Punjab Province (British India) regiments were raised from the Punjab which remained loyal to the East India Company throughout the crisis in the Punjab and United Provinces. By June 1858, of the 80,000 native troops in the Bengal Army, 75,000 were Punjabi of which 23,000 were Sikh. In the aftermath of the rebellion, a thorough re-organisation of the army took place. Henceforth recruitment into the British Indian Army was restricted to loyal peoples and provinces. Punjabi Sikhs emerged as a particularly favoured martial race to serve the army. In the midst of The Great Game, and fearful of a Russian invasion of British India,
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