Spectrum: A brief history of Modern India

This happened as the work of the East India

Company was distributed among various branches—public or general, revenue, political, military, secret, commercial, judicial, education, etc.

James Rennell as the first Surveyor General of Bengal in 1767

The records of the Reforms Office are very useful for an analytical study of the constitutional developments from 1920 to 1937.

the archives of the Kingdom of Lahore (popularly known as Khalsa Darbar records from 1800 to 1849), are important source material. 

the pre-British public archives in India is the Peshwa Daftar housed in the Alienation Office, Pune.

the princely states of Rajasthan, viz., Jaipur, Bikaner, Jodhpur, Udaipur, etc., the archives of these states, now housed in the Rajasthan State Archives at Bikaner

the history of Dogra rule from 1846 in Jammu and Kashmir can be studied in the valuable collection of state papers housed at Jammu.

The other significant archives of the princely states are those of Gwalior, Indore, Bhopal and Rewa, all in Madhya Pradesh, Travancore and Cochin in Kerala, Mysore in Karnataka and Kolhapur in Maharashtra.

The early records of Fort Williams (Bengal Presidency) were lost during the sack of Calcutta in 1756, but the archives of the Bengal presidency after the British victory at Plassey have survived more or less in a complete series, which are partly available in the National Archives of India and partly in the State Archives of West Bengal.

The records of the Madras Presidency begin from AD 1670 and include records of the Governor and Council of Fort St. George.

In these records there is plenty of information bearing on the rise of the English East India Company as a political power in the south and in the Deccan, including the Anglo-French struggle and the English conflicts with other Indian powers.

The archives of Bombay Presidency, housed in the Maharashtra Secretariat Record Office, Mumbai, are extremely useful in studying the history of Western India—Maharashtra, Gujarat, Sindh and the Kannada-speaking districts of the erstwhile Bombay Presidency which were incorporated in Mysore in 1956.

The archives related to the Portuguese preserved in Goa, mainly belonging to the period from 1700 to 1900.

The Dutch records of Cochin and Malabar are in the Madras Record Office and those of Chinsura in the state archives of West Bengal.

The French archives of Chandernagore and Pondicherry (now Puducherry) were taken to Paris by the French authorities before they relinquished these settlements.

The archives of the Danish possessions were also transferred to Copenhagen when the Danes sold Tranquebar and Serampore to the English East India Company in 1845.

The remaining Danish records, mainly relating to Tranquebar (1777-1845), are now housed in the Madras Record Office.

Judicial Record

Housed in the Madras Record Office, the archives of the Mayor’s Court at Fort St. George, beginning from AD 1689, are the earliest available judicial archives

The pre-Plassey records of the Mayor’s Court at Fort Williams have been lost, but those for the years 1757-73 are kept in the record room of the Calcutta High Court, along with the archives of the Supreme Court of Bengal (1774-1861). 

Similarly, the records of the Mayor’s Court at Bombay established in 1728 are available in the Maharashtra Secretariat Record Office which also has the custody of the archives of the Bombay Recorder’s Court and the Supreme Court 

The papers of eminent leaders of the nationalist movement and the records of organisations like the Indian National Congress are housed in the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi.

In England, the India Office Records, London and the records kept in the British Museum are very valuable. The India Office Records possesses various important documents: the minutes of the Courts of Directors and the General Court of the East India Company and various committees constituted from time to time.

The British Museum possesses collections of

papers of British viceroys, secretaries of states and other high ranked civil and military officials who were posted in India.

The Archives Nationale, Paris, and the Archives of the French Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Colonies and War, have records that throw light on the history of French possessions as well as the socio-political conditions.

The records of the Dutch East India Company is available in Rijksarchief, The Hague, and that of the Danish and Portuguese are kept in Copenhagen and Lisbon, respectively.

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