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
Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871) British Columbia (1858-66) on 2 August 1858, and dispatching Richard Clement Moody and the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment to establish British order and to transform the newly established Colony into the British Empire's "bulwark in the farthest west" and "found a second England on the shores of the Pacific". Moody was appointed Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works and Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. Moody and the Columbia Detachment disbanded in July 1863 and Moody returned to England. Douglas continued to administer the mainland colony in absentia from Victoria, but Sir Arthur Kennedy was appointed to succeed him as Governor of