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
Colony of British Columbia (1858–1866) Hudson's Bay Factor" and that the "Governor and Richard can never get on". In letter to the Colonial Office of 27 December 1858, Richard Clement Moody boasts that he had "entirely disarmed [Douglas] of all jealousy". Douglas repeatedly insulted the Engineers by attempting to assume their command and refusing to acknowledge their value in the nascent colony. Margaret A. Ormsby, author of the "Dictionary of Canadian Biography" entry for Moody (2002), condemns Moody for a contribution to the abortive development of the city. However, most other historians have exonerated Moody for the abortive development of the city and consider his