Presidencies and provinces of British India Presidencies and provinces of British India The Provinces of India, earlier Presidencies of India and still earlier, Presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in the subcontinent. Collectively, they were called British India. In one form or another, they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods: In 1608, Mughal authorities allowed the English East India Company to establish a small trading settlement at Surat (now in the state of Gujarat), and this became the company's first headquarters town. It was followed in 1611 by a permanent factory at Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast, and
Bermuda Militia 1612–87 to destroy them. What fate ultimately befell those two colonies is unclear, but the third established, Jamestown, spent its first years teetering on the same knife-edge between the threats of the Spanish, the Native nations, starvation, and disease. Bermuda, also, was subject to Spanish threat. Colonised by the Virginia Company, accidentally, in 1609, the first settlers arrived under Governor Richard Moore in 1612. Moore's first concern was the defence of the colony against an attack that was thought imminent. He oversaw the start of the fortifications built around Castle Harbour and the Town of St. George's. A militia was raised