Ceded and Conquered Provinces of British India

The Ceded and Conquered Provinces was one of the erstwhile provinces that were under the rule of the British Empire in India. It comprised of a territory in north India which was administered by the British East India Company. The territory was established in the year 1805 and was disestablished in 1834. The Ceded and Conquered Provinces approximately corresponded to most of the territories in the modern state of Uttar Pradesh, with the exclusion of the Faizabad and Lucknow divisions of Awadh. Further more, these provinces also included the region of Delhi; and after the year 1816, it also incorporated the Kumaun division and a major portion of the Kumaun division of the present state of Uttarakhand. In the year 1836, the area was developed as the North Western Provinces and was under the administration of a Lieutenant Governor. Later in 1904, the Ceded and Conquered Provinces became the Agra Province within the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh. The entire territory covered a total area of 9,479 sq km in the year 1835 and comprised of a total population of 4,500,000 in the same year.

Ceded Provinces
During the early 19th century, only the divisions of Banares and the Allahabad fort, in modern day Uttar Pradesh, were under the rule of the British administration. In the year 1801, Saadat Ali, the Nawab of Awadh, ceded a number of the areas to the British Government and seeked the protection of the British forces in return, in order to prevent threats from the attack of Zaman Shah Durrani, the grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani, from the North West. The region included the Rohilkhand and Gorakhpur divisions; the districts of Etah, Mainpuri, Etawah, Cawnpore, Fatehpur and Allahabad; the Terai Parganas of Kumaun; and the southern portion of Mirzapur. These came to be known as the Ceded Provinces of British India. The next year, the Nawab of Farrukhabad ceded the district of Farrukhabad to the British Empire in India.

Conquered Provinces
After the Second Anglo Maratha War, General Lake took charge of the Meerut division, including Aligarh, and almost immediately, the conquered over the remainder of the Agra division, including Agra city and the districts located in the region of Delhi. Gradually, most of the trans-Jamuna districts of Hamirpur and Banda and were also included, and a small area in Jalaun district was added as well. In the year 1816, after the culmination of the Anglo Nepalese War (1814- 1816), the Treaty of Sugauli was signed and the Dehradun district and the Kumaun division of present Uttarakhand state were annexed also.

Administration of Ceded and Conquered Provinces
The Ceded and Conquered Provinces were under the administration of the Governor General-in-Council and was incorporated as a part of the Bengal Presidency of British India. As the distance between the newly obtained regions from the capital of the presidency in Calcutta was excessive, it creates several administrative drawbacks. As a result, various temporary arrangements were tried, but failed to be proved successful. Thus in the year 1831, an independent Board of Revenue and a separate Chief Civil and Criminal Courts, known as Sadr Diwani and Nizamat Adalat, were established for these provinces. In the year 1833, an Act of the British Parliament (statute 3 and 4, William IV, cap. 85) concurrently propagated the separation of the Bengal Presidency, the augmentation of the Ceded and Conquered Provinces to the new Agra Presidency and the appointment of a new Governor for the Presidency of Agra. But the arrangement was never successfully implemented or carried out.

In the year 1835, a further Act of British Parliament (statute 5 and 6, William IV, cap. 52) renamed the Ceded and Conquered Provinces as the North Western Provinces, which was administered by a British Lieutenant Governor. Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, 1st Baron Metcalfe, Bt, KCB, PC was appointed as the first Lieutenant Governor for the Presidency of Agra in 1836. The erstwhile province is at present a part of the current states of Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.