Hundreds of settlements have been found spanning an area of about a hundred miles. There are remnants of thousand-year-old cities and structures, with a notable example in Sindh being that of Mohenjo Daro. Sindh and surrounding areas contain the ruins of the Indus Valley Civilization. This period goes back to the first inter-glacial period in the Second Ice Age, and remnants of stone and flint tools have been found. It is believed by most scholars that the earliest trace of human inhabitation in India traces to the Soan Sakaser Valley between the Indus and the Jhelum rivers. Prehistory Indus Valley Civilization (3300–1300 BC) 3.4 Samma dynasty and Delhi sultanate (1333–1520).
THE RIVER BY THE BOMBAY ROYALE TAB SERIES
A series of intermittent wars was beginning which would take British authority over the next fifty years up to the mountains of Afghanistan in the west and into Burma in the east. By the end of the century, however, the Company's governor general, Richard Wellesley, soon to be Marquess Wellesley, was willing to abandon policies of limited commitment and to use war as an instrument for imposing British hegemony on all the major states in the subcontinent. In Warren Hastings's period the British were drawn into expensive and indecisive wars on several fronts, which had a dire effect on the Company's finances and were strongly condemned at home. These alliances led to increasing intervention in the affairs of such states and to wars fought on their behalf. It sought to keep potential enemies at a distance by forming alliances with neighbouring states. The Company's new domains made it a participant in the complex politics of post-Mughal India.
The conquests that had begun in the 1750s had never been sanctioned in Britain and both the national government and the directors of the Company insisted that further territorial expansion must be curbed. If this were done, provinces like Bengal would naturally recover their legendary past prosperity. On the contrary, men like Warren Hastings, who ruled British Bengal from 1772 to 1785, believed that Indian institutions were well adapted to Indian needs and that the new British governments should try to restore an 'ancient constitution', which had been subverted during the upheavals of the 18th century. There was as yet little belief in the need for outright innovation. British judges also supervised the courts, which applied Hindu or Islamic rather than British law. In addition to enforcing a system whose yield provided the Company with the resources to maintain its armies and finance its trade, British officials tried to fix what seemed to them to be an appropriate balance between the rights of the cultivating peasants and those of the intermediaries, who resembled landlords. About one third of the produce of the land was extracted from the cultivators and passed up to the state through a range of intermediaries, who were entitled to keep a proportion for themselves. Collection of taxes was the main function of government. The new Company governments were based on those of the Indian states that they had displaced and much of the effective work of administration was initially still done by Indians. Inscription on a stone laid by the Honourable Warren Hastings These settlements had evolved from 'factories' or trading posts into major commercial towns under British jurisdiction, as Indian merchants and artisans moved in to do business with the Company and with the British inhabitants who lived there. The Company's main settlements, Bombay, Madras and Calcutta were established in the Indian provinces where cotton textiles for export were most readily available. Cotton cloth woven by Indian weavers was being imported into Britain in huge quantities to supply a worldwide demand for cheap, washable, lightweight fabrics for dresses and furnishings. Towards the end of the 17th century India became the focal point of the Company's trade. Twenty-four directors, elected annually by the shareholders ran the Company's operations from its headquarters in the City of London. Some 3000 shareholders subscribed to a stock of £3 200 000 a further £6 million was borrowed on short-term bonds twenty or thirty ships a year were sent to Asia and annual sales in London were worth up to £2 million. Through many vicissitudes, the Company had evolved into a commercial concern only matched in size by its Dutch rival. It was transacted by the East India Company, which had been given a monopoly of all English trade to Asia by royal grant at its foundation in 1600. At the beginning of the 18th century English commerce with India was nearly a hundred years old.
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