History of the British Raj into being, with Muhammad Ali Jinnah sworn in as its first Governor General in Karachi. The following day, 15 August 1947, India, now a smaller "Union of India", became an independent country with official ceremonies taking place in New Delhi, and with Jawaharlal Nehru assuming the office of the prime minister, and the viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, staying on as its first Governor General. History of the British Raj The history of the British Raj refers to the period of British rule on the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The system of governance was instituted in 1858 when the rule
Political warfare in British colonial India required replacing of pre-existing political institutions and replacing them with centralised, territory-wide, and bureaucratic legal-administrative institutions that were controlled by colonial officials. Indirect rule was a form of colonial domination via collaboration with indigenous intermediaries who controlled regional political institutions. Colonial India was a mix of the two types of rule. While the Civil Service ran a large portion of the country, "in peripheral regions, chiefs, princes, sultans, and other indigenous leaders controlled "customary" legal-administrative institutions that were organised along patrimonial lines." Leading colonial officials believed indirect rule was more adaptive and culturally sensitive, far superior to direct rule, in