BRITISII INDIA is a name which is applied to a great collection of different races, with different religions and different forms of government. Its people, in manners and habits, are as diverse as their climates, or as the plains and the mountains, fruitful valleys and savage jungles, that they occupy. The British are only recent arrivals. In 1625-26 the East India Company established a factory at Armagam, on tho Coromandel coast. In 1629 a mercantile agency was formed at Surat ; in 1634 the emperor of Dehli granted permission to trade in Bengal. In 1645, Gabriel Broughton, a ship's surgeon, obtained for the East India Com pany the additional privilege of planting factories m Bengal. In 1881 the British territories and those of the allied and feudatory chiefs had a population of 252,541,210, as under: Brit. Ter., 209,217,614 viz. :INat. States, 43,323,69G viz.: ilsroda, . . 2,154,4139 Bengal, . . . . . 4,1843,39') Madras, . . . 30,839,181 Bombay, . . 13,978,4SS Travaneore„ 2,401,153 „ Nat. States, 6,941,631 Cochin, . . . 600,278 „ Sind.. . . 2.404,934 Puducottah, . 281,809 Assam, . . 4,815.157' liana,ganapilly, 26,383 N.W. Provinces, 32,699,436,Sundoor, . 14,1.0)9 Oudh. . . . 11,407,625 ltampur„ . 345,152 Panjab, British, Garhatal, Central Prov., . 11,505.149,Panjab Nat. St.. 3,653,282 Burma, British, 3,707,646; Khaibar Troops, 8,153 Coorg, . . • 178,283,1lajputana, . 11,005,512 Ajmir, . . . 453,075 Central India, . 9,200,881 Berar, . . 2,670,962,11yderabad, . 9,167,76'9 'l'he island of Ceylon and the Straits Settle ments, though in the East Indies, are British colonies, and are not included in British India.
• The British had been trafficking in the East Indies for some time prior to the grant, by Queen Elizabeth, of a charter to a company of merchants, who, under various re-grants, up to 1833 con tinued to trade India, while they were also waging wars with, and acquiring dominions from, its previous rulers. Amongst the earliest of their possessions was the island of Bombay, which Charles It. received as a dower with his Portu guese bride. The British power did not, however, rise to its present magnitude over the ruins of ancient kingdoms, or by dispossessing dynasties that had long held sway. But the fortunes of war set aside a few families whose dominant position was almost ephemeral, and whom the British succeeded in the rule over the various populations. And, brief as has been the British dominion, at no period within historic times have so many portions of British India been so long under one paramount rule. The population of
all India by the 1881 returns is 252,541,210. Its foreign trade -imports and exports-is £124,840,000, consisting in round numbers of imports, £50,000,000; exports, £74,000,000. Yet, as a recent writer has well remarked, there never has been anything like a British conquest of India. No plan of such conquest was ever formed in Britain. No armament ever left the British shores for such purpose, nor did the British ex chequer ever furnish subsidy or supply with that object ; and further, no British viking, no one like the Norman chiefs of the middle ages, ever left Great Britain to found a nation or to acquire a principality in the East Indies, but a trading company and their officials gradually became transformed into the most powerful oligarchy that the world has ever seen. The first occasion of the natives of Britain coming in contact with a force of natives of India, was in 1664, when Sivaji attacked and plundered Surat, on which occasion Sir George Oxenden won the applause of Aurang zeb by an uncommon display of valour. With the formation of factories and the hiring of troops to defend them, was laid the foundation of a central power, which has gradually grown in strength sufficient to control and shelter the various races, and extend its sway from Cape Comorin to the Indus.
Madras was constituted a Presidency in 1639, Bombay in 1662, and Bengal in • 1682. In 1773, the Governor of Bengal was made Governor General of India, with certain powers, chiefly political and financial, over the other two. In 1784, a Board of Control was created in Britain, composed of the king of Great Britain's ministers, who in that capacity bore the title of Commis sioners for the•Affairs of India ; and this system of superintendence continued until the year 1858, when British India was taken under the direct control of. the Crown. During 'that interval the home administrators of India had consisted of a board of 18 members, called the Directors of the East India Company, and the President of the Board of Control. These directors had mostly all the patronage as to appointments, except to the higher offices and commands which were made in communication with the British ministry, who likewise o'riginated all questions of 'peace and war, possessed the power of reversing the acts of the -East India Company and those of the Government of India, and also of sending out instructions on special matters to the Governor-General, without consulting the Directors.