The British Raj (rāj, lit. "reign" in Hindi) is British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947.

The term can also refer to the period of dominion.

The region under British control, commonly called India in contemporary usage, includes areas directly administered by the United Kingdom(contemporaneously British India), as well as the princely states ruled by individual rulers under the paramountcy of the British Crown.

The region is less commonly also called the Indian Empire by the British.

As "India", it is a founding member of the League of Nations, and a participating nation in the Summer Olympics in 1900, 1920, 1928, 1932, and 1936.The system of governance is instituted in 1858, when the rule of the British East India Company is transferred to the Crown in the person of Queen Victoria (who in 1876 is proclaimed Empress of India), and lasts until 1947, when the British Indian Empire is partitioned into two sovereign dominion states, the Union of India (later the Republic of India) and the Dominion of Pakistan (later the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the eastern half of which, still later, becomes the People's Republic of Bangladesh).

At the inception of the Raj in 1858, Lower Burma is already a part of British India; Upper Burma is added in 1886, and the resulting union, Burma, is administered as a province until 1937, when it becomes a separate British colony that gains its own independence in 1948.