In 1807, the Directors of the East India Company ordered a survey of the nine districts, covering 60,000 square miles and containing 15,000,000 British subjects, which formed the Eastern territories of British India. In this three-volume work, published in 1838, Irish civil servant and author Robert Montgomery Martin (1801–68) compiled and collated the original survey material at East India House to describe the geography, geology, meteorology, natural history, agriculture and manufactures, population, history, architecture, fine arts, religion and education of this huge area. Martin, the first colonial Treasurer of Hong Kong and author of History of the British Colonies (1834–5), carried out his work to alert the British public to the growing social and political problems he perceived in India. Volume 1 covers Behar (Patna City) and Shahabad, Volume 2 (reissued in two parts), Bhagalpur, Gorakhpur and Dinajpur, and Volume 3, Puraniya (now in Bihar), Rangpur, and Assam.