Board's Collections

These consist of copies of papers on a given subject extracted from the Proceedings of the Indian Governments [India, Bengal, Madras, Bombay etc.] and certain other East India Company Overseas Administrations (eg Penang, St Helena) together with copies of previous overseas correspondence. They were so called because they were used for information purposes by the Board of Control in London [Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India] when reviewing the East India Company's draft overseas Dispatches, and the physical arrangement of the Collections follows the draft numbers and dates of these associated Dispatches [IOR/E/4]. The Collections relate to all the main departments or branches of Government except the Secret. They were first compiled in 1794 but the earliest surviving Collections relate to dispatches of season 1796/97. As might be expected there is always a time-gap between the dates of a particular Collection and the date of the associated Dispatch - in the earlier period this might be as much as 2 to 3 years - later the improvement in communications with India reduced the gap to about a year or less. Almost all the Political Collections (ie the Collections associated with Political Dispatches) have been preserved, and so may be considered to be a virtually complete duplicate of the Indian etc. Political Proceedings [IOR/P]. Collections associated with dispatches in other departments (Military, Public, Revenue etc.) were very heavily weeded circa 1860 and only a small proportion of them survive. The date range for most Board's Collections is a short span of years. Where the date range is longer, this generally means that there are one or two documents of an earlier date included in the Collection.

East India Company's Dispatches to Governments of Bengal, Madras, Bombay, and India [IOR/E/4], Penang [IOR/G/34], and St Helena [IOR/G/32]. Branches or subjects are referred to using the following abbreviations: Ecc=Ecclesiastical; Fin=Financial; Gen=General; Jud=Judicial; Jud (LP)=Judicial (Lower Provinces); Jud (WP)=Judicial (Western Provinces); Leg=Legislative; Mar=Marine; Mil=Military; Pol=Political; Pub=Public; Pub(CP)=Public (Ceded Provinces); Rev=Revenue; Sep Rev=Separate Revenue (ie Customs, Salt and Opium); Terr Fin=Territorial Financial.

Unrestricted