PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

THE original plan of this book, as it appeared in the 'University Extension Series,' was to sketch in outline the Rise of the British Dominion in India. In the present edition, which has been carefully revised and enlarged from beginning to end, the opportunity has been taken to complete the narrative of the gradual increase of our territorial possessions up to 1858, when the Crown superseded the Company in the direct government of India, and also to give, in a final chapter, some description of the nature and the operation of that system of Protectorates which has played so considerable a part in the empire's constitution. The scope and range of the work have been thus extended so as to include all material acquisitions of territory within and beyond the limits of India proper, and also to trace the political frontiers that circumscribe those adjacent States or outlying tracts which we have undertaken to protect from foreign interference or aggression. These additions to the first edition have been thought to justify a change in the book's title, which is now The Rise and Expansion of the British Dominion in India.

The main purpose of the work, however, is still to present a connected view of the principal events and

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