British Colonial Expansion & Administrative Acts

British colonial rule over India evolved from the commercial monopoly of the English East India Company into an imperial administrative apparatus. Strategic victories at the Battle of Plassey (1757) and the Battle of Buxar (1764) secured the Treaty of Allahabad (1765), granting the Company Diwani fiscal rights over Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. Expansion accelerated through Lord Wellesley's Subsidiary Alliance system and Lord Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse. The British restructured Indian agriculture through the Permanent Settlement (1793), Ryotwari, and Mahalwari revenue systems, causing widespread agrarian distress. Governance was gradually subordinated to the British Crown through legislative interventions including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's India Act of 1784, and successive Charter Acts.