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
Ross Island Penal Colony the First War of Independence and his experience of the "Kalapani", using charcoal sticks and rags of cloth; these were later published in Arabic as "Al-Surat-ul Hindia" and "Al-Fitnat-ul-Hindia". Ross Island Penal Colony was the inspiration for Rura Penthe, the penal colony island in the 1954 Disney film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Ross Island Penal Colony Ross Island Penal Colony was a convict settlement that was established in 1858 in the remote Andaman Islands by the British colonial government in India, primarily to jail a large number of prisoners from the Indian Rebellion of 1857, also known as the