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
Hope, British Columbia what is now Hope in 1808, and the Hudson's Bay Company created the Fort Hope trading post in 1848. The area was transformed by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, beginning in 1858. The following year Governor James Douglas laid out the Fort Hope town site. Hope became part of the Colony of British Columbia when the new British colony was created on 2 August 1858. Along with the rest of British Columbia, Hope became part of Canada in 1871. Late in 1859, Reverend Alexander St. David Francis Pringle arrived in Hope. On 1 December of that year, he founded the