Why did the British Crown assume direct control over the Indian Government in 1858 ? Mention the new administrative arrangements.

Why.

• The Revolt of 1857 demonstrated that a trading company could not govern a subcontinent, and its suppression had required the Crown's own resources.
• The dual system was discredited. Authority split between the Court of Directors and the Board of Control produced delay and diffused responsibility, and Parliament had been narrowing the Company's role since 1813.
• Annexation policy had become a liability. Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse and the annexation of Awadh in 1856 were widely identified as causes of the Revolt, and the Crown wished to reassure the princes.
• The Company's commercial rationale had gone with the end of its trading monopoly, leaving it a purely administrative shell.

The new arrangements.

• Home government. The Government of India Act of 1858 abolished the Court of Directors and the Board of Control and vested authority in a Secretary of State for India, a Cabinet minister answerable to Parliament, assisted by a Council of India of fifteen members. Indian expenditure was charged on Indian revenues, so Parliament had little incentive to scrutinise it.
• Government in India. The Governor-General became also Viceroy, the Crown's representative. The Indian Councils Act of 1861 introduced non-official Indian members into the legislative council and formalised the portfolio system, beginning the slow admission of Indians to the legislative process.
• The princes. Queen Victoria's Proclamation, read at Allahabad on 1 November 1858, renounced further annexation, guaranteed treaties, permitted adoption, promised religious non-interference and equality of opportunity in the services regardless of race or creed. Paramountcy replaced expansion, and the states became bulwarks of the Raj.
• The army. Following the Peel Commission of 1859, the proportion of European to Indian troops was sharply raised, artillery was kept exclusively in European hands, and recruitment was reorganised on the martial races theory, mixing communities within units to prevent combination.

Assessment. The change was of form more than of substance — the same officials governed the same territory by the same methods — but the Proclamation's promises became the standard by which nationalists afterwards measured British rule and found it wanting.