The Princely States, Sovereignty, and Late Nineteenth-Century International Law

Defining the “boundaries of the international”Footnote ³⁰ has always been a central concern of international law. Contemporary international lawyers, for example, argue over the entities that constitute the “proper” subjects of international law, including questions such as whether indigenous peoples are to be recognized as peoples entitled to self-determination.Footnote ³¹ Late nineteenth-century international lawyers were engaged in similar debates on the scope and limits of “the international” during a period when empire loomed largeFootnote ³² over the newly developing field of international law.Footnote ³³ More specifically, they sought to demarcate the frontiers of the spheres of national, imperial, and international law.

The so-called “standard of civilization,”Footnote ³⁴ which limited the applicability of international law to “civilized,” primarily European states, provided one solution.Footnote ³⁵ For example, John Westlake, one of the most influential British international lawyers of the time,Footnote ³⁶ argued that international society was geographically limited to European and American states, and “a few Christian states in other parts of the world.”Footnote ³⁷ This was because international law was “social” and had to be “well adapted to the character and circumstances of the men who are to observe it.”Footnote ³⁸ Westlake's contemporary, the English lawyer William Edward Hall,Footnote ³⁹ also thought that international law was “a product of the special civilisation of modern Europe, and forms a highly artificial system of which the principles cannot be supposed to be understood or recognised by countries differently civilised.”Footnote ⁴⁰ This view was shared by Thomas Joseph Lawrence, a lawyer and clergymanFootnote ⁴¹ who argued that international law was a body of rules that “grew up in Christian Europe, though some of its roots may be traced back to ancient Greece and ancient Rome,” and then spread to “all civilized communities outside the European boundaries.”Footnote ⁴² In the eyes of these scholars, international law was “based on the possession by states of a common and in that sense an equal civilization.”Footnote ⁴³ Because of the “civilized/uncivilized” dichotomy, they drew relatively sharp distinctions between the international and imperial spheres. Westlake argued that the relationship between the princely states and the British government had “shifted from an international to an imperial basis,”Footnote ⁴⁴ relegating the governance of princely states to imperial constitutional law.Footnote ⁴⁵ Lawrence also claimed that the princely states were “not even part-sovereign” and thereby not subjects of international law.”Footnote ⁴⁶ Hall shared this view, noting that entities such as the princely states “are of course not subjects of international law.”Footnote ⁴⁷ These jurists then proceeded to devise a series of techniques to “civilize the uncivilized” in order to bring non-European peoples into the realm of international law. The ideological basis of this approach was, as Antony Anghie argues, the idea of expanding European empires for the purpose of educating and improving the lives of the colonized peoples.Footnote ⁴⁸

In the second half of the nineteenth century, however, justifications of imperial rule based on the idea of the “civilizing mission” were undergoing a broad critique in South Asia, largely on account of the events of 1857. This was the year in which almost the whole of northern India broke out in a widespread and violent revolt, the intensity of which left a deep impression on British administrators. There was broad participation in the revolt, which included a military mutiny, peasant uprisings, and rebellions led by deposed rulers and landlords. The British repressed the revolt after a long and violent siege and transferred control over territories in India from the English East India Company to the crown. Karuna Mantena notes that prior to the rebellion, “liberal” imperial administrators inspired by the “civilizing mission” had engaged in deeply interventionist modes of rule to radically reconstruct “native societies.”Footnote ⁴⁹ This project included the annexation of princely states that, in the opinion of British administrators, had failed to provide “good government” to their subjects. Allegations of misgovernment were brought to justify the annexations of Jhansi and Awadh,Footnote ⁵⁰ both of which became centers of the uprising in 1857. Consequently, later British administrators attributed the revolt to the “Evangelical zeal of the liberals.”Footnote ⁵¹ The second half of the nineteenth century was, therefore, dominated by an imperial ideology that focused on rule through local rulers, chiefs, and power brokers.Footnote ⁵² The increasingly dominant view within the British establishment was that the rulers of the princely states were “traditional” or “natural” leaders who commanded the respect, loyalty, and obedience of the Indian masses who were immune to earlier projects of reform.Footnote ⁵³ However, the language of “good government” and “progress” continued to be employed to rank and rate these rulers.Footnote ⁵⁴

This change in imperial ideology was facilitated by Henry Maine's nuanced critique of the liberal view of empire. Maine was a leading Victorian jurist; between 1862 and 1869 he was also a prominent member of Britain's colonial administration in India as law member in the Council of the Viceroy and Governor-General of India. On his return to England, he was appointed Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford; in 1871, he became a member of the secretary of state's Council of India in London;Footnote ⁵⁵ in 1887, he was elected Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge.Footnote ⁵⁶

As Karuna Mantena notes, Maine was a central figure in the late nineteenth-century reconfiguration of ideas about modernity and progress. He constructed a binary model: ancient societies were based around communities, and fractured on contact with imperial rule by societies that had reached later stages of evolution and were focused on the individual. But rather than advocating the end of imperialism, he contended that only the British Empire's dominance could prevent a further dissolution of “traditional” societies.Footnote ⁵⁷ To prevent further episodes of rebellion that would threaten the stability of the empire, he argued in favor of “the preservation and incorporation of native institutions into imperial power structures.”Footnote ⁵⁸ The princely states were the archetype of such “native” institutions. Because maintaining alliances with entities such as the princely states necessitated their legal recognition in some form, it also required reinterpreting the concept of sovereignty and the nature of the boundary between imperial and international law, drawn so sharply by international law scholars such as Westlake, Hall, and Lawrence. Key to this change was Maine's conceptualization of sovereignty as “divisible.”Footnote ⁵⁹

Maine first discussed the concept of sovereignty in an 1855 paper that he delivered before the Juridical Society. There he regretted the tendency of “the great majority of contemporary writers on International Law [to] tacitly assume that the doctrines of their system, founded on the principles of equity and common sense, were capable of being readily reasoned over in every stage of modern civilization” when, in fact, the explanation behind the doctrines was “entirely historical.”Footnote ⁶⁰ This historical approach contrasted with what he considered to be the abstract and ahistorical analytical school of jurisprudence, which was predominant in England at the time and was exemplified in the work of John Austin. In his view, Austin's definition of law as “the command of the sovereign” placed an overwhelming emphasis on the coercive power of a sovereign as the source of legal obligation. This position, he argued, was the outcome of abstraction, which neglected “the entire mass of its historical antecedents, which in each community determines how the Sovereign shall exercise or forbear from exercising his irresistible coercive power.”Footnote ⁶¹ The result was that law, as defined by analytical jurisprudence, was exclusively the product of coercive force and required the backing of a sanction.Footnote ⁶² Maine argued instead that the link between coercive force and legal obligation was not a logically necessary one, but rather was the product of particular historical and social processes. He contended that sovereignty in Europe was linked to legislative activity on account of the influence of the Roman Empire, which had both legislated and levied taxes. The result of the Roman legacy was the modern social organization of Western Europe: highly centralized, actively legislating, territorially sovereign nation-states.Footnote ⁶³ This position, however, was historically exceptional, because other ancient empires had raised revenues and armies but had interfered only minimally in the civil and religious life of their subjects.Footnote ⁶⁴ Consequently, other empires had not developed along the lines of centralized Western European states. Maine even doubted the status of the United States, with its “semi-sovereign” constituent states, and the German Confederation.Footnote ⁶⁵

Relying on the claim of a radical difference between “traditional” societies that were based around local communities (rather than a distant ruler) and “modern,” centralized Western European states, Maine rejected the analytical school's insistence on the indivisibility of sovereignty. Instead, he contended that “[t]he powers of sovereigns are a bundle or collection of powers, and they may be separated one from another.”Footnote ⁶⁶ Maine sharpened this idea of the “divisibility” of sovereignty in the context of theorizing the relationship between the princely states and the British government.

In 1864, Maine wrote what was to become a tremendously influential minute on the sovereignty of Kathiawar, the collective name for a number of small princely states in the peninsular region of western India.Footnote ⁶⁷ Before the arrival of the British, the rulers of the Kathiawar states had recognized the supremacy of a succession of overlords, including the sultans of Delhi, the Mughals, and the Marathas, through the payment of tribute. In 1820, after a series of agreements, the East India Company obtained the right of tribute over the region.Footnote ⁶⁸ In the 1830s, the company increasingly intervened in Kathiawar affairs; for example, it took over criminal jurisdiction in the states. Despite this, on several occasions company officials stated clearly that Kathiawar was not part of British territory, indicating their recognition of the separate legal status of the princely states.Footnote ⁶⁹

A rather innocuous attempt to transfer jurisdiction over the state of Bhavnagar from Ahmedabad authorities (in British India) to the Kathiawar political agent (a British representative in princely state territory) set the stage for Maine's minute.Footnote ⁷⁰ This process ran into trouble when the Finance Department of the government of India questioned whether Kathiawar was part of British territory. If Kathiawar was foreign territory, then the proposed transfer could not be done by legislation. It would require a properly ratified treaty of cession since the change would not merely reorganize territory, but transfer it to a foreign sovereign.Footnote ⁷¹

The members of the Council of the Government of Bombay, a province in British India, unanimously decided that Kathiawar was British territory,Footnote ⁷² with the governor, Henry Bartle Frere, contending that the Kathiawar rulers’ minimal rights, such as jurisdiction over their own subjects, could not be called rights of sovereignty.Footnote ⁷³ Henry Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the government of India, agreed with the Bombay council, arguing that the Kathiawar rulers had the status of dependents. He dismissed the East India Company's earlier declaration of Kathiawar as foreign territory, arguing that it had been a confidential expression of views, and not a formal and publicly promulgated renunciation of British sovereign rights.Footnote ⁷⁴ The matter was referred to the Council of the Viceroy and Governor-General of India, of which Maine was the law member.

In his minute, Maine defined sovereignty as

He went on to note, “‘sovereignty’ is divisible, but ‘independence’ is not.” In his view, the British government was the only independent sovereign in India, but there also existed numerous other sovereigns; that is, the princely states, which were not independent.Footnote ⁷⁵

Maine also argued that sovereignty, for the purposes of international law, was a “question of fact” that had to be separately decided in each case and to which “no general rules” applied. Treaties often contained the manner in which sovereign rights were to be divided, but when there were no written documents or when the documents were ambiguous, jurists could determine this distribution from the de facto relations of the states with the British government. Maine proceeded to conduct a factual analysis of the situation and concluded that the principal right that the Kathiawar states enjoyed was immunity from foreign laws; other rights included the exercise of limited civil and criminal jurisdiction and the right to coin money. He, therefore, approved of British interference for the improvement in administration so long as it did not disturb the unqualified immunity of the states from foreign laws. However, he also admitted that the Kathiawar states enjoyed some limited degree of sovereignty, and hence were foreign territory, so therefore international rules and conceptions applied to them “in some sense.”Footnote ⁷⁶

Another council member, H. B. Harington, agreed, and quoted the work of the American international lawyer Henry Wheaton to argue that the exercise of some rights by the British did not mean that the Kathiawar chiefs had lost all their rights of sovereignty. Like Maine, however, he argued that this did not prevent the British, as the “paramount power,” from intervening to improve the peace.Footnote ⁷⁷ The viceroy, John Lawrence, also expressed his support for the divided nature of Kathiawar sovereignty, contending that “although Kattywar is British Territory in the sense that its Chiefs and people owe allegiance to the sovereignty of the British Crown, yet it is not British Territory in the sense of its being subject to British Laws, Regulations, and Administration”; hence, British laws could not be extended to the region.Footnote ⁷⁸

Maine's views received a stamp of approval when the secretary of state for India, Charles Wood, recognized the “modified form of sovereignty” of the region. Wood argued that although the British government had intervened in Kathiawar for the maintenance of order, it had never imposed British laws, because official policy was not aimed at undermining the authority and independence of local chiefs, but rather to work through the agency of these rulers.Footnote ⁷⁹

The Kathiawar minute exemplified Maine's historical approach to legal concepts such as sovereignty, with the idea that the princely states possessed only certain sovereign rights (the remainder being exercised by the British government) fitting within his broader understanding of “native” societies as radically different from “modern” centralized European nation-states. By arguing that sovereignty was divisible, and thereby that the Kathiawar rulers were both sovereign and not sovereign, Maine softened the boundary between imperial and international law and advocated the application of international law to the states “in some sense”; for example, in the case of treaty interpretation or sovereign immunity, but not in others.Footnote ⁸⁰ Like Maine's thought in general, this conceptualization of the fuzzy frontiers of national, imperial, and international law enabled the British to entrench their paramountcy in South Asia by providing the legal basis of the post-1857 imperial ideology of the recognition of the princely states and their simultaneous incorporation into the broader imperial hierarchy.Footnote ⁸¹ Consequently, the British abandoned their earlier policy of princely state annexation, and replaced it with a strategy of providing support to the princes to maintain them as “junior allies” in the imperial project. Maine's approach proved to be an inspiration for the Political Department of the Government of India, influencing successive generations of British political officers in the late nineteenth century.Footnote ⁸² In the next section, I will examine the many ways in which these political officials interpreted Maine and drew on his ideas to develop a coherent approach to understanding the relationship between the princely states and the British government.

Divisible Sovereignty and the Indian Political Department

The British handled their relations with the princely states through the Political Department of the Government of India,Footnote ⁸³ whose officials were recruited from both the Indian army and the Indian Civil Service.Footnote ⁸⁴ Although the department came under the government of India, it was different from the other government departments. Unlike the secretaries of the others, who reported to members of the Viceroy's Council, the most senior civil servant of this department, the political secretary (at times also known as the foreign secretary), reported directly to the viceroy, who was the representative of the British crown in India.Footnote ⁸⁵ Political officers were located at the Political Department's offices in the British Indian capital, Calcutta, at provincial capitals such as Bombay or Madras, or at the courts of individual states, where they were known variously as residents, political agents, or agents to the governor-general. Although political officers were representatives of the British crown, Barbara Ramusack has convincingly argued that they were “janus-faced functionaries,” because they formulated and implemented British policy as well as representing the views of the princes to the British government. These dual functions “spawned continual disagreements within the British hierarchy”Footnote ⁸⁶ that are particularly visible in jurisdictional disputes between the princely states and the British government.

Approximately 70% of serving political officers had an army background. Although Ian Copland claims that the preference for military men meant that the Political Department “became a byword for intellectual mediocrity,”Footnote ⁸⁷ the most influential members of the department were civil servants who had passed competitive examinations for their place.Footnote ⁸⁸ Political officers did not have any special administrative or diplomatic training and relied largely on learning through experience.Footnote ⁸⁹ Internal Political Department texts and manuals, therefore, became particularly significant in guiding officials in their work. Consequently, understanding the nuances of these texts is crucial for analyzing the British colonial view of princely state sovereignty and the nature of the relationship between the states and the British government.Footnote ⁹⁰

One of the first of the Political Department treatises was an 1875 tract titled The Native States of India, Footnote ⁹¹ written by Charles Aitchison, a political officer who spent much of his career in Punjab and rose to become the foreign secretary of the government of India.Footnote ⁹² Although he did not specifically acknowledge Maine's Kathiawar minute (he, did, however cite Ancient Law Footnote ⁹³), Aitchison emphasized the divisibility of sovereignty by arguing that sovereignty was “an assemblage of powers or attributes which may either be all concentrated in one possessor or shared with another.”Footnote ⁹⁴ With respect to the princely states, he noted that sovereignty was shared between the British government and the princes in varying degrees.Footnote ⁹⁵ The princely states enjoyed sovereign power “more or less imperfect,” but did not possess “international life.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Although Aitchison argued that international law did not apply to the relations between the British government and the princely states, he noted that it could be a useful guide for the settlement of disputes to the extent that it was “an embodiment of principles of natural equity, or of usages which independent nations have found it convenient or for their common advantage to agree upon regulating their intercourse with each other.”Footnote ⁹⁷

Aitchison's enduring contribution to the Political Department, however, did not lie in the treatise, but rather in his work on the compilation of treaties between the princely states and the British government.Footnote ⁹⁸ He built on the idea that he first developed in his monograph, where he had outlined general principles drawn from a series of disputes between the states and the British government; these principles, he argued, sustained British relations with the states. This was the first indication of the development of precedent to define the relationship. In the compilation, Aitchison listed the treaties by state, and prefaced each one with a detailed historical narrative,Footnote ⁹⁹ arguing that the treaties had to be interpreted based on the evolution of the relationship between the states and the British government.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Aitchison's successors in the Political Department built upon this insight to argue that “decisions” in later “cases” or disputes could be used to override specific provisions in the treaties, most often at the expense of the states.

One of these successors was Charles Lewis Tupper, also a man who spent much of his official life in Punjab.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Tupper freely admitted his intellectual debt to Maine, noting, “his pregnant suggestions have constantly guided my work in India, and throughout my life have chiefly inspired my studies.”Footnote ¹⁰² In 1893, Tupper published an unofficial text, Our Indian Protectorate, Footnote ¹⁰³ in which he provided an outline of “Indian political law,” a term he used to refer to the law that governed the relationship between the princely states and the British government.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ For Tupper, one of the basic principles underlying Indian political law was the divisibility of sovereignty; he quoted extensively from Maine's Kathiawar minute to support this contention. He described the princely states as “autonomous states, enjoying various degrees of sovereignty, levying their own taxes, administering their own laws, and possessing territory which is, for purposes of internal administration, foreign territory, and has not been annexed to the dominions of the British Crown.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The states, however, did not have the right to external relations and were politically subordinate to the British government, and so could not be subjects of international law.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Despite this assertion, Tupper, like Aitchison, did not entirely dismiss the application of international law to the princely states.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ The states had immunity from foreign law, the British government concluded treaties with the states, and questions arose relating to boundary disputes, extraterritorial jurisdiction, and the extradition of offenders. In all these cases, Tupper argued that international law could be used to resolve the issue.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Tupper's views proved to be influential, and the government of India invited him to update Leading Cases, a textbook on Indian political practice written by Mortimer Durand.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ The result was Tupper's four volume Indian Political Practice,Footnote ¹¹⁰ a survey of major cases from which he drew the main principles governing the relationship between the British government and the princely states. The treatise became a reference manual for the Political Department, and was kept confidential.Footnote ¹¹¹ Tupper included treaties with the princely states, provisions in British Indian statutes, and court decisions as sources of the principles, but noted that the most important source was the actual practice of the British government in its dealings with the states: what he dubbed “usage.”Footnote ¹¹² Tupper essentially produced a manual of case law to guide political officers in their work in relation to the princely states. The emphasis, building on Aitchison's work, was on historical practice, in order to determine the manner in which sovereign rights were divided between the princely states and the British government.Footnote ¹¹³ Tupper's work developed the idea that principles developed in the case of a single state were applicable in relation to all states; unsurprisingly, then, “usage” formed the basis of British claims of more extensive sovereign powers, thereby strengthening British authority over the states.

The final architect of the legal understanding of the relations between the states and the British government was William Lee-Warner, who was largely based in the Bombay Presidency through his career, and was Tupper's competitor in “the realm of ideas, and for official favour.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Lee-Warner also cited Maine to argue that sovereignty was divisible; in the case of the princely states, the distribution of sovereign powers was a question of fact to be determined by the evidence of treaties or usage. Of the two, he emphasized the role of usage; like Tupper, he argued that practice in relation to some states could constitute a precedent that was applicable against other states as well.Footnote ¹¹⁵ He first tried to promote his views in an 1886 manuscript titled Elementary Treatise on the Conduct of Political Relations with Native States; however, the government of India chose Tupper over him to compile a textbook on political practice.Footnote ¹¹⁶ In 1894, therefore, Lee-Warner published the work as a private individual, under the title Protected Princes of India, a revised version of which appeared in 1910 as The Native States of India.Footnote ¹¹⁷

In comparison with Tupper and Aitchison, Lee-Warner was a much stronger proponent of the international status of the princely states.Footnote ¹¹⁸ He relied on the idea of divisible sovereignty to argue that the princely states were semi-sovereign because they possessed some (though not all) powers of a sovereign. He admitted that the tie between the princely states and the British government was not “strictly” international, because the states were not equal powers, and had restrictions placed on both external relations and internal government.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Despite this, he argued that it was possible to conceive of a sovereignty that, “although wanting in completeness in every respect, was a sure defence against annexation.”Footnote ¹²⁰ Combined with the argument that international law regulated, to a limited extent, the relations of “communities of an analogous character with independent states,” Lee-Warner argued that the princely states could claim the shelter of international law.Footnote ¹²¹

Lee-Warner specifically criticized John Westlake, for being “the strongest advocate” of the argument in favor of a constitutional tie between the princely states and the British government.Footnote ¹²² Westlake noted that the states “had no international existence” as foreign states could not engage with them without the acquiescence of the British government.Footnote ¹²³ Hence, he argued that the ties between the states and the British government could only be “constitutional.”Footnote ¹²⁴ Lee-Warner, however, relied on Maine's Kathiawar minute to argue that the loss of one facet of sovereignty; that is, the right to external relations, did not destroy the international status of the princely states.Footnote ¹²⁵ He noted that even “if we officially avoid speaking of [states] as sovereigns we constantly apply to them conceptions of sovereignty, and are guided in many our negotiations with them by the spirit or the conceptions of international law.”Footnote ¹²⁶ He pointed out that the British Parliament had accepted princely states’ treaties as binding, whereas British courts had consistently treated the treaties as international obligations, with international law principles being used for their interpretation. He also described situations in which the princely states were not treated as a constitutional part of British India: for example, the exclusion of princely states from obligations under commercial treaties and from British Indian law.Footnote ¹²⁷

For Lee-Warner, the break in the constitutional tie signified that international law could be the only law applicable to the relationship, even if the states lacked complete independence or even internal autonomy. Instead, the crucial tests were, first, whether there was “common subjection to a common legislature, capable of making municipal laws binding upon the consenting states and their subjects,” and second, the existence of “a conflict of rights and interests which the states concerned could not in the absence of international law settle otherwise than by appeal to force.”Footnote ¹²⁸ The lack of a common legislature for British India, the princely states, and other parts of the British Empire, together with the existence of disputes, led him to argue that peaceful adjustment was needed by legal methods, leaving the field open for international law.Footnote ¹²⁹

Lee-Warner argued that Maine himself had envisaged such a view. In his Kathiawar minute, Maine had relied on the assumption that international law applied “in some sense” to the case in order to argue that the British government was bound, with regard to international rules, by its earlier disclaimer of sovereignty over Kathiawar. If international rules were applied, then rulers of princely states would be entitled, Lee-Warner argued, to “the respect and independence which the idea of international law so powerfully secures.”Footnote ¹³⁰ Because the states were foreign territory, if the British government wished to obtain an attribute of sovereignty within the realm of the state, such as railway jurisdiction, then it had to obtain a concession from the state; it could not simply use the constitutional mechanism of enacting a law to obtain the jurisdiction.Footnote ¹³¹

A review of the writings of Aitchison, Tupper, and Lee-Warner reveals the two basic principles that guided British political officers in late nineteenth-century South Asia. The first was the idea of “divisible sovereignty,” developed through Henry Maine's powerful influence. Sovereign powers were divided between the princely states and the British government; as a result, the states were both sovereign and not so, blurring the boundary between imperial and international law. Maine and his cohort in the Political Department all thought that international law had some part to play in defining the relationship between the states and the British government, although each of them had a different answer as to the precise nature of this role. Because boundaries between imperial and international law were hazy, colonial bureaucrats were able to argue in favor of extensive British extraterritorial jurisdiction, while also maintaining the princely states as “allies.”

Interlinked with the first principle of divisible sovereignty was the second, the idea of “precedent.”Footnote ¹³² Because colonial officials agreed that sovereign powers were divided among a number of entities, they were also concerned with the question of how such powers were distributed. Instead of deducing answers from an abstract idea of sovereignty, they relied heavily on history and political practice. This led to the development of precedent in the context of princely state relations, exemplified in the reliance on manuals of case law such as Indian Political Practice, and the official claim that general principles drawn from cases in relation to one state could be applied in similar cases in other states. Much like the concept of divisible sovereignty, the idea of political precedent enabled the British to entrench their paramountcy by expanding their own sovereign powers at the expense of the princely states through the mechanism of relying on case law to override specific provisions in British treaties with the states.

The twin principles of “divisible sovereignty” and “precedent” formed the core legal repercussions of the shift in British imperial ideology in the aftermath of the turmoil of 1857. Inspired by Henry Maine's understanding of radical differences between “traditional” Asian and “modern” European societies, this new philosophy of colonialism relied on the incorporation of local rulers into the imperial hierarchy, to provide stability to colonial rule after a period of rebellion. As a result, entities such as the princely states were recognized as “somewhat” sovereign junior allies, albeit within the broader enterprise of entrenching British paramountcy.

The softening of the boundaries between the imperial and the international, however, also had other consequences. Specifically, it led to the saturation of the South Asian landscape with the language of international law, and sovereignty in particular. In addition to British officials, princely state representatives also appropriated international legal language to argue about the legal status and sovereign powers of the states. Colonial civil servants considered jurisdiction to be one of the powers exercised by a sovereign; because sovereign powers were divided between the British government and the princely states, they argued that the British government exercised some jurisdiction within a state, while the remainder was with the state itself. Therefore, disputes over jurisdiction were rife, and the states and the British government continually argued over the appropriate manner in which jurisdictional powers were divided.Footnote ¹³³ The princely states had their own conceptions of sovereignty that they articulated in these disputes, at times with some success. It is critical to examine these arguments to understand the different ways in which sovereignty was defined, as well as the stakes of international law in the colonial context. In the next two sections, therefore, I examine two such conflicts: the first was a dispute between Travancore and the British government over jurisdiction over European British subjects who committed crimes within the territory of princely states, and the second was a dispute between Baroda and the British government over jurisdiction over telegraph lines within state territory.

Travancore and Jurisdiction over European British Subjects

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the British government began to claim jurisdiction over its subjects who resided in the princely states.Footnote ¹³⁴ The states resisted these claims, as they considered British extraterritorial jurisdiction to be highly intrusive. A case in point was the long-running dispute between Travancore and the British government over jurisdiction over European British subjectsFootnote ¹³⁵ who committed crimes in Travancore territory.Footnote ¹³⁶

The dispute was triggered in September 1868 by John Liddell's petition to the governor of Madras, a province in British India, seeking relief from an alleged unlawful detention by the authorities of the state of Travancore.Footnote ¹³⁷ Liddell had been convicted of theft by a Travancore court,Footnote ¹³⁸ but claimed that as a European British subject, he was subject only to the jurisdiction of British Indian courts. He argued, therefore, that his trial and subsequent conviction had been illegal.Footnote ¹³⁹ To support his claim, he adduced the governor-general's proclamation (dated January 10, 1867) that provided: “… The Governor-General in Council is … pleased to declare … that original criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects of Her Majesty being Christians residing in the Native States and Chiefships below named, shall … be exercised by, and distributed among, the several High Courts … as follows: By the High Court of Madras in Mysore, Travancore, and Cochin.”Footnote ¹⁴⁰

The advocate-general of the Madras government opined that Liddell's trial was illegal, arguing that “[t]he criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects hitherto exercised by the Travancore Courts does not appear to rest upon any treaty, but to have been ceded by courtesy and comity,” and that it had ended with the 1867 proclamation that conferred such jurisdiction on the Madras High Court.Footnote ¹⁴¹ The Madras government, therefore, asked Travancore for Liddell's release.Footnote ¹⁴²

In response, T. Madhava Rao,Footnote ¹⁴³ the diwan (chief minister) of Travancore, launched a strong defense of Travancore's exercise of criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects. He cited from international law treatises by Henry Wheaton and Emer de Vattel to argue that jurisdiction was “an inherent right of sovereignty,”Footnote ¹⁴⁴ and that “the jurisdiction of the nation within its own territory is necessarily exclusive and absolute. … All exceptions, therefore, to the full and complete power of a nation within its own territories must be traced up to the consent of the nation itself.”Footnote ¹⁴⁵ He also noted that Travancore had not agreed to cede jurisdiction over European British subjects; in fact, on several previous occasions, the British government had recognized Travancore's right to try Europeans residing in its territory. Finally, he argued that the 1867 proclamation, being British Indian municipal law, could not affect the inherent rights of foreign states, which were subjects of international law.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ For Madhava Rao, sovereign powers were linked with the control of territory, and jurisdiction was a right exercised by the territorial sovereign, in this case, the maharaja of Travancore.

Travancore also sought additional support to buttress its case, taking the opinion of J. D. Mayne, a well-respected member of the Madras bar and former advocate-general of the Madras government.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Mayne first discussed the situation in the Ottoman Empire and China, both of which had entered into treaties for the cession of jurisdiction over foreigners. In comparison, none of Travancore's treaties contemplated such a renunciation. And in support of Madhava Rao, Mayne also insisted that the government of India's 1867 proclamation would be inoperative against Travancore, because “Parliament is as incapable of taking away the powers of a court in Travancore as it is of dealing with the courts of France.”Footnote ¹⁴⁸

On the strength of these arguments, a majority of the members of the Council of the Government of Madras agreed with Travancore's claim. The dissenter, H. D. Phillips, claimed that the British government was bound by the 1867 proclamation and denied that Travancore could claim the privileges of international law, because it was a “feudatory” state.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ However, the governor of Madras, Francis Napier, conceded that no treaty was necessary to confer jurisdiction on Travancore, as it was “a right which is inherent in free and absolute sovereignty.” He denied that Travancore had the right to appeal to international law, which regulated the relations of independent and equal European states, because the position of the British as the “paramount power” deprived the princely states of some of their sovereign rights. In this specific case, however, he argued that it was inappropriate to deny Travancore the exercise of criminal jurisdiction.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ A. J. Arbuthnot, the final member of the council, agreed with Napier and emphasized the need for a state's explicit consent for the cession of jurisdiction.Footnote ¹⁵¹ As a result, the government of Madras revoked its previous resolution seeking Liddell's release.Footnote ¹⁵²

When the government of India intervened in the situation, the law member, Henry Maine, admitted that Travancore “theoretically” had jurisdiction to try European British subjects for offences committed within its boundaries since it was not a part of British India. He also agreed with J. D. Mayne that the 1867 notification could not take away Travancore's inherent jurisdiction, any more than English statutes could take away the rights of France or Prussia to try British subjects committing offenses in their territories. Being politically astute, however, he argued that without denying Travancore's abstract right to try European British subjects, the British government ought to point out that there were reasons for Europeans to be committed to Madras for trial, including the importance of trying them by a procedure to which they were accustomed, and the problems of native prisons.Footnote ¹⁵³ This was a practical application of Maine's enunciation of divisible sovereignty; here he argued that the British could exercise jurisdiction over some persons within princely state territory, whereas the state would retain the jurisdiction over everyone else.

In August 1871, the government of India laid down a categorical rule, stating, “No Native State can be allowed to try a European British subject according to its own forms of procedure and punish him according to its own laws.” It admitted that in theory, every state that had independent internal administration had the right to deal with persons resident within its jurisdiction according to its own laws. However, it claimed that there was a universal exception to this: extraterritoriality, which had been applied by Christian states in Muslim and “heathen” countries “out of necessity” on account of the differences in “religion, education, social habits, laws and judicial institutions.” Underlining the role of historical facts in determining the division of powers, the government of India also built upon earlier claims relating to extradition, asserting that the British had never surrendered European British subjects for trial by princely state courts. Because full reciprocity between the British and the princely states had never been accepted practice in the past, the government of India argued that the princely states could not be permitted to try European British subjects apprehended in princely state territory; instead, they were to be tried by justices of the peace appointed by the British government, and committed to courts in British India.Footnote ¹⁵⁴

After the 1871 resolution, the government of India passed the Foreign Jurisdiction and Extradition Act, 1872, which provided for the appointment of justices of the peace in the princely states to commit European British subjects to trial, and barred the extradition of European British subjects to the states. The act did not, however, explicitly provide that princely states could not try European British subjects. The government of India then issued a notification delegating jurisdiction over European British subjects in Travancore to the resident, appointed the resident as a justice of the peace, and directed that the esident commit European British subjects to the Madras High Court for trial.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

Travancore lodged a protest, with A. Sashiah Shastri,Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Madhava Rao's successor as diwan, referring to his predecessor's arguments in the Liddell case. He questioned the notification, because it related to European British subjects, but not to other Europeans or Americans or to the subjects of Indian or Asian sovereigns.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Surprisingly, the British resident at Travancore supported Sashiah Shastri; he contended that European British subjects had voluntarily chosen to settle under the sovereignty of a princely state, and that residency records did not show any complaints against the exercise of jurisdiction by state authorities. He proposed a compromise: Christian judges in Travancore courts, who were also European British subjects, could be appointed justices of the peace with powers to try petty cases, with serious offenses committed to the Travancore Sadr Court. He suggested that the appointment of the justices of the peace not be done by a unilateral act of the British government, but rather through an arrangement with Travancore.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ The Madras government described the compromise as one deserving the “most attentive consideration.”Footnote ¹⁵⁹

The government of India consented to the resident's alternative proposal on account of the “special circumstances affecting the States of Travancore and Cochin, and more particularly of the enlightened and progressive principles which have been followed by those States in their judicial administration.”Footnote ¹⁶⁰ The secretary of state for India also approved of the general principles governing criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects as well as the compromise in the Travancore case. However, he did not consider that Liddell, who had been released by Travancore after the completion of his sentence, had suffered any hardship as a result of his conviction, and so refused to ask Travancore to pay any compensation.Footnote ¹⁶¹ As a result of this decision, princely states were required to consult the political officer posted at their court in the trial of European British subjects and were bound by his advice.

The Travancore case is an example of a dispute over the exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction by European colonial empires; such jurisdiction is often considered to be based on the idea of a “civilizational difference” between Europeans and non-Europeans that required special privileges for Europeans. In the case of the princely states, the idea of such a difference was complicated by multiple factors: the British both did not claim jurisdiction over certain Europeans and did claim jurisdiction over those who were not European. Perhaps the most curious was the position of Americans and Europeans who were not British subjects. The government of India admitted that the same concerns of “heathen” laws applied, yet it did not include these subjects in its considerations. This was on account of concerns about the legality of extending British laws to foreign subjects in a foreign state. On several occasions, the British government claimed jurisdiction over Americans and Europeans who were not British subjects on the grounds of being the “paramount power,” and to prevent “awkward diplomatic incidents,” but admitted that the question was controversial.Footnote ¹⁶² A later memorandum clarified that Americans and Europeans who were not British subjects or in the service of the crown did not have the right to be tried by British Indian courts. Instead princely states exercised jurisdiction over them subject to the control of British political officers who had the responsibility of ensuring that foreigners received a fair trial, because the British government was responsible for the external affairs of the states.Footnote ¹⁶³ The states also retained jurisdiction over those European British subjects who were charged under state laws with acts that were not offenses under British law; these included, for example, offenses against revenue laws.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ European British subjects in the service of princely states were also usually left to the jurisdiction of state courts.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Another exception followed on account of the difficulty of determining what constituted a criminal case, with the British contending that “technical” criminality (such as trespass)Footnote ¹⁶⁶ existed on the boundary of civil and criminal questions, and could be dealt with by princely state courts.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ Further complicating the idea of a “civilizational difference” was the fact that the British also claimed jurisdiction over persons who were not European British subjects. Most prominently, they claimed the right to exercise jurisdiction over British Indian subjects who were in the service of the crown (i.e., those who were government personnel); these would include, for example, postal or railway employees who were posted in the princely states.Footnote ¹⁶⁸

As these complexities demonstrate, the notion of a “civilizational difference” could not fully encompass British claims to jurisdiction within entities such as the princely states, which straddled the boundaries of the “imperial” and the “international.” In the Travancore case, the British government argued that it possessed some (though not all) sovereign rights within the territory of princely states. By defining sovereignty as divisible, it was able to claim jurisdiction not only over European British subjects (on most occasions, at least), but also over British Indian subjects who were in charge of critical infrastructure works (such as railways and the postal service) in the states, while admitting that the states retained jurisdiction over most other people present in their territory. The idea of divisible sovereignty, therefore, enabled the British to establish and expand their control over the states, a position that was further facilitated by the notion of political precedent. The British buttressed their claim to jurisdiction over European British subjects apprehended in state territory by building on earlier decisions in which the government of India had refused to extradite European British subjects who were apprehended in British territory.Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Initially, this strategy of expanding British sovereign powers by building on earlier affirmations ran into a problem, because Madhava Rao had specifically pointedFootnote ¹⁷⁰ to an 1837 government of India statement that provided, “Europeans residing in the territory of Native States, not being servants of the British Government, must be held in all respects, and in all cases, civil and criminal, subject to the law of the country in which they reside.”Footnote ¹⁷¹ Consequently, the government of India chose to engage in a move familiar in the common law: it distinguished the cases, arguing that earlier (unnamed) difficulties in the British exercise of jurisdiction in the states had been removed by legislation; the question, therefore, “was placed on a different footing from that on which it formerly rested.”Footnote ¹⁷² The Liddell case then became the basis for British claims to jurisdiction over European British subjects in other princely states. Tupper, for example, included it in Indian Political Practice as a precedent to be relied on.Footnote ¹⁷³ Several later Political Department notes also relied on the case to articulate the general principle that princely states could not exercise criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects.Footnote ¹⁷⁴

Travancore's diwans, Madhava Rao and Sashiah Shastri, sought to challenge this vision of divisible sovereignty and the significance of precedent, and thereby also the British colonial claim to powers of intervention in the states. In this, they relied on the idea of “territorial sovereignty.” Both argued that there was a single entity that exercised jurisdiction over a particular piece of territory, in this case, Travancore. Therefore, they argued that the Travancore state had jurisdiction over everyone (regardless of nationality) within its territory, and hence, had the jurisdiction to try European British subjects who committed offenses in state territory. Because jurisdiction was vested in a single entity, all jurisdictional powers were vested in the Travancore state, with other entities, such as the British government, being excluded from exercising jurisdiction in Travancore territory. This focus on a unified notion of sovereignty lent support to the efforts of the princely states to maintain their separate existence and limit British interference in their internal affairs through extraterritorial jurisdiction. Madhava Rao, in particular, had expressed his concerns about the pre-1857 British policy of annexation of states, and argued that “native administrators” had a duty to defend the princely states and ensure their survival.Footnote ¹⁷⁵

One of the most significant ways to minimize colonial interference, Madhava Rao realized, was to develop the kind of administration that would win British approval.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ The product of an English education, Madhava Rao “knew what the British wanted, and he was able to give it to them; he played them successfully at their own game.”Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Even though colonial control was established largely on the basis of divisible sovereignty and precedent, the British did rely on the idea of “civilization” in a secondary manner: they used it as the basis for an elaborate system of classification of the princely states, whereby “more” civilized states enjoyed the exercise of broader powers than “less” civilized states;Footnote ¹⁷⁸ states that wished to defend their sovereignty were, therefore, compelled to conform to British ideals of governance. During his tenure as diwan, Madhava Rao instituted a range of reform measures, including the establishment of a plantation economy and fiscal reforms to improve the finances of the state, the improvement of both the English and vernacular education systems of the state, the institution of competitive examinations for government jobs, and the construction of a wide-ranging public works system.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ One of the rationales for the institution of these projects was to enable Travancore to take advantage of the colonial scheme of classification, but although the measures impressed the British, as Robin Jeffrey points out, they only “sought to ‘improve’ society as a whole, not to adjust relationships among its members.”Footnote ¹⁸⁰ Rather than resulting in any meaningful social engineering, the reforms simply resulted in the development of a centralized, bureaucratic, efficient state that was capable of intervening more deeply in the lives of its citizens. The articulation of absolute, territorial sovereignty in disputes with the British government was a crucial legal argument in this effort to empower state elites and bureaucrats and thereby also build administrative structures that would limit British interference.

Travancore's claims of territorial sovereignty and its status as a “progressive” state enabled the state's bureaucrats to negotiate a compromise with British colonial officials whereby Travancore judges could remain involved in the exercise of jurisdiction over European British subjects. Ultimately, however, it was the British idea of divisible sovereignty that won out in the dispute, and the universalization of the decision into a generally applicable political precedent soon enabled the government of India to claim extensive criminal jurisdiction within the territory of the princely states more generally.

Baroda and Jurisdiction over Telegraphs

The telegraph-based communication system, established in South Asia in the second half of the nineteenth century,Footnote ¹⁸¹ facilitated increasing levels of state surveillance, but also led to concerns about leaks of confidential information sent through the telegraph. Control over telegraph lines, therefore, was closely linked to the stability of British colonial rule.Footnote ¹⁸² These security concerns extended to lines in the princely states, as they were closely interwoven with British Indian territory. As a result, there were numerous disputes over the construction of telegraph lines within and across the states.Footnote ¹⁸³ A look at the development of the telegraph in Baroda can provide some insight.

In 1873, the government of India granted the Bombay, Baroda, and Central India Railway Company (BBCIR), a private British company, a licence to operate the telegraph line that ran along the railway line between the towns of Miyagam and Dabhoi in Baroda; BBCIR already operated the railway line in question. It is unclear under what authority the licence was issued, and there was no discussion about the legal framework that would govern the operation of the telegraph line. Ten years later, the government of India sought Baroda's formal consent for the application of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1876 (a British Indian legislation) to the line, stating that the measure was “usual” and “the necessity for it had escaped notice” earlier.Footnote ¹⁸⁴

In response, the diwan of Baroda, Kazi Shahabuddin,Footnote ¹⁸⁵ argued that the Telegraph Act was not applicable to the line in question as it was “constructed at the expense of the Baroda Government,” was “situated entirely in Baroda territory,” and was “under the jurisdiction of His Highness's Government.” After explicitly linking control over the telegraph line to its presence within Baroda territory, he went on to explain the role of the BBCIR. He claimed that the company was simply Baroda's agent, operating the line for and on behalf of the state, implying that Baroda continued to exercise ultimate authority over the telegraph line. Based on the claim that the princely states were separate legal entities from British India, he argued that as with any other statute passed by the British Indian legislature, the Telegraph Act did not apply to Baroda. Making the legislation applicable to the state would, he contended, be a “detriment to the integrity of jurisdiction and other rights of His Highness's Government.”Footnote ¹⁸⁶ Much like Madhava Rao and Sashiah Shastri had done in the Liddell case, Kazi Shahabuddin defended Baroda's right to control activities in its territory.

The government of India, however, disputed Shahabuddin's claim on finances, asserting that the telegraph line had been constructed and was maintained at its cost, and not at the cost of the Baroda state. More significantly, it stated that the application of the Telegraph Act to the princely states was not “an unusual measure” (giving the example of the state of Hyderabad as a precedent) and simply provided the advantage of uniformity across India.Footnote ¹⁸⁷ The government of India later clarified that would be satisfied if Baroda enacted its own law “following the provisions” of the Telegraph Act and the rules thereunder.Footnote ¹⁸⁸

When the Baroda Telegraph Act was finally drafted,Footnote ¹⁸⁹ the grant of the operation license by the government of India became a point of contention. The diwan noted that there was no existing engagement between Baroda and the government of India requiring the viceroy's consent for the establishment of telegraph lines in Baroda. As a result, the draft Baroda Act required the state to issue a licence to the BBCIR in supersession of the license that had been issued by the government of India. This was an indication that Baroda was attempting to retain as much control over the line as possible by claiming that it was the appropriate authority for the issue of licenses in relation to telegraphs in state territory. The agent to the governor-general (AGG) at Baroda noted that the draft act provided the state with the authority to make rules for the conduct of telegraph lines but did not take exception to this provision, because it was framed more as an “assertion of State prerogative than with any view of interfering with the working of the line.”Footnote ¹⁹⁰

The government of India was not as relaxed about the assertion as the AGG, stating that Baroda was required to pass a law “in the spirit” of the Telegraph Act, the main principle of which was to vest in the governor-general “complete control” over the telegraphic system in British India. It argued that a Baroda enactment framed along those lines would have vested control over state telegraph lines in the governor-general. Instead, the draft statute reserved that control to the state itself and would consequently defeat the British objective of securing control over the whole telegraphic system of the region. It therefore reverted to its demand for Baroda's consent to the application of the Telegraph Act to the line. It also objected to the “assertion of State prerogative” by Baroda in retaining the power to frame rules for telegraph lines as “inappropriate.”Footnote ¹⁹¹ The government of India's arguments relied on the idea that sovereign powers were divided between the British and the princely states. Consequently, the British government could claim to exercise certain sovereign powers within the territory of the princely states; in this case, it happened to be the power to determine the law applicable to telegraph lines situated within state territory.

In the attempt to retain control over its telegraph lines, Baroda delayed granting consent for the application of the Telegraph Act to its territory for years. As a result, the construction of telegraph lines in the state ground to a halt. In 1890, the issue began to be pursued more vigorously, because there were increased fears of an accident on railway lines that did not have parallel telegraph lines.Footnote ¹⁹² The government of India refused to permit construction until the state extended the Telegraph Act to Baroda.Footnote ¹⁹³ To resolve the issue, the diwan, Manibhai Jashbhai, one of Kazi Shahabuddin's successors, suggested a compromise. First, he proposed that the telegraph lines in Baroda that were connected with the general telegraph system of British India (as distinguished from local lines that lay completely within Baroda) would be worked according to the spirit of the Telegraph Act, with control (including the power to issue licenses) vesting with the government of India. Second, he argued that jurisdiction with respect to offenses under the Telegraph Act on telegraph lines in Baroda continue to vest with Baroda courts. He argued that this arrangement would preserve Baroda's “jurisdictional integrity,” while ensuring that through telegraph lines were worked on a general and uniform system.Footnote ¹⁹⁴

The AGG found the diwan's proposal to be satisfactory,Footnote ¹⁹⁵ but the government of India refused to accept anything “short of the complete and unconditional application of the Indian Telegraph Act by the Darbar to the lines in the Baroda State.” It also refused to accept a carve-out for local lines, demanding that the Telegraph Act be made applicable to all lines.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ After another 2 years, the diwan finally conveyed Baroda's consent to the application of the Telegraph Act “to all present and future telegraph lines in the Baroda State, that may be connected to the Imperial system, or, being isolated, may be thrown open to the public whose messages are charged for.”Footnote ¹⁹⁷ Jurisdiction over offenses against the Telegraph Act, however, remained with Baroda courts, except in cases involving European British subjects.Footnote ¹⁹⁸

As with the Travancore dispute over criminal jurisdiction, Baroda's dispute over the laws to be applied to telegraph lines within its territory (a dispute over legislative jurisdiction) demonstrates the significance of the differing conceptions of sovereignty that the princely states and the British government favored. Baroda officials relied on the idea of “territorial sovereignty” to argue that the state was the exclusive and absolute sovereign over everything in its territory. Therefore, Baroda had the sole right to enact its own laws and to have its courts exercise jurisdiction with respect to telegraph lines within state territory even if the lines were part of a larger system connected with British India. Because the idea of territorial sovereignty implied that there was a single sovereign with respect to any piece of territory, Baroda officials argued that other entities such as the British government could not exercise any sovereign authority over Baroda; that is, over telegraph lines that lay completely within state territory.

Much as Travancore bureaucrats had done, Baroda officials sought to establish a single point of legal authority within the state territory. The similarity of arguments is, perhaps, unsurprising, as Madhava Rao had been Kazi Shahabuddin's predecessor as diwan of Baroda, and had delivered a series of lectures to the minor ruler, Sayaji Rao III, emphasizing the importance of a well-run administration to minimize British interference in the state.Footnote ¹⁹⁹ Shahabuddin had served as the head of the finance department during Madhava Rao's tenure as diwan and had been his close confidante.Footnote ²⁰⁰ He also continued the extensive reforms that Madhava Rao had started in the state, including changes to the land revenue system, investment in education through the opening of a number of schools, the institution of competitive examinations for the civil service, and the establishment of an extensive public works system. These were analogous to the reforms carried out in Travancore, and among the varied reasons they were carried out was the need to impress colonial officials and conform to British ideals of responsible rule. More significantly, these reforms included the institution of a bureaucracy that concentrated power in the hands of the diwan and his subordinates at the expense of local nobles who had traditionally enjoyed enormous privileges.Footnote ²⁰¹ Shahabuddin himself had been heavily involved in a similar effort of centralizing power during his tenure as the diwan of Kutch; there, he had pleaded the state's case against British interference in relation to the rights of the local zamindars (landholders).Footnote ²⁰² The construction of sovereignty as “absolute” and “territorial” in the course of disputes with the British government fit with the princely states’ general efforts to create strong, centralized governments in the late nineteenth century.

Baroda's claims of territorial sovereignty or even its reliance on the status as a “model” state did not go very far. British officials defined sovereignty as divisible to argue that certain sovereign powers in relation to the princely states vested with the British government, with the remainder left to the Baroda state. As a result, the British government claimed the power to determine the laws applicable to telegraph lines even if they lay completely within Baroda. British officials also used the precedent of other princely states such as Hyderabad to argue that Baroda was required to apply British Indian legislation to and cede partial jurisdiction over telegraph lines within its territory. Tupper's Indian Political Practice used the Baroda case itself as the basis of a generally applicable principle;Footnote ²⁰³ soon other princely states were also deprived of control over telegraph lines.Footnote ²⁰⁴ Relying on the twin principles of divisible sovereignty and precedent, therefore, enabled British officials to cement colonial control by integrating princely state infrastructure into the broader imperial system, but also to claim that the states were “sovereign” in the sense that they retained the exercise of jurisdiction over most offenses committed along telegraph lines.