Madras Presidency
administrative unit in British India
The Madras Presidency, officially designated as the Presidency of Fort St. George until 1937 and later known as the Madras Province, was an administrative subdivision of the Company Raj, British Raj and its successor, the Dominion of India. At its greatest extent, the Presidency included most of South India, comprising all of present-day Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, along with parts of Kerala, Karnataka, Odisha, and Telangana, in addition to Sri Lanka, from 1793 to 1815. The city of Madras (present-day Chennai) served as the official and winter capital of the Presidency, while Udhagamandalam (present-day Ooty) served as its summer capital.
In 1639, the East India Company purchased the village of Madrasapatnam and one year later it established the Agency of Fort St. George, precursor of the Madras Presidency, although there had been Company factories at Machilipatnam and Armagaon since the very early 1600s. The agency was upgraded to a Presidency in 1652 before once more reverting to its previous status in 1655. In 1684, it was re-elevated to a Presidency and Elihu Yale was appointed as president. In 1785, under the provisions of Pitt's India Act, Madras became one of three presidencies established by the Company. By 1793, Ceylon was incorporated into the presidency but was later separated in 1815.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1772596. The Library of Congress control number is n92088954. Authority coordinates are 13.080, 80.270. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1937, 1793, 1815 and 1639.
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This entry incorporates text from “Madras Presidency” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.