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
Newfoundland Colony Newfoundland Colony Newfoundland Colony was the name for an English and later British colony established in 1610 on the island of the same name off the Atlantic coast of Canada, in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. This followed decades of sporadic English settlement on the island, at first seasonal rather than permanent. It was made a Crown colony in 1854 and a Dominion of the British Empire in 1907. The economy collapsed during the Great Depression and Newfoundland relinquished its dominion status, becoming once again a crown colony, governed by appointees from the colonial office