Company rule in India

Expansion and territory

The English East India Company ("the Company") was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies. It gained a foothold in India with the establishment of a factory in Masulipatnam on the Eastern coast of India in 1611 and the grant of the rights to establish a factory in Surat in 1612 by the Mughal Emperor Jahangir. In 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler further south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Following the Anglo-Mughal War, the Company was allowed by Emperor Aurangzeb to establish a presence on the eastern coast as well; far up that coast, in the Ganges Delta, a factory was set up in Calcutta. Since, during this time other companies—established by the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and Danish—were similarly expanding in the region, the English Company's unremarkable beginnings on coastal India offered no clues to what would become a lengthy presence on the Indian subcontinent.

The company's victory under Robert Clive in the 1757 Battle of Plassey and another victory in the 1764 Battle of Buxar (in Bihar) consolidated the company's power and forced emperor Shah Alam II to appoint it the diwan, or revenue collector, of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. The Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the Lower Gangetic Plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay and Madras. The Anglo-Mysore wars (1766–1799) and the Anglo-Maratha wars (1772–1818) left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej river. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer.

The expansion of the company's power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the outright annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions, which collectively came to comprise British India. The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces (comprising Rohilkhand, Gorakhpur, and the Doab) (1801), Delhi (1803), Assam (Ahom kingdom 1828), and Sindh (1843). Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir, were annexed after the Anglo-Sikh Wars in 1849–1856 (Period of tenure of Marquess of Dalhousie Governor General); however, Kashmir was immediately sold under the Treaty of Amritsar (1850) to the Dogra dynasty of Jammu, and thereby became a princely state. In 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later.

The Governors-General

The Governors-General (locum tenens) are not included in this table unless a major event occurred during their tenure.

Regulation of Company rule

Until Clive's victory at Plassey, the East India Company territories in India, which consisted largely of the presidency towns of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, were governed by the mostly autonomous—and sporadically unmanageable—town councils, all composed of merchants. The councils barely had enough powers for the effective management of their local affairs, and the ensuing lack of oversight of the overall Company operations in India led to some grave abuses by Company officers or their allies. Clive's victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. The company's money management practices came to be questioned, especially as it began to post net losses even as some Company servants, the "Nabobs", returned to Britain with large fortunes, which—according to rumours then current—were acquired unscrupulously. By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, and there was fear in London that the company's corrupt practices could soon seep into British business and public life. The rights and duties of the British government about the company's new territories also came to be examined. The British parliament then held several inquiries and in 1773, during the premiership of Lord North, enacted the Regulating Act 1773, which established regulations, its long title stated, "for the better Management of the Affairs of the East India Company, as well in India as in Europe".

Although Lord North himself wanted the company's territories to be taken over by the British state, he faced determined political opposition from many quarters, including some in the City of London and the Parliament of Great Britain. The result was a compromise in which the Regulating Act—although implying the ultimate sovereignty of the British Crown over these new territories—asserted that the company could act as a sovereign power on behalf of the Crown. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament. The Court of Directors of the company was required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government. For the governance of the Indian territories, the act asserted the supremacy of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal) over those of Fort St. George (Madras) and Bombay. It also nominated a Governor-General (Warren Hastings) and four councillors for administering the Bengal Presidency (and for overseeing the company's operations in India). "The subordinate Presidencies were forbidden to wage war or make treaties without the previous consent of the Governor-General of Bengal in Council, except in case of imminent necessity. The Governors of these Presidencies were directed in general terms to obey the orders of the Governor-General-in-Council, and to transmit to him intelligence of all important matters." However, the imprecise wording of the Act left it open to be variously interpreted; consequently, the administration in India continued to be hobbled by disunity between the provincial governors, between members of the council, and between the Governor-General himself and his Council. The Regulating Act also attempted to address the prevalent corruption in India: Company servants were henceforth forbidden to engage in private trade in India or to receive "presents" from Indian nationals.

Revenue collection

In the remnant of the Mughal Empire revenue system existing in pre-1765 Bengal, zamindars, or "land holders", collected revenue on behalf of the Mughal emperor, whose representative, or diwan, supervised their activities. In this system, the assortment of rights associated with land was not possessed by a "land owner", but rather shared by several parties with a stake in the land, including the peasant cultivator, the zamindar, and the state. The zamindar served as an intermediary who procured rent from the cultivator, and after withholding a percentage for his own expenses, made available the rest, as revenue to the state. Under the Mughal system, the land itself belonged to the state and not to the zamindar, who could transfer only his right to collect rent. On being awarded the diwani or overlordship of Bengal following the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the East India Company found itself short of trained administrators, especially those familiar with local custom and law; tax collection was consequently farmed out. This uncertain foray into land taxation by the company may have gravely worsened the impact of a famine that struck Bengal in 1769–70, in which between seven and ten million people—or between a quarter and third of the presidency's population—may have died. However, the company provided little relief either through reduced taxation or by relief efforts, and the economic and cultural impact of the famine was felt decades later, even becoming, a century later, the subject of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's novel Anandamath.

In 1772, under Warren Hastings, the East India Company took over revenue collection directly in the Bengal Presidency (then Bengal and Bihar), establishing a Board of Revenue with offices in Calcutta and Patna, and moving the pre-existing Mughal revenue records from Murshidabad to Calcutta.

In 1773, after Oudh ceded the tributary state of Benaras, the revenue collection system was extended to the territory with a Company Resident in charge. The following year—with a view to preventing corruption—Company district collectors, who were then responsible for revenue collection for an entire district, were replaced with provincial councils at Patna, Murshidabad, and Calcutta, and with Indian collectors working within each district. The title, "collector", reflected "the centrality of land revenue collection to government in India: it was the government's primary function, and it moulded the institutions and patterns of administration".

The Company inherited a revenue collection system from the Mughals in which the heaviest proportion of the tax burden fell on the cultivators, with one-third of the production reserved for imperial entitlement; this pre-colonial system became the Company revenue policy's baseline. However, there was vast variation across India in the methods by which the revenues were collected; with this complication in mind, a Committee of Circuit toured the districts of expanded Bengal Presidency to make a five-year settlement, consisting of five-yearly inspections and temporary tax farming. In their overall approach to revenue policy, Company officials were guided by two goals: first, preserving as much as possible the balance of rights and obligations that were traditionally claimed by the farmers who cultivated the land and the various intermediaries who collected tax on the state's behalf and who reserved a cut for themselves; and second, identifying those sectors of the rural economy that would maximise both revenue and security. Although their first revenue settlement turned out to be essentially the same as the more informal pre-existing Mughal one, the company had created a foundation for the growth of both information and bureaucracy.

Army and civil service

In 1772, when Hastings became the first Governor-General, one of his first undertakings was the rapid expansion of the Presidency's army. Since the available soldiers, or Sepoys, from Bengal—many of whom had fought against the British in the Battle of Plassey – were now suspect in British eyes, Hastings recruited farther west from the "major breeding ground" of India's infantry in eastern Awadh and the lands around Banaras including Bihar. The high caste rural Hindu Rajputs and Brahmins of this region, known as Purbiyas (Hindi, lit. "easterners"), had been recruited by Mughal Empire armies for two hundred years; the East India Company continued this practice for the next 75 years, with these soldiers comprising up to eighty per cent of the Bengal army. However, to avoid any friction within the ranks, the company also took pains to adapt its military practices to their religious requirements. Consequently, these soldiers dined in separate facilities; in addition, overseas service, considered polluting to their caste, was not required of them, and the army soon came to recognise Hindu festivals officially. "This encouragement of high caste ritual status, however, left the government vulnerable to protest, even mutiny, whenever the sepoys detected infringement of their prerogatives."

The Bengal Army was used in military campaigns in other parts of India and abroad: to provide crucial support to a weak Madras army in the Third Anglo-Mysore War in 1791, and also in Java and Ceylon. In contrast to the soldiers in the armies of Indian rulers, the Bengal sepoys not only received high pay, but also received it reliably, thanks in great measure to the company's access to the vast land-revenue reserves of Bengal. Soon, bolstered both by the new musket technology and naval support, the Bengal army came to be widely well-regarded. The well-disciplined sepoys attired in red-coats and their British officers began to arouse "a kind of awe in their adversaries. In Maharashtra and in Java, the sepoys were regarded as the embodiment of demonic forces, sometimes of antique warrior heroes. Indian rulers adopted red serge jackets for their own forces and retainers as if to capture their magical qualities."

In 1796, under pressure from the company's board of directors in London, the Indian troops were reorganised and reduced during the tenure of John Shore as Governor-General. However, the closing years of the 18th century saw, with Wellesley's campaigns, a new increase in the army strength. Thus in 1806, at the time of the Vellore Mutiny, the combined strength of the three presidencies' armies stood at 154,500, making them one of the largest standing armies in the world.

Civil service

The reforms initiated after 1784 were designed to create an elite civil service where very talented young Britons would spend their entire careers. Advanced training was promoted especially at the East India Company College (until 1853). Haileybury emphasised the Anglican religion and morality and trained students in the classical Indian languages. Many students held to Whiggish, evangelical, and Utilitarian convictions of their duty to represent their nation and to modernise India. At most, there were about 600 of these men who managed the Raj's customs service, taxes, justice system, and its general administration. The company's original policy was one of "Orientalism", that is, of adjusting to the way of life and customs of the Indian people and not trying to reform them. That changed after 1813, as the forces of reform in the home country, especially evangelical religion, Whiggish political outlook, and Utilitarian philosophy, worked together to make the company an agent of Anglicization and modernisation. Christian missionaries became active, but made few converts. The Raj set out to outlaw sati (widow-burning) and thuggee (ritual banditry) and upgrade the status of women. Schools would be established in which they would teach the English language. The 1830s and 1840s, however, were not times of prosperity: After its heavy spending on the military, the company had little money to engage in large-scale public works projects or modernisation programs.

Trade

After gaining the right to collect revenue in Bengal in 1765, the Company largely ceased importing gold and silver, which it had hitherto used to pay for goods shipped back to Britain.

In addition, as under Mughal Empire rule, land revenue collected in the Bengal Presidency helped finance the company's wars in other parts of India. Consequently, in the period 1760–1800, Bengal's money supply was greatly diminished; furthermore, the closing of some local mints and close supervision of the rest, the fixing of exchange rates, and the standardisation of coinage, paradoxically, added to the economic downturn. During the period, 1780–1860, India changed from being an exporter of processed goods for which it received payment in bullion, to being an exporter of raw materials and a buyer of manufactured goods. More specifically, in the 1750s, mostly fine cotton and silk was exported from India to markets in Europe, Asia, and Africa; by the second quarter of the 19th century, raw materials, which chiefly consisted of raw cotton, opium, and indigo, accounted for most of India's exports. Also, from the late 18th century British cotton mill industry began to lobby the government to both tax Indian imports and allow them access to markets in India. Starting in the 1830s, British textiles began to appear in—and soon to inundate—the Indian markets, with the value of the textile imports growing from £5.2 million 1850 to £18.4 million in 1896. The American Civil War too would have a major impact on India's cotton economy: with the outbreak of the war, American cotton was no longer available to British manufacturers; consequently, demand for Indian cotton soared, and the prices soon quadrupled. This led many farmers in India to switch to cultivating cotton as a quick cash crop; however, with the end of the war in 1865, the demand plummeted again, creating another downturn in the agricultural economy.

At this time, the East India Company's trade with China began to grow as well. In the early 19th century, demand for Chinese tea had greatly increased in Britain; since the money supply in India was restricted and the company was indisposed to shipping bullion from Britain, it decided upon opium, which had a large underground market in Qing China and which was grown in many parts of India, as the most profitable form of payment. However, since the Chinese authorities had banned the importation and consumption of opium, the Company engaged them in the First Opium War, and at its conclusion, under the Treaty of Nanjing, gained access to five Chinese ports, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Shanghai, and Ningbo; in addition, Hong Kong was ceded to the British Crown. Towards the end of the second quarter of the 19th century, opium export constituted 40% of India's exports.

Justice system

Until the British gained control of Bengal in the later part of the 18th century, the system of justice there was presided over by the Nawab of Bengal himself, who, as the chief law officer, Nawāb Nāzim, attended to cases qualifying for capital punishment in his headquarters, Murshidabad. His deputy, the Naib Nāzim, attended to the slightly less important cases. The ordinary lawsuits belonged to the jurisdiction of a hierarchy of court officials consisting of faujdārs, muhtasils, and kotwāls. In the rural areas, or the Mofussil, the zamindars—the rural overlords with the hereditary right to collect rent from peasant farmers—also had the power to administer justice. This they did with little routine oversight, being required to report only their judgments in capital punishment cases to the Nawāb.

By the mid-18th century, the East India Company had completed a century and a half of presence in India as a trading company, and had a burgeoning presence in the three presidency towns of Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. During this time, the successive Royal Charters had gradually given the East India Company more power to administer justice in these towns. In the charter granted by Charles II in 1683, the company was given the power to establish "courts of judicature" in locations of its choice, each court consisting of a lawyer and two merchants. This right was renewed in the subsequent charters granted by James II and William III in 1686 and 1698 respectively. In 1726, however, the Court of Directors of the Company felt that more customary justice was necessary for European residents in the presidency towns, and petitioned the King to establish Mayor's Courts. The petition was approved and Mayor's courts, each consisting of a Mayor and nine aldermen, and each having jurisdiction in lawsuits between Europeans, were created in Fort William (Calcutta), Madras, and Bombay. Judgments handed down by a Mayor's Court could be disputed with an appeal to the respective Presidency government and, when the amount disputed was greater than Rs. 4,000, with a further appeal to the King-in-Council. In 1753, the Mayor's courts were renewed under a revised letters patent; in addition, Courts of Requests for lawsuits involving amounts less than Rs. 20 were introduced. Both types of courts were regulated by the Court of Directors of the East India Company. After its victory in the Battle of Buxar, the Company obtained in 1765 the Diwāni of Bengal, the right not only to collect revenue, but also to administer civil justice in Bengal. The administration of criminal justice, the Nizāmat or Faujdāri, however, remained with the Nawāb, and for criminal cases the prevailing Islamic law remained in place. However, the company's new duties associated with the Diwāni were leased out to the Indian officials who had formerly performed them. This makeshift arrangement continued—with much accompanying disarray—until 1771, when the Court of Directors of the Company decided to obtain for the company the jurisdiction of both criminal and civil cases.

Education

Education of Indians had become a topic of interest among East India Company officials from the outset of the company's rule in Bengal. In the last two decades of the 18th century and the first decade of the nineteenth, Company officials pursued a policy of conciliation towards the native culture of its new dominion, especially in relation to education policy. During the 19th century, the Indian literacy rates were rumoured to be less than half of post independence levels which were 18.33% in 1951. The policy was pursued in the aid of three goals: "to sponsor Indians in their own culture, to advance knowledge of India, and to employ that knowledge in government".

The first goal was supported by some administrators, such as Warren Hastings, who envisaged the company as the successor of a great Empire, and saw the support of vernacular learning as only befitting that role. In 1781, Hastings founded the Madrasa 'Aliya, an institution in Calcutta for the study of Arabic and Persian languages, and Islamic law. A few decades later, a related perspective appeared among the governed population, one that was expressed by the conservative Bengali reformer Radhakanta Deb as the "duty of the Rulers of Countries to preserve and Customs and the religions of their subjects".

The second goal was motivated by the concerns among some Company officials about being seen as foreign rulers. They argued that the company should try to win over its subjects by outdoing the region's previous rulers in the support of indigenous learning. Guided by this belief, the Benares Sanskrit College was founded in Varanasi in 1791 during the administration of Lord Cornwallis. The promotion of knowledge of Asia had attracted scholars as well to the company's service. Earlier, in 1784, the Asiatick Society had been founded in Calcutta by William Jones, a puisne judge in the newly established Supreme Court of Bengal. Soon, Jones was to advance his famous thesis on the common origin of Indo-European languages.

The third related goal grew out of the philosophy then current among some Company officials that they would themselves become better administrators if they were better versed in the languages and cultures of India. It led in 1800 to the founding of the College of Fort William, in Calcutta by Lord Wellesley, the then Governor-General. The college was later to play an important role both in the development of modern Indian languages and in the Bengal Renaissance. Advocates of these related goals were termed "Orientalists". The Orientalist group was led by Horace Hayman Wilson. Many leading Company officials, such as Thomas Munro and Montstuart Elphinstone, were influenced by the Orientalist ethos and felt that the company's government in India should be responsive to Indian expectations. The Orientalist ethos would prevail in education policy well into the 1820s, and was reflected in the founding of the Poona Sanskrit College in Pune in 1821 and the Calcutta Sanskrit College in 1824.

Social reform

In the first half of the 19th century, the British legislated reforms against what they considered were iniquitous Indian practices. In most cases, the legislation alone was unable to change Indian society sufficiently for it to absorb both the ideal and the ethic underpinning the reform. For example, upper-caste Hindu society in the Indo-Aryan speaking regions of India had long looked askance at the remarriage of widows to protect both what it considered family honour and family property. Even adolescent widows were expected to live a life of austerity and denial. The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856, enacted in the waning years of Company rule, provided legal safeguards against loss of certain forms of inheritance for a remarrying Hindu widow, though not of the inheritance due her from her deceased husband. However, very few widows actually remarried. Some Indian reformers, such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, even offered money to men who would take widows as brides, but these men often deserted their new wives.

Post and telegraph

Postal services

Before 1837, the East India Company's dominions in India had no universal public postal service, one that was shared by all regions. Although courier services did exist, connecting the more important towns with their respective seats of provincial government (i.e. the Presidency towns of Fort William (Calcutta), Fort St. George (Madras), and Bombay), private individuals were, upon payment, only sparingly allowed their use. That situation changed in 1837, when, by Act XVII of that year, a public post, run by the company's Government, was established in the company's territory in India. Post offices were established in the principal towns and postmasters appointed. The postmasters of the Presidency towns oversaw a few provincial post offices in addition to being responsible for the main postal services between the provinces. By contrast, the District collectors (originally, collectors of land-tax) directed the District post offices, including their local postal services. Postal services required payment in cash, to be made in advance, with the amount charged usually varying with weight and distance. For example, the charge of sending a letter from Calcutta to Bombay was one rupee; however, that from Calcutta to Agra was 12 annas (or three-quarters of a rupee) for each tola (three-eighths of an ounce).

After the recommendations of the commission appointed in 1850 to evaluate the Indian postal system were received, Act XVII of 1837 was superseded by the Indian Postal Act of 1854. Under its provisions, the entire postal department was headed by a Director-General, and the duties of a Postmaster-General were set apart from those of a Presidency Postmaster; the former administered the postal system of the larger provinces (such as the Bombay Presidency or the North-Western Provinces), whereas the latter attended to the less important Provinces (such as Ajmer-Merwara and the major Political Agencies such as Rajputana). Postage stamps were introduced at this time, and the postal rates were fixed by weight, dependent no longer on the distance travelled in the delivery. The lowest inland letter rate was half anna for 1⁄4 tola, followed by one anna for 1⁄2 tola, and 2 annas for a tola, a great reduction from the rates of 17 years before. The Indian Post Office delivered letters, newspapers, postcards, book packets, and parcels. These deliveries grew steadily in number; by 1861 (three years after the end of Company rule), a total of 889 post offices had been opened, and almost 43 million letters and over four and a half million newspapers were being delivered annually.

Telegraphy

Before the advent of electric telegraphy, the word "telegraph" had been used for semaphore signalling. During the period 1820–1830, the East India Company's Government in India seriously considered constructing signalling towers ("telegraph" towers), each a hundred feet high and separated from the next by eight miles, along the entire distance from Calcutta to Bombay. Although such towers were built in Bengal and Bihar, the India-wide semaphore network never took off. By mid-century, electric telegraphy had become viable, and hand signalling obsolete.

W. B. O'Shaughnessy, a professor of chemistry in the Calcutta Medical College, received permission in 1851 to conduct a trial run for a telegraph service from Calcutta to Diamond Harbour along the Hooghly River. Four telegraph offices, mainly for shipping-related business, were also opened along the river that year. The telegraph receiver used in the trial was a galvanoscope of O'Shaughnessy's design and manufactured in India. When the experiment was deemed to be a success a year later, the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, sought permission from the Court of Directors of the company for the construction of telegraph lines from "Calcutta to Agra, Agra to Bombay, Agra to Peshawar, and Bombay to Madras, extending in all over 3,050 miles and including forty-one offices". The permission was soon granted; by February 1855 all the proposed telegraph lines had been constructed and were being used to send paid messages. O'Shaughnessy's instrument was used all over India until early 1857, when it was supplanted by the Morse instrument. By 1857, the telegraph network had expanded to 4,555 miles of lines and sixty-two offices, and had reached as far as the hill station of Ootacamund in the Nilgiri Hills and the port of Calicut on the southwest coast of India. During the Indian rebellion of 1857, more than seven hundred miles of telegraph lines were destroyed by the rebel forces, mainly in the North-Western Provinces. The East India Company was nevertheless able to use the remaining intact lines to warn many outposts of impending disturbances. The political value of the new technology was, thus, driven home to the company, and, in the following year, not only were the destroyed lines rebuilt, but the network was expanded further by 2,000 miles.

O'Shaughnessy's experimental set-up of 1851–52 consisted of both overhead and underground lines; the latter included underwater ones that crossed two rivers, the Hooghly and the Haldi. The overhead line was constructed by welding uninsulated iron rods, 13+1⁄2 feet long and 3/8 inch wide, end to end. These lines, which weighed 1,250 pounds per mile, were held aloft by fifteen-foot lengths of bamboo, planted into the ground at equal intervals—200 to the mile—and covered with a layer each of coal tar and pitch for insulation. The underwater cables had been manufactured in England and consisted of copper wire covered with gutta-percha. Furthermore, to protect the cables from dragging ship anchors, the cables were attached to the links of a 7⁄8-inch-thick (22 mm) chain cable. An underwater cable of length 2,070 yards was laid across the Hooghly river at Diamond Harbour, and another, 1,400 yards long, was laid across the Haldi at Kedgeree.

Railways

The first inter-city railway service in England, the Stockton and Darlington Railway, had been established in 1825; in the following decade other inter-city railways were rapidly constructed between cities in England. In 1845, the Court of Directors of the East India Company forwarded to the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, several applications they had received from private contractors in England for the construction of a wide-ranging railway network in India, and requested a feasibility report. They added that, in their view, the enterprise would be profitable only if large sums of money could be raised for the construction. The Court was concerned that in addition to the usual difficulties encountered in the construction of this new form of transportation, India might present some unique problems, among which they counted floods, tropical storms in coastal areas, damage by "insects and luxuriant tropical vegetation", and the difficulty of finding qualified technicians at a reasonable cost. It was suggested, therefore, that three experimental lines be constructed and their performance evaluated.

Contracts were awarded in 1849 to the East Indian Railway Company to construct a 120-mile railway from Howrah-Calcutta to Raniganj; to the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company for a service from Bombay to Kalyan, thirty miles away; and to the Madras Railway Company for a line from Madras city to Arkonam, a distance of some thirty nine miles. Although construction began first, in 1849, on the East Indian Railways line, with an outlay of £1 million, it was the first leg of the Bombay-Kalyan line—a 21-mile stretch from Bombay to Thane—that, in 1853, was the first to be completed (see picture below).

The feasibility of a train network in India was comprehensively discussed by Lord Dalhousie in his Railway minute of 1853. The Governor-General vigorously advocated the quick and widespread introduction of railways in India, pointing to their political, social, and economic advantages. He recommended that a network of trunk lines be first constructed connecting the inland regions of each presidency with its chief port as well as each presidency with several others. His recommended trunk lines included the following ones: (i) from Calcutta, in the Bengal Presidency, on the eastern coast to Lahore in the north-western region of the Punjab, annexed just three years before; (ii) from Agra in north-central India (in, what was still being called North-Western Provinces) to Bombay city on the western coast; (iii) from Bombay to Madras city on the southeastern coast; and (iv) from Madras to the southwestern Malabar coast (see map above). The proposal was soon accepted by the Court of Directors.

Canals

The first irrigation works undertaken during the East India Company's rule began in 1817. Consisting chiefly of extensions or reinforcements of previous Indian works, these projects were limited to the plains north of Delhi and to the river deltas of the Madras Presidency.

In plains above Delhi, the mid-14th century Sultan of Delhi, Firuz Shah Tughlaq, had constructed the 150-mile-long Western Jamna Canal. Taking off from the right bank of the Jamna river early in its course, the canal irrigated the Sultan's territories in the Hissar region of Eastern Punjab. By the mid-16th century, however, the fine sediment carried by the Himalayann river had gradually choked the canal. Desilted and reopened several decades later by Akbar the Great, the Western Jamna Canal was itself tapped by Akbar's grandson Shah Jahan, and some of its water was diverted to Delhi. During this time, another canal was cut off the river. The 129-mile Eastern Jamna Canal or Doab Canal, which took off from the left bank of the Jamna, also high in its course, presented a qualitatively different difficulty. Since it was routed through steeply sloped land, its flow was difficult to control, and it never operated efficiently. With the decline of the Mughal Empire's power in the 18th century, both canals fell into disrepair. The Western Jamna Canal was repaired by British Army engineers, and it reopened in 1820. The Doab Canal was reopened in 1830; its considerable renovation involved raising the embankment by an average height of 9 ft for some 40 miles.

Farther west in the Punjab region, the 130-mile long Hasli Canal, had been constructed by previous rulers. Taking off from the Ravi River and supplying water to the cities of Lahore and Amritsar, this left-bank canal was extended by the British in the Bari Doab Canal works during 1850–1857. The Punjab region, moreover, had much rudimentary irrigation by "inundation canals". Consisting of open cuts along the sides of rivers and unregulated, the inundation canals had been used in both the Punjab and Sindh for many centuries. Many such canals in Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, and Muzaffargarh were still working efficiently at the time of the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849.

The first new British work—with no Indian antecedents—was the Ganges Canal built between 1842 and 1854.

Contemplated first by Col. John Russell Colvin in 1836, it did not at first elicit much enthusiasm from its eventual architect, Sir Proby Cautley, who baulked at the idea of cutting a canal through extensive low-lying land to reach the drier upland destination. However, after the Agra famine of 1837–1838, during which the East India Company's administration spent Rs. 2,300,000 on famine relief, the idea of a canal became more attractive to the company's Court of Directors. In 1839, the Governor-General of India, Lord Auckland, with the Court's assent, granted funds to Cautley for a complete survey of the swath of land that underlay and fringed the projected course of the canal. The Court of Directors, moreover, considerably enlarged the scope of the projected canal, which, in consequence of the severity and geographical extent of the famine, they now deemed to be the entire Doab region.