Administration of Justice in the presidency Towns and Development of courts under East India Company (1600–1773)

The East India Company came to India in 1600 to buy pepper and cotton, not to run courts. But the moment its servants started living together in a factory, someone had to decide what happened when one of them stole from another, or a sailor was accused of murder aboard ship. For a century and a half the Company improvised an answer, town by town, charter by charter — and that improvisation is the whole of this topic.

In two minutes

Between 1600 and 1773 the East India Company grew from a trading body governing its own servants under English maritime law into the ruler of three presidency towns with their own courts, and every later reform in this paper is a correction to the mess this period left behind.

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