EAST INDIA COMPANY’S CONTROL CEASES.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 7, 18 September 1906, Page 8

EAST INDIA COMPANY’S CONTROL CEASES.

On November 1, .1858, Charles John Canning (created in 1837 an English viscount), o.t that time Gov-eror-General of British India, who lived from 1812 till 1862, issued a proclamation to the princes, chiefs, and peoples of India, announcing the resolution of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to assume the government of those territories in that country that had heretofore been administered in trust by the Honourable East India Company, or representative of the Royal Sovereign. He called upon the millions of subjects there to yield loyal obedience to the summonses which, in words full of benevolence and mercy, their monarch made for their allegiance and faithfulness. This change arose from the famous mutiny, which lasted- from March, 1857, till the next summer.

The proclamation was announced at Allahabad, up the River Ganges, 564 miles west from Calcutta, the capital, and itself in the part of India where the mutiny had occurred, since when it has been the capital of the North-West Provinces of England's Indian Empire. The East India Company, whose government had ceased on September 1, 1858, two months previously, had originated in a royal charter of Queen Elizabeth, incorporating it on December 81, 1600 ; but its first footing there was not obtained till 1615, when its men, in four English ships, commanded by Captain Thos. Best, a naval officer, won a great victory over our jealous predecessors, the Portuguese colonists, at Surat, fourteen miles up the River Tapti, on the North-west coast of Hindostan. This called the London East India Company, allied in 1702 with a new rival, the "English East India Company," and thus united they continued in commerce till the East India Company dissolved on June 1, 1873.