Princely state
Videos
Page
A princely state was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, subject to a subsidiary alliance and the suzerainty or paramountcy of the British crown.
Political subdivisions of the Indian Empire in 1909 with British India (pink) and the princely states (yellow)
Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the maharaja of Baroda State.
An old image of the British Residency in the city of Quilon, Kerala
An 1895 group photograph of the eleven-year-old Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV, ruler of the princely state of Mysore in South India, with his brothers and sisters. In 1799, his grandfather, then aged five, had been granted dominion of Mysore by the British and forced into a subsidiary alliance. The British later directly governed the state between 1831 and 1881.
British Raj
Videos
Page
The British Raj was the rule of the British Crown on the Indian subcontinent; it is also called Crown rule in India,
or Direct rule in India, and lasted from 1858 to 1947. The region under British control was commonly called India in contemporaneous usage and included areas directly administered by the United Kingdom, which were collectively called British India, and areas ruled by indigenous rulers, but under British paramountcy, called the princely states. The region was sometimes called the Indian Empire, though not officially.
Political subdivisions of the British Raj in 1909. British India is shown in two shades of pink; Sikkim, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Princely states are shown in yellow.
The British Raj in relation to the British Empire in 1909
The British Raj and surrounding countries are shown in 1909.
Lakshmibai, Rani of Jhansi, one of the principal leaders of the Great Uprising of 1857, who had lost her kingdom by the Doctrine of lapse