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
Langley, British Columbia (district municipality) smithing and for shipping furs back to Europe. Along with farming, the export of cranberries and salmon would soon become the fort's main source of profit. In 1858, gold was discovered in the Fraser River in what is now the interior of British Columbia, and the fort also became important as a supply station for the miners heading up the river toward the gold fields. With thousands of gold prospectors, many of them American, streaming into the region, the British government created British Columbia as a colony. James Douglas was sworn in as the new colony's first governor in Fort