The History of the Indian Princely States: Bringing the Puppets Back onto Centre Stage

Abstract

AbstractThe Indian princely states are now widely, if not yet universally, recognised as being worthy of serious historical analysis. Their rulers occupy a unique position in imperial history: they were major supporters of British imperial rule, yet undermined it by demonstrating that Indian self‐government was not wholly a thing of the past. The article focuses on publications concerned with one or more of three themes which are central to the historiography of the states. These are first, the politics of indirect rule; second, the social, economic and political conditions within the states; and third, the roles pursued by or imposed upon rulers. It suggests that princely India possesses a far broader relevance: not only to ‘mainstream’ modern South Asian history, the history of the British empire and Britain as an imperial nation, but also to debates about the existence of essentially imperial forms of domination, influence and control in an ostensibly post‐imperial world.