The twelve essays in this volume deal with a range of understudied topics related to the Indian princely states, which made up “two-fifths of south Asia's territory” and “one-fifth of its population” (p. 1), and which were outside the “direct” jurisdiction of the British in 1858 when the Crown took over the East India Company. Although the topics covered are various, the contributors generally share a habit of utilizing rare archival source materials to critique the colonial mode of historiography and the tradition that studies the Indian states in reductionist ways. Because of the varied nature of the princely states and their different positions, any generalization, the writers of this volume affirm, is a serious impediment to the recognition of Indian regional diversity in precolonial agrarian relations and power structures. Rather, as Hira Singh contends, more flexible methodologies are needed that focus on the elements of “agency,” “particularity,” “resistance,” “negotiation,” and “mutual accommodation.”

Most of the articles shed light on the varied relationships between the colonial power and the princely states and give insights into the hegemonic strategies of colonialism. Indrani Sen shows how the colonial fiction composed during 1858–1900 reproduced an ideology (“imagined” reality) that represented the Indian princes as the “Other,” as the “spent force,” and in moral and political decline, thus legitimizing and making indispensable British rule in India. This legitimacy was worked out and negotiated variously, and often, as Biswamoy Pati argues, the princes themselves indirectly served to legitimize colonialism and imperial history, for example, by participating in the popular cults and modernizing processes, Hinduizing the tribal population, reinforcing the existing class/caste and gender hierarchies, and constructing their royal genealogies.

At times, especially after 1858, as Samiksha Sehrawat suggests, the princes became “willing collaborators” in Britain's military agendas in Europe and the empire, such collaboration assuring the princes (and the women rulers, in the case of Bhopal) an honorable position within the British paramountcy. Whenever a prince was a liability rather than an asset for British interests, as Fiona Groenhout illustrates, the colonial power employed means to discredit and depose him. Similarly, when the British saw it as the better option for their economic benefit, Amar Farooqui demonstrates, they subjected the state to their own rule—sometimes, as shown by Shakti Kak, imposing agrarian interventions in various states and creating new power structures by leaving intact the old exploitative conditions. Finally, Hari Sen, examines the effects of various state and imperial policies and shows how rural areas often had to pay the price because of the uneven application of measures such as taxation and unequal distribution of land that often gave rise to the popular uprising such as the Eki movement of the Bhils.

Other articles underscore the collaborations between the people, princes, and colonial authority. Barbara N. Ramusack deals with several levels of alliances in considering the evolution of public and private medical institutions and professions that looked after women in Mysore from 1870 to 1920. T. V. Sekher, similarly treating the theme of the public health in Mysore, shows how different establishments worked together and how the well-organized administrative machinery and the existing health infrastructure made it possible to tackle the influenza pandemic of 1918. The collaboration also existed on the military front, the topic of Sehrawat's article, in which she traces the history of the Imperial Service Troops established by the British as a defense strategy against the Russian imperial ambitions and later appropriated by them to counter the rising anticolonial movements in India.

Taken together, the articles in this anthology raise important questions for future research: What kind of autonomy did the princely states “really” enjoy during the British Raj? Were the economic and political systems and regional autonomy that these princely states developed in the aftermath of Mughal decline fully retained as the British negotiated various treaties with these states? Was the British policy of “noninterference” after the Rebellion of 1857, as Ernst and Pati argue, the “hegemonic shift” in British policy? How far were the princes able to exercise their power in the real sense, given that the colonial power still “retained the right to intervene in states and to remove rulers from power when necessary”? (p. 100). As the British also made various types of treaties and military engagements with the princely states, and applied different policies such as “subsidiary alliance” and the “doctrine of lapse” in order to constrain the Indian rulers' freedom of action in the economic and political fronts (p. 1), it is important to pay close attention to these questions when addressing the issue of “autonomy” of princely states. While the articles are devoted to the specific issues and times, they also open the way for similar types of studies of the many princely states and time periods not covered in this anthology.