Dutch Suratte Dutch Suratte Suratte or Soeratte was a famous trading city on the north coast of what is now India, in the modern state of Gujarat, lying on the river Tapti. The city, now known as Surat, became a directorate of the Dutch East India Company in 1616. The British had established a factory in the Suratte in 1609 or 1612, after delivering a blow to the Portuguese. It is part of what is today known as Dutch India. Pieter van den Broecke established a Dutch trading post in Suratte in 1616, after previous efforts had failed in the years before.
Presidencies and provinces of British India India Company had become the paramount political and military power in south Asia, its territory held in trust for the British Crown. Company rule in Bengal from 1793, however, ended with the Government of India Act 1858 following the events of the Bengal Rebellion of 1857. From then known as British India, it was thereafter directly ruled by the British Crown as a colonial possession of the United Kingdom, and India was officially known after 1876 as the Indian Empire. India was divided into British India, regions that were directly administered by the British, with Acts established and passed in