In India, too, expansion was largely unplanned by Britain, but occurred in particular on the initiative of the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie (1812–60), appointed in 1848. Dalhousie thought Indian-controlled states were inefficient and that income for the East India Company – the powerful British trading organization that in the previous decades had come to rule over large areas of the subcontinent with its own private armies and administrators, in order to provide a stable and secure basis for its operations – would be increased if he annexed them.
