Punjab Province (British India) regiments were raised from the Punjab which remained loyal to the East India Company throughout the crisis in the Punjab and United Provinces. By June 1858, of the 80,000 native troops in the Bengal Army, 75,000 were Punjabi of which 23,000 were Sikh. In the aftermath of the rebellion, a thorough re-organisation of the army took place. Henceforth recruitment into the British Indian Army was restricted to loyal peoples and provinces. Punjabi Sikhs emerged as a particularly favoured martial race to serve the army. In the midst of The Great Game, and fearful of a Russian invasion of British India,
Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) the southern tip of Vancouver Island. Vancouver Island and the surrounding Gulf Islands in the Strait of Georgia were organised as a crown colony in 1849. Meanwhile, the mainland continued to function under the de facto administration of the HBC, whose chief executive, James Douglas, also happened to be governor of Vancouver Island. The non-aboriginal mainland population during this time never exceeded about 150 at Fort Victoria, mostly HBC employees and their families. By 1857, Americans and British were beginning to respond to rumors of gold in the Thompson River area. Almost overnight, some ten to twenty thousand men moved