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 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 Indian Mutiny. With the establishment of the penal colony at Ross Island, the British administration made it the administrative headquarters for the entire group of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and built bungalows and other facilities on the site. This colony was meant as "manageable models of colonial governance and rehabilitation". The Chief Commissioner's