to the India Office, a department of the British government, thus creating a new statutory British India. [edit] Definitions
Before the Government of India Act 1858, the term 'British India' meant those parts of India under the control of the Honourable East India Company.[7] The Government of India Act 1858 transferred the task of administering the British possessions in India to the India Office.[8] Some Acts of the Governor-General of India of the 1860s began to define the term 'British India'. For instance, the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act 1865 contained the following definition:
The British Parliament's Interpretation Act 1889 defines the term as follows:
The Government of India Act 1935 (26 Geo. V &1 Edw. VIII Ch. 2) says:
It is important to notice that the definition of 'British India' excludes the Indian Princely States.[2][13] In 1909, the Imperial Gazetteer of India said:
In 1925, the Literary Digest's 1925 Atlas of the World and Gazetteer reported under 'India':
In 1945, the princely states made up two-fifths of the territory of the Indian Empire, but contained only one fifth of its population. British India, conversely, covered some three-fifths of the Empire's territory and held some eighty per cent of its population.[16][17] In short, 'British India' has a well-established meaning and relates only to the parts of India under British administration and subject to British law.[18] [edit] System of governmentThe Honourable East India Company's Governors General held autocratic powers, being responsible only to a Court of Directors in London, itself answering to a Court of Proprietors (as shareholders) and to parliament through a Board of Control headed by the President of the Board of Control. The Board was created by Pitt's India Act of 1784 and was intended to bring the Company's administration under British government control.[19] The Act of 1858, in transferring power from the Honourable East India Company to the Crown, established a new system of government. The Court of Directors, Court of Proprietors, and Board of Control were replaced by a Secretary of State for India (a cabinet minister of the British government), assisted by a Council, which he was required to consult, except in matters of urgency. Members of the Secretary of State's Council were at first appointed for life, later for ten years. A Viceroy & Governor General was to be appointed, normally for a five year term of office, and was to reside in India, and supreme authority in India was the Viceroy's. All executive orders and all legislation were made in the name of 'the Governor General in Council'.[20] According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India (1909 edition):
[edit] Presidencies and provincesThe three longest established Provinces of British India were the Madras Presidency (established 1640), the Bombay Presidency (the Honourable East India Company's headquarters were at Bombay from 1687), and the Bengal Presidency (established 1690). To these were added: Ajmer-Merwara (ceded by Sindhia of Gwalior in 1818); Coorg (annexed 1834); the North-Western Provinces (established 1835 out of the Bengal Presidency, later renamed the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh; Punjab (established 1849); Nagpur Province (created 1853, merged into Central Provinces 1861); the Central Provinces (created 1861 from Nagpur Province and the Saugor and Nerbudda Territories, renamed the Central Provinces and Berar 1903); Burma (lower Burma annexed 1852, made a province 1862, upper Burma added 1886, separated from British India 1937); Assam (separated from Bengal 1874); Andaman and Nicobar Islands (established as a province 1875); Baluchistan (organized into a province 1887); North-West Frontier Province (created 1901 out of districts of the Punjab Province); East Bengal (separated from Bengal 1905, but reintegrated 1912); Bihar and Orissa (separated from Bengal 1912, renamed Bihar 1935; Orissa (separated from Bihar 1935); Delhi (separated from Punjab 1912, when it became the capital of British India); Aden (separated from Bombay Presidency as a province of India, 1932, became Crown Colony of Aden, 1937); Sindh; Panth-Piploda (new province, 1942). There were seventeen remaining Provinces of British India at the time of partition and independence: Ajmer-Merwara-Kekri, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Assam, Baluchistan, Bengal Province, Bihar, Bombay Province, Central Provinces and Berar, Coorg, Delhi Province, Madras Province, North-West Frontier Province, Panth-Piploda, Orissa, Punjab, Sindh, and the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. Of these, three, Baluchistan, the North-West Frontier, and Sindh became parts of Pakistan, while two more, Bengal and Punjab, were partitioned between India and Pakistan, and the remainder became provinces of the Union of India. [edit] Legal frameworkBritish India possessed a system of law and network of courts, which were not shared with the rest of India. It was subject to the laws of British India, which flowed directly or indirectly from legislation of the British parliament and from the legislative powers which those laws vested in the local and central governments of British India. Other parts of India were not.[21]. The Imperial Gazetteer of India of 1909 says:
Thus, an important distinction between the area of direct British administration and the princely states which were subject to British "suzerainty" was supplied by the jurisdiction of the courts: while the courts of British India derived their powers from the British Parliament, the courts of the Princely States existed under the authority of their rulers.[22][23][18] [edit] Governors-General and Viceroys of IndiaSee Governor-General of India. [edit] Indian EmpireThe British Indian Empire, usually referred to while it existed as the Indian Empire or just India and now commonly referred to as the British Raj, came into being when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India on 1 May, 1876. This Empire consisted of British India together with the princely states. Suzerainty over several hundred such self-governing states, including some large ones such as Bahawalpur, Hyderabad, Mysore, Travancore, Jaipur and Kashmir and Jammu, was exercised in the name of the British Crown by the government of British India under the Viceroy of India, with many small princely states being dependent on the provincial governments of British India.[21] [edit] End of British IndiaBritish India came to an end when the Indian Independence Act 1947 brought about the Partition of India, with effect from 15 August 1947, creating two fully independent successor states as dominions within the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations, the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The Act received the Royal Assent on July 18, 1947. King George VI continued to use the title "Emperor of India" until 22 June 1948; he used the title "King of India" until that dominion became a republic on 26 January 1950 and the title "King of Pakistan" until his death in 1952, when he was succeeded by the "Queen of Pakistan", his daughter Elizabeth II. She reigned until the creation of the Republic of Pakistan in 1956. [edit] Bibliography
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