Bombay Presidency
Substate | Defunct
1618 CE to 1947 CE
The Bombay Presidency, also known as Bombay and Sind from 1843 to 1936 and the Bombay Province, is an administrative subdivision (presidency) of British India.
Headquartered in the city of Bombay, at its greatest extent, the presidency includea the Konkan, Nashik and Pune divisions of the present-day Indian state of Maharashtra, Ahmedabad, Anand, Bharuch, Gandhinagar, Kheda, Panchmahal and Surat districts of the present-day state of Gujarat, Bagalkot, Belagavi, Bijapur, Dharwad, Gadag, and Uttara Kannada districts of the present-day state of Karnataka and the South Canara (Dakshina Kannada and Udupi district including Kasargod District of Kerala; the Sindh province of present-day Pakistan; the Aden Colony (part of present-day Yemen), and the Khuriya Muriya Islands (part of present-day Oman).
The Bombay Presidency is created when the city of Bombay is leased in fee tail to the East India Company by a Royal Charter from the King of Britain, Charles II, who had in turn acquired it on May 11, 1661, when his marriage treaty with Catherine of Braganza, daughter of King John IV of Portugal, placed the islands of Bombay in possession of the English Empire, as part of Catherine's dowry to Charles.
The English East India Company transfera its Western India headquarters from Surat, its first colony in thia region, to Bombay in 1687.
The Presidency is brought under British Parliament control along with other parts of British India through Pitt's India Act.
Major territorial acquisitions are made during the Anglo-Maratha Wars when the whole of the Peshwa's dominions and much of the Gaekwad's sphere of influence are annexed to the Bombay Presidency in different stages until 1818.
Aden is annexed in 1839, while Sind is annexed by the Company in 1843 after defeating the Talpur dynasty in the Battle of Hyderabad and it is made a part of the Bombay Presidency.
At its greatest extent, the Bombay Presidency comprises the present-day state of Gujarat, the western two-thirds of Maharashtra state, including the regions of Konkan, Desh, and Kandesh, and northwestern Karnataka state of India; it also includes Pakistan's Sindh Province (1847–1935) and Aden in Yemen (1839–1932).
The districts and provinces of the presidency are directly under British rule, while the internal administration of the native or princely states is in the hands of local rulers.
The presidency, however, manages the defense of princely states and British relations with them through political agencies.
The Bombay Presidency, along with the Bengal Presidency and Madras Presidency, is one of the three major centrer of British power in India.
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Shocked by the extent of solidarity among Indian soldiers during the rebellion, the government separates the army into the three presidencies.
The Congress at its inception has no well-defined ideology and commands few of the resources essential to a political organization.
It functions more as a debating society that meets annually to express its loyalty to the Raj and passes numerous resolutions on less controversial issues such as civil rights or opportunities in government, especially the civil service.
These resolutions are submitted to the viceroy's government and, occasionally, to the British Parliament, but the Congress's early gains are meager.
Despite its claim to represent all India, the Congress voices the interests of urban elites; the number of participants from other economic backgrounds remaina negligible.
The decades following the Sepoy Rebellion are a period of growing political awareness, manifestation of Indian public opinion, and emergence of Indian leadership at national and provincial levels.
Ominous economic uncertainties created by British colonial rule and the limited opportunities that await the ever-expanding number of Western-educated graduates begins to dominate the rhetoric of leaders who have begun to think of themselves as a "nation," despite fissures along the lines of region, religion, language, and caste.
Inspired by the suggestion made by A.O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, seventy-three Indian delegates meet in Bombay in 1885 and found the Indian National Congress.
They are mostly members of the upwardly mobile and successful Western-educated provincial elites, engaged in professions such as law, teaching, and journalism.
They have acquired political experience from regional competition in the professions and from their aspirations in securing nomination to various positions in legislative councils, universities, and special commissions.
British attitudes toward Indians shift from relative openness to insularity and xenophobia, even against those with comparable background and achievement as well as loyalty.
British families and their servants live in cantonments at a distance from Indian settlements.
Private clubs where the British gather for social interaction become symbols of exclusivity and snobbery that will refuse to disappear decades after the British had left India
In 1883 the government of India attempts to remove race barriers in criminal jurisdictions by introducing a bill empowering Indian judges to adjudicate offenses committed by Europeans.
Public protests and editorials in the British press, however, force the viceroy, George Robinson, Marquis of Ripon (who serves from 1880 to 1884), to capitulate and modify the bill drastically.
The Bengali Hindu intelligentsia learn a valuable political lesson from this "white mutiny": the effectiveness of well-orchestrated agitation through demonstrations in the streets and publicity in the media when seeking redress for real and imagined grievances.
The Indian Civil Service, which administers the Presidencies and provinces of British India, consists of fewer than thirty-five hundred overwhelmingly European officials, with power over a native population of some three hundred million.
Four out of every thousand residents of British India die of cholera each year.