The following is a list of residents or political agents of the East India Company to the court of the Mughal emperor in Delhi from 1803 to 1857. A resident or political agent was an official of the East India Company (and after 1813, the British Government), who was based in a princely state and who served as part-diplomat, part-adviser to the native ruler, and part monitor of activities in the princely state. He was an instrument of indirect rule of princely India by the British.
| 1803 – 25 Jun 1806 | David Ochterlony (1st tenure in office) | (1758–1825) |
| 25 Jun 1806 – 1811 | Archibald Seton | (1758–1818) |
| 25 Feb 1811 – 1818 | Charles Theophilus Metcalfe (1st tenure) | (s.a.) (1785–1846) |
| 1818–1820 | Sir David Ochterlony (2nd tenure) | (subject to approval (s.a.)) |
| 1820–1823 | Alexander Ross | (1777–18) |
| 1823 | William Fraser (1st tenure) (acting) | (1784–1835) |
| 1823 – Oct 1825 | Sir Charles Elliott | (1776–1856) |
| 26 Aug 1825 – 31 Jul 1827 | Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe (2nd tenure) | (s.a.) |
| 31 Jul 1827 – 1828 | Sir Edward Colebrooke | |
| 1828 – 1829 | William Fraser (2nd tenure) (acting) | (s.a.) |
| 18 Sep 1829 – Nov 1830 | Francis James Hawkins | (1806–1860) |
| 25 Nov 1830 – 1832 | W. B. Martin | |
| 1832 – 22 Mar 1835 | William Fraser (3rd tenure) | (s.a.) |
| 1835–1853 | Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe | (1795–1853) |
| Nov 1853 – 11 May 1857 | Simon Fraser | (d. 1857) |
The Governor-General of India was the representative of the Monarch of the United Kingdom and after Indian independence in 1947, the representative of the Indian head of state. The office was created in 1773, with the title of Governor-General of the Presidency of Fort William. The officer had direct control only over Fort William but supervised other East India Company officials in India. Complete authority over all of India was granted in 1833, and the official came to be known as the "Governor-General of India".
Company rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company on the Indian subcontinent. This is variously taken to have commenced in 1757, after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal surrendered his dominions to the Company, in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar, or in 1773, when the Company established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The rule lasted until 1858, when, after the Indian rebellion of 1857 and consequent of the Government of India Act 1858, the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj.
Sir John William Kaye was a British military historian, civil servant and army officer. His major works on military history include a three-volume work on The History of the Sepoy War in India. This work was revised later by George Bruce Malleson and published in six volumes in 1890 as Kaye and Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny.
Brigadier-General Sir Henry Montgomery LawrenceKCB was a British military officer, surveyor, administrator and statesman in British India. He is best known for leading a group of administrators in the Punjab affectionately known as Henry Lawrence's "Young Men", as the founder of the Lawrence Military Asylums and for his death at the Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion.
Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, 1st Baron Metcalfe,, known as Sir Charles Metcalfe, Bt between 1822 and 1845, was a British colonial administrator. He held appointments including acting Governor-General of India, Governor of Jamaica and Governor General of the Province of Canada.
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.
John Laird Mair Lawrence, 1st Baron Lawrence,, known as Sir John Lawrence, Bt., between 1858 and 1869, was an English-born Ulsterman who became a prominent British Imperial statesman who served as Viceroy of India from 1864 to 1869.
A princely state, also called a native state, feudatory state or Indian state, was a vassal state under a local or indigenous or regional ruler in a subsidiary alliance with the East India Company and after 1858 with the British Crown. Though the history of the princely states of the subcontinent dates from at least the classical period of Indian history, the predominant usage of the term princely state specifically refers to a semi-sovereign principality on the Indian subcontinent during the British Raj that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by a local ruler, subject to a form of indirect rule on some matters. The imprecise doctrine of paramountcy allowed the government of British India to interfere in the internal affairs of princely states individually or collectively and issue edicts that applied to all of India when it deemed it necessary.
Sir William Wilson Hunter was a Scottish historian, statistician, a compiler and a member of the Indian Civil Service.
The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and Southeast Asia. Bengal proper covered the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal. Calcutta, the city which grew around Fort William, was the capital of the Bengal Presidency. For many years, the Governor of Bengal was concurrently the Viceroy of India and Calcutta was the de facto capital of India until 1911.
Major-general Sir David Ochterlony, 1st Baronet of Pitforthy, 1st Baronet of OchterlonyGCB was a Massachusetts born military officer of the East India Company in British India. He held the powerful post of British Resident to the Mughal court at Delhi.
The Provinces of India, earlier Presidencies of British India and still earlier, Presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in the Indian subcontinent. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another, they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods:
The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent from 1858 to 1947. The rule is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially.
Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, 4th Baronet, KCB was an East India Company civil servant and agent of the Governor General of India at the imperial court of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar.
The political history of Mysore and Coorg (1761–1799) is the political history of the contiguous historical regions of Mysore State and Coorg province on the Deccan Plateau in west-central peninsular India from the time of the rise of Haidar Ali in 1761 to that of the death of his son Tipu Sultan in 1799.
The political history of Mysore and Coorg (1800–1947) is the political history of the contiguous historical regions of Mysore state and Coorg province located on the Deccan Plateau in west-central peninsular India, beginning with the acceptance of British suzerainty in 1800 to the independence of India in 1947.
Ludlow Castle, Delhi was a building located in the Civil Lines in Delhi, India, which for a time during East India Company rule in the first half of the 19th century served as the Residency of the British political agent to the Mughal Court; later it was the headquarters of the Commissioner of the Delhi Territory within the North-Western Provinces.
Indore State, also known as Holkar State, was a royal state in India. Its rulers belonged to the Holkar dynasty. Indore was a 19-gun salute Maratha princely state during the British rule in India.
Loharu State was one of the princely states of India during the period of the British Raj. It was part of the Punjab States Agency and was a nine-gun salute state.
William Fraser was a British India civil servant who was an Agent to the Governor General of India and Commissioner of the Delhi Territory during the reign of the last Mughal Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. He was a brother of James Baillie Fraser.