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| 1859–62 |
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| Paper currency, license fees, income taxes, and a 10 percent tariff were introduced to meet the heavy debt left after suppression of the rebellion. | 1 |
| Administrative reforms were undertaken to strengthen the government: cabinet system was introduced; civil service appointments were regulated (competitive since 1853); the army was reorganized, recruited increasingly from the Punjab and Nepal; code of civil procedure (1859), penal code (1860), code of criminal procedure (1861), and high courts (1862) regularized administration of justice; legislative councils were appointed (governor-general's, 1853; reorganized and enlarged, 1861; provincial, 1862), containing a small proportion of Indian members. | 2 |
| Public works were pressed energetically: the railway network embraced all major cities by 1875: telegraph service to Europe was opened (1865). Archaeological surveys (1861), famine relief (1861), forestry (1861), and agriculture and sanitation (1864) began to be fostered by official measures. | 3 |
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| 1862–63 |
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| Lord Elgin, viceroy, was succeeded by Lord Lawrence (1864–69); Lord Mayo (1869–72); Lord Northbrook (1872–76); and Lord Lytton (1876–80). | 4 |
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| 1866 |
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| Collapse of the cotton boom, which had arisen from increased production during the American Civil War, led to severe economic dislocation, especially in western India where production for external workers had expanded most dramatically. | 5 |
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| 1868 |
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| Security of land tenure granted to peasants by Oudh and Punjab Tenancy Acts, following precedent of Bengal Rent Act (1859), which applied also to Agra and Central Provinces. | 6 |
| Hindu reform movements broadened their influence among the English-speaking middle class: Keshab Chunder Sen formed the Brahmo Samaj of India (1865), stimulating the establishment of the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay (1867); annual meetings of the Hindu Mela at Calcutta (1867–80) propagated neo-Hindu and protonationalist ideas; Arya Samaj was founded by Swami Dayananda (Bombay, 1875), and its headquarters fixed at Lahore (1877). | 7 |
| Muslim reform built momentum in north India through the educational and journalistic work of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, who founded the Muslim Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh (1877); in Bombay through the Aga Khan; in Calcutta through ‘Abdul Latif (Muslim Literary Society, 1863) and Sayyid Amir Ali (National Muslim Association, 1877). | 8 |
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| 1869 |
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| Opening of the Suez Canal eliminated the overland Suez link (regular service opened, 1843), greatly cheapening freight shipments. Both India's overseas trade and the percentage of manufactured goods in its total exports nearly tripled in the following four decades. | 9 |
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| 1870s |
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| First railroad systems opened across India. This new linkage had important implications for economic development, communications, and pilgrimage patterns. The fact that the internal lines were built to a different gauge than those leading to the ports shows that the railroads' first purpose was extractive (that is, the system made it simple to convey goods for export, but almost impossible to recirculate them internally to meet famine needs). | 10 |
| At the same time, print media expanded dramatically. Newspaper, journal, book, and pamphlet publication increased significantly; more important, the circulation of these printed materials—including oral transmission through being read aloud in villages and small towns as well as urban neighborhoods—brought ever larger numbers into a world of public information. The movement of people as well as information on the railroads reinforced this expansion of public intelligence and thus the formation of a public opinion that could be brought to bear on the British imperial regime. | 11 |
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| 1872 |
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| Assassination of Lord Mayo by a Muslim. | 12 |
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| 1875 |
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| Peasant uprising in Maharashtra (Deccan) was in part occasioned by the dislocation of cotton growers. | 13 |
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| 1876 |
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| Occupation of Quetta as a safeguard against the Russian southward advance toward Afghanistan. | 14 |
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| 1876–78 |
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| Great famine in the Deccan and adjacent areas took over 5 million lives. | 15 |
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| 1870–90s |
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| Industrialization was limited under colonial rule for several reasons. The British Indian government refused, for instance, to introduce protective tariffs to protect infant industries. Even the advantage of cheap labor was offset when the Indian government was forced by British industrialists at home to pass a Factory Act in 1882 that restricted the uses of labor in ways similar to restrictions imposed in Britain. Even when entrepreneurs did manage to carve niches for themselves (e.g., cotton textiles), they could not effect linkages with other industries. Textile machinery, for instance, continued to be produced only outside India. But perhaps the greatest disincentive flowed from the enormous appreciation in land values, luring Indian capital out of industry and into nonproductive but more secure investment in the countryside. Some sector industrialization did, however, occur, such as the expansion of the Tata Iron and Steel Company (West Bengal), which began during World War I. | 16 |
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| 1877 |
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| On Disraeli's initiative, the queen was proclaimed empress of India at a Delhi ceremony (durbar) at which the Indian princes were assembled to offer their homage. | 17 |
| Formation of huge Empress Mill (for cotton) by Jamsetji Tata (1839–1904). | 18 |
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