Abstract This article examines routine competition and co-ordination among the multiple governing bodies or Presidencies of each major British settlement across the Indian Ocean world. It argues that British institutions and mechanisms of governance grew out of the process of administering and maintaining political and commercial stability across multiple, territorially non-contiguous spaces. The English East India Company commanded spaces as varied and distant as the entire island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, coastal outposts in the Persian Gulf and a seasonally accessible factory in Canton in the South China Sea. Between St Helena and Canton lay the three major Presidencies of Bombay, Bengal and Madras as well as its fourth, oft-forgotten sometime Presidency of Fort Marlborough in Bencoolen, Sumatra. Examining the relations among these settlements reveals the daily workings of an imperial state-in-formation. Ironically, the very fragility and segmentation that characterised intra-imperial relations shaped the concerted effort to build a more centralised and powerful state. Attempts to build state capacity at each Presidency were often driven by rivalry and competition with other Presidencies. Nevertheless, such processes also served to build a stronger British imperial state, one that could marshal labour, goods and revenues across long distances.
Tiraana Bains (Sun,) studied this question.