Administration of the Company and the Crown

Colonial administration moved in two great phases: Company rule, in which a trading corporation learned to govern, and Crown rule after 1858, in which a formal imperial bureaucracy replaced it. Both phases shared a core aim — stable revenue and order at low cost — but their instruments differed. The Company built district administration, a codified legal system and a civil service; the Crown added a centralised secretariat, an Indian Civil Service recruited by examination, and a more systematic policy of ruling through loyal elites.