British colonial rule in India

British colonial rule in India is depicted as a vast administrative system whose reach is real but incomplete. Its boundaries shape the routes people can travel, the laws officials claim to enforce, and the limits of the government’s power in territories beyond its control.

Extent and Administration

The account distinguishes India as a whole from British India. It gives the subcontinent an area of 1.4 million square miles and a population of 180 million, while British India is described as covering 700,000 square miles and containing between 100 and 110 million people. The Crown exercises authority over the larger portion of the country, but a considerable area remains outside British control. Independent rajahs in the interior mark a limit to the map of colonial administration: India is not represented as a single territory governed uniformly from one center.

The administrative hierarchy has Calcutta as the seat of the Governor-General, with governors at Madras, Bombay, and Bengal and a lieutenant-governor at Agra. These offices suggest an extensive system of regional oversight, but the account places that system alongside territories where its authority does not apply. The contrast matters in the journey through Bundelcund, where Sir Francis Cromarty explains that British officials cannot intervene in local practices as they might elsewhere. Colonial rule is therefore both an organizing structure and a claim with geographically defined limits.

From Company Rule to the Crown

The East India Company’s rise is traced from 1756, when the English first established a foothold at the site of Madras. The account describes the company as gaining power through the gradual annexation of provinces, purchasing them from local chiefs—often without paying them—and appointing civil and military officials, including the Governor-General and subordinates. Its history is thus presented not simply as commercial activity but as the development of territorial government.

After the Sepoy insurrection, the Company’s rule gives way to direct Crown control of British possessions in India. The account also notes that the central government has assumed the Company’s powers, a change reflected in the high salaries of British military officers serving in India. The transition consolidates administration under the Crown without erasing the broader distinction between British-held areas and territories that remain independent. The political structure is centralized at its governing level but still uneven in its reach.

Railways and the Conditions of Movement

Transport infrastructure expresses the ambitions of colonial modernization. Where travel once depended on walking, horseback, palanquins, or cumbersome coaches, steamers now run on the Indus and Ganges, and the Great Indian Peninsula Railway crosses the peninsula between Bombay and Calcutta in three days. Its route passes through Salcette and Tannah, crosses the Western Ghauts, runs northeast toward Burhampoor, skirts Bundelcund, ascends to Allahabad, and then turns east toward Benares and Calcutta. The railway makes a long journey appear newly manageable, but its route is not direct: the distance between Bombay and Calcutta is more than a third longer than the straight-line distance.

The network’s promise is also vulnerable to gaps between announcement and operation. At Kholby, travelers learn that the railway is unfinished and that roughly fifty miles of track remain before the line resumes at Allahabad, despite reports that it had opened throughout. Elsewhere, a mountain crossing requires passengers to continue by palanquin or pony. Such breaks show that movement depends not on a railway in the abstract but on completed track, local connections, and transfers between different forms of transport. The journey’s carefully timed movement between trains and steamers makes these practical connections consequential: speed is an achievement of coordinated systems, not a guarantee provided by a timetable alone.

Law, Religious Practice, and Jurisdiction

The narrative presents British law as protecting Indian religious customs and punishing their violation. In Calcutta, three Indian priests bring a sacrilege complaint against Phileas Fogg and Passepartout over the desecration of a place held sacred by the Brahmin religion. Fogg admits the facts; the judge cites the law’s stern protection of Indian religions and sentences Passepartout to fifteen days’ imprisonment and a fine of three hundred pounds. The episode shows colonial authority acting through a formal court, with a specific religious offense translated into a criminal judgment.

The procession encountered in Bundelcund exposes the limits and tensions of this legal order. Sir Francis identifies it as Suttee (widow immolation), and the guide identifies the deceased husband as an independent rajah. When Phileas Fogg asks why the English have not stopped the practice, Sir Francis answers that such acts do not occur across most of India, but that the authorities lack power in this territory. The account contrasts the law’s stated duty to protect religious custom with the government’s inability to intervene in an area outside its authority. It also describes the widow’s constrained alternatives: social punishment and deprivation are presented as pressures that can drive participation, even as the narrative acknowledges that some cases are voluntary. The legal question is therefore not only what the law forbids or protects, but where the government can enforce its position.

Narrative Significance

Colonial rule appears through a combination of administrative description and obstacles encountered on the road. The route across India makes the state’s infrastructure legible, while the unfinished railway and the crossing through Bundelcund expose its discontinuities. Courts and officials can regulate conduct within their jurisdiction; they cannot simply extend that jurisdiction wherever a journey carries them.

This portrayal also has a clear perspective: the account measures territories in relation to British authority, its officers, laws, and transport systems. Its descriptions of local independence and religious practice are filtered through that colonial frame. The result is a picture of power that is neither absent nor absolute. The Crown governs a large portion of India, inherits the Company’s administrative machinery, and relies on new transport connections, yet its authority remains bounded by geography and by the incomplete reach of the systems meant to sustain it.