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 by appointment, rather than election, and the councils were restricted to a consultative role. The East India Company increased its power in India by playing local rulers off against each other and the declining Mughal Empire. Lord Dalhousie, the Company Governor General between 1848 and 1856 established a principle, the Doctrine of Lapse, that if any princely state or territory under the direct influence (paramountcy) of the British East India Company would automatically be annexed if the ruler was either "manifestly incompetent or died without a direct heir". This allowed the Company to remove rulers it viewed as troublesome. After