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
Colonial India and valuable parts of the British Empire and thus became known as "the jewel in the British crown". According to modern data, the Mughal Empire was a very wealthy country with many independent princely states therefore it is possible that the country's governance system was outsourced to the Europeans. Long after the decline of the Roman Empire's sea-borne trade with India, the Portuguese were the next Europeans to sail there for the purpose of trade, first arriving by ship in May 1498. The closing of the traditional trade routes in western Asia by the Ottoman Empire, and rivalry with the