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| East India Company Coinage - Silver rupee |
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| Coins of East India Company Silver rupee |
Coins of India, Indian Coins, The Coins of the Bengal Presidency. The Coinage of the Honourable East India Company.
Obverse: Persian legends in three lines.
Mint Place: Calcutta
Mint Period: 1833-1835 AD
Weight: 11.64 gram of silver; Diameter: 26 mm
Bengal Presidency
The Bengal Presidency originally comprising east and west Bengal, was a colonial region of the British Empire in South-Asia and beyond it. It comprised areas which are now within Bangladesh, and the present day Indian States of West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Odisha and Tripura. Penang and Singapore were also considered to be administratively a part of the Presidency until they were incorporated into the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements in 1867.
Calcutta was purchased by the English in 1698 and declared a Presidency Town of the East India Company in 1699, but the beginning of the Bengal Presidency as an administrative unit can be dated from the treaties of 1765 between the East India Company and the Mughal Emperor and Nawab of Oudh which placed Bengal, Meghalaya, Bihar and Odisha under the administration of the Company.
At its height, gradually added, were the annexed princely states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh and portions of Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra in present day India, as well as the provinces of North West Frontier and Punjab, both now in Pakistan, and most of Burma (present day Myanmar).
In 1874 Assam, including Sylhet, was severed from Bengal to form a Chief-Commissionership, and the Lushai Hills were added to that in 1898.
The Presidency of Bengal, unlike those of Madras and Bombay, eventually included all of the British possessions north of the Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh), from the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra to the Himalayas as well as the Punjab. In 1831, the North-Western Provinces were created, which were subsequently included with Oudh in the United Provinces (Uttar Pradesh). Just before the First World War the whole of Northern India was divided into the four lieutenant-governorships of the Punjab, the United Provinces, Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam, and the North-West Frontier Province under a Commissioner.
At its greatest extent, the presidency covered the major cities of Calcutta, Dacca, Chittagong, Rangoon, Penang, Singapore, Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Patna, Srinagar and Peshawar.