Company rule in India

Company rule in India (sometimes Company Raj,^[6] from Hindi: rāj, lit. 'rule'^[7]) 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;^[8] or in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar;^[9] or in 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance.^[10] The Company ruled 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.

This article is about the rule of the East India Company on the Indian subcontinent from 1773 to 1858. For rule by the British Crown from 1858 to 1947, see British Raj. For the history of the East India Company until 1756, see East India Company.

Company rule in India

British colony

Calcutta

Official: 1773–1858: English; 1773–1836: Persian^[1]^[2] 1837–1858: primarily Urdu^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4]
but also: Languages of South Asia.

Administered by the East India Company functioning as a quasi-sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown and regulated by the British Parliament

Warren Hastings

Charles Canning

Early modern

23 June 1757

16 August 1765

1772–1818

1845–1846, 1848–1849

2 August 1858

1,940,000 km² (750,000 sq mi)

Rupee

Social reform[edit]

In the first half of the 19th century, the British legislated reforms against what they considered were iniquitous Indian practices. In most cases, the legislation alone was unable to change Indian society sufficiently for it to absorb both the ideal and the ethic underpinning the reform. For example, upper-caste Hindu society in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions of India had long looked askance at the remarriage of widows in order to protect both what it considered was family honour and family property. Even adolescent widows were expected to live a life of austerity and denial.^[87]^[88]^[89] The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, enacted in the waning years of Company rule, provided legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for a remarrying Hindu widow, though not of the inheritance due her from her deceased husband. However, very few widows actually remarried. Some Indian reformers, such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, even offered money to men who would take widows as brides, but these men often deserted their new wives.

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ISBN

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Company rule in India