In popular opinion, the “colonial period” of Indian history is said to have begun in the mid-19th century with the Sepoy Mutiny or Indian Rebellion of 1857, after which the control of India was transferred from the hands of the British East India Company to the British Crown to be governed directly as a Crown Colony: the British Raj. However, it is clear to scholars that the seeds of colonial rule had been planted in India well before 1857, as the East India Company had begun to establish administrative, military, economic, and social control over the subcontinent nearly a century earlier. India was already unified when the Crown took over, yet the geographical processes that went into making India whole are often taken for granted. Pre-1857 colonialism was inextricably tied to some of the greatest transformations in colonial India’s geography and history, from the fall of the Mughal Empire to the rise of the British East India Company to the formation of modern Indian identities. To understand the subcontinent the British Crown inherited, it is critical to study in detail the foundations that led up to the Crown’s takeover. Crucially, studying this period through the perspective of historical geography helps us gain a better understanding of its spatial dimensions through an examination of scale, structure, tension, and change in the landscape. This thesis intends to provide a fresh, spatially intensive perspective with which to reframe the nature of colonial settlements in India in 1498-1857 by synthesizing what research is available. To this end, the paper offers a critical analysis of the different ways in which Indian geography was utilized and represented by colonial powers, reconceptualizing the ways in which we understand the nature of early colonial India. This thesis is thus an exploration of the transformations in the configuration of European colonial powers in India between 1498-1857 and the rise of the British over other European powers, which were informed by differentiations in spatial elements such as settlement patterns, natural land usage, imperial policies, economic development, and urban evolution. Examining these phenomena allows us to draw insightful conclusions on the greater geographical interactions and processes that typified European colonial projects across India.