Company rule in India (sometimes also Company Raj, "Chapter 5: Early Modern India II: Company Raj", "Chapter 3: The East India Company Raj, 1857–1850," "Chapter 7: The First Century of British Rule, 1757 to 1857: State and Economy." from Hindi , Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989: Hindi, rāj, from Skr. rāj: to reign, rule; cognate with L. rēx, rēg-is, OIr. rī, rīg king (see RICH).) was the rule of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj-ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar, who had the support of the East India Company; 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar;, or 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General of Fort William, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The Company's rule lasted until 1858, when, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and the Government of India Act 1858, the India Office of the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.
Expansion and territory
The English East India Company ("the Company") was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies. It gained a foothold in India with the establishment of a factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India in 1611 and the grant of the rights to establish a factory in Surat in 1612 by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. In 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler further south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Following the Anglo-Mughal War, the Company was allowed by Emperor Aurangzeb to establish a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges Delta, a factory was set up in Calcutta. Since, during this time other companies—established by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish—were similarly expanding in the region, the English Company's unremarkable beginnings on coastal India offered no clues to what would become a lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent.
The company's victory under Robert Clive in the 1757 Battle of Plassey and another victory in the 1764 Battle of Buxar (in Bihar) consolidated the company's power and forced emperor Shah Alam II to appoint it the diwan, or revenue collector, of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the Lower Gangetic Plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore wars (1766–1799) and the Anglo-Maratha wars (1772–1818) left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej river. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer.
The expansion of the company's power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively came to comprise British India. The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab) (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam (Ahom kingdom 1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir, were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849–1856 (Period of tenure of Marquess of Dalhousie Governor General); however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra dynasty of Jammu, and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later.
The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the company's hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy. Since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule. The most important such support came from the subsidiary alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-third of India. When an Indian ruler, who was able to secure his territory, wanted to enter such an alliance, the Company welcomed it as an economic method of indirect rule, which did not involve the economic costs of direct administration or the political costs of gaining the support of alien subjects.
In return, the Company undertook the "defence of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor." Subsidiary alliances created the princely states, of the Hindu maharajas and the Muslim nawabs. Prominent among the princely states were: Cochin (1791), Jaipur (1794), Travancore (1795), Hyderabad (1798), Mysore (1799), Cis-Sutlej Hill States (1815), Central India Agency (1819), Cutch and Gujarat Gaikwad territories (1807–1820), Rajputana (1818), and Bahawalpur (1833).
The Governors-General
The Governors-General (locum tenens) are not included in this table unless a major event occurred during their tenure.
Governors-General of Fort William (Bengal) (1773–1834) Governor-General Period of tenure Events Warren Hastings 20 October 1773 – 1 February 1785 Great Bengal famine of 1770 (1769–73)Rohilla War (1773–74) First Anglo-Maratha War (1777–83)Chalisa famine (1783–84)Second Anglo-Mysore War (1780–1784) Charles Cornwallis 12 September 1786 – 28 October 1793 Cornwallis Code (1793)Permanent Settlement Cochin become semi-protected States under British (1791) Third Anglo-Mysore War (1789–92) Doji bara famine (1791–92) John Shore 28 October 1793 – March 1798 East India Company Army re-organised and down-sized. First Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar(1793–97) Jaipur (1794) & Travancore (1795) come under British protection. Andaman Islands occupied (1796) Company took control of coastal region Ceylon from Dutch (1796). Richard Wellesley 18 May 1798 – 30 July 1805 Nizam of Hyderabad becomes first State to sign Subsidiary alliance introduced by Wellesley (1798). Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–99) Second Pazhassi Revolt in Malabar (1800–05)Nawab of Oudh cedes Gorakhpur and Rohilkhand divisions; Allahabad, Fatehpur, Cawnpore, Etawah, Mainpuri, Etah districts; part of Mirzapur; and terai of Kumaun (Ceded Provinces, 1801) Treaty of Bassein signed by Peshwa Baji Rao II accepting Subsidiary Alliance Battle of Delhi (1803).Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–05) Remainder of Doab, Delhi and Agra division, parts of Bundelkhand annexed from Maratha Empire (1805). Ceded and Conquered Provinces established (1805). Subsidiary alliances created the princely states of the Hindu maharajas and the Muslim nawabs. Charles Cornwallis (second term) 30 July 1805 – 5 October 1805 Financial strain in East India Company after costly campaigns. Cornwallis reappointed to bring peace, but dies in Ghazipur. George Hilario Barlow (locum tenens) 10 October 1805 – 31 July 1807 Vellore mutiny (10 July 1806) Lord Minto 31 July 1807 – 4 October 1813 Invasion of JavaOccupation of Mauritius Marquess of Hastings 4 October 1813 – 9 January 1823 Anglo-Nepalese War (1814) Annexation of Kumaon, Garhwal, and east Sikkim. Cis-Sutlej states (1815). Third Anglo-Maratha War (1817–18) States of Rajputana accept British suzerainty (1817). Singapore was founded (1818).Cutch accepts British suzerainty (1818). Gaikwads of Baroda accept British suzerainty (1819). Central India Agency (1819). Lord Amherst 1 August 1823 – 13 March 1828 First Anglo–Burmese War (1823–26) Annexation of Assam, Manipur, Arakan, and Tenasserim from Burma William Bentinck 4 July 1828 – 22 April 1834 Bengal Sati Regulation, 1829 Thuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–48 Mysore State goes under British administration (1831–81) Bahawalpur accepts British Suzerainty (1833) Government of India Act (1833)
Governors-General of India (1834–1858) Governor-GeneralPeriod of TenureEvents William Bentinck 22 April 1834 – 20 March 1835 Coorg annexed (1834). Lord Auckland4 March 1836 – 28 February 1842 North-Western Provinces established (1836) Post Offices were established (1837) Agra famine of 1837–1838 Aden is captured by Company (1839) First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–1842) Massacre of Elphinstone's army (1842). Lord Ellenborough 28 February 1842 – June 1844 First Anglo-Afghan War (1839–42) Annexation of Sindh (1843) Indian Slavery Act, 1843 Henry Hardinge 23 July 1844 – 12 January 1848 First Anglo-Sikh War (1845–46) Sikhs cede Jullundur Doab, Hazara, and Kashmir to the British under Treaty of Lahore (1846) Sale of Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu under Treaty of Amritsar (1846). Marquess of Dalhousie 12 January 1848 – 28 February 1856 Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848–1849) Annexation of Punjab and North-West Frontier Province (1849–56) Construction begins on Indian Railways (1850) Caste Disabilities Removal Act, 1850 First telegraph line laid in India (1851)Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852–53) Annexation of Lower Burma Ganges Canal opened (1854) Annexation of Satara (1848), Jaipur and Sambalpur (1849), Nagpur and Jhansi (1854) under Doctrine of Lapse. Annexation of Berar (1853) and Awadh (1856). Postage Stamps for India were introduced. (1854). Public Telegram services started operation (1855). Charles Canning28 February 1856 – 1 November 1858 Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act (25 July 1856) First Indian universities founded (January–September 1857) Indian Rebellion of 1857 (10 May 1857 – 20 June 1858) largely in North-Western Provinces and Oudh Liquidation of the English East India Company under Government of India Act 1858
Regulation of Company rule
Until Clive's victory at Plassey, the East India Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable—town councils, all composed of merchants. The councils barely had enough powers for the effective management of their local affairs, and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall Company operations in India led to some grave abuses by Company officers or their allies., Clive's victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. The company's money management practices came to be questioned, especially as it began to post net losses even as some Company servants, the "Nabobs", returned to Britain with large fortunes, which—according to rumours then current—were acquired unscrupulously., , By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, and there was fear in London that the company's corrupt practices could soon seep into British business and public life. The rights and duties of the British government about the company's new territories also came to be examined. The British parliament then held several inquiries and in 1773, during the premiership of Lord North, enacted the Regulating Act 1773, which established regulations, its long title stated, "for the better Management of the Affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe".